The garden is really doing well. Here are some updated pictures:
Here is the main garden. Everything is doing well. I’ve replaced a couple of things (picked all my rat tail radishes, added in a tomato plant, things like that).Garlic ScapesRat tail radish
I’m getting some garlic scapes now. I grew spring garlic (planted this spring after cold stratifying it in the fridge for a month or two). When I grow fall garlic, the scapes are usually here in June if I’m remembering correctly. This garlic is giving me scapes now, in early August. I’m figuring bulbs will be ready later as well since it was planted later.
I had a large harvest of rat tail radishes – they are seed pods from a radish variety that doesn’t actually produce a large root. Those are now out, and that will give my green beans some room to grow.
Tomato plantsDelicata Squash
I’m starting to get small tomatoes forming on my plants. I’ve also taken cuttings – I took the suckers out of the plant and put them in water. The cuttings formed roots and I’ve put them into my beds as well, to see if we can get some later tomatoes. I figured it’s worth a try. I also am starting to get some delicata squash on my squash plants. I didn’t know how they’d do in the raised bed situation but it seems to be growing pretty well.
I’ve got some flowers blooming now, these are zinnias. My plan was for a bunch of different colors all over the garden – I put in some black and red petunias that I bought, and a fluffy red flower (I can’t remember the name). Of the seed-grown flowers, so far I’ve just gotten these yellow zinnias and some yellow calendula.
goldenrod with a sleeping beegoldenrod and comfrey
Outside the main garden, I have some areas of flowers – a mix of native stuff and some things I planted. I was looking around the yard the other day and found that my goldenrod/comfrey/mugwort bed area had a lot of bee activity. Some of them were sleeping on the flowers (it was pretty early yet).
Black currants. I just harvested a bunch of these y/esterday and made some syrup. It was good on pancakes. It was pretty tart, so I needed to add a bunch of sugar. I have only had these canned before, this was the first harvest of a usable amount I’ve gotten. A view of our back yard, toward the cottage garden. I mostly have perennials in there now, it gets overrun with Valerian and nettles. The white topped flowers in the picture above are the Valerian. I pick the nettles to keep them somewhat contained but they like to spread a lot – I pick the small ones when I find them and put them in soup. The valerian is everywhere but it smells so nice that I don’t really mind. I put a peach tree in the cottage garden this spring and moved my elderberry trees into there a month ago (those were in the front and not very happy – bad rocky soil). I was growing some herbs and stuff in there but perennials work better for me in there – I can mostly just let them do their thing. I leave it a bit wild but it looks nice. The cats like to hang out in there and sunbathe. The chickens saying hello
The chickens are growing well. I set up a table and chairs next to their coop and like to hang out with them a bit. My cats sit around their coop as well – I do think they may be more interested in the tasty birds inside than being friendly. The chickens don’t seem to mind the cats, since they can’t get to them. I have come out and found a deer investigating them a few times. The chickens didn’t seem worried about the deer.
The garden is growing, and the chickens are getting larger too. We put the chickens into their new home on July 4th. Here you can see they were almost outgrowing their box, and pics of their first day in the coop.
They are really enjoying their coop. They chase each other around, and we’ve put watermelon in for them on hot days and they love that as a treat.
The garden is growing as well. It went from this in early July:
To this yesterday:
I am realizing as the plants have grown in that I kind of overcrowded things a little. I think it is looking really nice though, and some space should be recovered as I harvest things. Nothing seems like its growth is hindered. I have had deer jumping over my fence and munching on some stuff though so I put some strategically-placed sticks and pieces of fence in the beds to try to deter them. I may have to work harder in the future to fix that issue but there is so much outside of my garden they can eat that I hope my current efforts are enough.
I’m starting to get some harvest now, my chard is getting big enough to pick and I’ll have rat tail radishes soon:
Here you can see the pods growing. I grew these radishes a couple of years ago, and they were tasty. I cooked them like green beans, just sauteed them. It’s a radish plant that gets edible pods up on top instead of the big root down below. I have green beans growing in the same bed, so once these produce I’ll pull them out, let the bean plants get a little bigger, and maybe plant another crop of one of them where these were.
