Touching Grass & Getting Out the Paints!

Several different articles, podcasts, videos & memes have come up lately that have drawn my attention to how so many people are struggling with our "time spent online" in various ways and across various formats. Which, to me, is kind of a red flag that lots of different people are getting the same vibe that something about it just doesn't seem right. Or, porpotionate. Or something.  It seems pretty clear, all sorts of people are noticing it doesn't feel right. 

One example was this from 2024 recently making the rounds again on social media, showing how and where people spend their time from 1930 to 2024.  I can't vouch for it's accuracy but I suspect anyone viewing agrees at how fast things have drastically changed. I don't think of myself as someone who spends a ton of time online but when I see things like that, I'm even more determined to spend way more time outside & offline. 

Where I live in southern Ontario Canada, as long as the weather allows, I'm outside. Generally barefoot, and in the dirt.  It's just what feels right to me. As much as I'm able, I'm outside and today was no exception. I planted out my sweet onions, got rid of a bunch of junk that's been piling up, re-installed a downspout & picked up a cute new garden decor item.

This was completely unplanned, but after I picked this up I absolutely had to re-paint this cute, tin hummingbird wind chime. Nothing like a 4 hour unplanned painting session on the deck to completely de-stress & enjoy the early spring sunshine on the deck.

There's also nothing like picking up your paint pens & paints and brushes and remembering how much you miss it. I should most certainly be doing more of this! 

Thanks for stopping by.  As always, I hope you're encouraged by what you've read here, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions please feel welcome to leave a comment. 😊

Garden 2025 Update #3: Companion Planting

At the beginning of every garden season I like to take a refresher course on companion planting. There are so many combinations of herbs, flowers, fruits & veggies that you can do that it's hard to remember them all and some years you want to change things up a little! 😀 Not to mention, this is only my 6th year seriously growing so I'm not exactly a professional. One of the most enjoyable things about it is continuing to learn how it all works the way God designed it to work. 

My sources on this vary from books at home to YT videos from seasoned gardeners & homesteaders. The latest one I watched was from Grace Walk Farm - Companion Planting for Beginners She explains it well: 

"Companion planting is my favorite way to manage pests and improve the quality and quantity of harvests from our backyard farm." 

Companion planting of herbs & flowers around your garden has a wide variety of benefits from improving the soil heath, attracting bees & butterflies as well as attracting other beneficial insects that ward off pests.  It's also a really great way to add pops of lovely color and make your garden even more enjoyable to spend time in.

My short list of companion planting I'll be doing this year: 

• TOMATOES with Basil, Marigolds & Cosmos 
• STRAWBERRIES with Sage
• PEPPERS: Thyme, Marigolds & Yarrow
• CUCUMBERS: Dill, Echinacea & Sunflowers
• LEMON BALM: English Lavender

Companion plantings are usually the last thing I plan after I have the rest of the garden planned out for what will go where.  Now that this is done, the garden planning for 2025 is done (mostly!) & ready for the snow to melt. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope this helps you in some way as you begin to plan your 2025 garden.  Please feel welcome to leave a comment or question & have an awesome day! 🌺

 

Garden 2025 Update #1: Planning It All Out

• Garden 2025 Update #1:

While all my beds are covered in a thick blanket of snow, I'm already tossing around some fun new ideas and some basic garden planning for this year.

A big part of that is doing a winter inventory on all things homegrown & home canned. I've adopted the motto to "grow what you eat" to keep it as simple as I can, so it's been a matter of fine tuning that each year when I take inventory of my shelf space and all the things I've put up from the garden.  

It doesn't take too long into winter to notice what there's too much of, and also notice what there's not enough of. This can change each and every year for many reasons, so keeping track and updating every winter is a very helpful habit to get started planning the garden for spring.

