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.
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.
Our spring was very cold for awhile, and then the last couple weeks it’s been super hot. It was 85 degrees yesterday and humid. Today it’s in the 40s. Tomorrow it is supposed to warm back up. It gets hard to plan your garden and planting when you’re not sure if the weather is going to cooperate. Here where we are situated, I follow a couple of different Last Frost dates – one for Houghton, Michigan, and one for Marquette (they are each about an hour or two away from me, I’m in the middle). According to my source, these two towns which are only a couple hours away from one another, are about 2 weeks different in terms of last frost date. One is mid May, one is late May. Then our weather can vary from day to day. It can be really hot and make you think “oh, I can plant those tomatoes” and then we get frost. Or even snow! I saw we might get some slight snow / rain showers in a couple days. But the temps shouldn’t be too cold where I’m that worried about us getting it. Anyway, I planted the last bits of my garden this weekend (before I saw that snow prediction). If I have to cover things, I will. I do have one or two things still waiting in the house – ginger, which can’t take ANY cold at all, and some gourds I’m waiting to sprout.
Here are some updated pictures of our gardens the last couple of weeks:
My cottage garden – we are putting in stones around all the paths. I will be sprinkling cayenne pepper if we get something digging up stones like we did last year. (We had something digging for grubs in the garden – a skunk or groundhog, probably.)
Here is the main Herb garden portion of the Cottage Garden. On the left I’m putting more perennial herbs, and the right is annuals.
Another view of the cottage garden.
My first Asparagus harvest! I just put the bed in last year so these were the first I have gotten.
Here is a view of the main garden. We are using landscape fabric this year to attempt to thwart weeds. It is pretty much all planted in this pic. On the left (from the back) are: tomatoes, then carrots, then sunflowers, leeks, cucumbers and zucchini. The right (from the back) are tomatoes, onions, sunflowers, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, greens/broccoli.
Here is a side view picture of the garden, only a few things were in in this picture (pic courtesy my husband Elton).
Our greenhouse before we put the outer plastic up for the year (photo taken by my husband Elton)
Here is inside the greenhouse. We got the plastic cover up yesterday and then I planted these all inside. On the left are peppers galore (bell and various hot peppers, and paprika) and the right are ground cherries, eggplant, and then a space in front for my ginger.
Here is our moon garden. We had planned it last year, and I got seeds pretty late – nothing had come up. So this year I started seeds inside and we planted them out last weekend. It’s still doing pretty well. It’s mostly white flowers (to reflect moonlight – the “moon garden”) but I put some black pansies in, and black hollyhocks too (although hollyhocks don’t flower their first year).
Here you can see the whimsical makeshift trellises we put in for our moon garden. I have white black-eyed susan vines to climb up these.
Here is my scarecrow / garden guardian. Her name is Valeria. I figured the garden could use the protection (to keep the grub-digger/stone-messer-uppers away). I made her body from a gourd I grew last year and other things from outside, to tie her to the land that she is protecting.
Here is Valerian (on the left) and my Stinging Nettles patch. These are in the back portion of my cottage garden. The Valerian flowers smell really good when they bloom.
The garden is growing and our spring is definitely under way. Hopefully the weather keeps cooperating.
We had a great gardening season. I’ve been so busy with the harvest that I have not had time to post anything. Fall has come and almost gone – winter seems like it is coming early this year. We’ve had close to freezing temps for weeks already, which is not typical for us. I think a lot of the upper U.S. is in this weather pattern as well. I have not yet planted my garlic – I ordered from one website, and then saw that it was back-ordered, and they were not going to be shipping till late October. I typically plant the first or 2nd week, so I cancelled it. I ordered from another place that I know grows their own garlic, thinking that they would ship quicker. I ended up having to order a different kind, but it’s still a Porcelein type of garlic (they typically have 4-6 large cloves per garlic head). They have not shipped yet either, so I called this week, and they shipped it for me yesterday – I have a blanket on the garlic bed, trying to keep my ground from freezing before I can plant the garlic.
Our front yard on October 17th. Not a nice sight to wake up to – I’m not ready for snow yet. It luckily melted the next day.
With our hot summer this year, some vegetables grew fantastically, and other plants didn’t do so well. Some things I thought did horribly but as we cooled down they surprised me – our cauliflower grew really large, but didn’t head until September after the rest of the garden was dying. We had a whole lot of squash and tomatoes. I have so much squash that I don’t think I will plant any next year, at least not winter squash.
Here are squash waiting on the porch after picking. I ended up putting them in the greenhouse to cure so they will last most of the winter.
