I thought you might get a tickle out of last year’s kale.  The tall green and the purple ones are plants that survived last winter.  They already made seeds, and those are the seeds I am using for my microgreens.  

 

The short plants in this picture are this year’s kale.  I will take out the tall ones when winter comes, and leave the others to overwinter.  We can still harvest the leaves and eat them.   SO GOOD!!!

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

This is the kale that I planted this spring.  I sowed the seeds in a flat in February, and got them going in the basement.  Then in March we planted them in the garden.  And they have been growing great all summer.  We’ve eaten LOTS of kale.

 

Kale is a biennial, meaning that it makes seeds in the second year.  So they have to survive the winter in order to make seeds.

 

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this winter is milder than last.  Last year only three of our kales made it.   

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

The Bradford Pear Trees are starting to change color.  Not all of them are this colorful, but they are beautiful.

 

There are lots of them in the neighborhood and around town.

 

I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I do.

 

HAPPY FALL!!!

 

Before that last cold spell I went out and cut all my Baker fern leaves.  I brought them inside and put them in a pretty vase on the landing.  They were fine all by themselves, but then I remembered I had a few extra silk sunflowers with long stems.  So I added them to the vase.  They have been there for almost three weeks, and show no sign of fading.

 

Now they greet me every time I go up and down the stairs. 

 

 

I am a HAPPY GARDENER!!!

 

I know that complaining about the weather does NO good, but I am going to do it anyway.  We haven’t had any rain since the middle of September.  It is DRY!!!

 

So you can imagine how excited we were on Saturday to get this little bit of moisture in the air.  It registered only .25 inch on the weather station, but we celebrated anyway.  

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

Well, the Catnip is still growing fine too.  I guess it didn’t mind the cold nights either.  

 

Fun fact:  Gizmo loves it, and apparently the deer do not.

 

Strange way to choose plants for your garden, but that’s how we do it here:  grow whatever the deer won’t eat.  We have just about figured it out:  they don’t especially like strong smelling plants.  They don’t bother the Rosemary, Sage, Basil, Catnip, Arugula.  And they eat the leaves of pepper plants, but not the peppers.  

 

So, we have a fabulous kitchen garden with herbs close to the house.  

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

The Arugula is still hanging in there.  We’ve had a couple cold nights, temps in the twenties, but no frost yet.

 

This is our third crop of Arugula this year.  We use it just like spinach:  fresh and peppery in salads, or cooked and neutral tasting in everything from tomato soup to eggplant pizza.

 

We love our Arugula, and it loves us back.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

This is a flat of radish, kale, and pak choy microgreens.  

 

They get harvested by the cut-and-come again method.  I grab a handful of the leafy tops and cut the stems.  Then in a week or so they grow back, and we do it again.  

 

This flat has been living outside, except on the really cold nights, but they don’t mind the thirties.  When it gets cold to stay, we will bring them in and put them under the lights, and have microgreens all winter, just from this one flat.

 

Pretty cool, huh?

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

Good thing I’m better at gardening than embedding pictures into my blog.  I wanted the two pictures side by side, but after 15 minutes of alterations, I gave up.  Anyway, you get the idea.

 

 

I thought I would share a little gardening secret.

 

We save our eggshells, rinse and dry them, then grind them up in an old coffee grinder.  Of course, we need to wear a good filtration mask because the particles are small and sharp.  Don’t want to breathe in that.

 

Anyway, the reason we do all that is to add calcium to our soil.  The tiny particles break down faster than big chunks of eggshell (which can take years.)  This way, we add it to the soil, and the plants can utilize it almost immediately.  

 

Plants need calcium in their “veins” to facilitate the uptake of nutrients, just like we need calcium in our bloodstream to promote optimum health.  Commercial fertilizers only provide nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  So for good soil health we need to add a few other ingredients, and calcium is a big one.

 

Calcium is available as a nutrient for plants, in bone meal, lime, and some other organic sources.  But why BUY calcium when we have it right here?  Call me “Cheap-le-stiltskin” if you like, but I love using what we have.

 

Oh, yeah…we have noticed better gardens since we started adding eggshells to our soil, which is the point.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

We read our weather report just in time to get in all the peppers and eggplants.  This is part of that harvest.  

 

My next big project is to get out into the garden and pull out all those eggplant and pepper plants.  The basil and marigolds are all dead too.  It makes me sad to see them, so I will put them on the trash pile and let them turn into compost.  

 

But, don’t worry, all is not lost:  the broccoli, kales and cabbages are loving the cooler weather.  They can stay.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!