•  While I haven't officially planned 2025 garden yet, I've got a good idea of how it will look since I decided to simplify things considerably for this year.  There will be three, new 8' beds this year (Lord willing!) for cucumbers and strawberries so that will help keep things a little more organized. The 16 feet of cucumber space was flooded badly last year and I lost all but one plant.  So this year I'll be building two, 8 foot long raised beds for all my cucumbers to prevent that from happening again in the future.  I have strawberry plants all over the garden and even on the deck, so they'll all be moved to their own dedicated raised bed as well, just in front of the blackberries. 

•  I have decided I can't give up on growing onions from seed just yet, even though it's been a utter disaster for several years running now. I bought Walla Walla sweets & planted them on the 15th. Many have germinated already and I'm determined to see them grow well. So far the chipmunks have defeated me every year but... I'm not giving up just yet. I'll be sorting through several different options of "chipmunk proofing" and hopefully find one that works well for my situation. 

•  On a whim, I'm trying winter sowing for the first time. I have two bins outside now and plan to put another one out soon. Winter sowing this year will be: Purple Coneflower, Yarrow, Milkweed, Sunflowers & Chamomile.  Joyful Farmer on YT has some great videos on this subject if you'd like to give it a go yourself.

• I had so much fun with it last year and was so happy with the results that "beautifying my space" will definitely continue this garden season. 💖 Here's one addition that will be going into the garden this year (I'm growing some of this already, but there's plenty of room for many more!) 12 Mosquito Repellent Plants - Plant these 12 plants in your garden for their colorful and fragrant display, plus their ability to keep uninvited bugs out.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you're encouraged by what you've read here, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions please feel welcome to leave a comment. 😊

Garden 2024 Update #14: Season's End (almost!)

Seven months ago I began my garden updates with some big ideas for 2024.  In that post, exactly 7 months ago today, I mentioned how I was spending some concerted effort with things that I haven't previously had much success with.  Sweet potatoes and onions from seed. Well the onions were a complete flop just like before, since the squirrels and chipmunks just absolutely love young onions, and ate them all. I won't be trying that again, I'll just get my onions from the local farmer's market instead. The sweet potatoes on the other hand, are doing fantastic. 

Starting with slips I grew & then transfered to jars of water, I ended up with 4-6 slips in each 20 gallon grow bag.  They seemed to struggle most of the first half of the season but then when the intense heat of the summer showed up, they took off like mad.  I suppose that makes sense considering sweet potatoes are actually a tropical crop.  They did excellent in this location too, so my plans for next year will be to grow them here in the same place.  Possibly in grow bags again, or possibly in a raised bed along this side of the sand area. I love the way raised beds make the growing space so organized and tidy, so I really think this area needs one of those to go toward my goal of beautifying my growing space.  

Another crop that did really well for me this year were jalapenos. I discovered Cowboy Candy a few years ago and it became an instant hit with the entire family as well as many friends. I never seem to make enough for it to last more than a couple of months (in addition to all the jars I give away in gift baskets) so this year's plan was to make at least twice as much!  I like to mix up the peppers 1/2 & 1/2 with jalapenos and sweet peppers, to dial the heat down a little and that works out perfect for everyone.

Overall this year, I had some pretty wonderful successes with garlic, basil, mint, lemon balm, peppers, carrots, blackberries, apples, potatoes, tomatoes and even my cucumbers that got flooded out far too early in the season.  Next year I'll be dialing it in even more, and focus more on what grows well in my wee garden.  I'll still make room for experiments but after many years of trying out new things, trying new spaces to see what grows best, where, I think I've finally sorted all of that out.  

While I haven't harvested the sweet potatoes yet, those are on the list to clear out over the next couple of weeks along with all the rest of the tomato and pepper plants and then mulch a ton of maple leaves for topping off all the beds for winter, and putting the garden to bed. I plant my garlic on Halloween, and this year I'm going to plant twice as much as in years prior, since we always run out long before the season is over. 

