Garden Update 2025 #8: End of The Outdoor Season 2025

My garden updates are a fun little way for me to keep visual track of what's working for me (and what failed miserably! Because that's all a part of the gardening journey as well.) in the garden.  I share these publicly and just hope they bless you as much as they help me.

I haven't been very regular in my garden updates this year. This one is 8 weeks after the last one, and that was 8 weeks after the one before that. 😁 I've just been busy in the garden and haven't really set much time aside to update my garden journal minus a few scribbled notes here and there. 

One of the biggest learning curves this year was, cucumbers and heat. 

I've planted cucumber seeds indoors on heat mats & under grow lights, for years. They always work out.  Until they don't. That was this year. We had an unseasonably cold spring.  What I learned this year was, no matter what may have worked before, wait until June 1st at least, before planting out the cucumbers. I planted all of mine out in early May (with all of my tomatoes and peppers, like I always do) and all but one died. I then re-planted several more in mid-May from local nurseries and they all died as well. Between trips to local farmer's markets and local grower's farms I'd spoken to a good number of gardeners who were all having the same problem. Refusing to give up (because we're a HUGE pickle eating family!) I bought a third round of seedlings from a local grower at the end of May, and planted those out at the first of June.

The growing conditions were finally optimum and all of those plants thrived for the entirety of June, July and August. I was able to can multiple batches of pickles for our family's pantry for the winter. My plan for next year is to keep it the same as this year:  if you're in zone 6a (or colder), WAIT and plant out your cucumbers no earlier than June 1st. You'll save yourself a load of headaches and the cost of replacing all your plants. 

2025 is my  first year with Elderberries. I have two plants, and both produced about the same amount of berry clusters seen here on this one. They've all been harvested and are currently sitting in a brown paper bag in the freezer.  I have just enough to make 1 recipe of Elderberry syrup for a fully natural way of fighting off winter colds & viruses. 

A brand new challenge to me this year was... propagation. 

I've tried this many times before and never had much success with it minus one small Basil plant. This year, that finally changed with 2 small plants (Trumpet Vine & Strawberries) that I was able to facilitate into multiple brand new plants!

Both plants did really well over the summer and fall so we'll just wait & see how they do over winter, and into next spring. I'm hoping for great things for them both!

This winter sown sunflower grew to about 16 feet tall. 

Both my winter sown sunflowers and chamomile plants did remarklably well.  I may do this again over winter to see how more plants do. 

2025's batch of pasta sauce from (mostly) home grown tomatoes. I need about 30 pounds of tomatoes for my homemade ketchup, and another 30 pounds for my pasta sauce for an entire year of product of each. I'm currently only getting about half of that from my garden, so I supplement with the incredible produce from my local farmer's market, for both products for my family pantry. 

My goal for the 2026 garden is to double my tomato plants, and hope I can grow enough to cover all the ketchup and all the pasta sauce for an entire year. I've been working on this for several years now and each year the garden produces a wee bit more than the previous year so I'm happy it's increasing each year. 

DAMAGE CONTROL: This was the first raised bed I ever built of this size, and looking back it's easy to see everything I did wrong. In 2021 I built 2 of these 8'x4'x10" raised beds and just used deck screws to attach the end cap 4' (untreated) boards. 

What I didn't know then and what I know now is, I should have used outdoor treated wood (perfectly safe for edible plants) and maybe even these Oldcastle Planter Blocks I originally bought to construct a simple "tool free" sand box for all my little people.  I had 4 of these on hand from an old sandbox and when I saw the joints giving way to far too much soil/water pressure I did this simple repair. 

My plan going forward for spring 2026 is to replace all corners with these blocks (that I already have) and with 6 inch width pressure treated lumber for each side & end. I'll be losing 4" of overall height but that's okay since this is my pepper bed and they don't need that much depth anyway so it really all works out. I've since learned to raise the bed for those with mobility issues, you can easily double up the planter blocks to a 12 inch depth, drive a stake of rebar in to secure them in place and use 12" tall side & end cap lumber for 1 foot deep beds. I really love how easily this building style is so versatile depending on personal needs and mobility. 

