I think I went overboard

So I am no longer allowed to go to a greenhouse by myself, after buying quite a bit of plants I think I need more supervision haha.

So I went and bought 3 cucumber plants, each container contains 3 seedlings, so really I bought 9 cucumber plants! And I bought 9 zucchini plants, 3 eggplant, 3 summer squash, 12 cabbage, and 4 cauliflower. And we still haven't talked about the tomatoes and peppers.......

I think I might have a little bit of a problem with my garden addiction. Just a little one.

The the real fun started, my mother came home from the hardware store. With a flat of herbs, 3 elderberry bushes, 3 blueberry bushes, and like 6-9 asparagus plants. Well I think you know where I get it from don't you?

No room for me

Mom a girl needs her room you know! 

I guess that's fine I can sleep on the floor.

More of my Garden

So I have yet to show you all of my growing things both inside and out, which seems a shame as there is so much more growing on the land!!! I am going to put at some point exactly which strain of each veggie we planted so that I can keep track of how much we got out of what we planted.

So first up are my blueberry bushes, two bushes got transplanted last year and we picked up two more bushes this last summer. The transplanted ones aren't looking so good, and I am not even sure one of them is a blueberry bush.

This itty bitty bush is one of the transplanted, and I think he will grow big and strong with tons of blueberries don't you? 

These are all freshly mulched with pine needles as blueberry bushes need highly acidic soil. Thankfully we have no shortage of pine trees on our property.

Next we have our apple trees, we have two but there are two huge ones down on my grandmothers farm that I intend to pick from this year, if they produce. 

They already have buds out so I am excited to see what the year brings for fruit!!

These trees usually produce pretty well for being fairly small and early in their life cycle. We got a few dozen off the tree last year and I hope to get just as many this year!

Last but certainly not least is probably my baby on our property. I love this tree and I have wanted one for years and so now that I finally have one I am constantly checking on it. My plum tree!

That nice big shoot on the top that looks a little ridiculous is brand new and grew last summer after we planted it. I cannot wait to get fruit from this tree, plums are one of my favorite fruits. 

And I suppose though this isn't veggie or fruit garden what would I be if I didn't show you our lawn art?

These are handmade by my father and my mother loves them so yes we have a million. Dogs are included as lawn art since they spend so much of their time on it haha. 

So at some point I am going to put up here exactly what strain of veggies I planted for future reference so that we can decide what we liked and didn't like, but that is down the line after everything goes in.

Until next time, happy gardening!!

I sleep a lot

It's a really rough life being a puppy dog, didn't you know that?

Comfy

When it's raining out and there is a good book calling your name what else is there but to cuddle up with a good book and a puppy dog?

Holy cow batman.

Looks like the garden has loved the rain and warm weather!! Where did it all come from?!?! Omg!

Spring Garden Roundup

So I figured I should give everyone a show of what we have ready and in the ground for our garden this year! Everyone loves to see gardens right? Well if you are on this blog you better!

This past Saturday we planted all of our early spring vegetables, and even some that weren't early.

We planted another bed of carrots, like a WHOLE bed. We are gonna have carrots coming out our eyeballs. Which I guess shouldn't be a big deal the horses and us love carrots.

Another bed of beets, yum pickled beets!! My favorite!

A second planting of our greens, salads galore are in our future.

Sadly not everything from our first planting grew, we replanted our peas because a certain SOMEONE who shall not be named decided her bone belonged there and buried it!

My father also tilled a good portion of our old garden and another portion of our lawn so that we can plant more thing that take up too much room in our raised beds. 

This is the old garden! Plenty of room for all the squash we want! And we have a lot planted!

These are three of our four trays of squash! I can't wait to see if they will all produce us some yummy squash. I love squash! My whole family does!

This is our other location that my father tilled for me. If you click on the photo to make it bigger you might be able to see the blueberry bushes in the background. They aren't very big but they look promising so far! Lots of buds for spring! This is where our cucumbers and zucchini are going to go, which is very exciting for this family as we haven't been able to grow either in a very long time. Hopefully we get lots! We have it staked for 6 plants each but with how much room there is we might do more. 

I am already salivating over pickles, zucchini bread, and stuffed squash. I am sure I will have about a hundred new recipes to try, and then share with you all as the summer progresses!

