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!

Garden sprouts

WELL I was GOING to show you my sprouts in the garden and get you all excited for spring! I am very excited for it, and with greens growing in my garden my excitement just seems to multiply.

BUT this morning I woke up to SNOW on the ground! UGH! I am so done with this crazy spring weather!

So I figure I will show you all of my seeds that are sprouting and then tomorrow I will put up what it looks like now :( Everything is growing a little slower because of the colder weather but these plants love it this way anyway!

So this is our arugula coming up, my mother loves it in salads and it's healthier for you then plain lettuce anyways. 

Our one lonely Kale sprout :(

My crazy lettuce that just decided that this weather isn't going to stop it from going nuts!

These are my onions, nothing much to see there yet but give them time. They will take over the world soon enough haha.

So even with the cold weather we have more sprouting every day, I will make sure to take lots of pictures, and I have a surprise post for you at the middle of the week!! 

Easter weekend!

The puppy dog says Happy Easter! Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend with family. Wish it were warmer.