We got new chickens! If you are a longtime follower of the blog, or have read my old posts, you know that I had chickens for about 5 years, until spring of 2020. We really enjoyed them, but it had gotten too much to take care of them in the wintertime, and was very expensive at the time with all our birds. I think we had 20 chickens or so, plus some ducks when we gave our birds to the neighbor. It’s been a few years now and I missed having them. Then this spring with the price of eggs and everything going on I decided to get some, but only a few. I ordered 6 female chicks. They arrived at the beginning of June. They are just over 2 weeks old now. Here are some pictures of my hens.
We ordered 6 from a mail-order place: 2 easter eggers, 2 fibro-easter eggers (full black chickens), and 2 black/blue splash chickens. When they arrived, one had died in transit, and then one died the next day. The chicken company refunded me for those two, and I went and picked up 2 more hens at Tractor supply, some Buff Orpingtons. I wanted to make sure everyone was the same age, and not have to introduce anyone later. I’m not sure what kind of chicken everyone above is, except the 2 yellow ones are my Buff Orpingtons. We’ll have to wait and see how everyone feathers out to know what is what.
My old coop from before was a converted old sauna building, that is now kind of falling apart and is mostly just used for storage. I decided not to use that and ordered a small coop for my hens. It came as prefabricated parts that we then assembled. I think it will be nice for my hens once they are ready to go outside. The coop came with a small run, and it’s light enough that we plan to move it to our front porch for winter time. That will make it easier for us to take care of them in the winter, and keep them out of some of the snow. Here is our coop:
I also have some predator proofing stuff to add to the bottom to keep creatures from digging underneath – we haven’t added that yet. We just set it up and added some waterproofing. I used to let my chickens free range all over our property, but that got annoying – I had to fence in all my plants everywhere because the chickens used flower beds as dust baths. If I feel that they need more room to roam I may add some temporary movable fencing around the coop and run, so I can give them a little more foraging space.
I’m excited for our new little flock. They are all healthy and doing well. I have another month or so before they are ready for the outdoor coop, but I think they will really like it.
I had some trouble with last year’s garden. I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 2023, which is a form of heart failure. I’m doing well with medication, but it does slow you down a lot. I noticed the most problem with bending and trying to weed or dig garden beds. I had a garden last year but it was not very well tended, because I just couldn’t, and so my harvest wasn’t as plentiful as it could have been. I had a few things that did well, especially if the soil was good (my cottage garden had some indigo and that did really well), but my main garden tends to get compacted a lot. For this year I got some new raised beds. They were just metal raised beds from Amazon. I ordered 6, set them up, and filled them with leaves, compost, and soil. I did a bit of a lasagna garden in them, just to keep my soil costs down a little. Here they are, set up:
My raised beds. Some had to be on pallets because the ground wasn’t very even.
The beds are waist-height, so they are just at the right level for me. I am so excited to garden in these this year. My husband told me I should order a couple more, so I did – those will be coming in the next week sometime. I planted seeds this week, so those should start coming up soon. I have some seedlings hardening off right now (tomatoes) but I just saw that we have a frost advisory for tonight so those will be coming inside tonight.
I put garlic in one of the beds for this summer, to try a spring-garlic trick that I read about. I had a really good harvest of garlic last fall, I think partially because they are a low-effort crop. I didn’t plant any in the fall though because I knew we’d be doing raised beds and didn’t want to take any space in the garden for them at the time. I read that you can plant it in the spring. Sometimes they won’t develop heads then, unless you cold stratify in the fridge. So I put some heads of garlic in the refrigerator sometime in March, and planted those in one of my raised beds the other day.
