Happy Monday!

Hello how is everyone today?  I hope you had a good weekend. I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes last week – it sure makes you feel loved when you get so many on Facebook.

In celebration of my birthday Hubby bought a cake and some flowers, a birthday is just not complete without cake according to my kids.

Then on Saturday night we went out for dinner with my sister and her husband.

We wanted to go to Bolero, but were unable to get a reservation as so instead we went to Wellington’s, honestly it was okay.
Not fantastic, not terrible, just okay.  Next time, note to self – make a reservation way early.

Even though we got a dump of snow on my birthday, most of it has melted already so I was able to check out a few things starting to happen in my back yard.

Rhubarb

These are volunteer onions – I am not sure if they are green onions or yellow onions – they were planted pretty close together last year – I am really hoping they are yellow onions and hopefully they will be nice and big and ready for me to harvest mid-summer.

Oh, I can't wait, soon we will be able to start working the dirt and plant another garden.
I am planning a few different things than I planted last year - this year I am going to try cucumbers - crossing my fingers!

What about you?  Do you plant a garden, maybe a few potted things on your deck?
What are you planning on growing this year?

Garden Recap - Tomatoes

Since I decided to plant a garden in April, I did not have time to plant my tomatoes from seed – so I purchased all of them from a local garden centre.

I bought 3 cherry tomato plants, 4 Roma tomato plants, and 4 Grape tomato plants.

The Cherry tomatoes were pretty big when I got them (one already had a few small tomatoes and all of them had flowers already) they went in the ground in early May – and we got our first ripe tomato by late June.  We continued getting fruit all summer and I ripened the remainder inside after I pulled the plants Thanksgiving weekend.

Romas – these I also got at a larger size – but when they went in the ground mid-late May – they had not started to flower yet.  I noticed that these took much longer to go from flower to fruit than the cherry and grape tomatoes.

We were able to harvest our first ripe tomato in mid-September, but I ended up having to harvest the remainder of the tomatoes and ripen them in the basement (which we are still enjoying).  I got over 20 tomatoes from each of the 4 plants.

Grape Tomatoes – these I bought quite a bit smaller than the other 2 varieties.  I decided because of a lack of garden space – these were going to be potted on my deck. 

They did fantastic.  We had tons of fruit and they were sweeter than the cherry tomatoes.

I would defiantly plant these again next year.

Changes for next year: I plan on trying to plant my tomatoes from seed inside this winter - we will see how that goes.

Garden Recap

Even though this is super late – it is more about me recording my thoughts about my garden this past year to help me figure out what I will do differently next year.

Overall I would have to say I had a fantastic first year at the garden.

We had more successes than failures.

Success:

-         Tomatoes – these deserve a post unto their own – but I had 11 plants total and all did fantastic

-         Peas – not only did we get a lot of great peas to eat – they kept coming, I eventually pulled the plants out in mid-September and there were still flowers.

-         Carrots – 2 different types, and although they were a little on the small and slower side – we had many yummy carrots and so did my co-workers.

-         Yellow Onions – these too were on the smaller side – but we still harvested them and enjoyed thoroughly.

-         Strawberries – we harvested strawberries right up until they froze – however the kids got most of the benefits.

-         Green Beans – my plants were incredibly small, but the beans they produced were normal size – but since the plant was so small we did not get the yield I was hoping for.

Failures:

-         Beets – I have no idea why these did not really grow, but the largest beet I got was only the size of a golf ball.

-         Green Onions – again these did not grow big enough to harvest.
-         Spinach - my spinach grew very small leave and bolted before the leaves were bigger than a toonie.  I have no idea why.

Plans for next year:

This is something I will be working on this winter – post Christmas.

I plan on doing a lot of the same things, but making some changes to the foods the kids gravitate towards – I think cucumbers are on the list for next year.

What about you?  Did you plant a garden or even a pot of tomatoes this year?  Will you do the same next year?  Or make some changes?

Garden Update - Tomatoes

It has been quite a while since I updated you all about my garden.

We have been happily enjoying our daily harvests.

So far we are almost done the peas, although there seem to be more every time I go out and check, I am not sure where they are coming from.

I just harvested the last of the green beans.

We have been getting lots of carrots and tons of tomatoes.

Last week we had 2 days of rain, and then we headed out of town for an extended long weekend, so when we came back we had a lot of tomatoes.

The picture below is a bowl full of cherry and grape tomatoes.

Little Girl eats them like candy, we have to tell her to stop eating them, or she would never would.

Still to come are my Roma tomatoes, they are starting to turn red, but we still have a while to go before they are going to be ready.

Our strawberries are also still producing - of course I never get to eat them, Little Boy and Little Girl are hoovers in the strawberry department.

Garden Harvest

We have been enjoying our garden a lot recently.

This is our harvest just the other night. 

The carrots and the beets are from being thinned.  I would not have picked them, but this helps make space for the other ones to grow bigger.

Snack for the kids that night was tiny baby carrots, peas, tomatoes and strawberries.

Garden Update

I was planning on doing a garden update before I went on holidays, but ran out of time, so here is a comparison post about how we are doing.

Before holidays: 10 weeks

After holidays: 12 1/2 weeks

 You can see in the photo that my spinach is pretty much dead.  We did not harvest any of it.  It bolted when the plants were really small and has subsequently died.  Not sure what I did wrong, but I am thinking the soil is lacking something.  Any ideas?


This is our almost ready to eat grape tomato before holidays, unfortunately it was not ready in time and my dear friend who came and diligently watered everything got to enjoy it and many other goodies from the garden.

Roma tomatoes before holidays:

 Roma tomatoes after holidays:

 Peas before (these were also not quite ready to eat when we left, but we are enjoying them now)

Peas after (they are kind of over grown, note to self for next year - more space is needed and a much, much taller fence)



Tomato Candy

Tomato Candy definition: picking tomatoes from your garden and popping them in your mouth - small delicious and they taste like candy.

Look what I harvested this morning before work!  5 Cherry Tomatoes

By far this is the most exciting thing to come out of my garden!!

My thumb is feeling very green right now.

Little girl had 2, I had 2 and I brought the last one to a friend at work (we chat about gardening every single day).
Hubby and Little boy declined - leaves more for us.

Garden - 9 weeks

This past week we have had A LOT of rain.  And of course some of it came about 2 hours after I finished watering my garden on Sunday night. 

But now my rain barrel is full again.

Here is week 9 of my garden - I took the strawberry cage off for this picture - they have gone insane, shoots everywhere - with flowers - so we will be getting more strawberries soon.

My green beans are not very big - is this normal?  But my peas are doing wonderfully.

Saturday evening - we only had barely visible buds - now we have tons of flowers.

Look at my tomatoes - you can see the little red spots!  So excited to have my first one!!

One of the down sides to all that rain - but we were lucky - no hail in our neck of the woods.

This is my herb planter.  You might not be able to tell but the oregano has gone insane.

Rosemary - this was a decent size plant when I bought it and transplanted it - anyone need some - I have more than I can use right now.

Sarah - this picture is for you - the kids flower pots - about to start some blooming.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Garden Photos - Week 8

First I can't believe I had had the garden planted for 8 weeks already!!

Wow, where does time go?

So far I have been very lucky, the weather is co-operating with me.  We have now had 2 weeks of warm / hot weather.  I have been watering a lot since there is also no rain coming.

My cherry tomatoes are doing super great - in the picture below they are at the back corner, you can see how they are much taller than their cage, and you should see the flowers.

On one plant alone, I counted 20 flower bunches, that does not include the 6 bunches of already tomatoes.  If the weather continues to cooperate we are going to be eating lots of delicious tomatoes.

The one orange one I showed you a week ago, is now red and starting to soften up - we are probably only a few days away from eating that, and the other plants have orange tomatoes now too.

Peas - they are loving the heat - it seems like every day they grow a few inches while I am at work.  I can just see the buds of a few flowers.

Grape tomatoes are in pots on my deck - they too have done very well in the heat, all 4 plants have small tomatoes on them, and more and more flowers showing up daily.

Look What I Have

When I bought my Cherry Tomato plants, one of them had two little tomatoes on it, this is one of them. 

The other one developed a crack (from too much moisture) so I pulled it off  for two reasons: 1) there was no sense letting the plant pump energy into developing a tomato that would not be good anyway, and 2) I was fearful that the crack would attract bugs and then thee bugs would like the good tomatoes too.

But this little one has decided to turn orange and I am sure in a few days (if it stays hot here) we will have a nice red cherry tomato - which I am sure we will let Little Girl eat.

The First Harvest

After a bird stole our first ripe strawberry before we could eat it ourselves, we had to wait quite a while for another one to be ready.

The day finally arrived.

If you have more than one child you know that it is hard to give one child something and not the other - at least when you are trying to not have a temper tantrum on your hands. 

It had been decided a long time ago that Little Girl would get the first strawberry and Little Boy gets the second, but try and tell Little Boy that his is not ready yet, and he has to wait 4 more days.

So I woke up early, went and woke up Little Girl, who is normally quite slow getting out of bed, and said "Do you want to go and pick the strawberry?"

You should have seen her jump out of bed - look at me with questioning eyes. 

So downstairs we go, putting sweaters on and out onto the dew covered grass to the garden.

I was kind of hoping she would eat it right out of the garden, but there was a little bit of dirt on it, so we had to wash it off before it could be consumed - oh and I wanted a picture too.

So here is our first harvest! 

Eversweet Strawberry

She said it was yummy.  I have to wait until the third strawberry is ready to get my taste.

Garden - 6 weeks

Week 6 - wow time has really flown.  We now have everything up - second batches included.

I did some thinning of the beets, but still have 3 row of carrots I need to thin - this is much harder than you would think since if I am in the garden I have 2 kids trying to come in too.

Yellow Onions



Spinach



 Look at my tomatoes - they are huge - this is the biggest cherry tomato plant.

I tried to get a picture of the tomato clusters, but it was much harder than I though - as you can see in the picture above there are 2 fences in the way, but look at these babies.  I can't wait to eat them.



Our strawberry netting / cage has been very successful - look at this beauty.



The strawberry plants are doing super well - almost all of them have sent out shoots, this is the biggest one so far with roots already showing.





Garden - 5 weeks

Here is my garden at 5 weeks.  I am beyond excited about it. 

Strawberry cage!



My super awesome, amazing hubby built this for me on the weekend.  We have another strawberry starting to turn red - this time no birds are stealing from me!!

Wanted Dead or Alive

Okay maybe I don't actually want him dead, but remember this beautiful, almost ready strawberry...

Well this is what it looks like now...

We discovered yesterday that a bird had stolen our one almost ripe and ready to eat strawberry.  So today I am buying some nettings and protecting the rest from our bird thiefs.

Garden Update - 3 1/2 weeks

I know I promised I would take a picture of my garden at week 3 - but I got busy and did not get around to it - so this picture was taken on Sunday night - 3 1/2 weeks from initial planting.

This past week was busy, on Monday I planted the second crop of peas, carrots, spinach and green onions.

Sunday, I finally put the last of the tomatoes into the ground - I am sure they will be much happier in their new home.

Yellow Onions

Peas

Green Beans - these guys finally came up - and look at what they did - considering a week ago it was hard to tell anything was there at all.

Tomato Alley - in total here I have 7 tomato plants - they might be a bit crowded, but this is my first year so we will see.

If you are noticing that they are in a corner and might not get the best sun - this corner actually gets mid morning to late evening sun - so it is a pretty good location - now I am also hoping that the hail comes from the opposite direction so they are protected!

Strawberries - I intended to buy 5 of the same type of strawberries - I accidentally bough 2 different kinds - I realized this as I was planting them - so it will be interesting to see what we get - this one is Eversweet.

This strawberry is called Fraisier Tristar - can't wait to try it!