Can This Garden Be Saved?

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My focus is all about reducing cost and labor in the future. I tell you what, this body is getting old, and if I don't find ways to cut corners and achieve either the same or better, I'm going to be crying "Uncle" from some hammock in a very cheap area south of the Border, trying to live on 4o bucks a month and learning to love, and I mean REALLY love, rice, beans, and naked chickens hanging from questionable tin roofs.

One of last weeks projects was to see if we can bring any of the garden in with us to live through the winter and get a head start next year. I've known that peppers are actually a perennial, in tropical climates, so they can be saved in a pot indoors. I will do that as soon as I'm done harvesting peppers.

I've been also taking pinchings and cuttings from just about everything. I have simply never been good at making them grow, but I've certainly been doing a lot of practicing this month.

Here are some failings. These little plants never thrived up there, but they were tough. It took me 4 years to kill them, but they finally died completely about year ago. So I figured it might be time to dump them out.





Do you remember the houseplant I grew so frustrated with, that we whacked it off and stuck the branches in a vase? That was 6 months ago.

Some of those branches were still alive and had grown roots.









So, not having a clue what to do with them, I laid them to rest in this pot.





And covered them up.





Then refreshed myself with a blueberry, strawberry, banana smoothie.





Since I was in a transplanting and cutting mood, this little grass-snuggling-errant from the compost bucket caught me eye.....





Nah. Don't go crazy girl!

The first week of September I planted these lemon seeds. And after about 2 weeks I had a little lemon tree!





As of today, I have a 7 tree lemon grove, and my tangerines and key limes are just about to break free from the soil that buries them, and reach for warm blue skies in Florida. Boy, are they in for a surprise.





And the ginger roots I planted are doing well!





Here are some philodendron (those are easy, except for the time I failed at that, too) I am sprouting for friends, the celery heads are doing well, and..... I'm not sure what else is there in the tiny drag-and-drop view I see. I'm going blind.





So now I'm heading down to the garden to take tomato, pepper, and eggplant cuttings. There's that evil wild amaranth with all the spikes and billions of seeds on every branch.





The tomatoes are feeling better now that the weather cooled off, but it's too late to get much from them. Next year I'll set them up a little better.





I end up with a few tries at tomatoes.









Some peppers.









And the missing giant Jalapeno made a marvelous home for the eggplant I decided to give another shot at life.









The ristras are still coloring nicely.





A special treat, a couple of latent watermelons to enjoy.





I've found my mind wandering more and more to how nice it would be to have a thermal, double-paned, glass greenhouse built all along the south side of a home, about 10 feet wide and 75 feet long. You close it off to the rest of the house, keep it toasty warm, maybe add a few grow lights, and you've got a perfect garden to grow things all year round. Nice seating areas, a fountain, yada-yada. No more of this seasonal prepping, planting, harvesting, and preserving madness. Open it up and cool it off when you can plant a small garden outside...

ah........





Minus the pool.
Maybe.

Reality calls.

~Faith

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Gardening Day - August 13, 2010

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Finally, a day to do some catch up work outside.

Aren't these melons pretty! I wish I could remember what they are.









Picking more eggplant.





Here's a funny one.





Not my favorite kind - a lot of tough skin per inch of tender flesh, but it was all they had at the garden center when I needed to buy them; Japanese variety. They are producing really well, though, and withstanding the ferocious onslaught of flea beetles.





I just had to make sure they were about a foot tall before I planted them.





This was yet another really hot day, just like they've all been since April. I cleaned up around the back of the house, where the tree had fallen, so that looks a bit better.





We used some scrap left over from building this back porch to make more storage shelving underneath. I could not believe I didn't think of doing that for two years.





We wore our swim suits as we worked, so we could jump in whenever we couldn't stand things any more. This feels GREAT!





Time to go pick more peppers.





Bell





Jalepeno





The lettuce still bolted, despite the shade cloth. This summer was just too hot.





YAY, more Swiss chard!





Tomatoes had a really bleak year with all the heat.





The Bright Lights chard never really recovered from the grasshopper invasion, though the plain chard did. I know what I will plant from now on.





I had a terrific start on my beloved Brussel sprouts, but not keeping up on spraying allowed the moths to decimate the entire crop. This smells really bad!









Here are some beds we never got around to planting. The mulch worked well, the paths are weedy, but that can be easily taken care of. Just so long as the plants are isolated from the weeds, I'm very happy.





Here is our pepper patch. Why do these things come in packs of six?





Next year, go in with friends.

~Faith

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A Great Season is Upon Us.

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The season of friends coming along to pick berries. We are all looking forward to some trips to the blueberry farm again this year, but to jump start things off, Michael and I have been sharing our cherries and gooseberries.

We had some company over on Thursday morning to pick.





I'm thinking the gooseberry bushes are on the decline, so I really need to take cuttings this winter so I can propagate new bushes for next year. Though it doesn't take too many bushes to satisfy us, it's so nice to have them to share.









Then we went down and picked cherries and had pit spit contests. Here was the undisputed champion at probably near 20 feet. I could not even get close.





Yay, cherries!





Then Michael's friend stayed, as we would all join up later.





And another stayed and got sucked into an eggplant project. We chatted, we dipped and fried, and we ate.





Later that night, we got to enjoy these delicious round scones, complete with cherries. So moist and delicious!





Some of the girls enjoying chatting.





Examining a new machine.





And when the guys came back we said goodbye. Imagine the Walton's, and one can kind of see how our goodbye's go, as we all try to remember who we already hugged. I snapped the backwards shot as I was heading out the door, following some others.





Today is Shabbat, and we can sure use it. We are plumb tuckered out. The only adventure I want to have today is a nap, a swim, some slow meanders around the fields, and maybe seeing if I can turn a delicious pound cake I made yesterday into some form of Biscotti.

Happy Shabbat!

~Faith

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