Besides the raised beds, we are doing a small Sunflower patch in the garden, and then raising potatoes in dog food bags:
Here are my potato bags. We put bamboo sticks up to prevent the dogs from messing with them or peeing on them when they come into our garden with us.
So far this year seems to be quite promising. Once we quit getting frost advisories anyway.
I started my early seeds last weekend – tomatoes, brocollini, some dye plants, and flowers. Some are things that the seed packet said to start in place, but last year when I started them in place I never saw them come up (like Woad). I wanted to make sure that I can find them. I also made sure to only plant a few seeds per tray, which will help me later because I won’t have to thin the seedlings.
I used old mushroom trays (from when you buy mushrooms at the store) with holes poked in for drainage, and set them inside actual seed starting trays. I have taller domes because my seedlings tend to be in the house for longer (because of our U.P. climate) and to keep plants safe from cats longer. One of my cats likes to dig into the pots if she just sees soil, so this will keep the seedlings safe. The domes have air vents, so that is helpful.
Here are my seed trays, with my grow lights (in the sunny window) – the sunny window does not give enough light, so they have grow lights. The Toilet paper tubes are cat-deterrents – to keep the cats from jumping up.
I didn’t have plant markers so I created a map of my seed trays:
Here is my seedling map. My tomatoes are the bottom right of the right tray. I then turned my actual trays so they are horizontal, but the larger trays in the trays are in the center.
I was able to fit 8 mushroom trays per seed-starting tray. Here you see the left tray (or most of the left tray:)
Here (at the bottom of the picture) you can see (from L to R) marigold, safflower, and brocollini. I have rocks between the brocollini types.
Some of the seedlings sprouted right away and some are taking a while, which is expected. It’s only been a week.
In this tray the dahlias are coming up before anyone else.
It’s always exciting during seed-starting time. Our weather is still really weird. Our winter never really showed up – we got a little snow over last weekend, right in time for St. Patrick’s day – a few inches of snow though. We’re still waiting to find out if our snowless winter will translate to an actual early spring. I’m going to follow our normal schedule, (most plants go out in late May/early June) just so I don’t get any unwelcome surprises.
We’ve had a really weird mild winter this year, but I’m starting to dream of spring. We have some snow on the ground, but I have a good view of the garden (even covered with snow) from my window and I have been sifting through my seeds to see what I’m going to plant this year. With last year’s travel and health issues, my garden wasn’t very successful last year. I want to try to go a little easy this year, but I still want to make a good effort and have a great garden. That said, I tried to rein in what I’m going to plant but it is still a little more extensive than I originally wanted. Here is what the plan is for this year:
Here is the garden plan for 2024. A little rudimentary but it will work for my purposes.
I did a quick pen drawing for my garden plan for this year, but you can go as extensive as you’d like if you make one. I did a nice one a few years ago that I actually colored in, on large paper. My problem is that when I go to plant I tend to bring this outside with me so a nice one will become dirty and probably wet from being out there with my. So rudimentary is best in my case.
To make the plan above, I started by going through all my seeds. I have a plastic photo box that I use for my seed storage, and earlier this winter I went through and got rid of the old seeds – anything pre-2019. I had tried to grow some older seeds last year and had a bunch that didn’t sprout, so I figure 5 years is a good mark – anything older I tossed. I also through out any onion seeds also because those are really only good for about a year.
I went through the seeds and decided what I wanted and what I didn’t want to grow for the year. I also bought a few things this year so of course those will be grown too. I had an original pile that was probably half of my seeds, and then I whittled that down more by choosing things I know I definitely want to grow. Some plants I like but know that they are a hassle for what we get, and some things I wanted to grow but I have tried and failed too many times (like Brussel’s sprouts). Here are most of the contenders for this year:
Pumpkins and squashSome different, experiment plantsOnly 2 types of tomatoes
I have most of the regular contenders – pumpkins (including another try at giant pumpkins), and those giant Gete Okosomin squash I grew a few years ago. We’ll see if this summer is hot enough to get a nice crop. In my effort to really rein in, I’m only growing 2 types of tomatoes – one is a Pineapple tomato that I really liked and have grown a couple times. While seed shopping I saw some Devil’s claw seeds and Job’s tears – the job’s tears are good for beads, and I figured maybe i could make some art with the Devil’s claws. We’ll see if they grow and what they are like.