It's been a really good growing season for me, and I hope this inspires you to get out there and use whatever space you have, wherever you are, and grow some of your own amazing food! 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have an incredible day. 

Status Report: August 2024

Sitting: Inside with all the windows open and the AC off.  While I'm ever thankful for the air conditioning on those sweltering hot summer days, it's sure nice to be able to turn it off and just enjoy the fresh breeze coming in the windows. 

Been busy with: the garden always keeps me busy but my current (ongoing) project is beautifying the cottage space. When I had it built a few years ago the intention was to have it be dual purpose. A garden cottage to store all my garden supplies as well as guest cottage bunkie.  We did have a surprise guest for a week long stay a couple of years ago and I quickly turned it into a bunkie with an inflatable bed, night table, privacy curtains, lamp, fan & charging station. After seeing how cute it looked with a very rushed "hurry, turn that into a bunkie!" job, I'm even more excited to see how it will look once it's all done. There is much work to do from insulation, sheetrock, better lighting, additional shelving, building a small storage loft & probably 10 other things I haven't thought of yet, but it's a project I'm very pleased to be working on. I'm enjoying watching the YT channel Made by Mick while he renovates a storage area off the side of his house, turning it into a small apartment for his daughter. Getting lots of ideas on how to translate some of his techniques to what I'm aiming for in the cottage.  

Re-evaluating: the garden for next year.  Every year I dial it in just a little more.  I've had a lot of fun growing experimental items and I do dedicate a small space every year for that but I've toned that down the last couple of years to spend more time growing what grows well here, and what grows well for me. Also re-evaluating raised bed areas for spots that currently don't have them. For my piece of land, raised beds tend to produce much better results than in-ground planting so I'm planning on adding at least 4 more for next growing season. 

Feeling: Kind of sad that the growing season is coming to an end in a few short weeks. Technically, my growing season is from mid May through mid October, so there's roughly 7 weeks left, before we're looking at the first frost of the year.  Although there really isn't much time to be sad, since fall zips by faster than it should, and between mulching all the falling leaves for free garden bed mulch, there are roughly 32 million things to take care of to put the garden to bed for the winter.  My carrots are doing amazingly well this year and I've decided they'll be the last to harvest, after the first hard frost.  An old time farmer told me they're ten times sweeter if you leave them in the ground until then, so I'm taking that advice as Farmer Gospel. 😊

Looking forward to: The next round of canning!  On the list to finish out the summer will be zucchini bread jam, Cowboy Candy, and my world famous homemade ketchup.  Okay maybe not world famous but my kids & grandkids, in-laws & outlaws all love it, so, that's good enough for me. 

Well, that just about does it for this month's Status Report. 

Thanks for stopping by and checking in! 😊 I hope you have an incredible day. 

Garden 2024 Update #10

Other than a sad loss of cucumbers this year from constant rain and flooding, the garden is pretty much right on track.  I'm also including some fun pics of my walk at the river, because there's always something cool to get pics of.

This is my volunteer tomato plant looks to be a slicer!  Growing in the same pot is a strawberry plant, and some purslane that I posted a pic of last update.

Doubled in size since last week. Each time I've googled this plant, from any angle, it tells me it's a Black Mulberry. If you're a mulberry grower, I'd love to hear from you to confirm!

Sometimes, harvests look like this. My wee basket of cherry tomatoes and spearmint for the tea jar.

Spotted this dude on the blackberries.  Google tells me he's a Snipe Fly, or a Rhagio. 

I'm going with Rhagio, as it sounds like a cool name you might find in a Tolkien story. 

On the way to the walking path at the river, I spotted this lovely creature.  It didn't appear afraid of me at all, and let me get about 4 feet away, taking pics.  I'm more or less a Disney Princess now. 😂

Cool structure spotted in the woods, that wasn't there last week.  Lots of kids play in these woods so I suspect one of them or a group of them decided to build this. Very impressive!

