When Jon went up on the roof to blow out the gutters, he found this hornet’s nest!!!  Looks like it’s been there all summer.  But it was on the back side of the house where we can’t see, so we never noticed it.

 

Fortunately it was abandoned, so there is no threat.  I just want you to see how big it is.

 

Lots of critters here in the mountains.  But when you think about it, they were here first.  

 

So we just leave them alone.  

 

HAPPY FALL!!!

 

 

THANK YOU!!!

 

 

 

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!!!

 

Yep, it’s that time of year again.  Time to change the clocks back to Eastern Standard Time.  

 

But I bet you already knew that.

 

 

HAPPY FALL!!!

 

When our Hickory trees drop their leaves we will have more mulch than we can shake a stick at.  And best of all, there are 4 big trees like this one near the garden.  They all fall right into the garden.  

 

They are a little problematic so close to the garden because they cast a bunch of shade.  But we work around that ok.  We just plant shade lovers in the shady spots:  you know, lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach, and beans.  The rest of the garden gets plenty of sun, so it creates a nice balance for ALL our crops.  

 

It looks like the Hickories will be dropping soon.  Everything else is just about done.

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!

 

A few years ago, Sheri sent us hot cherry peppers that she grew in her garden.  We saved the seeds and have been planting them ever since.  Jon likes them because they are hot peppers.  I like them because when they turn red in the fall they look like red ornaments on a Christmas tree.

 

That’s how they looked before those cold nights.  Love it.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!