Some cool carrots Tons of flowers – 3 types of sunflowersHerbs, beans, fennel and cucumbers
I decided I definitely want to grow carrots, so I grabbed a few kinds for this year – one was a free seed packet I just got. I am growing lots of flowers this year, including 3 types of sunflowers, because I love them. I also am growing cucumbers, beans, green zucchini, broccoli and some other herbs and vegetables.
I make a lot of art and have been working with natural dyes and botanical printing lately, so I decided I would like to grow some dye plants. I started some last year but with everything going on, most of them didn’t take. I did grow some madder plants, I had 3 in the fall, but we’ll see if they survived our winter once the snow is all gone. Madder is good for red dye.
Here are the dye plants – I did start some Woad seed last year but I didn’t see it come up (I blame the slugs).
This year’s garden should be exciting. Let’s hope the weather is good.
Longer than I realized – I thought I had posted something this past summer, but 2023 was a whirlwind year for me. Not in the best way. My garden was planted, but didn’t do very well. A big reason was because I had ongoing health problems – hospitalized with pneumonia in June of 2023. I was better but not fully recovered, and we went on vacation to England in July (my husband is from there and hadn’t been home in 12 years or so) and I was hospitalized there with the same pneumonia. We got home, and I got a new doctor – she sent me to get more testing – turns out along with the pneumonia I had cardiomyopathy – essentially congestive heart failure. I’m doing a lot better now that I’ve gotten proper treatment and the correct medications. I didn’t have the energy or ability to do a lot of garden maintenance for most of the summer, and didn’t start feeling more normal till about mid September.
Me and my husband at Edinburgh CastleMy husband and our son at Morecambe Bay in England
The weather was another reason the garden crapped out. We had lots of rain, and lots and lots of slugs. I was trying to grow giant pumpkins – I bought seeds specifically for those award winning giant pumpkins, figuring I would try to grow one or two in the middle of the garden, to keep them away from deer. I got one pumpkin that was almost to about grapefruit sized, and one day I went to check on it and it was being eaten on the bottom by slugs. This was the second year of lots of slugs – I had noticed the year before they were just wandering around in the yard – I was seeing them everywhere, not just in the garden In fall of 2022, I put in a King Stropharia bed (edible Wine cap mushrooms) – I got fruiting mushrooms in 2023, and we harvested some nice mushrooms:
Then the slugs came. They would eat the mushrooms before they even could pop out of the ground. I’d find holes where they were starting to fruit, and also half eaten full mushrooms. I essentially grew a slug smorgasbord. I will be doing some super slug prevention this coming year.
We did have some garden successes for 2023. I got lots of good garlic, enough to eat and to plant more for next year. I got a decent crop of onions. A few nice sunflowers. A few tomatoes. Our grapevine got huge and gave us a ton of grapes. I found that if I leave them on the vine till after it frosts, they actually are sweet.
2023 also came with changes to our household. We added a couple more puppies – we still have Downey, but he’s about 14 years old, and not very active anymore. We added Onyx, a black labrador retriever; and Lobo, a mixed-breed puppy (that looks like a yellow lab, but he’s a mix of 3 or 4 different things).
Lobo and Onyx playing in the snow in the late fall of 2023.
We also lost our rabbit, Buddy, in late 2023. He was the last holdout of our rabbit farming from a few years ago, and he was a nice pet. He lived to about 8 or 9 years old.
Buddy in the yard on a sunny day last summer.
2023 was a crazy year. Sorry for being away for so long. I plan on doing more gardening in the coming year, and will hopefully have some nice stories and photos to post on here.
