Lionden Landing

So today was unseasonably beautiful.  So Froggy and I opted for a trip to the garden store and an afternoon spent planting.  We placed a border of pansies around our main front planting bed.  The bed itself is largelyy empty still but some day I will decide the perennials to live there.  We also put some pansies beside the side bed. And I put two new ground cover plants in.  The ground is awful and I am concerned they wont thrive but since nothing else has either there is no loss.  It was glorious just to be outside in the sun.  I worked a good lather which I did not know you could do in February. 

While I truly despise daylight savings time and the havoc it causes to our sleep schedules, there are some pluses.  Last night, we got to eat dinner outside and I was even able to work in the vegetable garden a bit.  I got the early lettuce, spinach and peas planted.  It was absolutely lovely to be outside in the evening.  I still miss my morning walks but this is nice too.

Our Daisy troop is starting the Earth and Sky Journey .  Journeys were added to  the traditional petals.try-its and badges to broaden the program.  This is my very first experience with a Journey. Typically the girls would start with Welcome to The Daisy Garden .  Since our girls are not, we thought it might be nice to introduce them to the flower friends that guide them or join them on this journey through planting a Daisy Garden. It was so fun.  The girls were thrilled to hear the little introduction  speech each flower has.  After we introduced the characters, we moved over to our garden.  Each girl got to plant one of the flowers that corresponds to the characters in the story. We wet the soil and prepared the garden.  We started with Sunflower, a seed most of girls had seen before and were familiar with.  We talked about proper planting depth and put the seed in.  We then planted the seed and marked it with a marker....

Today was harvest day at the Landing. I picked the last of our lettuce and spinach and took in all of the chard. This marks the end of the greens for us until the Fall. I also topped all the basil plants which netted me quite a bit of basil. Bits of it will be added to the salads to kick them up. Lots will go in the pasta sauce and the rest will be for lunches . The big haul from the day though was the cherries. We have a sour cherry tree in the front yard. Despite living in this house over 4yrs, this is the first year we have harvested them for our own use. I will make a cherry pie with some of them but have lots I still need to figure out what to do with. This is the first year for lots of plants. All of the following are firsts. We have two cantaloupe and one watermelon which are still growing and do not look sick but are still tiny. We have an acorn squash (featured last week) that has now blossomed and shows teeny tiny baby squashes. We have harvested our first zucchini las...

As we get ready for Memorial Day and the unofficial start to summer, it is time to check in on the garden again. We had a lovely salad with lettuce from our garden for dinner last night. We finally got to taste two strawberries from the garden. They were the most sour things I have ever had. I have no idea why. Most are still being eaten by some non-human. I hope whoever it is enjoys them but doubt from the half eaten ones. The zucchini plant is flowering and looks wonderful. The acorn squash in the same planter is trailing down the deck. I just moved them over to this location in hopes of getting them some more sun. The two cucumber plants in the container are dinky and unlikely to produce. It is lucky that I have cucumbers in the main bed that are doing better. I planted a total of six cucumber plants this year, two in each different location to test out how each location works. The full size tomatoes are huge and several green tomatoes plus more flowers. We may actually g...

It is hard to believe it is not even the middle of May yet. I have to keep reminding myself when I get frustrated at the state of my garden. I need to find something to do for our strawberries if we want to get to eat any. Every single one is being consumed down to the nub before we can pick it. Hiranu suggested netting over our frame but the tomato plants are much too big already to fit under the frame. One friend suggested I sprinkle human hair around them but another told me that will not work. Tuesday I am checking out my different netting options. I am using more containers this year than ever before. I put in two new cantaloupes, a watermelon and two more cucumbers in a second container in a different section of the garden. I am not sure I am satisfied with the location. I am not sure it will get enough sun or be safe from the mowing monster. I also put in some more basil with marigolds in a container in front of the house. My first batch totally died. We added two grap...

We ate greens from our garden with dinner last night. The spinach, lettuce and arugula are all harvestable. Yippee We finally got the cucumber,zucchini and acorn squash in. I will probably put in some more cucumbers as well in a different location. Our bean pole lady's skirt is still not happy. We have about a 6-10 sprouts which look lackluster. We will plant some more seeds this week to see if can boost her up. Our strawberries are developing some color Our potato plants are up over the top. I wonder how much longer before they are ready for the next tire Look a baby tomato There are baby brocolli on all four plants. Unfortunately there are almost all the leaves on ths one have been eaten by something.

