Potato towers and the Garden comes to Life

Last fall I planted some garlic and have seen 2-3 coming up!

Our Bartlet Pear trees are probably at their peak in bloom.









I love this stuff - it's mushroom compost that we get from a local garden center that is wonderful to use in our beds.


We are trying out a new way to grow potatoes in these towers. You have to get the right varieties of potatoes that grow throughout the season (I have red Pontiac and Binjte) but basically as the potatoes grow, you mulch them throughout the season and add more sides to the towers. They can still be growing and setting potatoes while you take the bottom planks out to get some potatoes for dinner.

We also did a raised bed in potatoes that I plan on piling up the mulch as they grow. Fresh potatoes are the best to eat! So much different than what you buy in the stores!

Tube plants 12 days apart

On February 26 we redid our hydroponic tubes and put in some very small plants in with a trickle of nutrients.

Here are those plants two weeks later.

They have more than tripled in size. . . in 12 days.

Floating lettuce and container update

Here is the picture I took when I put the lettuce in the floating bed on February 26.

Here is the same floating bed of lettuce on March 10 - 12 days later!


Here are the containers of carrots, radishes and beets on February 26th.

Here are those same containers (in backwards order) 12 days later!

I think we are on to something with our greenhouse crops!

See anything different?

Do you notice anything different about these two pictures? This is what I see when I open the door to the deck or am out in the garden. I love our view from our home. The first one was taken in 2004 before we built our newer raised beds.

I took this picture this morning.

See it yet? I was working yesterday and heard our neighbors across the pond start up some bulldozer equipment. All of a sudden, I thought I felt a light earthquake. I went outside and saw that the tree just on the other side of our fence had been taken down. Actually they took out two other trees, one on the other side of the pond and one by their barn. It sure opens up our view. But, I will miss the tree. It was home to a lot of songbirds in the spring and we enjoying watching the cardinals and mockingbirds come and go! We have a couple of pin oaks that are about 8 feet tall but it will take them a lot of years to take the place of the other tree!

Floating lettuce and other goodies!

We are trying various ways to grow plants in our greenhouse. We saw this idea from the University of Florida - floating lettuce. Underneath the styrofoam is a water nutrient reservoir. These have been in there a week and doubled in size.

We also replanted our tubes with broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. We lined them in black to help with the algie. We have a nutrient reservoir that circulates several times a day.

Here's a close up of the plants. We make our own pots!

Here are some early tomato plants that I started January 8th. I plan on putting these in big pots in the greenhouse soon.

I am trying to produce some carrots, radishes, baby greens and beets in pots. They are looking good right now!

We also have several broccoli plants that we potted. They are so healthy looking and green!

Go to the roots!

The middle of January we started some new plants for the greenhouse and early garden. We started them under lights in the house and took them outside during the day to the greenhouse but this past week has been so nice and mild that they are now living in the greenhouse.

We've had such success growing lettuce in the house that I have started carrots and beets in containers to grow inside under lights as an experiment. I plan to start some more for the greenhouse and then outside in a bed to see how they grow best this time of year.

Last fall when we started our little plants in the tubes, we had the fertilizer mix wrong and the plants had their roots burned. We bought some new type of fertilizer the first part of December and thought we'd keep the damaged plants going to see if we could tell a difference and experiment with them.

All I can say is wow! The plants grew and are deep green and we are actually getting a little bit of broccoli. I pulled these lettuce roots up out of the tube and was shocked at how many roots there were.

Healthy roots make healthy plants. I am transplanting some of the smaller broccoli plants into pots to make room for our new seedlings to go into the tubes. Here is another picture of the roots on the plants.

My babies are 35 years old today!

I can hardly believe it but my baby boys are 35 years old today!

Can you tell which is which?

(Eric is on the left and Ryan is on the right)We didn't know until five days before they were born that we were having twins. Ryan laid sideways below my diaphragm and they didn't ever hear his heartbeat. They also came three weeks early with a lot of medical problems but we are blessed and they are healthy today!

Happy Birthday!

Lettuce and Tomato harvest!

We have had a learning experience over the winter with our greenhouse. We started out with the wrong fertilizer mixture and hurt the roots of the plants in our tubes. However, we got some different water soluble fertilizer and mixed it up to see what it would do for the plants.

Many roots came back and for the past six weeks they have taken off despite the shorter days. These plants were only about 3" high a month ago.

This head of lettuce is now ready to be cut. In fact, I cut it right after the picture was taken. It should keep growing. I'm excited on what we have learned. We are starting some new plants and hopefully will have another batch of plants to try.

Our downstairs lettuce has also grown. I took some pictures and blogged about it two weeks ago but now they also are ready for their first cutting.

I plan on trying carrots and beets indoors as well! I think we can do that. We have watered them about two times a week and they have organic soil to get their nutrients.

We are still getting some tomatoes each week from our tomato plants in the greenhouse. The plants look terrible but they were planted last July! I have some new ones started to replace them in another month or so!

Is it Turkey time?

Today I was on my way into Duncan, just around the corner from where we live near the bridge and looked out into the field to see this:

We seem to have a herd of about 50 wild turkeys living nearby.

I guess they live in the woods nearby but were out foraging for food. I've seen them twice now and they seem to be at home! I hope they don't find the garden in the summer like the beavers did!

Ice on trees

We ventured out this afternoon for a short time and I noticed that the snow is coming off the tops of the trees. However, it's still cold enough that as the snow melts it refreezes into ice.

The trees were beautiful as they shimmered in the sunshine.

Schools are closed for a fourth day! Michael had to go to class this afternoon as they opened at noon. Once he got to the freeway the roads are fine but secondary roads still have a lot of bad spots.