Look What's Blooming

The garden is again underway and is growing nicely. It doesn't look like it, but we did cut back. We decreased by 10 tomato plants, 45 pepper plants, increased green beans and peas, and added new strawberries. My delphiniums are blooming too. It amazes me every year that I grew them from a seed packet and how beautiful they are. They are my favorite flower I have. I also found a white spider on my echinacea plant. Not only am I terrified of spiders, but white ones are the scariest kind. I thought I'd play around with camera settings to see how well I could document it.

 Above is one of our new strawberry plants. After growing the alpine runnerless variety last year, which Eric threw a fit about. He realized how good sun ripened strawberries taste and decided he wanted to add regular variety plants. Little does he know, but he will be in charge of keeping them contained.

 Ahh delphiniums...it is impossible to capture their actual color on my camera. These pictures just don't even come close to doing them justice. More pictures to come when the whole bed starts blooming and there are 10-20 plumes. For now just the darkest purple plants are starting.



 Couldn't resist a few garden shots either. I never seem to get tired of the feeling of accomplishment when I know I have successfully grown a plant that can produce flowers or food. I monitor plants for buds, flowers, and early fruit everyday and before I know it I am cursing myself for planting too many tomatoes because I have buckets I can't give away. It doesn't ever stop me the next year though.

 And here, is the terrifying spider. He is about the size of a fingernail. What is it about the white ones? Are they scarier because they aren't common or that they are an unnatural color for a spider. Kind of like that green ketchup they used to have...something just wasn't right about it. Freaks me out. If my weakening echinacea plant dies I am totally blaming this spider and not my gardening skills.

Garden Before and After

Here's a little flash back to what I thought was a nicely growing garden....

 Then things got crazy and turned into this. Next year we are cutting back (or so we say).

Before Pictures

This past Friday we were predicted to have severe weather. Then, on Sunday we were under severe weather warning. Since we can't seem to avoid the inevitable and will probably get at least one severe storm this summer, I took some before shots to look at once all my hard work gets ruined from strong winds, tornadoes, hail, summer snow, or whatever other weather may come our way.

My delphiniums are in full bloom compared to a few weeks ago. They are gorgeous and everyone who walks by our house stops to comment. I have them on both sides of the front beds and they are going crazy. I wish they lasted all summer.

Here is one of 25 tomato plants we have. We grew cherokee purple, chocolate cherry, sun sugar, yellow pear, celebrity, and early girl varieties. They are going crazy! All I have done is sprinkle eggshells at the base for calcium. No fertilizer (besides the soil we added), and regular watering with some eggshells and they all look lush and have tons of little green fruit.

We upped the pepper count to 60 this year. We have 10 varieties and they are doing great. We had one cutworm casualty, but the rest have survived and are starting to fruit. We grew jalapeno, habanero, hot lemon, cayenne, relleno, anaheim, red, green, and orange bell (that's only nine...) and some other kind too. Oh chocolate bell!

This is one of 13 cucumbers. I planned on more, but we had many  cucumber cut worm deaths (I should post about the cutworm tragedies soon). Last year we lost all our cucumbers to hail and they never really grew back. Maybe my pickle dream will become reality this year. Plants look good so far.

Here is an aerial view of the garden. Eric climbed up our clothesline post and took this. I almost posted it next to the aerial view of Martha's garden on pinterest, but we aren't quite to that level in only our second year of gardening. However, we are quite proud of our weed management compared to last year and can't wait for tomatoes. So far we have harvested some lettuce (lots of lettuce) and basil.

Two Year Blooms

Here's another little thing to get excited about while watching it rain all day AGAIN (haven't had to water the garden though). After two growing seasons (this being the second) I finally have columbine flowers! Last year they didn't bloom, got some white powdery fungus, and had something eating them. Something is still eating them this year but I have sprayed and they look WAY better. In the last week or so they finally bloomed and I have a few different colors.