We had an extremely productive day in the garden yesterday. Unfortunately the front of the house now looks worse than when we started. We removed lots of dead branches from our dying Cherry Tree. It is at the end of its life span and we are delaying removing the whole thing. We also took out one of the major shrubs which had been demolished by Snowmaggaden 2010. We put in some salvage techniques to try to save the other two that were badly put upon by the same storm. On a more positive note, I managed to get my green beans planted. We moved the Green bean lady to a more sunny spot in the yard. It is a much less convenient spot but it will hopefully yield a much greater harvest. We also planted four different kinds of potatoes. It is a little later than I had hoped to get these planted but better late than never. We are moving slowly towards increasing the amount of local produce in our diet much of which I hope will come from our garden. The goal for this weekend is the cucu...

This year March is coming in like a lamb. Today for the first time in ages, we actually went outside. We saw the beginnings of several bulbs coming up, at least in those places where there were not holes from the squirrels. I cleaned up the vegetable garden and opened it up for spring. I turned the soil and added compost, homemade compost for the first time ever. It was glorious to be out in the sun and feel the dirt in my hands. I planted spinach and lettuce. Yes it is only March 1st but I bought a cold frame for just this reason. I am hoping that I can get 3 full plantings in the same plot by starting this early. Welcome March. You are promising to be so much kinder than February.

Getting ready for TuB'Shevat (Jan 31st this year) means getting ready for spring as well. I pull out my garden catalog and start planning my garden. What will we plant? Where will it go? Is a new exotic specie we want to try? Every year we plant a tree on Tu B'Shevat. Unfortunately the ground is too frozen and we cannot plant outdoors on the day itself. So we plant in a container regardless of whether the tree will eventually live in the ground or not. Last year we planted a pear tree which is still in its container. I like to leave them in the containers for a while to make sure they will grow and thrive before we go through the hassle of digging a full size tree hole in the clay soil we have here. The Meyer Lemon tree we planted in 2008 finally bloomed and is doing much better which makes me feel safe enough to try another indoor/patio dwarf tree. This year we are getting a Dwarf Venous Orange Tree I am actually on the ball enough this year that I can order our tree t...

Cucumbers have arrived in our garden. I had been checking and checking but seeing essentially no progress is the development of the fruit. Yesterday we discovered some that were finally starting to develop some. While looking at these emerging fruit we found two beauties hidden deep under the vines that should have been picked at least a few days earlier. Now at least I know where and how to look for all my hidden gems. For dinner last night we had a green salad with the last of our lettuce and the first of our cucumbers. We will not be buying any more cucumber from the store for the rest of the summer. As you can see, some one could not wait for dinner to sample the goodness. We took out the remains of the lettuce and added in some additional tomato plants. We will see how they do. So far the count from the garden is Lettuce ++ Spinach ++ Cucumbers ++ peas + beans - strawberries - Potatoes ?

Our little garden is doing amazing things. The lettuce and spinach took off like gang-busters. We have plenty to eat. There is something about lettuce and spinach coming from HER garden that means Froggy will eat at least a few bites of it. Today we harvested the very first of our peas. The peas have been a serious hassle as they do not seem to like my trellis material. Still they are growing. It was fun showing Froggy how to open the pods to get at the peas. She ate all the peas right there in the yard. Our squash-family plants are growing phenomenally. Unfortunately the fruit is developing at a glacial pace. I am concerned that some how I planted a winter squash rather than the desired cucumbers. Our tomato plants are growing but not producing anything yet. We just had the first flowers appear. We have a couple of spots vacant in the garden. I am going to add either tomatoes or cucumbers in these holes.

So the sunflower garden is under way. We have had two work sessions so far. On the first day, we determined which direction was north using both a compass and the direction of the shadows at midday. It was neat to show the children the two options and that the answer was the same no matter how we got to the answer. We placed the door to the house on the north side and marked out the rest of the walls. That was enough for our first adventure. On day two, we dug up the sod where we will be planting and added compost. We are planting only a 4 inch wide area around the house. Even so removing the sod turned out to be a great deal more work than originally anticipated. The children had fun digging and breaking up the sod to save as much of the dirt as possible. The hit though was probably all the worms and bugs that we got to see and identify. The step for day two was adding compost to the soil. Explaining what compost is and where it comes from was neat. It was interesting to see ...

