How does my garden grow?

Well now that we got the computer back working again, I can continue to update you on my garden!

I know its been a long time since This post, where I showed you my sugar snap peas, lettuce, and celery. 

The Lettuce was amazing, I had fresh salads for about a month and a half. I think next year I will try a different variety, because they didn't produce as much as I liked, next year I think I will try them in a shallow box. 

As for sugars snap peas, they DO NOT GROW WELL in pots, not nearly enough root space, they did wonderful until they ran out of room then they quickly got brown and would only produce small pods with one maybe two peas in them, the peas though, were delicious, and Annabella loved picking them off the vine

The Celery,was my favorite out of this day! It stayed small until its first feeding of Compost tea, then it bloomed out and the foliage turned bright green, here is a picture of it as of a few days ago its the one in the orange pot. The one in the purple pot is Lemon Verbena. It smells like Lemon PEZ.  I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, but I know it will be something fabulous

I attempted a California pepper this year (again after many failed attempts) so far we haven't eaten any peppers, but there are lots starting, and I hope to eat some.

This year I have quite a large herb collection, I'm working on a greenhouse to keep them going in the winter, its been so nice to have fresh herbs outside my door

Oregano, Marjoram and Sage

Roman Chamomile, Peppermint, and Kale

Thyme and Flat Leaf Parsley (orange pots)

Rosemary and Sweet Basil (purple pots) next year I'm going to plant more basil, I use so much!

Genovese Basil (yellow pot), Moss Curled Parsley (purple pot), lavender (green pot) and thats the thyme again in the orange

Here is are the result of the dill seeds that my mom gave me! This was delicious on fish!

My San Marzano Tomato is my pride and joy, planted in a  SMART POT it has not stopped growing, smart pots force the roots to form a good root ball and prevent them from getting root bound! 

They will be red soon, San Marzanos are pretty much the only tomato in a can that I'll buy, and I always get them imported from Italy, I'm anxious to see how mine compare.

The zucchini is doing great in a wine barrel, It keeps it a manageable size.

Annabella loves the squash blossoms and baby zucchinis

Thanks for reading!

Luther Burbank Gardens with Mom

One of my favorite places in the world is the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, in Santa Rosa, California. Luther Burbank was someone who loved plants, he developed over 800 strains and varieties of plants most commonly, the shasta daisy

You may also know Luther as the inventor of the Russet potato! Ever had a white blackberry? If you go to Luther's Wikipedia Page, you can find out more facinating facts, like he never even graduated high school! You can also thank him for this juicy fire poppy

At the Burbank house there is a whole bed of them

This is the biggest Opuntia (prickly pear) plant I've ever seen!

And some pears

I'll never have a veggie garden like Burbank, check out his red chard

And Orange

I feel blessed to live next to Santa Rosa, Burbank wrote to his family "I firmly believe from what I have seen that [Santa Rosa] is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as nature is concerned...." I think that he's right.

The flowers above were in Burbank's children's garden, I read this beautiful quote in front of it 

"Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs and mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, waterlilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education"

I couldn't agree more

The beans below are great for returning nitrogen to the soil, they are good food as well, what you do is plant these in an area in a year after you have planted a crop that drains nitrogen from the soil. After a few years the soil is rich in nitrogen and great to plan in again. Brilliant!

A bed of Shasta Daisy!

Annabella loved all the flowers

Some Blue Fennel! I love how these flowers look

This sundial was so easy to read!

If you are ever in Santa Rosa or Northern California, definitely check this place out, you can even get some of Luther's plants to take home and plant in your garden! 

Or just hang out on the lawn, watch the fountain, and eat a banana

yum

How Does my Garden Grow

Its been just two months since this post

where I showed you all the plants that I have been putting in pots outside

Most are doing very well

My sugar snap peas get the most compliments

I love the pea flowers, they remind me of tiny orchids

However, follow a little bit further down the peas and you'll find

Thats right something has been eating my PEAS!

Its no question who, Snails have been going to town on my poor peas.

At night I go on snail hunts, 

I remove the snails and then smash them on my driveway.

Don't tell PETA

Its satisfying, but I can't kill all of the snails

So I set a trap two days ago

I dug a hole, stuck a glass inside, and filled it halfway with beer

so far no new snails

not that I've caught any.

I sent a tweet to Martha Stewart asking her what to do.