Last year I planted 3 plants of butternut squash, and got about 1 per plant. This year, I planted three butternut and three Gete Okosomin squash plants. The butternut gave us 11 very large squashes, and the Gete Okosomin gave us 28 – the largest was 25 pounds. These things were massive. Our super-hot summer really helped.
Another pic of some of our squash (with a couple of our Jarrahdale pumpkins).Here are the squash being stored in our house. We are using them as we are able. Eventually I might have to cook them up to freeze them, but we are currently out of space in our freezer.
We bought a pig for meat from a butcher / farmer this year, and our freezer has run out of room with that and all the vegetables. I have a lot of tomatoes that I just froze instead of canning, and a lot of zucchini that I froze, besides the pork. I am hoping the squash will mostly last for us through the winter since I cured them for awhile. I will check them here and there to make sure they aren’t softening.
We had too many cucumbers this year – we tried to make pickles but we just got tired of them. So that is something I won’t grow next year, or maybe a plant or two. I had at least 6 plants this year – too many. I also grew Patty pan squash but we weren’t very excited about them. I grew some Zucchini Rampicante, a curly long zucchini variety – they were really nice. The plants sprawl everywhere, so I’ll trellis them next year, but the flavor was really good and if you forget them or don’t find one until late, they turn into winter squash. They just harden up a bit on the outside and turn from green to brown (like a butternut color).
Pumpkins we grew (the orange one is not from my garden). They are called Jarrahdale, a white / light green pumpkin. Most were left outside as decoration, but I took one in so we can eat it later. The ones outside are doing ok but they have frozen and thawed, so probably wouldn’t be good for eating. I’ll open them up for the deer after Halloween.
This year was pretty good for our gardens. I don’t like the cold of winter, but I do like that we get a time to slow down. I’ll start getting the mid-winter gardening itch probably in January once we’ve had snow for awhile.
(Pictures in this post are all courtesy of my husband, Elton Powell).
We’ve had a lot of things happening – it was really hot for the beginning of summer, so my garden was growing like crazy. We’ve cooled down a bit for the last few days, and today it got sunny again. Here are some nice pictures of our gardens and yard:
Some bee balm growing against the house. I split this plant – took some and put it in the cottage garden.
Last month, I went out and found that my beautiful herb spiral was ruined by something – we suspect skunks. They moved the rocks, and then have been digging for grubs or something. Some plants survived – they didn’t eat the plants, just messed them up on their way to the grubs.
Here you can see another spot where my spiral was messed up, but not as bad. I tried fixing the spiral for a couple days and then gave up. I will get some motion lights to try to deter the skunks before I try recreating it.
Here is the squash jungle. This part is butternut squash.
Here are a couple baby Gete Okosomin squash. There are tons of them on the 3 plants I am growing.
Here is a Gete Okosomin that we accidentally picked early. It was in a weird spot and I wanted to keep it off the ground – I went to adjust it and knocked it off the vine. It was 6 pounds. They can get up to around 20 lbs when ripe. We cut it up and it was soft like zucchini, so I used it as I would zucchini this week.
Here are the gourd plants. They are both birdhouse gourds. I had a mixed pack – there is one plant that is very tiny by the door in the background. I don’t know that I’ll actually get any gourds from it. I was hoping for a bowl gourd plant. But birdhouse ones are nice. I want to make some cool gourd art eventually.
Here are the gourd flowers. They are really cool, I was expecting them to look like squash flowers. I like how these are growing, they just look really whimsical.
Here are some gourds getting bigger on the vine.
Our giant rogue sunflower (grew from last year’s seed, randomly in the garden). This was just before something knocked it over – it was broken at the base but still connected. I tried tying it up to save it. It still flowered but the leaves look dead.
Here is the bloom – for a few days after I tied it back up, the leaves would wilt by end of day, but be all healthy looking by morning. But for the last few days the leaves have been wilted all day. It now has 3 blooms though, even though the leaves look sad.
Here is my first red sunflower – one I started from seed this year (on purpose instead of volunteer/rogue).
Another picture of the squash jungle, from inside the garden fence.
Here is a terra cotta frog I have in the cottage garden. (photo courtesy Elton Powell)
The terra cotta frog sits under the foxglove. (photo courtesy Elton Powell)
Here is another view of the foxglove. (photo courtesy Elton Powell)
I’m growing Balsam for the first time – the blooms are pretty. (photo courtesy Elton Powell)
Here is a little helper, (well, kind of a big helper), Mr. toad. He was living in the main garden, I found him under my tomatoes.