Aside from what I've learned with each plant this year, I've also learned much more about fertilization & soil amendments. Both of which I've unintentionally neglected for a few years so another big improvement for spring 2026 will be the much needed soil amendments of some nutrient rich compost as well as some liquid fish fertilizer. I've used both randomly but never intentionally, so spring 2026 will be a much more intentional gardening plan with richer soil than ever before. 

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

Garden 2025 Update #6: My Early June Garden

I composed & meant to update this 10 days ago.  In the last 10 days things look much different so the July update will be a lot of fun, seeing the tremendous difference!

I've used this method before for my beets & carrots and it worked really well so I thought 

I'd see how it might work to protect my onions from the chipmunks. They just love onions.

So far it's a 100% effective deterrant after being in place for the last 11 days. 

Green beans coming up nicely.  

It never ceases to amaze me how drastic the view from the deck can be from one season to the next. 

48 hours of heavy winds lead to an emergency stake-up of most of the garlic. 

It's been a weird spring. The Roma tomato plants are small but they're producing. 

I plan out my garden months in advance and knew a year ago I wouldn't be growing potatoes this year. 

And then I found one tucked away in a veggie basket, out of sight, that had begun to chit. 

Immediate change of plans 😂

This year's potato is a single medium size Russett. 3 pieces in each pot. 

It'll be fun Potato Math to see how many come from a single potato. 

Looking to add some pretty pops of color, I added two new Butterfly Bushes. 

I can't describe how magical they smell other than to say it's birthday cake & love. 💖

Another new addition this year are these adorable pansies. 

I've transplanted nearly 100 strawberries this year and there's 4 different kinds.

This pretty, deep pink blossom variety is so pretty! 

The oldest garden tool in my possession, from back when things were made to last.

This is entirely made from diecast metal, handles to blades, springs, levers, nuts & bolts.

One of my grandma's most used, she parted with it & gifted this to me in 1983.

I grew up in her back yard and watched her use this tool at least thousand and one times. 

 I've never oiled or sharpened it, and would love to restore it one day. 

I used it today, and it works just as awesome as it did 42 years ago. 

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 2025 Update #5: Pictorial Garden Tour and a Triple Garden Mystery!

Welcome to my fun pictorial garden tour. 🌿I hope this blesses, inspires and encourages you in some wonderful way. 😊

The best of the garden from April 14th through May 20th.  This is spring in southern Ontario, zone 6a: 

Both of these guys think they're my garden assistants. 

Noobies on the left, and Ed on the right.

Both of them follow me around while I work in the garden.  😍

Early spring solar lighting accents in the very empty garden. 

Ed in complete control of the garlic/pepper bed. 

Hardneck garlic on the edge of the pepper bed. 

Mama Robin moved 3 of these eggs and left the fourth one. 😢

While I began the hardening off process for my tomatoes and peppers, my foyer almost looked like walking into an indoor nursery. 😄

Plsease allow me to introduce you to Thinking Harry. My youngest daughter found him and immediately decided he needed a home in our garden. Harry will live in the blackberry bed for now.

The lovely bloom of the Italian Prune tree.  💖

Beautiful welded dragonflies by my youngest in her last year of high school shop class. 💖

 

Three different colors of Forget Me Nots, all in one lovely bunch. These volunteer all over my back garden just about everywhere you look. 💖

Mr. Possum tried sneaking out early but I saw him & he slowly waddled back under the deck.  

My first strawberry bloom 

Seeing all the new growth on the grapevines just makes me so happy 😍

The chamomile I winter sowed and it's doing just fantastic. 

I find these little metallic stars in random places in my yard. Some gold, some silver. It's wild!

The view from the lawn swing. I love my tiny little garden. 

First sauce tomato of 2025

All the peppers are doing fantastic

The view from the deck May 16th

Help me solve a TRIPLE garden mystery 🌿🔎

What kind of bug is this on the peppermint?

Likewise... what kind of bug is this, on another peppermint plant?

What kind of plant is this? This is a volunteer & I've never seen it before. 

