I still need to put the garden to bed. I need to pull out all of the dead tomato plants. All of the rotten squishy produce that didn’t get harvested. I must say though, this year has been a doozy. We got literally no rain for the entire month of April, and a late frost that completely devastated some people’s entire gardens all the way in June. If this is your first year gardening here in cute little Eureka, I am SO sorry, you got duped. I cannot attest to what the future holds, and one of my favorite gardening books – (link to come)

states that times are a changing and we should pretty much just get used to some crazy weather and prepare to be more resilient. I do keep growing my fun, strange, multi-colored varieties that I love so dearly, but I may have to shift my mindset, or shall I say my way of gardening just a smidge to be able to create a more bountiful harvest through the upcoming years.

So this likely will be more a show and tell of the year of gardening that I did in fact catalog, but just didn’t get on here to write about. I love the garden. It was so crazy this year, and not really in a bad way. Despite the lack of early season rain….oh! and the overabundance of it in August! My goodness! The garden actually produced quite a variety of different volunteers. I even ended up with loads of tomato and squash plants in the chicken yard, because that is where the leftovers of last year’s garden ended up. I did have to transplant them out of there though, because if my husband’s boots didn’t send them to an early death (Trying to be grateful that he created an awesome huge chicken run for them and that’s why his boots were tromping in there in the first place) then once the chicks were let out they started pecking away at the starts as well. All ended up fine in the end. Minus not having pumpkins, that just sucked. Always plant pumpkins, people. And at least two zucchini plants.

Let’s see, last time I wrote it was about radishes, which means I pretty much get to start at the beginning. FUN!

This was actually back in March, before the radishes! Ha! Look at these cute little crocuses! Croci? Crikey? I have pictures a few days after this and we were all making snowmen. I had brought these inside and potted them to give them to my Mom for her birthday, so that was cute.

I had started some Tatsoi, an awesome green that I probably need more of in my life. Which is super interesting because I was just looking into starting plants to go through winter in the greenhouse to have and maybe sell in the farmstand. Oh yeah, also haven’t talked about the farmstand…err…we’ll get there eventually. It is funny because it all seemed to take forever, and still feels that way, but as it all comes together I am getting this mix of “I’m not ready” and “Holy sh** this actually worked” I always say I am the dreamer and my husband is the doer, but it obviously can’t completely be that way, or he would also be the gardener and he has told me on many an occasion that he is very much not.

Back to tatsoi!

Looking back on it, I should’ve spaced them more…maybe. I could’ve and it would’ve been good. I believe I still used the jiffy pellets for these, and although I will still be using those in the future, I do have a fun, super cool new tool that I want the world to know about and it is called a mini soil blocker- (link to come)

This thing seriously flipped the table on all my previous methods of germinating. It is fantastic. You do have to be a little particular about placement or have a good system to organize to know which little tiny block contains which seeds, but it is completely do-able and a fabulous way to start seeds. Very economical. I can fit 200 mini blocks in a flat, with plenty of space to organize between varieties. You use so much less space per seed and less soil per seed, therefore when you have duds when trying to germinate, you aren’t wasting your precious seed sprouting areas on duds, or at least not nearly as much space. There are two different sizes of soil blockers, and I most certainly prefer the smaller of the two. They work for the itty bitty seeds, because honestly, once you get to larger seeds, and after a year without pumpkins I am kicking myself for thinking this, I thought I would just direct sow my larger seeds. I was wrong. I didn’t get ANY squash in the ground (Minus the volunteers) and did not get enough of the China Jade cucumbers that I love so much planted either, although I think that was just more of a user error moment. I planted WAY too many Dragon’s Egg cucumbers and although they are fun, they were like the white scallop patty pan squash of last year and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see another one in my garden for another few years or I might attack it with a hoe. Overabundance is a thing, and I am working on being more grateful for the harvest, even when it isn’t in the exact proportions that I had wanted or planned for. I am hoping the Farm stand will yet again be helpful in that aspect as well.

Did I go off again? I did….phooey.

Squirrel!!!

Okay so tatsoi. March 29th! It’s quick! I’m excited to plant some and I have a list of other seeds I will be starting to put in the greenhouse. I might end up needing a grow light in there to help extend the light hours, otherwise some of the plants might just sit there and not grow much at all, which isn’t what we want.

Sadly, I feel like I haven’t even started and it is all of a sudden midnight and I am exhausted. Felt like I was coming down with something earlier today, so I just took it slow, really slow for me. I did make some chili with some tomatoes I found in the freezer from last year! Thought for sure we were onto only having this year’s. And I added two very strange ingredients to my chili that I absolutely must now recommend because they made the chili outstanding: Fish sauce and cocao powder! Who knew?! I didn’t until today. Apparently they are like secret ingredients to some pretty bomb chili recipes. The weather outside really felt like a chili sort of day. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a little warmer so I can go out and plant my garlic. I really don’t want to put it off like I did a few years ago. Although…if you do…and the ground is frozen and you are left kicking yourself, super sad thinking you won’t have any garlic in your life…you can do what I did…I bought a few bags of compost, dumped them out where I wanted to plant my garlic and planted directly into the compost and then covered with straw. Worked for me in a pinch!

Happy Gardening!