The garden is going well so far this year. Here are some pictures from the last week or two:
My foxglove have been spreading. And I have several white ones too. They are in front (as seen here) and along the moon garden portion of the old chicken shed.
Here is my greens bed – kale, Asian greens, chard, and collards. There is some spinach that is starting to bolt, and I’m growing some salsify as well.
My honeyberries are producing more. I need to put some kind of tarp down underneath. The berries are supposed to be ready when they just fall off the bushes (or you can shake them off). They are still a bit tart yet.
My strawberries are doing well. The mint is overtaking some of the bed, so later this summer I will be pulling everything out and replanting just the best strawberry plants.
My poppies all re-seeded, I can see them coming up everywhere. This bed will be full of them soon.
Here are even more poppies.
Here is half of my main garden. Things are growing well. I had a couple of zucchini plants not take, but I put like 12 in, so a few missing won’t matter so much.
Here is the other half of the main garden. I put sticks up around this bed to keep the deer from jumping in this year. A way to inexpensively make my fence taller.
We didn’t put the greenhouse fabric up this year, but I am still using it for planting. I put onions in, and some tomatoes. There are tons of ground cherries coming back from last year, and some wildflowers (daisies) and wild herbs (the giant Mullein on the left).
I did combined-beds (companion planting) this year. This bed is onions and Chinese cabbage. I have several beds with 2 things interplanted, to help save space, but also the plants benefit each other. There are also marigolds in this bed.
My nettles and Valerian came back in full force. We picked some nettles and froze them for eating when they were small. (They get too bitter once they get large). The Valerian flowers will smell really nice once they fully bloom.
I started some onion seeds this weekend. I’ve been planning out the garden, even though we have tons of snow on the ground (or maybe because of the snow). I like growing onions from seed – you get more choices than if you buy sets, and it’s cheaper. I like to start them usually at the beginning of February, but figured it was close enough.
I’m growing 5 types of onion this year:
The 5 onion varieties. I’ve grown three of these before, but the middle (Red of Florence) and right side (Yellow of Parma) are new kinds.
I like to start seeds in leftover mushroom containers (that the mushrooms come in at the store) – I poke holes in the bottom and put the mushroom containers on trays,or in a peat pellet tray so I can use a lid at first).
They say onion seeds are only good for a season but I have not found that to be the case. I have had good sprouting a few years later.
Here are the mushroom containers. I labeled seeds with the type. I can fit about 25 seeds in each of these.
The idea with these is that they’ll grow and be big enough to set out in April or May (depending on our weather). I have space for two beds of onions in my garden. I also read that you can put onions in around other things where you want to deter groundhogs and stuff and they will stay away.
As I do each spring, I came up with a whole seed starting schedule and made a spreadsheet to track when to start, where they are starting (inside or right in the ground), and how many I started. I am growing about 70 different varieties of things this year (3 kinds of tomatoes, 5 onions, etc), so it’s really helpful to make a chart. I cut it down to 70 – I have to restrain myself from growing ALL the types of seeds I have.
My seed starting table – it will get more full in April when I start some other things. I have grow lights and enough space for 3 or 4 trays of things.
It’s always exciting starting the gardening season, even if there is not a whole lot of work I can do yet.
We lost our dear dog Atat earlier this month. I’d like to tell the story of his life with us.
We had our dog Downey when we moved to this house in the U.P., but Downey seemed lonely. We wanted to get him a friend. But I didn’t want a small dog, I wanted a really big dog. We stared searching online, and on Petfinder I saw this puppy:
His name at the time was Landon, and he was 4 months old. He was at a shelter just outside of Duluth Minnesota, and they had him listed as an Akita mix. We did the paperwork and were approved, and drove the 4 hours to Duluth (and 4 hours back) to pick him up.
We brought Downey with us so they could meet and we could make sure they’d get along, and they did. Downey was mostly indifferent, so that was fine. We got in the car, started the drive home, and the new puppy must have been nervous because he suddenly had diarrhea all over the back seat. We had to stop and put him in the very back (I had a station wagon at the time) and you could see Downey was not impressed with his new brother.
