Looking forward to the Garden Guild meeting Saturday

Attracting the Birds and Bees and Butterflies, too.
Mar. 17, 2012, 11:00 AM at the Community Center at 2104  Klattenhoff – Yvette Shelton has arranged for Lynn Hill, an expert in plants that attract and help Birds, Bees and Butterflies, to teach us about the right plants to use in our landscapes. To have sustainable yards and gardens we need birds and bees and butterflies. This will be a great opportunity to get good info and your questions answered just in time for the Spring plantings.

A very bountiful winter

I have to admit that I planted a few too many seeds in my little starters. Never in my wildest imaginings was I prepared for all of them to germinate and thrive. The winter crops have been incredibly bountiful enabling me to share with friends and put some bags of cauliflower and broccoli in the freezer for later in the year. Now the kohl rabi is starting to head up and the cabbage is heading nicely. Should hold us for another 6-8 weeks, maybe more. We even made our first batch of sauerkraut and several batches of slaw--from the cauliflower leaves and bok choi. Fabulous tasting and better than just composting the leaves. My husband says we are on a cabbage diet and maybe we are as we are focusing on eating what I am growing.

The Malabar spinach and new Zealand spinach that did not do well last year both have seeded themselves and are thriving.  Even the regular spinach which we can only grow over the winter and early spring here is much more productive this year than it ever has been. I am also having a bumper crop of peas that I planted last October and suddenly took off with the rains this winter. Chard, of course is thriving and so pretty.

I wound up with 4 different kinds of cherry tomatoes/small tomatoes so they are going to stay in large pots and sit next to the greenhouse. I tried to find tomatoes that would thrive in the heat of our summer and am trying a couple of Porters and Porters Pride, Creole, Heatwave, super Sioux, and Arkansas traveler. I may have a couple of Romas or not. They did so poorly last year that I am about given up on them. I have both Black beauty and oriental eggplant, one that wintered over is blooming to beat the band--now will it set fruit? I haven't figured out where to put the green beans but they are so good fresh that we have to put some in. I am going to put more cucumbers in the greenhouse with row cover to try and avoid the bugs.
If I can find room for most of the plants I will be lucky. Maybe I'll have to share a few of the little guys with friends to turn them on to gardening too.

Getting a jumpstart on tomatoes in the sunroom

 I think Christmas was a bit early to start  the tomato seeds as they are getting pretty big and have another 30 days to go until I can put them into the ground. They started in the heated mat I made then up potted to 6 packs under the grow lights. Now they are in 4" pots under grow lights in the sunroom.  they will be ready to go into the greenhouse in a week or so or into the unheated mini-greenhouses I bought last year so maybe I was not to early after all. 


 Some (cherry ) will go into tubs and not into the ground. I think that anything less than 5 gallon is too small for tomatoes although the peppers are doing great in the kitty litter buckets that are about 3 gallons. I think the eggplants may do ok in the smaller buckets too so we'll try them this year. 
Germination rates were mostly fabulous resulting in over 20 plants growing out now. I'll have lots to share with friends. I am specifically growing ones that are heat tolerant and many from Texas or nearby states with our hot summers.
I also started about a dozen sweet 100s for the new garden at the school as well as almost as many romas. The school will get some and I'll keep some to put into pots. 
This year's list of tomatoes includes Porter and Porter's Pride, Creole, Heatwave, super sioux and white rabbit. 

Greens take off

Last fall when I was planting the cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, kohl rabi, chard, and spinach I didn't think as much about what it would look like in the winter as I am now. The gardens look beautiful and are feeding us most days with really healthy greens. We have found we like the bok choi so much that I reseeded for spring. Chard has been a bane. It grows so well but it is an acquired taste until this week when I steamed it in tomato juice instead of water or oil. Also found a great greens recipe with beer and molasses in it. WOW! Now we cannot get enough. I am impatiently waiting to harvest the first broccoli and kohl rabi.

Broccoli is really coming on--2 last week and several not far behind. The cauliflower are heading too deep in their leaves while close by the kohl rabi are beginning to make their bulbs. None of them is following the schedule on the seed packets but the produce will be welcome as it comes. We will probably get far more than I planned on from the looks of it now. 


The green house has been a real surprise to us. We really just wanted to salvage and protect the plants that were not done bearing but were frost tender--tomatoes and peppers with an eggplant thrown in. The heat and humidity has produced a new crop of peppers and has resulted in tasty vine ripened tomatoes that are better than I had last summer. I have draped the lettuce bed with plastic sheeting in a kind of cold frame arrangement to try and even out temperature and moisture and am being rewarded with bags of leaves every week now. Better get some more seedlings going to put in next month as these play out.