It's still too cold to get outside and play in the dirt to get my garden and hopefully my new chicken coop ready and running for the summer season yet, so I continue to dream and plan big. Mother Nature better give us the warm break we need soon, because the more I'm cooped up inside, the more ideas I get for the garden...oh, the ideas swirling around in my head! I need my own full time garden staff!!! Really.
This is my family, minus my oldest who now lives in the Arizona desert...a whole different world and different gardening world too. My hubby and girls like to explore around the farm usually while I work in the garden.
They do get involved though, my youngest found and planted a volunteer tomato she found growing, and this is what came of it. I think it's the parent of some Sweet 100's I had planted nearby the previous year. Sweet 100 is a hybrid, so the seed from them may or may not come true to what was planted, ususally not. So this is most likely an heirloom at this point, but I'm not sure the variety, some are smaller like cherry type tomatoes, but some larger than than a golf ball. They were however, very sweet and the plant took up about one half of her raised bed! She grew this tomato, cabbage, and kohlrabi. Somehow this kid, doesn't like brussell's sprouts! Go figure!
My hubby's love is hot peppers. The hotter the better. I guess it's a guy thing. I can barely take any heat at all! These are Ristra Cayenne peppers. We got the seed from Burpee, I haven't seen it anywhere else. They are a hybrid and mature to very bright reds, oranges, some yellows. It can be eaten at this stage, and is quite hot, I think just hotter when they mature. Peppers like the heat too...they love hot dry summers! We were lucky last year, we got a great crop for his salsa. Salsa is another story and another post. Making it from scratch is definitely a labor of love...hours of chopping tomatoes, peppers, onion, parsley (I like parsley over cilantro, but I make some special jars just for the hubby with the cilantro). Also, once you eat salsa made from the garden veggies that you grew and nurtured yourself, it takes on a whole new level, not only is it something you put on the table with your own hands and hard work, but the taste is not comparable to store bought salsa...I call it 'summer in a jar'. The taste and texture are incredible. My sister says it isn't salsa, it's a summer salad because you can literally eat it with a fork! It's incredible. Yum. I"m hungry just writing about it!
My other daughter is more into flowers right now. She planted an entire raised garden bed with these beauties...Cockscomb Celosia. Thomas Jefferson grew these in his Presidential Garden at Monticello. His were scarlet, on of the colors of these, they bloomed in a variety of colors; reds, pinks, orange, yellow, and cream. This one is just starting to bloom, but the flower heads get huge...the size of your hand, and contain hundreds and hundreds of tiny florets that make a great show in the garden. The bees and wasps absolutely loved to visit them, which in turn was great for my veggies...flying critters are the best pollinators and absolutely essential for a successful garden. She also loves cantaloupe fresh off the vine. It's the only melon she'll eat...Hale's Best Jumbo. They are pretty and have an intense aroma on and off the vine. That's how you can tell they are ripe, the aroma is unbelievable! The taste, again, not comparable with anything you can buy in the store. I don't usually like cantaloupe, but I found out it's because of the shipping and handling, and them not being fully ripe when harvested. When you pick one off the vine, it's intensely sweet and crisp...nothing mushy or soft about them, and no blah flavor. She also fell in love with cosmos last year, so she'll be planting some this year too!
So, this is a mix of our peppers...it was a great year for them. There are some Pinot Nior's here (the purple blush ones) that we primarily eat fresh, that is when my younger brother doesn't get to them first...they are his favorite. Also shown are some regular sweet belle's cayenne, Thai Red's, Ristra, and Pinata, another hot hybrid from Burpee. They are similar to the Ristra, but offer more yellows and are brighter. A good salsa pepper. Actually, all but the Pinot Nior's are salsa peppers. Just like a great apple pie, I believe a variety of flavors and tastes is what makes a great salsa!
One of my greatest loves are birds. Any birds. I find them fascinating...modern day dinosaurs. They are so graceful in flight and amazingly efficient while hunting, foraging, nest building, and taking care of their young. Each one is adapted for it's environment, as are plants. I grow sunflowers just for the birds. Well, other critters too! I have any kind of bird around visit them, minus hawks, but they will come around to hunt the critters that feed on the seeds...squirrels, chipmunks, smaller birds sometimes too, but they prefer the four legged critters! I even have hummingbirds visit too for the pollen in summer. This was a surprise to me, one day my next door neighbor told me that she saw 4 or 5 visiting at one time! Incredible! For years, I thought they only liked red. My Dad used to buy only red or purple flowers just to attract the hummingbirds! If only he knew they loved the sunflowers too! They are natures perfect food for the animals In the foreground of this pic are some of my daughter's celosia's. Notice how some are spiked?
This is another post topic too! Compost piles! I always have something growing out the sides of mine, but I"ve started to intentionally add potatoes to the bottom of the pile. Through the growing season, I just add to the pile as normal, but don't turn it except to mix the top. I do add some dirt along the way to help things break down easier since the whole thing isn't turned until fall, but I found I can get a great harvest of potatoes this way. Potatoes grow along with the compost pile and need hilled up anyway throughout the year, so I just add kitchen scraps, weeds, leaves, dirt, hay, paper, whatever, and dig the whole thing up in the fall. It's fun for the kids. They love to dig the potato crop from the 'black gold'! I pick an all purpose potato for this, the season is long for them, and when the vine dies, we know it's time to harvest the potatoes!
I think these are the favorite components of our family garden, everyone's individual favorites. I love that they love food fresh from the garden...now I just have to figure out a way for them to love to help me with all of the planting, the weeding, the mulching. They are pretty good at helping with the harvest and enjoying the beauty of a garden, so that's a good thing...but I still want them to love the planting and weeding part of it too! Maybe I should bury some money and prizes in the soil and tell them the one who finds the prize gets to keep it...really, I think that might be a good idea. And then there's the dream of adding chickens to the mix this year!!!
Till later, have a great one!!
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