I’ve been wanting a wind spinner. I have a plastic colorful one, but I wanted a metal one. I had some scrap aluminum sheet, so I made my own. I just made it the other day so I have not seen it actually spin in the wind yet. We’ll see how this works. (photo courtesy Elton Powell)
My Wizard has a friend. This black and white kitty comes to our yard sometimes. She has stayed with various neighbors around here, but I don’t know what home she originally came from. My son named her Shadow. She and Wizzy are good friends. (photo courtesy Elton Powell)
Our strawberries have been coming in well – I had gotten a couple cups a few days ago, and at that time there were a bunch almost ripe and ready to pick. So yesterday morning, I walked out to the strawberry patch to harvest, and came across this sight:
A deer got into my strawberry patch and eaten the tops and the berries off most of my plants. The way they were eaten and the amount taken points to deer. And we have deer in the yard a lot. Here is what the plants were SUPPOSED to look like:
My strawberry plants last week.
Luckily they just got the tops of the plants, so the plants will live to give me strawberries next year. I have it all fenced with a makeshift gate, but the gate had been off, since I don’t have to worry about chickens getting in there. The deer must have figured out she could get in through the open door. The deer also got into the open gate of the cottage garden (which I also had left open since we don’t have chickens anymore) and tried a bunch of other things. She must have thought it was a salad bar:
Some of my green bean plants got the tops taken off.
The deer ate some bean plants, some chard, some lettuce, a bunch of my orach, some Borage and some broccoli. She wanted nothing to do with the huge patch of Kale or Asian greens that the chard and orach were between, for some reason. This deer just came in and had a taste of random things. A lot of herbs were untouched as well, fortunately. I have since made sure that gates are closed, and also got some fence to cover things a bit – I laid pieces of fence a little over so the plants are okay but the deer can’t get to the leaves, just in case they decide to just hop the fence to get some more salad. I was lucky that they didn’t completely devastate anything, but it was close. I only will get a few more strawberries, not the nice crop I was hoping for.
One bright spot was that my poppies are starting to bloom:
I’ve been trying to get poppies started for a few years and usually the seedlings disappear after I plant them. I put a ton in this year and they are all coming up and now this was the first bloom.
We have had a strange spring, it’s finally warming up again. Our weather was warming when I last posted, and then we got more snow over the Easter weekend – about a foot. That melted after a week or so, so we are finally getting into actual spring here. I planted some tulips in the fall and those are emerging now, and our daffodils are getting ready to bloom soon. We’ve been adding some stuff to the yard, planning the garden, and we put up a greenhouse yesterday! Here are some pictures of our farm in early May:
The main garden is getting ready for planting, although we have a while before our last frost date. We put in newspaper and cardboard covered with old chicken bedding as mulch, to try to keep weeds down this year. Next I’ll be turning the actual beds for planting.
Here are the onions, I am starting to harden them off so I can put them in the garden soon. This picture was just before I took them out to the porch to harden off.
Some seedlings – these are mostly cauliflower I think.
More seedlings. I am growing 10 types of tomatoes this year!
Here are the asparagus. I’m growing two kinds, and planning out their permanent bed – we’ll be putting that in soon.
I planted some Honeyberries, or Haskap. They are a cold-hardy oblong blue berry, that is supposed to taste something like a cross between strawberry and raspberry.
Here is another Haskap. I put in 4 bushes. I got these from Honeyberry USA, out of Northern Minnesota.
Here is our Gooseberry bush, I got it a few years ago, but planted it next to the house. It really didn’t thrive there, because it was always crowded by weeds and wildflowers, but it lived. So I just transplanted it into our front yard so it will hopefully do better there. We do tend to get gooseberries from it, but only like 4 or 5 per year so far. Maybe it will get more this year since it has more room. I also fenced it against deer in case they decide that it looks tasty.
Here is one of the elderberries – I just put in two trees in our front yard, and circled them both with fencing to keep the deer from eating them. I have attempted to plant them before but had deer destroy them. This time they are protected.
We got some Emerald Green Arborvitae to make a privacy hedge in our front yard – here they are – they are all just under a foot tall right now – they should grow 12-15 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide, so they’ll make a nice hedge.
Here is another view of the arborvitae. We put in 10 in a little haphazard row to make the hedge. We fenced this also, to keep the deer from wrecking them. Luckily this part of the yard doesn’t grow grass very quickly so it won’t really need mowing while they grow in.
Here is our greenhouse! My uncle gave it to me in the fall. He had had it sitting in his garage (had been given it by our other uncle) and neither uncle wanted to use it anymore so they gave it to us. We put it up yesterday, and then extended our dog fence around it (so it will be easier to access from the backyard where the garden is). It’s approximately 10×10 feet. It’s pretty nice, we are happy with how it went up.
