"Blue skies, smilin' at me..."

The rain has cleared, the weather is warming up slightly, and while we're still very busy, we were FINALLY able to do some work outside this weekend.  Friday after work, we didn't get much done.  Saturday, Anna had a daytime band clinic followed by a birthday party, and Alex and I went out to the farm and practiced target shooting, but Sunday after church, Nicole and I played in the garden.

Nicole did a lot of work to the back flower beds, moving things around and making it more organized-looking, replanting hostas that had heaved out of the ground, etc.  I planted peas (finally) in one of the two raised beds, and onions all the way around the circle bed.  Then we re-potted the eggplant and the peppers, along with some herbs (rue and chamomile).  The nightshades are not quite ready to put in the ground yet, but the weather is getting close.  The 10-day forecast now goes through May 8th, and there is nothing close to freezing predicted, although we are supposed to get more rain this week.

I'm still not happy with our tomato seedlings -- the cold, wet weather when we were trying to harden them off did more damage than I would have liked.  They're a little wilty, and many of the leaves have died around the edges.  They'll probably bounce back ok, but it would have been better for them if we could have given them a smoother transition.  We'll try to do a better job with the peppers and eggplants.

Weird, wild weather

Remember last week, how I said that spring had maybe arrived?  Yeah, I totally jinxed it.  It was spitting snow again on my way to work this morning -- a freeze is expected tonight.  All this week, it has been raining torrentially, causing flooding in many local rivers, and even a levee to burst down in London Mills.

Between the cold and the wet, we've been doing our best to harden off our tomatoes, but it's been very difficult.  We keep them in the garage, and they stress because there's not enough light.  We put them out on the patio, and they stress because they're cold and drowned.  I'm keeping an eye on the weather, but if things don't improve this week, we are going to have to bring them up and put them in the three-season room.  We also need to pot our peppers -- they've been left in the seedling tray for far too long, and are starting to yellow and drop leaves.  They need nutrients!

Also, if the rain stops long enough to dry out the ground at all, I'd like to get the peas in the ground as quickly as possible -- it's late for those, too, but the weather hasn't exactly been cooperating for us.

Welcome to spring in northern Illinois!

Poor tomahto. (He cannot dance like the cucumber.)

I hesitate to say it (since Thursday we may see some more snow), but it looks like spring has... maybe... sorta... arrived? We had beautiful weather this weekend, and took advantage of it. I was out of town on Saturday, but Nicole got much of the landscaping and garden beds cleaned up, emptied our composter, and picked up several bags of compost and potting soil from the Davenport facility.  Sunday, we spent the day continuing to prepare for planting.  We cut back dead growth, burned through the garden, turned over and amended the soil in our new raised beds, and pulled weeds.

We also repotted our tomato seedlings.  They were getting way too big to stay in their little dirt disks, so we potted them for the next phase of their growth.  Right now, we're trying to harden them off, setting them outside for a few hours each day, but they look horribly bedraggled.  Their poor little roots had to be torn apart when we took them out of the seed trays, and then stuck in new soil, and set in the sunlight for the first time, and in the wind -- it's a lot of changes all at once, but I'm sure in a few days, they'll bounce back, happier and healthier than ever.

We attempted to plant some peas and greens in our raised beds tonight, but the rain during the day made everything much too wet to work the earth.  It looks like rain is forecast for the next several days (until the snow on Thurday, yuck), so it may be a while before we can actually get those in the ground.  We'll just do it when we can.

It's been fun watching our spring flowers coming up, too.  Things are much later than last year (we just got our very first daffodil to open today), but most things look healthy.  I think our cherry bushes both survived.  We did lose one of Nicole's roses, but the other two look great.  The perennials in our front beds seem to be coming back ok.  It's just nice to be able to work outside again!

"I'm dreaming of a White Palm Sunday..."

If we look at the larger picture, we're still more than three weeks from our average last frost date in this area, and it's hardly unusual to have a late dusting of snow.  But yesterday, it snowed all day long.  There were some area schools that had a delayed start time today.  Last year at this time, the trees were all in bloom and we were actually planting some things outside.

Our seedlings, however, are doing splendedly.  The tomatoes are especially tall (perhaps even a little leggy), and I took some time yesterday to thin eveything out -- no more than one plant per cell.  It always bothers me, throwing away perfectly good plants, but I know it's for the best.  It bothers me most when some cells have two or three plants, and other cells are empty.  Ugh!  We had that with some of our bell peppers, but we should still have plenty to plant.

Looking ahead, we are going to have to get at least the tomatoes planted in larger pots to allow them more space to grow.  The timing of this is going to be tricky.  I usually do the potting at the same time as we start hardening off outside.  With it still very cold (and snowing) outside, I'm wondering when the hardening off period will be.  There's not enough room under the grow lights in the greenhouse for all the potted plants, so if we have to pot before setting out, we'll have to get a little creative.

"Spring is here, a-suh-pah-ring is here... life is skittles, and life is beer..."

Yesterday was officially the first day of spring.  Overnight, the low was around 12 degrees, with a wind chill near zero!  There is snow in the forecast for Palm Sunday!  Absolutely crazy.  We were putting some seeds for hardy plants in the ground by this time last year.

Nicole took a couple of wonderful shots of our baby seedlings in the greenhouse the other night.  You can see tiny little true leaves forming on the tomatoes.  Exciting!

Unfortunately, we lost a few of our eggplants.  The way our greenhouse is set up, the bottom rack is near a floor register, and it's been so cold, our heat dried out the trays down on that rack much faster than we anticipated.  It's all watered now, and we should still have enough plants to put in the garden, but I'm glad I started some extras.

This weekend will be our last free one for a while.  I know we've got some projects we'd like to finish off, but I also want to make sure we at least get started on planning and building a new trellis for the north side of our new raised beds, and maybe one to replace the old, worn-out, chicken-wire one we have had on the north side of our old legacy garden for the past three years.  That's a pretty ambitious schedule for a "free" weekend.  Wish us luck!

The Greenhouse Effect

Our seedlings are coming along nicely in the greenhouse.  All of our tomatoes are up, along with the rue and thyme.  Our bell peppers (which got a bit of a head start over the rest of the plantings) are looking great, and even some of our eggplants and hot peppers have popped up, although those take a little longer to germinate.

The tomatoes are looking just a little bit leggy, so we're going to turn off the heat mat on that tray.  Otherwise, we are just keeping them well-watered and lit up about 16 hours a day and let them do their thing.  It's snowing again outside today, but it's like a little plant sauna under the plastic dome.  Grow, babies, grow!

Also, yesterday afternoon, we were looking out of the upstairs window at the snow-covered yard, and Nicole spotted some crocus pushing up grassy leaves out by the grill.  Snow or not, spring is on its way!

Think spring!

OK, so yes, it was snowing yesterday, but we still did some planting.   For the start of the 2013 gardening season, we started a number of seeds in our indoor greenhouse.  Actually, I'm cheating a little bit... I planted four varieties of bell peppers last weekend, but then forgot about them and didn't get the greenhouse set up.  Whoops.  Anyway, now, safely in the greenhouse on top of warming pads, we have the following seeds planted and ready to go:

• Bell Peppers (King Arthur, King of the North, Golden California Wonder, Orange)
• Sweet Peppers (Banana, NuMex Conquistador)
• Hot Peppers (Cayenne Purple, Jalmundo, Trinidad Scorpion)
• Eggplant (Pingtung Long)
• Cherry Tomatoes (Sweet Million)
• Plum Tomatoes (Opalka, Polish Linguisa)
• Herbs (Rue, Thyme)

Also, despite my week-long neglect, it appears I didn't hurt our bell peppers too much.  Several have popped up through the surface and are leafing out nicely.

So, I'm excited to get going this year.  We're still enjoying the fruits of our labors from last fall (we had friends over for games and Mexican last night, with refried beans made from our dried pintos!), but it'll be nice to have fresh-from-the-garden produce again.

Baby, it's cold outside

We had our first major frost this past weekend.  We covered the tomato plants, but they still look like they got a little frozen at the top.  In preparation for the frost, we brought in every tomato that even looked like it was close to ripe, and pulled all the basil, peppers, and eggplant.  We even got most of the rest of the beans.  We made some tomato sauce, but only enough for one dinner (of Eggplant Parmesan) plus about another quart of frozen.

Also, last week we harvested apples.  We've got four or five large sackfuls.  This weekend, Nicole and the kids made an apple pie, and yesterday, they canned seven quarts of applesauce.

Tonight, I'm hoping to get back to the apples.  I want to dry some for snacks and can some baked apples or apple pie filling.

Harvest moon

We are deep into harvest and canning season now, and while this summer's drought did hurt, there is still plenty to do.

Our beans were a huge success -- we have several quarts of dried pintos, yin-yang, turtle, and black-eyed peas.  In addition to the fruit cocktail we canned (below), we put up three quarts of peach pie filling.  We also canned 14 quarts of tomato-basil soup.  We opened one of those on a cold, rainy night last week, and found it delightful.

Last night, we just canned our second batch of whole tomatoes.  We did pop a jar by putting it into too-hot water again, but fortunately, were able to save the tomatoes.  A little over 20 pounds of Opalka and Polish Linguisa tomatoes = 6 quarts.  This week, I hope to get some of mom's tomatoes and make some salsa.