Last but not least is our other bed with our peppers and tomatoes. This one we really went overboard. The whole bed is dedicated to 29 tomato plants and 32 pepper plants. O.O Think I might be crazy? I don't! Those are two of my favorite vegetables! And I really want a lot of banana pepper plants this year because we want to try and can them for use in sandwiches. Like the kind you can buy at a store or sandwich place. YUM!

Yeah I know we are a little crazy to plant that many, but it just means we have more to share! And that's my favorite part of gardening, sharing the food with others and showing them you care.

Anyway I am sure I will have more for you soon. Our onions are already starting to sprout with our rainstorm!

Please let me in!

So I should preface this picture by saying that the room she is laying outside is my parents, and my dog has shown that she most definitely loves my parents way more then she loves me. LOL.

Mommy why won't they let me in?! I just want to snuggle!

Spring in Minnesota

Now I don't know about you but there aren't many places in the world that you can have a snow storm, 70 degree weather and a rain/hailstorm in one weekend. Welcome to Minnesota and don't let our weather patterns fool you, the residents aren't as crazy as the weather.

Now on Friday morning I arrived at work to a snow storm. An I am talking blowing so hard you can't even see where you are going snow storm. It lightened up throughout the morning and pretty soon by like 10 am the sky was blue and our snow was melting.

This was my work that morning, and let me tell you it did not make for a good start to the weekend.

By the afternoon we had hit the 60s, and everything was great and forgiven. Winter had one last fight and had given up. 

This Saturday was beautiful. I spent some time with my goddaughter, and got to do a ton of planting with my mother. Everything in our garden is ready to go for summer. Today started off just as beautiful, and I really enjoyed it, we did some yard work and then my mother worked with our horses and then the storm rolled in.

This is what it currently looks like outside, and two seconds later it started hailing. I didn't get a picture because we were pulling in the plants off our deck because they can handle a thunderstorm, we weren't expecting the hail. LOTS of hail.

Now don't get me wrong, as an environmentally aware person I am fully ok with this downpour. We needed the rain badly. I even love thunderstorms, they are my favorite spring weather pattern. What I would like more though is for nature to decide on what they are going to give us. I would really like either more winter or just spring. No more snow that lasts for only a few hours.

So please Mother Nature if it's not too much to ask can we just pick a season already?



P.S. I leave you with this poor puppy who doesn't like storms as much as her mother does and has taken to hiding from them. She finally found her favorite spot.

My house is growing!

We have a lot of plants in our house over the winter, some we put back outside, and some that stay in year-round.

My favorites are our ivy plants in the kitchen, our ten million aloe plants, and my personal favorites. My dwarf lemon and dwarf lime trees. 

This is my lemon tree!! Look at the flowers!

My lemon tree, while being much larger then my lime tree has not produced as many buds, but my lime tree had the benefit of being downstairs in the basement next to our fireplace, much warmer. I think that might have something to do with the abundance of blooms.

This is my lime tree, notice the ridiculous number of blooms!

Because these are dwarf trees, made for container growing they are self-pollinating, though my sister has some of the same ones and she says they do better if you take your finger and pollinate. They also self-shed the blooms they don't have the energy to turn into fruit so I doubt we will get anything more then one. We have yet to get any fruit from either of them, but I am just going to give them time. Because they are also in pots you need to make sure to add fertilizer to the pot every couple of months or so, otherwise the plants eat up all the nutrients and then die. We mix miracle grow right into the water of the feeders, and that seems to work really well.

I will be posting more pictures as the summer goes along, so keep your fingers crossed for fruit!!

Our Snow Garden

So this is what I woke up to this morning, sadly I was expecting rain.

Surprisingly enough though while it rained and sleeted all day I came home to double the sprouts!

My arugula really took off, my kale started popping up everywhere and my radishes made an appearance! My garlic is even getting in on the action!

Like I said I think we have wacko lettuce this year, it's ahead of everything else and just growing like crazy!

So it is supposed to freeze tonight and be colder then usual all week, with like a 50-90% chance of rain everyday. So I put our covers on them to help them out.

My lovely row covers making sure all my greens are snug as a bug in a rug!

More of my crazy lettuce, I have never had it go this crazy! Usually it's my carrots and green onions that get out of control right away! This is new for me!

Well I have your surprise post all ready to go for this week, and I have a seed post coming up as well. Then it's time to discuss that all important necessity in your garden, water.

Have an awesome week everyone! And don't let this weather get you down!