My cat, Wizard was investigating the greenhouse and decided to pose for some pictures.
Here is another picture of Wizard. He is excited to be able to explore outside without dealing with snow. We are all happy it is spring.
It is now mid-October and our weather is taking a turn for the worse. We’ve had a month or so of way too much rain, with a few days of nice temperatures and sun thrown in, until this past weekend – I had ice on my car window yesterday morning. I knew this was coming so we pretty much pulled everything in that remained outside. I experimented a bit this year, I grew some sunchokes and some crosnes – those grew but never flowered. The deer ate most of the sunchoke plants the other day. I am leaving them where they are to see if they will come up again in the spring. I grew peanuts and ginger. Our ginger did really well in the early part of the season, with our hot weather, but then we got lots of rain in the later part of the summer and the temperatures really weren’t warm enough – I have two plants and I have pulled them both in the house to keep growing, under grow lights. My peanuts, however, did really well, despite the rainy later summer/fall. Below you will see some highlights of this year’s garden:
Carrots – I didn’t get a lot but most of them were very large.
My two pumpkin / hubbard squashes – seeds for these were from the same “Heirloom” pumpkin I bought last year at Walmart. These were on separate plants, as best I can tell, but the seeds were from the one pumpkin. I’d be interested to see what other variations come from these seeds. I suspect they weren’t actually heirloom or were cross pollinated somehow when they grew them.
A nicer photo of my carrots, all cleaned up so you can see the colors.
Fort Portal Jade beans. I have not tasted these yet because I am waiting for the rest of the pods to dry. I brought all the bean pods in to dry inside because of the wet weather.
My beets. I got a lot of plants but not very big (I failed to thin them at all so they didn’t have a lot of room to get big). These were mostly about 1-2 inch diameter beets.
Here are the peanuts! We got one pound of peanuts out of a small packet of seeds (5 shells total that I planted). I was worried these were going to rot in the ground because of the rain this fall, so I pulled them; when I did I found that they were already ready to harvest.
Peanuts cleaned up and ready for roasting. They were pretty good tasting. We plan on growing these again.
Some of my other bean pods (a cranberry type bean) and the last of my scallions from the garden.
A teeny tiny cauliflower. I did get one decent sized head, but most were this size. This is the first year I got them to actually create heads, so I feel that this was a successful year for these, for me.
I still have a few things in the ground that may be ok till the ground freezes – kale, brocolli, and some brussel sprouts. I planted my garlic and some shallots last week and covered them with some straw. All in all, I feel 2019 was a pretty good gardening year. I do wish the rain would spread itself out over the whole season instead of walloping us either early or late – this year we got nothing in the spring and way too much in the later part of the season. I am already thinking of what to plan for next year’s garden.
We’ve been busy in the garden. I am starting to get carrots now – I had planted seed tapes this spring, with tons of carrots. My double dug beds are supposed to allow you to cram things in, so I had seed tapes next to each other and carrot seeds spaced about 3 inches between (so I wouldn’t have to thin.) Because of our lack of early summer rain, the seed tapes didn’t do so well. I got several carrots, but they are spaced way far between – I planted about 140 with the seed tapes and I think there are maybe 20 or so that have done anything – but they are HUGE. I had a couple that were popping out of the ground, so I picked them – they were mostly dark purple and 11-12 inches long. I had planted a mixed blend (old seeds I had on hand), plus these dark purple carrots called Black Nebula, and some yellow and orange carrots.
Some of our first carrots. The purple ones are Black Nebula (I got from Baker Creek Seeds) – they are purple all the way through. I grew a different purple kind last year but only the outside was purple – with an orange center. These are nice, they just taste like normal carrots. (I couldn’t tell a difference, anyway.)
Here you can see these purple ones have a lot of hairy little roots – those washed right off luckily.
I was making mashed potatoes and decided to see if one of the Black Nebula carrots could color them. I cut one carrot up and boiled it with the potatoes in a pot – the water turned all black, and when mashed, we got purple mashed potatoes!
I have a ton of sunflowers and was thinking it would be nice if I had some other colors besides yellow. I forgot I had planted a mixed seed bag – we had a couple of red ones open this weekend. Here is one (with the yellows).
Here is another one – this one is more orange colored.
More yellow – these sunflowers are all about 7-8 feet, I am estimating.
The garden is doing well, but we are getting into fall and the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting some yucky weather later this month. (They talked about a snow/rain mix at the end of September. Yuck. I hope they are wrong). Hopefully I’ll get all my vegetables to ripen before we have to worry about frost or snow.
My tiny u.p. farm 