For future planning purposes, this year, in our new raised beds, we put in six pepper plants and sixteen tomato plants.  While it looked good for the beginning of the year, by the end of summer, things were completely overrun.  The tomatoes completely engulfed our peppers, killing some of them, and spilled out all over the lawn.  Stronger cages are a must, as is a more spread-out plan.  A few tomatoes sprinkled in several places might be better than a solid block of them.

Also, the two pots of basil (sweet and purple) have been fine, but the basil we put in the tomato bed was covered and smothered.  We may not be able to freeze much basil this year.  Next year, we should definitely get some in the garden as well.

Choppin' broccoli!

I think we finally got our broccoli harvest timing right!  These little guys were big, beautiful, and NOT bolted into yellow flowers yet!

Soaked in salt water for about 10 minutes, then blanched, bagged, and frozen.  We had enough for five quart bags, plus a side dish that we ate tonight.

This was the product from ten - twelve plants I had put in the garden.  Nicole says this was a little overrun, and it might be better to space them out a little more next year.  I didn't mind, though -- perhaps if we are just more careful about not letting the marigolds go *quite* so crazy, it will be easier to get to and to pick.

Fruit cocktail

Yum.  That is all.

Like a big cucumber hug

We had quite the productive time this weekend.  We really hacked back the overgrown sections of the garden, resulting in a whole mess of flowers (mostly zinnias) for Anna to arrange to her heart's content, as well as the ability to step on our walkway stepping stones again.  Yay!  Everything got a good watering, and we staked up all of our peppers and eggplants, and tied up some of the tomatoes that had gotten away from us and were not staying nicely in their cages.  Also, we caged a few of the tomatoes on the periphery of the garden (one Traveler tomato, one volunteer plum from last year -- it was completely LOADED with good-sized green tomatoes! -- and one volunteer cherry).

I think the highlight of my weekend, though was the crazy cucumber we pulled off the vine.  This poor little guy didn't know which end was up, evidently, so just kept growing around and around!

Hope springs eternal

Well, the drought, while being uncomfortable and making us water more than we're used to, has not really seemed to hurt most of our garden crops.  I think our peas died back a little earlier than they should have, and our yin yang beans were not happy for a while, but most of our other plants seem to be doing ok.  I'm not thrilled with the blossom-end rot we're getting on some tomatoes (I put in fertilizer spikes with calcium, but it's just not being absorbed).  However, we've continued hauling in the cucumbers, pintos, yin yangs, and are starting on our black-eyed peas.  Cherry tomatoes continue to give us a handful every few days, and our peppers are loaded with blossoms and small fruit.

The garden has, however, gotten a little out of control (see photo on right).  This weekend, our goal is to tame that back some, but tonight, we planted a second round of carrots (four rows) and beets (about nine rows, between the two varieties) in the kitchen garden.  I also put down some more basil, but it's in a pretty shady area, so we'll have to see if it grows well there.  We typically do not do well with our second sets of plantings, but we're optimistic that we've gotten things in early enough this year to still make well.  I still want to put in some more carrots, and then later this month, get in our second round of garden peas and salad greens.

Beans, beans, the wonderful fruit...

This summer, like most, has been an incredibly busy time for us.  The show I was music directing just closed, so hopefully, I can spend some more time gardening (and blogging about it!) now.  The weather has been unbelievably dry for us this year -- this drought is hurting a lot of the crops.  Fortunately, our garden space is small enough that we can just use a combination of hand watering and sprinklering, but I worry for the poor farmers.

However, we are pulling in some fairly respectable harvests now.  Our pinto beans (see left) and yin yang (or "calypso") beans (see right) are doing great.  We've harvested the first small crop of each, and just shelled the dried beans tonight.

Additionally, we've been enjoying our cucumbers immensely, and we've already pulled up all of our onions.  I see four small cherry tomatoes that are ready for harvest probably tomorrow, and it won't be long on the tomatoes and peppers.  In fact, I've got a couple of hot peppers already, and we sent a relative home with our first banana pepper last week.

Our pea plants are dead, and are drying in the garden now -- we think we may try these dried peas as seed when we plant our fall crop in a few weeks.  We had to pull out the last of our spinach, too, as it had gotten too large and bitter to eat.  We've still got some lettuce hanging in there, but I think we'd be better off just pulling that, too, and starting some new plants in a few weeks.

There is a little bit of rain in the forecast for later this week.  We continue to hope and pray that it hits this area heavily.  The weather has been wonderfully hot, but without rain, these plants are not going to make it much longer.