garden 2010

Its that time of year, time to Garden! I have started many plants and thought I'd give you all a run down of what I have going on:
January 18th I started my first set of plants all herbs
February 26th I transplant the first set of herbs into bigger pots
John and I also built a light shelf green house type thing for the basement
February 28th I plant all my tomato, pepper, and flower (snapdragons, marigolds, zinnas, and petunia)
March 1st all the marigolds are up from my second planting, along with some zinnas and snap dragons. I saw my first tomato plants start to "pop" no peppers yet

I'm looking forward to all the fresh veggies!

above: getting the seedling trays ready is a very important first step!

Seedsavers

On Saturday John, Ellen (John's grandmother), and I took a rode trip to Decorah, IA to visit the seedsaver farm for their labor day event. It was basically a big open house to get to check out their farm and what they do. Seedsavers is keeping heirloom variaties of fruits, vegetables, and flowers alive and in circulation.
Ellen and me in front of the neat morning glory 'tower'


Checking out the types of plants in the display garden.


treking through the sun and twisty sunflower maze

Loved all the bees and flowers I got to take pictures of


John and his grandma with the flower "kiss me over the garden gate". One of the neat flowers none of us had seen before.

PS happy 09-09-09 at 9:09 pm

potato harvest

Its that time of year, time to dig up the potatos. Here are some pictures from our recent harvest.

before

digging
john eyes his produce

the end result

Compost it!

John and I recently created a compost bin out of a regular garbage can. All we did was cut a 'flap' at the bottom of the can so we can get the compost out about ever 2-4 weeks.

(John filling the can for the first time)

This will hopefully help cut down on the amount of garbage we produce (good for the enviroment) and make our gardens nicer with the rich compost (good for eating!)

Garden growing update

All the rain and wonderful temps have really helped our garden grow quickly. As you can see below...


"potatoes" garden; i saw the first bloosom on one of the plants. These will be purple potatoes.

Other side of the potaotoe garden.

You can now see the baby green beans :)


My baby peppers, i'm watching you and waiting to eat you!


"grape" garden
Our grapes are growing quickly. I don't know what kind they are so if you know how to figure this out I could really use the help!
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The fence garden.

Fence garden is growing well. The mulch is really working as I haven't spend more then 20 minutes since we planted pulling weeds.

I have 3 roma tomatoes that are getting pretty big

Cherry tomatoes are almost ready!

The cucumbers have blossoms that opened for the first time today (soon we'll be over run with cucumbers and I can't wait! If you like cucumbers and would like some aka you live close let me know and i'll put you on my list if we have to many veggies)

Lillys in full bloom

One of the the clematises
The first harvest this year from the garden (other then herbs) to heirloom radishes.

I'm so ready to start eating out of the garden!!

NLUMC Decorah trip: day trip to Burr Oak area

Last Friday Judy, Alecia, John and I took a trip to Burr Oak, IA to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. I have always been a Laura fan so it was fun to get to visit a child hood home and learn some history.


Master's hotelMaster's hotel 'parlor'
Master's hotel dinning room

Rope bed usually shared with 2-3 other people whom you didn't know. (I don't think I could do that!)

We then went to Willowglen Nursery which is just south of Burr Oak. They had an amazing selction of very different flowers and a great garden you can tour through. If you ever get near the area I highly recommend a stop!

Water garden



I'd really love to have this in my backyard!

This is the largest hosta I've ever seen!



We saw lots of 'cylcone' flowers :) I might have to start a cyclone garden!