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 2025 Update #4: Oh Hello, Fake Spring

Right on cue for "Fake Spring" the weather here runs the gamut from frozen wasteland to mild & sunny and then back again... then it starts all over again for the next 6 weeks or so. 😁 This is our normal. 

Thankfully, Fake Spring includes a few days here and there to really spend a good part of the day working outside to get the garden ready so I've been taking advantage of it as much as possible! Here's the run down of how it's looking this first week of April:

OUTSIDE update: Showing beautiful signs of life so far this spring is my garlic, lemon balm, rhubarb, strawberries & tons of new of elderberry buds on my two bushes.  

My last surviving apple tree (Honey) and prune tree (Harry) both got a wee wine goblet shaped prune just to remove any inward or crossing branches & to give the new growth this year plenty of room for proper growth & air circulation. 

Also, yes, I've named my fruit trees. 🍎 It made more sense a few years ago when I had many fruit trees but it was a fun habit that just stuck.  I hope to have many more fruit trees in the future so I'll just keep naming them. My Italian Prune tree is named after my grandfather Harry, because he had one he planted in his back garden that we all enjoyed for many, many years. 

My last surviving apple tree is Honey, just because it's a Honey Crisp apple. Honey produced quite well last year but Harry hasn't yet, so I'm hoping this is a good year for them both. I'm very much looking forward to sweet, deep purple Italian prunes this year.  

INDOOR seedling update: onions, peppers, tomatoes and ground cherries. This is my 2nd year of attempting ground cherry seedlings indoors and sadly my 2nd year of 100% failure. 

My onions, peppers and tomatoes have done above and beyond my expectations.  Ground cherries were sadly a 100% germination fail so... I won't be attempting them indoors again but I will attempt an outdoor sow this spring and hope for the best! 

One new seedling this year that's really made an impression is the sturdiness of the stalks of the Tomato plant Tiny Tim.  I'm already very impressed with how well it's doing. Instead of being thin and leggy (the usual process for me with indoor seedlings) this one is far more thick and stout. I grow all my cherry tomatoes in 10-12" pots on the deck, so I'll be eager to see how it does up-planted come time to move it outside. 

Speaking of up-planting, I've already had to do that with one Roma tomato plant and have at least two more that will require it before they're ready to be planted outside. The growing conditions in my laundry room-turned-grow room are so good, my seedlings just tend to grow like mad. Not a problem I'm complaining about at all. I'm incredibly thankful for it and keep trying to plan my seedling starts around it. 

WINTER SOWING UPDATE:  a process that was brand new to me this year. I'm not sure how I'd never heard about it, but once I did I knew it was something I needed to at least try, for my very short growing season. 

I sowed Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), Chamomile, Milkweed, Sunflowers & Yarrow back in January and by the end of the first week of  April what's germinated and come up is Sunflower, Chamomile and a wee bit of Yarrow from last fall's saved seed.  None of the purple coneflower or milkweed. I'm not clear on why that didn't work out, so I'll just be buying some plants this year from my local nursery to make up for it and get planted in my wee garden for returning attractions year after year. 😍 

I've discovered I didn't create nearly enough holes for rain/snow to get in and/or enough holes for drainage in each container. But that aside, there are Sunflowers, Yarrow and Chamomile so I'm calling it a win, just for those! I'll fine tune all the water intake holes and water drainage holes and try this again next year for sure! This is really a wonderful type of "hands off" sowing, since the seeds just know when it's time to germinate and come forward. 

RAISED BED update:  I knew it would happen sooner or later but the first 8'x4' raised bed I ever built 3 years ago, is starting to fall apart at one of the joints. I used what I could at the time and that was untreated lumber so I'm calling it a win that it lasted 3 growing seasons before any issues came to light. I've patched the damaged area and will still use it this year but will hope to replace this bed at the end of the growing season, Lord willing. 😊

I avoided "treated lumber" on both of my current 4'x8' beds, mostly due to outdated advice at the time. I've since done some research this MicroPro Sienna treated lumber appears to be rated for safe garden beds. So I'll be using this for 2 of my 3 new raised beds for 2025.  