Rain Barrel Update



It started raining Thursday early morning and just stopped (Sat. afternoon). It REALLY rained. I thought maybe we could fill the barrel halfway in the first few storms. It was half full by Thursday when I left for work and then it started pouring. Eric had to come home to start emptying it into the yard because it was overflowing. The good news is that our stand held 250 (probably more) gallons of water without collapsing, but now we have to figure out how to control it all. Our options are installing connectors on the downspouts to divert one to the barrel and the other way out the regular spout so we can switch the flow when the barrel gets full (assuming we are home). Option two is to look into some system that automatically starts emptying after a certain amount. I don't know if this exists or not.  Anybody?

Perrenials

Last year I grew some perennials from seed and had a lady down the street give me some for free from her perfectly landscaped yard after I complimented her. These, combined with the tulips and peony that were here already started my collection and made for a really exciting spring (yeah, I'm a dork). As soon as the snow melted and it was sunny I would check everyday to see if things had started peeking through the ground yet. It made for so much less work in the flower beds and I am adding even more perennials this year. Here's what survived:

Here's the originals, tulips and a peony, which surprisingly came back even though Eric ripped it out last year by accident.

This bed was filled with the help of our neighbor, she gave the day lilies, small yellow irises, and some cute white flower I can't remember the name of.  The bushy ones in the back are my seeded delphiniums. I am kind of proud of myself for these.

My columbines came in strong. Didn't think they would. Last year they got some kind of white powdery fungus and never bloomed. They are looking amazing actually.



Only one of 3 or 4 lupines so far. I think another one may come in because it reseeded, but two are still just sticks and may not make it.



This year I am adding more delphiniums and lupines, a bleeding heart that blooms april-oct., lily of the valley LOVE! (from Eric's mom), oriental poppy's if I can successfully grow them from seed, ranunculus (don't know if it's a perennial in zone 4 though), grape hyacinth, a blue and white flower from a sale bulb box, can't remember it's name,and something called a moss rose that is an annual but apparently re-seeds and comes back each year. I have saved a TON of money growing my own perennials (except for two and the neighbors). If you have the time and are willing to put in the effort it is really worth it. Maybe next year I will only have to start annuals.



Water Barrel

Last year we had a few good rain storms. By this I mean CRAZY water accumulation. Instead of staying indoors or running to the basement when the tornado sirens went off guess where we were? Yep, outside in the rain filling up buckets with water from our downspouts and pouring them into a garbage can. Hence, our decision to get a rain barrel. My plan was to set a few cute camouflaged barrels at the end of down spouts.

Eric had a different plan. He asked a friend of ours to borrow her giant (maybe 250 gallon or more) tank for the summer since she wasn't using it. So as of last weekend here is our eyesore rain barrel.

I must admit I was anti-giant tank when it arrived at our house, but over the last week it has grown on me a little bit. Unfortunately we missed the first heavy rain because we had to order some gutter parts from the hardware store, but they came in and we are all set up. Now we just need some rain

(hopefully on a weekday) and we will be set to water the HUGE garden area we tilled (more on that soon). Thinking of painting the platform white too.

Greenhouse

Last year we (meaning Eric) built a greenhouse when we started running out of room for plants in our house. It was very well constructed and functional but no so pretty looking. We decided to take it down last summer and reconstruct one that is a little cuter and permanent.  With all the weather, we got a later start than last year, but it turned out great. Here's the process:

We used  our old windows and some from our neighbor who replaced his last fall. Since we had cooling issues last year, we put three windows on hinges to control the temperature and gave ourselves more room than last year, almost double the size. I still plan to paint it all one color, but it is working wonderfully and our plants are doing great.



Rabbit Food

I started cleaning out the garden last weekend and had really forgotten about all the carrot's I had planted. I knew they were in there but hadn't checked their size for awhile. Lo and behold we had a good crop of rainbow carrots. I don't know if we are going to do carrots again next year as they take a long time to grow and don't keep producing, but it was fun to pick em and see all the colors.

