When winter gets long…

This is the weather graphic is for my suburb.  Today the high is 9.  Yeah.  We are about halfway through this winter and sometimes at this point we start to get a little stir crazy.  See that sunshine there, well it looks warm and inviting outside, but it’s not really and the sunshine just makes us want to go out there all the more!  So what do we do?  How do we cope with the endless winter weather? 

We plan!

We get out all our seeds and take inventory!

              We get out our garden notebook and draw!

We get on the computer and visit the land of the living, living things that is.  Seeds. Plants.  What can we grow?  What can we plant?  Show me some GREEEN!

We figure out where everything goes.  What can we plant here, how about here?  We use post-it-notes so we can change our mind.

We ordered organic seeds and 10 (yeah 10, my husband doesn’t do anything small) elderberry bushes.  Still not sure where all those are going to go, but who cares!  They are coming!  My husband also bought worms of all things, and they are happily munching away in a container on the counter in the kitchen.  That right there is love in action.

Here’s my garden pin board if you want to see some more inspiration:  http://pinterest.com/mrstaffy/garden-backyard/

We want to try the potato towers and the sunflower fort, do you think the neighbors would mind if we put the sunflower fort in the front yard?  Our backyard is pretty full!  ha!  An outside chalkboard for the kids and gutter gardens on my little deck to keep the spinach safe from the bunnies.  So much inspiration! 

I wonder how many other people have spent a long winter’s Saturday planning for the time when the earth warms up and the worms wake up and life springs forth!  Probably more than we can imagine!

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Chipmunk…the New Swear Word

  June Garden Tour

I’m not one given to swearing.  I’d rather growl or sigh VERY loudly.  But seriously, these chipmunks are something else.  They are ruining my garden.  GRRRR!

War has been declared!  Chocolate Taffy was kind enough to post this wanted sign…now if the chipmunks could read and then RUN far away!

 Exhibit 1

They ate all of my spinach, beets, cauliflower, peanuts and peppers.  Every. Last. Bit.  Why couldn’t they just eat the yucky brussel sprouts huh?

 

 

Exhibit 2

You might not even believe this was possible, but those rotten rodents knocked an entire wall of chopped wood over!  Can you even believe it?  There is a family of about 5 living in this wood pile and not a one of them was smooshed in the crash.  Figures.

So, they’ve been making a mess and eating OUR food, but there are a few good things happening too, so all is not lost.

  Apparently they don’t like potatoes…

Or Green Beans…

Or Tomatoes.

I bought some more plants over the weekend but I’m afraid to plant them, so they are in the greenhouse.  I bought sweet corn and popcorn, more peppers and 2 more tomatoes.

Apparently herbs aren’t tasty either, because our herb garden is looking really good.

The kids planter boxes are doing really good too.

Here’s my refurbished plant cart.  I love how it turned out.  I have little pansy’s, some other flowers I started from seed and chamomile in the pots, I need to add something to that little white pot still.

Chocolate Taffy and Mr. Taffy built this amazing contraption to keep the birds from eating our berries.  There’s netting strung from the pvc pipe. 

Mr. Taffy also built this nice support for his raspberries.  I think we will get a lot of nice raspberries this year, there are many flowers appearing.

Sad little empty planter box…sniff sniff…chipmunks.  Ugh.

So there you have it, a June tour of our garden.  Thanks for visiting!  In July we can sip on some peppermint tea and snack on raspberries while we are are looking around!

Until then,

Mrs. Taffy

A Garden Tour~April

My bloggy friend over at I can’t Decide gave a garden tour here recently, it was so fun to take a walk through her garden with her. I thought I would like to do the same.  Plus, it’s extremely satisfying to look back the beginning of the season and see how much growth has happened.

I usually go out the side door when I go to the garden.  I just love walking down this rock path.  A couple years ago I transplanted all those hostas down the side of the fence, it’s so clean and pretty.  And because of the time of year it is, I also get to see our lovely flowering tree.

I love how it peeks over the fence.  There are hundreds of bees feasting on these blossoms and standing under it is exhilarating and terrifying in the same breath!  The other bush there is a Chinese Lilac, it will have white flowers and won’t get much bigger than it already it, but when it blooms it sure smells good!

Okay, back down the path.  First we’ll stop in the greenhouse to see how my seedlings are doing.  Today is very warm, mid 70’s, so I have the sky light open to let some heat out.

My beans are doing the best.  I planted two varieties, both are heirloom seeds and both are of the bush variety.

These three flats are all flowers and you can see that they are finally starting to sprout.  So exciting!

You can see my greenhouse on the left, when I leave the greenhouse I cross the backyard to the “front” of my garden.  As we cross the yard we must stop to admire the tulips that are absolutely gorgeous right now!

Tulips are my favorite!

And now on to the garden.  We will pass through the trellis that the kids gave me for Mother’s Day last year.  We have grapes planted on either side and I’m hoping that they make it up and over the trellis this year.

Walking to the left you can see (in this order): grape, 3 kiwi, and two blueberries.

Our Kiwi started getting leaves and then we had a frost, it lost most of it’s new growth but has started to recover.  I think I’m going to plant something in the soil in front of these plants, maybe strawberries.  I still have a bunch of strawberries to move around.

Our Currant Bush is loaded with baby fruit.

Of course they need to turn red still, but this bush is very happy and hasn’t been affected by the unstable weather. 

             

I’m happy to see the blackberry waking up, there are actually two there.  And the raspberries are looking good too!

We have a side entrance/exit to our garden, which I failed to take a photo of, but on the other side of it is this Asparagus bed.  I think it’s so funny looking.  We did eat a few stalks of this, I sautéed them and we put them in our omelets.  Delish!

Two of our apple trees have blossomed, they are covered with bees too.  Don’t tell our neighbors but we have a hive hiding in a compost bin behind our shed.  It’s only there temporarily, just long enough to pollinate our apple trees and possibly our blueberries.

In the herb garden I’m surprised to see the Parsley come back.  It’s not supposed to be MN hardy.

Strawberry planted some Dill in our herb garden too, but I haven’t seen any signs of it yet.  But the Echinacea is doing great!

It’s still too early to get the whole garden planted.  I’m trying to be patient.  I’m going to plant some more seeds soon, I want to get my greenhouse full of little plants!

If you’ve posted a tour of your garden, leave a link and I’ll be sure to take a stroll through it with you!

Happy Spring!

Mrs. Taffy

Frugal seedling pots

This might just look like a basket full of recycling, but it’s really a few little “free” things to make seedling pots with.  I’ve been saving little tubs and toilet paper and paper towel tubes and newspapers that come for free below my mailbox and I turn them into this:

I take the folded newspaper and cut it into four strips, about 6 inches wide.

Then I roll them up like this:

And tuck the bottom in like this:

And then I have this:

The really cool thing about this frugal little pot is that when I’m ready to plant the seedling, I can just stick the whole thing in the ground!  How easy is that?

Filling the little pots up with dirt.

I’m sure children could be taught to do this!  It’s so quick! 

Since I didn’t want too many hot pepper plants, when I put them in the Animal Crackers Tub from Trader Joe’s, I bound them with a rubber band, to keep them organized.

 

This way I can keep track of my seeds without using up all my cute tags.  I don’t need very many hot peppers!  I started a few spinach here, and I’ll start some more in a week or two or three and then again after that so I can have a continuous spinach supply over the spring and summer. 

My thermometer registered 75 today!  You better believe we enjoyed that fantastic sunshine!

See their pink noses?

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy