Gardening and Composting

Charles and I are making changes again in our garden. Each year we try to improve on what we can grow in the garden. This year I did not start my garden on time. We have not had the time or strength that we needed but no matter how much I try, I cannot not plant a garden. Even though it is a bit too late I have seeds and so I will plant. If the plants do not do well with the heat, then I will still have seeds that I will use to plant a fall garden. This year I will do something I have not done and that is plant a late spring garden in the southeast corner of Alabama.As some of you know, we have a small space to grow food and herbs and we are older a ......

Above is a baby satsuma. It has been very busy in and around our house. Charles took vacation so we could get a better handle on all of the work we have to do with Madge's house and our house. We were not getting proper sleep at night and we had an upcoming special event.The event was our grandson Sean was getting married. We have been on the road a lot traveling to here and there for all kinds of things. For a full week we did our best to get our yard and garden back in order. The week before that was many trips up to Madge's house bringing loads of stuff back to our home to go through and donate, give away or throw away. For months it ......

Painting our bedroom closet wall.As some of you know, we have been doing a serious maintenance project in our bedroom. We are Not spring chickens and we scraped, sanded and sealed our wood floor without a sander machine or hired help. We painted our walls, ceiling and trim. This required a lot of climbing, bending, squatting, kneeling, lifting, twisting, and you name it for several weeks now. We normally grunt and moan just getting out of bed on a regular day so now it has become comical, let your imagination guide you through the scene.This week I am going to just pop in with some photos of what is going on. First piece of furniture going into the room... ......

My post will not be on a particular day for awhile like my regular Friday post because there is so much to do in and out of the house. Don't worry if there are gaps. I am just trying to catch up on some things because we are doing repairs and gardening. This post is catching up on all that is going on around here and answering some questions.As many of you here in the U.S. know that the weather is a bit off in many areas of the country. This past weekend and this week as well, it has been 80 plus degrees (26-27 Celsius? )and we are still in the season of winter. Some places in the country have had unusual snow and ice.Here where we live many thing ......

It is seed planting time at our house and I am so ready to do this! Everything here is still grey and brown because we are still in winter so I will add some past pictures of spring and summer to bring some cheer into this post.I have been thinking about the great depression study and the importance of gardening this year and then a memory came to my mind. I realized that most everyone I can think of in my family, that lived through the great depression, had some type of vegetable garden and at least one fruit tree in their yard. Either a small garden or large one, they had a plot to grow vegetables.When my mother came to live with us I planted flowe ......

Today as I am writing this it has been 33 days since I planted our late summer garden. We have a very small yard and a lot of shade so we do mostly container gardening and small plot gardening. We also grow fruit trees and bushes so each year we are harvesting something even if our garden is small.This is how the experimental radish garden has grown in 33 days. Experimental because we are trying different varieties. It looks a little pale to me but it has been very dry lately.The same day we planted this little bed here with some patty pan squash, a small planting of turnips and a few beans and some daikon radish. 33 days later here we are. It all depends on our ......

To me this Blackeyed Susan, means bring it on, the garden has begun! Last year we walked through a sea of Blackeyed Susans but this year there are not as many but any amount makes me happy. I am going to post about two topics together and post many garden pictures because the garden is changing so fast, it was bare in mid march other than the fall plants that were still growing in the troughs. These are pictures I took yesterday and this morning in the garden. Beans on the left with tomatoes, basil and on the right zucchini and peppers.Each year I ask myself, how much longer will I be able to garden and that I cannot answer so I concentrate on this season. We made ......

The entire back yard grew together during this hot humid summer. During the time that we have not been able to get out due to the heat, rain and high humidity it became a merged mess. The Mums took over the vegetable tanks, the weeds took over the garden bed, the asparagus ferns grew into the walking space around the tanks. The sweet potato vines tangled all over everywhere, the lemon tree grew into the sweet potato tank. But guess what?It still is making food. All by itself, just let it go and it somehow manages. This is the time of the year our trees are heavy with foliage, nuts and citrus. Our weeds and grass is high. We took down the gre ......

It is that time of year for planting so I am doing another garden post.Our backyard has been through so many transformations it makes my head spin. This was many years ago when we were younger and we had started experimenting with raised beds and planting in the ground and growing in hay and most anything to try and grow vegetables. We had a much too shady lawn and we would get a good thing going and the tree roots would find it and the next year was a problem due to the roots.Then we started studying about permaculture. We realized while we were learning how to grow in a shaded yard with tree root problems we thought about how we needed the type of trees that could feed us. So w ......

Time passes and things we do take time if we want to do it right. If we have a vision of something we want we can take steps towards achieving that.It can be anything because we are all different. I have a vision of a lovely garden that provides us food. Each year we add new things to get to that place we feel is right and manageable. Gardening in a small space means we need to max out our space but leave enough space for a peaceful flow.Doing the work ourselves is hard. I took on a project this year to bust out a cement and brick patio. It was put in 40 years ago and tree roots made it uneven then cement covered the bricks and it helped for awhile but it is a t ......

Well the time finally came to pick these lemons. Last year the freeze severely damaged one of our lemon trees. Our trees are still young but this is the second year for a harvest.This is the time to harvest citrus in the southern USA and we love salted preserved lemons. I have a post on how to preserve them in salt and I will post the link at the bottom of this post. You can make them with store bought lemons too. It was also time to harvest our Turmeric and Ginger so Charles dug them up the other day.We grew ginger in pots and the ground this year, this is some of the ginger we dug up.Our bucket of turmeric. We have been harvesting it over the past month.This is one ......

Recently I became concerned about our Wooly Lamb's Ear. After doing some research I found out that very hot humid weather can affect this plant. So I immediately moved the planter to a more shaded area. There is nothing I can do about the humidity.I have always been intrigued with Lamb's Ear. One of our Grandsons loves to feel the soft fuzzy leaves.Many years ago I did some research and read how long ago the leaves of the plant were used in battlefields for wound care and laid over a wound as it is absorbent and has antibacterial and antiseptic properties. It has many other uses but I will not post that here because there is much information available for this plant.I ......

We will start out little walk here at the side of our driveway. This is the berry Garden filled with blueberry and raspberry bushes. A small olive tree was already planted before the blueberries. The Dill and Cilantro, pineapple sage outside the fence.My Grandmother always had flowers and vegetable growing in her yard. I feel so connected to her when I walk in our yard. Sometimes it is as if she is walking along with me. we dug out the surprise sweet potato vines that nature gave us and there were actually two small sweet potatoes that they were coming from so now the slips will be rooted.We added three small beds to the yard this weekend and planted more ......

This winter we started putting in a secret garden around our camper called the Shabby Cabby. We had issues with our little 16 foot argosy camper, a leak, floor problem and the fact it had been gutted from all electrical and wheel wells removed when we bought it. It turned out to be more than we could do so we just turned it into a guest room for the Grands.Then the idea came to make a secret garden and turn the shabby cabby into a garden house. So we went to work.We planted some ground cover (Red Clover) in the garden for the winter and some onions and garlic and let it sit. Then it started warming up.We have an arbor going up the side of the garden and this arbor is ......

For about a week things we awry. First The devil squirrel came in our yard and ripped up two chair covers. This is our first year to plant artichokes and the devil squirrel or gang member ate the largest artichoke plant which was rather large here but you cannot see it because it is gone. and ate most of the others.After I found out that Artichokes are perennials I was excited about adding these to the garden plots.So I gathered what was left of them with parts missing off each plant and replanted them in one of the wire cages.This weekend we discovered one of our clothesline posts was rotting so we removed all of the clothesline posts and lines and rebuilt that area (which is a good th ......

Last Fall I posted about our little victory garden and that we were growing a winter cover crop of clover. Here is a recent photo now February. So it is time to harvest the clover.We have been reading about growing cover crops for green manure. Basically what that means is we can either till this in the soil and wait 30 days or more or pull it up and put it in the compost bin and compost it and then add finished compost to this area.So this is our cover crop before...And after we pulled it up....So we dug out some finished compost that has been composting all last year and we added it to our little plot.We are tired of buying soil so this is what we are trying to do now.Thi ......

For many years now we have worked toward having whimsical Permaculture backyard as well as a extension in our front yard. Our goal is to be beneficial to us as well as for the wildlife that visits our small place on this earth.We started with a typical city front and back yard with green grass and a few trees. We decided that it was time to have a more sustainable and natural yard. We realized that it is important and we had to do a lot of work to achieve this goal. Our yard grows, peaches, pears, plums, figs, blueberries, pecans, grapes, raspberries, herbs and vegetables.We are learning things each year and one is iron is better than wood since wood rots quickly. So little by li ......

I mentioned in a few posts about the Cardinals that are nesting in the Meyer Lemon tree just outside our back porch. If you look close into the center of this picture you will see the nest and the orange beak of the Mama bird.I named the Mama bird Lemonette since she chose a lemon tree. Here she sits on the fence wood.This is her stunning mate bringing her food.I am taking these photos from my dining room window.Sadly this is the last time to see her mate. Something happened to him and he never came back.Lemonette laid her eggs and she called for him each day but he never came.There were three eggs, something happened to one of the eggs.Lemonette has done an amazing job being a s ......

The entire backyard is full of flowers, vegetables and herbs. Also we have a new visitor this year.Mrs Cardinal has decided to build her a nest in the Meyer Lemon Tree. You can see the nest to the right side of this photo.Mr Cardinal has brought her something to eat. He is feeding her while she is building the nest. Wouldn't it be nice if humans would do this :)Her nest is coming along nicely. She will fly off and bring back the things she is using including a nice leaf down in the bottom that you cannot see in this picture.I can watch her from my dinning room window and where I took this photo from. She picked a very pretty place as she is next to the wrought iron arbor and among coneflower ......

Sprouting sweet potato slips. To grow sweet potatoes you first have to sprout slips from the sweet potato. Then remove the slips....And put them in water to root. Once they have good strong roots they can be planted in soil.It is very early spring here and our turnip greens are producing roots which is one of my favorite vegetables.Our tomato plants are now producing baby tomatoes. It won't be long. My husband planted potatoes this year. Around valentines day was when we planted these. He has several pots and raised beds with potatoes. As they grow he mounds dirt around them until he runs out of room to put anymore soil.Just about everywhere we look there is something growing in a ......