Harvest Time

cutting

some of the many bins we processed

corn coming out of our ears

(note eric's bathroom goat, now that the bathroom is finished he is again clean shaven)

A few weeks ago we went out to a farm in Gladstone, ND (about 15 miles away) to help with the sweet corn harvest. When we were invited I assumed we'd go out in the field, pick some corn, take some home in a bag, and then enjoy the potluck lunch. Boy was I wrong. We got there a little late because we had to make a seven layer dip to take and walked in on an entire pick up bed full of sweet corn. We jumper right in helping husk the corn and how lovely it was when you got a rotten one. While husking was happening another team started the water boiling. Once the corn could start blanching yet another team started cutting and bagging. I was mostly on the cutting team and by the end of the time half dried sweet corn in my hair, on my clothes, stuck to my sunglasses (I think there is still some there) and had sore hands from all the work. We headed out with oh, 40 pounds of corn which has now filled up the freezer in our house. Deep freeze purchase has not been added to the list since butchering at the farm is in the fall and Eric signed us up for a 1/2 pig and 1/4 beef. I will not be helping with butchering.

Tomato Party

Once again pictures of tomatoes. Sick of em yet? We have jumbo, purple, yellow, cherry and striped. Check out our largest one yet and our recent harvest from one day.

Farmville

red lightning tomato

yellow heirloom tomato

green onions

not quite hundreds of beans

first baby jalepeno pepper

Without going into detail here is the recent produce we've been enjoying. Loving the garden and already planning for next year.

The Day Has Arrived

The baby's new toy

It's about darn time....num num

Ripe Tomatoes here in Dickinson. Granted they are a little bruised and hail dammaged but they made it through the storm. It has only taken 5 months from seed to fruit. Yeah that is a little long, but when you don't get a lot of sun it takes longer. I think our recent sunny hot days have helped a lot. I picked two Cherokee purple's today and we will have some tomato sandwiches. It's also nice to start labeling plants since I don't know what's what. Enjoy the photos of recent "summer" It finally seems to have arrived. It's about time now that it's mid July. I felt like it was hot yesterday for the first time.

It's All Shot to Hail

lupine

potato patch

pepper stem

cucumber nub

sad tomato

Yesterday we decided to drive to Bismarck to get concrete for the bathroom counter top (yes I know driving 100 miles each way for Menards on a Monday is a little much). We stopped everywhere we could before things closed at 10 (when it was still light outside). I really don't enjoy living right on the time zone boundary at all. We gain an hour when we go 30 miles East. I got the phone call about Maggie on the way home. As if that wasn't bad enough, Mother Nature decided to kick me in the gut and them punch me in the face too. Besides getting home exhausted with puffy red eyes we arrived to soaked ground and debris. It was nice when we left Dickinson, and all the way to Bismarck, and the whole time we were there, and the whole drive back exept for a storm in the distance which didn't ever rain on our drive. Well apparently it did rain in Dickinson. It hailed actually and not all over the whole town. This storm decided to single out certain houses so that two houses away there is no dammage and my flowers, garden. tree branches and everything else at the little green house was shredded to stems. Have you ever heard of straight line winds? A new term I have recently learned. Wind can blow all over your place and leave your neighbor's alone. In our case the neighbor's garden was in our backyeard too. Bet they're glad that we let them share our space. There goes four months of growing from seed, babying my perennials, controlling weeds, and getting eaten by bugs. Bundles of tears for 100 miles home and an awful feeling of complete defeat and hate for mother nature is not a good way to fall asleep and also horrendous to wake up with. My coworkers probably thought i was hungovr. So that I don't have to keep pitying myself I will share the devastation with all of you. The plan is to clear rows little by little, trim broken plants, and hope they grow back. So much for early tomatoes and any cucumbers at all.