No response

My lettuce however,

is doing wonderful

I was pretty nervous about growing lettuce

But I think I'm doing alright

I harvested the outer leaves on all the lettuce plants for a yummy salad last night

Also I have been growing Red Celery

This is also a new one for me

I'm really pleased with the celery

All my plants are grown organically, this is what I use to make my garden grow

• Compost Tea; a friend of mine told me that this stuff will save anything, so far its proven very true, I can remember an almost dead tree at an old house of ours that I put Compost tea on about once a week, it came back to life in about two months. Compost tea is basicly compost and a bunch of different manures, brewed into a tea. Its smelly but it works. This is the best natural boost for your garden, You can get a Compost Tea Brew Kit made by Bountea and brew it yourself. Some garden shops brew the tea and sell it by the gallon to customers. I'm sure there are lots of D.I.Y. tutorials for a brewer on the internet.
• Fish Poop; this stuff STINKS, well at first it stinks, after a while I started to like the smell of it, because it works! It has so many nutrients that your plants need that they don't normally find in the soil because they are nutrients found in the sea.
• SUPERthrive - this stuff is amazing, I use it when I transplant a plant to a new pot, or if I trim a lot off a plant. 

I hope that this helps some of you gardeners out there, or some of you beginner gardeners.  Just a note that Miracle Grow is very unnatural, and contains lots of hazardous chemicals. I don't use it on anything, any chemicals that you use leach into your soil. 

The Future of Food

is a great movie to check out about organic eating

Frostbite prevention Plan B

The Farmers Almanac  is a site that I reference whenever I need information about my plants, the site is wonderful, you can enter your zip into thier best dates planting guide. Here you can enter your zip code and they will give you a chart of when to plant your seeds.

This year I decided that I didn't want to be late planting like I usually am. So when I looked last week at what to plant, I saw that there was a few plants that I could start!

You can see my pot garden here in case you missed that post.

But it still gets cold at night, and Ryan warned me that the plants still needed to be covered.

Last night, I opened a garbage bag and covered the plants and held it down with rocks. However this morning, my plants seemed squished by last nights rainfall.

So today I decided to try a new method

I'll let you know tomorrow how this works out. 

Gardening in Pots

HOORAY! Its time to plant for spring, well those really early veggies anyways

I saw a sign a few weeks ago advertising $2.99 refurbished pots. I thought it had to be good to be true, but so far folks, its been just as good as I had hoped.

So on Monday, I went to the store and bought five.

thats right $2.99 each!

Then I went to Harmony Farm Supply 

Its such a wonderful place, they have everything, I mean this is California, and I'm from the northeast coast, so what they can grow out here is just incredible. I love it here.

I could walk around for hours

and I have.

But this trip was short, just for a few early veggies, and some herbs to have on hand,

now that I have such fancy pots, I can have some herbs stick around for a while.

 I had scored a free bag of Organic soil, from someone on freecycle. It was a hike to get to the ladies house, who lived 'just outside town' (apparently that means a half hour). But the soil was well worth the trip.

My list was

Lettuce

Carrots (dwarf)

Rosemary

Basil

Thyme

Peas

Snap Peas

Morning Glory Seeds

The basil I'll admit, was a little hopeful  for this time of year, I should have bought some seeds to put on my windowsill, but forgot

I crossed most things off my list

Lettuce

Carrots (dwarf)

Rosemary

Basil

Thyme

Peas

Snap Peas

Morning Glory Seeds

*Celery

*I added the celery, I use it a lot, and it says on the tag that I can "harvest singly for continuous supply", I think this will be a much cheaper option then buying bunches of celery, I never use them all. And I love the subtle flavor celery adds to a dish, you can't leave it out of a stuffing!

In honor of the celery, here is my 'Redventure' Celery

Next up some Moss Curled Parsley, after cooking so many recipes from my 

Carmine's Family-Style Cookbook:

I've needed a lot of tablespoons of parsley! Again, a lot goes to waste, no matter how many times I tell myself that I'm going to dehydrate it!

I also picked up some 'Tuscan blue' rosemary. I don't use rosemary dried very often, mostly because I don't have a mortar and pestle

But I love the way that it tastes fresh, especially rosemary potatoes, I think that is my favorite way to have rosemary. I thought that it would look beautiful when it blooms, because its about the same color

Last but not least, Ryan's favorite herb, thyme. I chose the 'True English, broad leaf' variety, my thyme got a little out of control last year in the garden, so I'll have to be more on top of it this year,  the more you trim the bigger it gets! Last year I was madly pregnant, so I would be gardening for a week straight, and then sleeping all day the next!

I also got some Sugar Snap Pole Peas, and an 'Encore Mix' of Lettuce which has Dark Lolla Rosa, Firecracker, Red Saladbowl, Tango, and Paris Island.

Yes, you may come over for a salad

There was no more soil left for these so they will be potted tomorrow when I have more dirt!

Oh one last outdoor pic, these are the seedlings from the seed paper card that Ryan got me. These are the ones that I started outside

I can't wait to see what flowers come out of it!

The ones on my windowsill will be first for sure! They are growing like wildflowers! (and they should cause thats what they are) They always photograph well!

and another one from the other side

Thats it for the gardening, I'm anxiously awaiting more soil so that my peas and lettuce can spread their roots! I bought ten more pots today, so I'm sure that should be enough to hold me over for a while!