Scarlet Runner Beans showing off in the middle of the garden 💖

First batch of garlic dills this year.  Half were mine, the other half I had to pick up at the farmer's market.  Cucumber Lane will be getting an overhaul this fall after the season is over, and I'll be building two new raised beds there instead of planting directly in the ground. 

Just being a Disney Princess again as these two doves let me walk right up to them. 💖

Thanks for stopping by and taking the garden stroll with me 😊

Garden 2024 Update #9

The garden is in full swing this first week of July, and with that also comes loads and loads of mosquitoes, and a spot or two of powdery mildew on my cucumbers and bee balm.  I use the baking soda, dish soap & water recipe to keep it at bay, and it seems to work rather well.  Here's some pics I've snapped over the last couple of weeks in and around the garden.

I transplanted my raspberries this year and they're not producing nearly as well as I'd hoped, so this lovely batch of raspberry jam comes from berries I picked up at the local farmer's market.

This delightful jar of magic potion is a Wild Young Country Cherry wine. This is a new adventure for me, and if you'd like to try it as well, the recipe is here:  Wild Fermented Young Country Wine

A wee harvest of Yukon Gold potatoes, garlic, chocolate mint, holy basil & pickling cucumbers. All of my garlic gets dehydrated then turned into garlic powder for my own seasoning blends (eliminating the need to ever buy it at the store, for the last several years).

Some lovely Sugarbaby Cherry tomatoes

I picked up a couple of Elderberry bushes from the local greenhouse.  This one is called a York Elderberry, and the other one is called a Scotia Elderberry. I've never grown elderberry before so I'm doing a lot of homework on these beautiful berry bushes, and very much looking forward to some homemade elderberry syrup and maybe even an elderberry pie.

Last year I had 9 berry clusters on my one year old Chester Thornless blackberry bushes. This year I have more than 50 clusters!  I'm really looking forward to them ripening next month and a big, beautiful blackberry harvest.

Beefsteak tomatoes doing well

Small batch of Heal All for drying.  If you have this growing in your back yard (and odds are, you do) don't waste it, use it up! Here's a great article on how to ID it, process it and use it: Foraging and Using Self Heal 

While this is not my back garden, it is just a 5 minute walk away, and where I try to get at least several walks in a week, in my ongoing effort to stay as active as I can.  It's a beautiful path along the Thames River here in southern Ontario, lined with lush foliage that includes numerous cherry trees and wild raspberries. 

Whoever said plants can't talk, never met these 3 amigos. 😁 

My raspberry bush on the left, peony in the center, and hibiscus on the right are all desperately leaning into the eastern side of the yard where the sun is unobstructed by the giant maple tree canopy.  What these plants are saying is basically, transplant me, or get that Maple tree trimmed back.  Both will be happening at the end of the season. The peonies will be moved and the maple tree is getting a long overdue trimming to pull the shade canopy back & allow more sun into the garden.

The Scarlet Runner beans all the way to the top of the 7.5 foot trellis

I've had several volunteers show up this year, and this Purslane in the spring onion pot is just the latest.  It joins the volunteer tomato also in the same pot 😊 Most people consider this a weed but did you know it's actually a food?  Here's a good article on the health benefits of Purslane, or what Chinese folklore calls "the vegetable for long life". 

In my ongoing attempt this season to beautify my space, I've addeed these window boxes and these pretty solar lanterns on both the north and south sides of the cottage.  The cut out pattern on the metal lanterns casts a most lovely light along the wall of the cottage at night.  The window boxes contain Mojito Mint I picked up for half price since they were mostly dead.  I've been able to thankfully bring them back to life! (The next beautifying my space project will be to build a wee front porch deck for the cottage, and get rid of those paver stones.)