I love Sunflowers. I love gardening (not that I am very good at it). I love working with children. Combine all these and you come up with my latest project. And as of yesterday afternoon it is official. I met and received permission from the parks department. We -those families from our homeschool group who choose to participate -will be building a Sunflower House at the local park where we have our Park Day gathering. The house will have a variety of types of sunflowers as well as morning glorys to form the roof. Our inaugural meeting is two weeks from yesterday. I have written up an entire unit stud y based on Sunflowers with the focus being the house that hopefully will provide a creative, engaging play space during the summer months. The basic directions for the structure and many of the initial activity ideas came from Sharon Lovejoy's book, Roots Shoots Buck ets and Boots . I have investigated many gardening with children books but this is my all time favorite. Frog...

We had a beautiful day in which to enjoy our celebration. We started at sundown and welcomed the holiday under the full moon. With the sun came our seder. We had lots of friends over to help us celebrate. Lot of non-Jewish friends because we don't have many local Jewish friends. We ate lots of fruits discussing the differences and tasting the first new fruits of the year. We drank our four cups of wine (juice) and we did crafts. With the preschool set, this is always the most fun. We made bagel birdfeeders , a very messy but ecological craft. To me it was a visible way for the children to see the importance of giving on this holiday. Most of the children took theirs home but the samples and the extras are all hanging in my backyard. With the regular feeders in the front and these in the backyard the birds are enjoying our house today. We also planted seeds. Each child planted parsley seeds in a little yogurt cup they could take home with them. The theory is that the pa...

I very much want to make a Sunflower garden playhouse at one of the public parks where our homeschooling group meets regularly. We will do all the work and maintain it and provide all the materials. Once it is established and growing and safe, it would of course be open to anyone who wanted to visit it or play in it or enjoy it in any reasonable manner. I want to do this this year as a precursor to a more adventurous community vegetable garden idea that is percolating. I believe it would benefit the county and the park to have this as part of the environment of the park. My problem is I don't know politics. I don't know who to approach to start the process. There are so many different departments and dealing with bureaucracy makes me crazy

Well really any garden catalog. I like them all. But Stark Bros has a special place in my heart. Their catalog is well organized with the information presented in a logical easy to read format. The catalog actually gives me all the information I need to make a decision regarding which variety I want. But what really rocks my socks about this company is the quality. When these plants are planted they actually grow. And produce and let me tell you those are rare things in my experience. We always plant a tree for Tu B'Shevat ( the birthday for the trees) which is February 9th this year. So I am really under the gun. Given where we live we can't actually plant the tree in its final home on that date but we either plant a tree for Israel by donation, plant a picture of a tree we will plant in the yard later in the year or we plant an indoor plant in a pot. This year we will be planting this little beauty . And hoping really hoping that it actually produces fruit.

One of the most enjoyable things for me to do on a cold gray winter afternoon is to curl up in front of a roaring fire with my seed/garden catalogs. Here are some notes from today's venture We are going to leave the bean pole lady where she is and try her there again. Hopefully with us being home this summer and better able to tend her she will do better even though her spot is not ideal. We are also going to try a Top Hat Blueberry bush is a pot on the deck. I am still debating a raised bed of strawberries on the driveway. We will also be trying potatoes again, this time using official seed eye potatoes. The main vegetable garden will be moved to the side of the house where it is much sunnier. I am seriously considering investing in a cold frame to help us get a good start early in the season and to help keep the puppy out. To Order/Purchase: Top Hat Blueberry bush Seed potatoes - Grape tomatoes bean seeds ("straight n Narrow") cucumbers zucchini peppers spinach s...

For Tu B'Shevat, we planted parsley and some other seeds in a indoor starter kit and placed it on a wire shelving unit in front of a large window. Every day since we have dutifully checked the box. Nothing until today. This morning there is green in our box. Tiny, tiny seedlings that look nothing like plants yet. After our previous attempts at growing seeds in which nothing happened, Froggy was thrilled to see even this minimal progress. I am getting excited about gardening with her. We got Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children based on a recommendation from one of my favorite blogs . I hope to do three of the projects described in the book with her this spring. I know. I know. It isn't even February yet and I am already planning my spring gardening. But that is what gets me through the cold of winter.