We got him home, and the puppy had long lanky legs and was a little awkward (just being young) so my son, who was 5 at the time, said he looked like an AT-AT (those giant machines from Star Wars). So we named him Atat. (Pronounced like At-Tat – both “A”s like in Tattoo.)
Atat on the left, with Downeywith Downey on the carpet
At 4 months he was already the size of Downey, so we knew he would get way bigger, and looking at him you can tell he was a Mix of German Shepherd and Akita. (A Shepkita).
He did get bigger, and he was a great dog. He would jump on people sometimes but it was always friendly, and he actually helped pull Downey out of his shell – Downey had been having some anxiety issues when people came over, but since Atat wasn’t scared of them, it helped Downey to calm down with visitors.
He and Downey were great brothers and loved each other. We eventually got their sister Nova, and Atat was obsessed with her. He had a very long torso, and a big curly tail, so he would curl around her, and they’d play on the carpet and on the couch a lot.
Here are our three dogs chewing on their chews. (Downey, Atat, Nova, from left to right)
After several years we lost Nova, and the two boys were sad for awhile but eventually got into a two-dog routine again.
Atat (with Nova on the couch)Here he was on our loveseat – he was a 100 lb very large dog.
Last spring, Atat started drinking a lot, and peeing a lot. We brought him to our vet, who could not figure out what was wrong. He was going in the house at night because his bladder was full. We started getting up at 3am to let him out, and then we just added a doggy door so he could go whenever he wanted. That really helped, but still didn’t tell us what was wrong.
I ended up switching vets, and the new vet diagnosed him with Cushings disease. With the pandemic and stuff, we weren’t able to get this diagnosis till December. (I called to make an appointment in July and they couldn’t get us in till late October). We planned to treat his Cushings with Melatonin, because the actual vet medicine for it, something called Trilosane, was way too expensive since Atat was over 100lbs. (Melatonin was recommended by some vets online as a gentler way to treat it, but still effective).
Over the Christmas holidays, I noticed that he was really slowing down – he had been slowly getting slower since he started getting symptoms, but this was a lot. He had been dealing with ongoing swelling in his belly (like fluid) – the vet had told us his first visit in October that she first thought he might have congestive heart failure, but then I thought she had ruled it out – she had done an xray and his heart was not enlarged, but we still didn’t know what the fluid was from.
I got the Melatonin (I had to order a dog-specific version in the right dose) the week before New Years, and I gave him his first dose on a Tuesday. On Wednesday I noticed he perked up a bit, but on Thursday he had Edema (swelling) in one of his legs. Then over the next day or so the other one swelled, and then he was having trouble getting up. We were helping him to stand so he could go outside. He also started panting really hard like he was having trouble breathing.
That Tuesday, January 4th, I went to work and actually called a vet that does euthanasia house calls, to find out pricing, in case. But my husband got home and found Atat outside in the yard, pretty much in the middle of dying. He called me and I came home, but he was gone before I got home. We figure it was congestive heart failure, based on how it happened. So he must have had that and Cushings together.
Our sweet boy guarding his domain.
We are in the middle of winter, with a foot or so of snow on the ground and frozen earth below. So we put him in the garage, thinking in spring we would bury him. My husband and son went yesterday to move him under the snow – we remembered that when we get a warmup in spring, our garage sometimes gets hot so, we didn’t want a bad situation. But they went to move snow and found the ground near our garage, where we were planning on putting him later, was only frozen about an inch or so down, so we laid him to rest in his permanent spot.
Downey has been sad, but getting a little better about everything. We got a kitten last year, and she wasn’t afraid of Atat but she hangs out more than she did when he was here. Our other cat comes out more as well. We will miss him -he was a great dog. I get really upset because he had only just turned 8 years old in December. I feel like he didn’t get long enough, but I guess that happens with all dogs.
My tiny u.p. farm 