My volunteer tomato plant. It's always a fun surprise to see volunteers show up.  Last year, I had so many volunteer beets growing in the compost, I harvest them all & canned a batch of pickled beets.  Free food! 😁

Another volunteer this year.  Google lens tells me this is a Black Mulberry.  Funny thing is, I almost bought a Black Mulberry bush earlier this season, then changed my mind and thought I'd pick one up later.  When I went back, they were sold out.  A week later, this showed up in the raised bed where my butternut squash are planted. 

Thanks for stopping by and going on this fun stroll through the garden with me. 😊

Garden 2024 Update #8

Well, we cashed in the rain & wind for the same heatwave most of north America is also currently having.  Temps have hovered right around 95 degrees for days on end, with off & on thunderstorms (helping to alleviate the need for watering, for sure!) We've had some wild weather for June so far, from a frost warning the first week, to a heat wave 2 weeks later, but things are growing, and I'm thankful for that.  

Come take a stroll with me through the back wee garden and see how things are coming along!

Mr. Hodus, aka HoHo, supervising from afar. 

Garlic scapes will be dried and turned into a garlic powder blend for cooking.

Blackberry blossoms are so pretty 💖

Last count, there are 10 Honey Crisp apples. It's anyone's guess how many make it to full maturity! 

Of the 2 cucumber plants that survived the flooding, both produced a single cucumber each, so we're off to a very weak & slow start, but hopefully things turn around. 

Jalapenos are doing wonderfully well.  Looking forward to that Cowboy Candy!

Yellow Alpine strawberries grown from seed.  So excited to try these!

Roma tomatoes off to a good start.

I lost count of how many berry clusters there are, but at least 50+  

Last year there were only 9, so this is a wild improvement. 

Russet Potato flowers are SO adorable & dainty. 

I've added this cute little water feature on the side of the clover path leading to the cottage.  

A simple solar pump, dollar store bowl, a flipped over cracked pot & some large river rocks from the yard.  There's truly something quite magical about a stroll through the garden while you can hear running water.  All of the wildlife, cats, birds and bees love the back pond, so in my effort to beautify my space this year, I chose to add even more of what's already a success. I also have another one sitting on the deck railing for the critters that come to the feeder cam station. 

The view from my chair after a long day of work in the garden.

Fairy lights, crackling fire, toes in the sand, amazing views and a lovely beverage. 😊

Garden 2024 Update #4

For many, spring is a very fast moving, things-are-changing-quickly season if you're keeping a productive garden.  Lots of work to be done both indoors and outdoors.  Plus, if you're like me, you've got all sorts of big ideas and big plans for changes and additions to your space, so that's just work on top of the work. 

This year, I'm planting the same amount (more or less) in my staple garden, but I'm not taking as much time to invest in different varieties of things, or what I usually call the "experiment garden bed" as I've done before. Instead, and it's really long overdue, this year my plan is to work hard at beautifying the space.   

Over the last several years I really haven't focused on that aspect of the garden as much as I'd like to, so this is the year to make it as lovely, comfortable and inviting as I know how to make it.  Anyway, that's the goal.  So here's a few shots over the last few days for a mostly pictorial update as things are getting busy out there!

The 6x6 wooden post the mint is sitting on: recycled old clothesline post. 

Thrifted metal window wells turned into a raised bed.

Yukon Gold potatoes in those eight grow bags. Please excuse the wheelbarrow handles 😁

Russet Potatoes in these two grow bags on the left. First year growing them so that's exciting! 

The first 4 white pots are different mints used for tea, then Lemon Balm and Yarrow at the end. 

My raspberry bush relocated for the 3rd time.  Now it's between the Peonies, permanently. 

A Bloomerang Lilac I've had for almost a year now. Easily doubled in size if not more. 

Meet Mr. Ed.  He always follows me around in the garden. 

He just turned 8 years old a few days ago. Happy birthday Mr. Ed! 

A new, faux raised bed/border box. It sits flush with the deck without being attached. 

Future home to rhubarb & strawberries.

I really can't ask for a better view. I mean, wow!