Planning Spring's Plantings - Garden Post

Nymeria's First Snow

With the frost in the air getting more and more bitter, I can't help but dream of warmer days. The smell of marigolds, while I flip through a Southern Living Magazine with a sweet tea in hand - sunning on the porch.

It's enough to make me start thinking about my plants and my garden and my seedlings.

Last year, I purchased a grow light, which was just the bees absolute knees in terms of prepping seedlings for spring planting, but after a particularly viscous set of aphids, all my seedlings were destroyed and with it my hopes of a magnificent harvest. So I recouped what I could and struggled along the rest of the summer with an eggplant (destroyed by a hornworm), 2 pepper plants (produced until the first frost), and a pineberry plant (my pride and joy).

When the chills of fall set in I pulled my pineberry plant and the runners I had cultivated indoors with me, but a long thanksgiving break killed one of the runners, and little Nymeria did in the rest. So I'm back to my sole pineberry plant hoping fervently for some warmer weather.

But what to grow with my pineberry plant - what to grow... what to grow...

I've decided that I'm going to stick with what I know and what I can eat. I want to limit myself to the bare necessities, because we might be moving places in the middle of the summer and it would be a beast to have to move 20 containers.

SO.

What to grow.

I want my garden to have some focus, and I want my garden to not die, like it did this past summer (which might have been my fault - planning a wedding and all that jazz). So I'm going to limit my plants. 

I'm thinking that I should pick up some pineberry seeds and start from seeds, to see how that goes, and add to my one prize, lonely plant. I always love a challenge.

I'm also thinking about branching out into another kind of strawberry - I think the alpines all have a nice small size to them, and one I found doesn't have runners - so that would keep it all in it's container.

I also like having scallions and chives about - they have such a distinctive smell, and my chives grow quite prolifically.

I think I'll bring back some basil. It's always so expensive to get fresh basil at the store, and I do so long for some fresh pesto.

Aside from that... I still have some garlic in the ground, trying to get it to winter properly so that it grows me some big, honking bulbs, but if that fails - I think I'll wait till next summer (2016) to try again.

SO that's it:
Strawberries, Scallions, Chives, Basil.

It's going to be small, but I hope it's at least fruitful.

Best Gardening,

Laura

Prepping for the Big Move

So last you heard was the big engagement. Now, it's time for the big move. I have 21 days to pack up and move into JR's condo in beautiful Virginia. It's going to be tough (seriously you should see how much SCHTUFF I accumulate), but someone's got to do it.

The combining of the households is requiring a storage unit, because it just doesn't make sense to get rid of a perfectly good bed (the crappy bed frame, yes, the bed, no) and my perfectly good IKEA chair bed (also amazingly comfortable). So we've been packing boxes for a few weeks, separating things that are going to his place and things that are going into storage, while also getting my place in tip top condition so that I get my deposit back (I have a lot of things I want to buy with that deposit).

The combining of the household is also requiring an incredible amount of new storage over at JR's. Let's just say "WALL OF BOOKSHELVES" together! Now a little quieter we'll say "wall of miss-matched bookshelves." We have IKEA bookshelves ranging from Beech to Dark Brown. We'll see how it works...

In the meantime, we've been prepping for the wedding and cooking and I have been steadily researching plants to grow in next year's garden.

Right now all we have left in the pots are Silver Rose Garlic (which are growing quite nicely, we should be able to harvest a couple in the next few weeks) and some China Rose Radishes that are really FREAKING stubborn. I thought anybody could grow a radish! I planted the seeds when I supposed to and everything, but those DAMNED Radishes refuse to plump! We'll try again in early spring to see if maybe the spastic freezing is what's stunting their growth, but who knows.

So next year's garden (let me tell you JR is ober psyched about the new planters coming to his porch - emphasis on the ober) is going to be bigger, we're going to be moving some planters up onto the balcony railing to improve light-reach, and we'll get a few bigger pots for the balcony floor to grow some really tasty things.

The key to next year's garden is going to be edible. Everything will be edible. EVERYTHING (okay maybe some marigolds wont be, but everything else is edible). Burpee.com has become my new favorite website. I visit it basically every 20 mins. Who knows if there's a plant that missed my eye before! I have to see! I HAVE TO KNOW!

So! Next year's garden, I'm thinking:
Chives
Oregano
Basil
Scallions or Onions of some kind
Born to Be Mild Jalapeños
Cayenne Peppers
Sweet Flavorburst Hybrid Peppers
Bush Belle Hybrid Peppers
Container Corn (This is a thing)
Baby Boomer Tomatoes
Shooting Star Eggplants
Peas in a Pot
Caracas Carrots
More Silver Rose Garlic
More China Rose Radishes
&
Pineberries (currently have a plant to see if it can weather the winter, so far it's doing fine!)


I think we're going to need a bigger balcony....

Prepping for the Fall Garden - Garden Post

Sorry about the post delay, had a busy week! But we're back on track. 

So I'm gonna be real, I thought that as soon as JR and my annual plants died at the end of summer that we'd trim back the left over herbs, move them inside and turn the rest of the dead plants into mulch.

Nope...

Apparently there is something called a Fall Garden.

Now granted we have a container garden... so everything is scaled back a bit, but I am going to be making preparations for this new gardening endeavor.

Step 1... Order my plants from Burpee! I set myself a $50 limit, which I wasn't expecting to take me very far, BUT I found a promo to get 15% off, and they were doing flat-rate shipping! So I lucked out and got quite a nice haul for our container garden.

Step 2... Brag about my great choices... So, womp, I didn't consult JR on these because I was just way too ober excited to explore more growing opportunities, but he thinks I made solid choices, which... haha... I did!

So in our garden we're going to be growing some actual food for a Fall harvest, and planting perennials and a fruit so that everything is hunky-dory in the Spring.

Here's the Plants:

• Lady Lavender Seeds
• Early Harvest Tulips Bulbs
• Coreopsis Route 66 (they were on sale, I'm not crazy about them, but I wanted to plant an actual plant-perennial to see what happened over the winter.)
• China Rose Radish Seeds (because how could I resist? I'm from China! I'm a Rose! Match, Set, Heaven)
• Silver Rose Garlic Bulbs (Again those names just pull me in)
• Strawberry Pineberry Plant, which has a really interesting history. So essentially some dutch scientists brought these plants back from near extinction, a few years ago. Sat around at their gardening complex, took the highest yielding plants (most only yielded 1-2 berries per plant when they first discovered them), cross-bred those over a few years and now we have Strawberry Pineberries again, brought back from near-death. Why do you care? Because these Strawberries.... taste like pineapples. Boom! 

Strawberry Pineberries

Step 3... Wait for plants. Burpee only sends you the plants right when it's ready for them to be planted in your region. We'll see... I shipped my father 3 pepper plants for Father's Day and they sent him withered pepper plants... so benefit of the doubt here - our plants will arrive; they will be perfect, and I will get to planting!

Step 4... Plant!

Step 5... Eat the things we've grow! We had our first dabble with this from the serrano pepper plant last week in some salsa - Yum-tastic!

Happy Gardening!

Anyone have other recommendations for the fall garden? Let me know!