I've already bought some untreated lumber, so that will be my new strawberry bed for a few years, before I have to eventually replace that with the same treated lumber I'll be using for my other beds.

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 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. 😊

Status Report: December 2024 - Final Post of The Year!

After the festive Christmas rush of activity it's quiet again, and time for the last status report of the year. I like status reports - they're mini versions of blog posts & rando thoughts all wrapped up into one. So, here we are:

Been busy with: all the Christmas things.  From decorating to shopping, baking to basket filling and everything in-between. Somehow this year December came out of nowhere and Christmas was here long before I was mentally ready. Even with all that, there was plenty of laughter, lots of great food and I'm blessed that almost all of my people were able to be here with family this year. 

Contemplating: Writing out the story of Mrs. Dudley. Who exactly is Mrs. Dudley, you ask?  Yes, well she's among the top 3 most profoundly, godly, influential women in my life in my 60 years on this earth. It's always felt like her story needed to be told, for some reason. I have her name on my project list and it keeps staring at me. 😎

Feeling: nostalgic about Oregon. My twitter friend Beth humorously commented recently that "Oregon is home to Tillamook cheese and Bigfoot".  Well, yes. This is truth. But immediately my brain said: "And the Vortex, and the Sea Lion Caves, and Wildlife Safari, and the Dunes and mom's old house on the Umpqua River and all those amazing things." 😂

My family spent so much time there over the years it's really like a 2nd home vibe for me. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, then as an adult I've been blessed to take all my kids there too & relive some of the amazing adventures that we went on as kids. 

Oregon is a fantastic place to visit and explore. Highly recommend 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 😊

Thinking: How incredibly enjoyable it is to actually have my very own "pretend" wildlife documentary show. I know it sounds funny and it really is, but with the technology of my simple little Ring spotlight cams and a free video editor I can document the urban wildlife in my very own backyard. It's also partly funny because 'wildlife photographer' was sort of my dream job if I ever had to pick.  

I'm often quite surprised by what I see on the cameras each day and until I actually had cams installed, I had no idea my back garden was as busy as it is at night. If you're curious and haven't watched, my wee little channel is Barefoot in the Garden on YT. So funny how 1 security cam turned into 3 wildlife food/drink camera stations around the back garden and pond. 😁  

Re-evaluating: My garden layout & plans for 2025. Nothing on paper (yet) but some big ideas. In my ongoing effort to refine what I'm growing and where, it's more of a simplified garden layout this year than it's ever been before, and I'm really looking forward to that.  

This will only be my 6th year of attempting to grow my own produce section of the grocery store 😄 and now after several trials and errors over many seasons, I know what grows well for me, what doesn't, and what I have room for. This year, I'm also leaning heavily into more perennial fruits to add to the ones I added last year. No such thing as too many berries. 

And with that, this month's and this year's Status Update posts come to a close. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have an incredible, blessed and fantastic day. 😊

If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel welcome to leave a comment. 

Garden 2024 Upate #6

Update on the 2024 garden progress. 

Sweet peppers will be used for roasting, freezing & freeze drying for soups & dips. 

Chives & Cherry Tomatoes

Pickling Cucumbers

Volunteer Hibiscus Plant 

The view from the lawn swing after a long day gardening 💖

Sitting alongside a crackling fire at the end of the day is a refreshment I can't recommend enough.

Take a moment. Praise God. Enjoy the fruit of your labor. 

My Urban Homestead 💖 Food Forest

The goal: fresh, organically grown food available in every square foot in the almost 1200 square foot garden space. I'm very close to that goal now so here is what's available in this small area: 

blackberries, strawberries, grapes, sweet potatoes, carrots, peppers, green beans, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, plums & apples. 

My first ever, 4 leaf clover. 😊

Yukon Gold potatoes

Bloomerang Lilac Bush

Hardneck Garlic in the DIY window well raised bed

I hope you've been blessed and encouraged by what you've seen here. 

Please feel free to leave a comment with any gardening questions you may have!