What should I be planting?

With the warmer weather upon us, the avid gardener is itching to put his/her hands in the dirt. It's still too early to plant a lot, but you can start on your vegetable gardens!

Here's a list of things that you can start:
Broccoli, cabbage, onion, garlic, lettuce, peas, radish, spinach, turnips and brussel sprouts! All are very frost tolerant and can be planted with a sigh of contentment.

As time is heading towards April, you can get ready to plant:
beets, carrots, parsley, perennial herbs (personally, I would cover these), parsnips, potatoes, swiss chard, asparagus and rhubarb.

Have fun planting! If you have any questions on what does better started indoors or out, let us know, but I have direct sown all of these vegetables with no problems...as long as I keep them moist! With hand watering, it's sometimes harder to do.

You can, of course, plant trees anytime. At Picadilly, we have tons of bareroot trees and shrubs for your picking! Come by and see us!

As it's snowing outside, I am just telling myself to go around and look at my gardens to see splashes of color here and there. My crocuses are up, and my bulbs are peeking through the ground. Is it spring yet?? I am so ready for it this year!!

Brian and I have had a busy weekend. We've been getting our trailer essentials and loading them in. After a wonderful trip to Target, we are now set with dishes. Since I keep everything, all of our bedding is set. There are just a few more items, and then we are ready for our first trip. I am hoping it warms up a little more before we head out! Destination...not sure yet. We are thinking Boyd Lake, but haven't made up our minds.

We get to have dinner over at mom and dad's. Since I worked the past few weeks, I haven't had time to visit much with them. A couple of Sunday's ago I went to listen to my father preach and then had lunch with them afterward. It was nice to see them and just spend time with them. I miss them a lot.

Ah. Work. It's going well. I started earlier than I usually do and potted up hundreds of roses in a short time. About 120-125 in one day. I will be having down time because a coworker is back, so I am going to try to keep using my muscles so they don't go in shock again. It would be a lot easier if it were warm!! Not sure what my schedule will be like. It's all up in the air right now, just like every year.

Things to pay attention to in your gardens. With the warmer weather this week, I would water again (of course) and about day 3 of warm weather, you can even fertilize. March-April is when I normally do it, but you can wait until May. I just noticed that when I fertilize a little earlier, the bugs seem to stay away more often. A healthier tree they do not like!! Also, make sure your iris beds are cleaned up. This is the time where fungus and bugs start going crazy. Pretty much clean up is starting...just keep the mulch around things that the cold air could hurt. I still don't prune my roses until April-May.

This weekend I will be planting spinach, beans, onions and lettuce and different intervals to get started on the crops. So excited to have fresh produce again!!

Here's to a happy, work filled spring! I can feel it!

Using tomatoes both ripe and green

A couple of nights ago we heard that we would have frost, so that night, I picked every large tomato off of my four vines. About 100 tomatoes later, I felt quite overwhelmed with what to do with them.

A little background...I grow tomatoes for my family. I, for one, can't stand them. I'm okay when they're pureed, and more into paste, or for some reason I like them in salsa (as long as they are very, very tiny). I put out a HELP!!! onto facebook on what to do with all of them. After reading several recipes and dicing up what seemed a million tomatoes, I tried making my own salsa. It was a lot of fun, and I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out. I still have the ingredients to make about 8 cups more, but will refrain for a couple of days so we can actually eat what I've already made.

Most people told me that I can ripen the tomatoes using the box method (which I haven't tried yet) or I could make Fried Green Tomatoes. I haven't decided, but am starting to worry about fruit flies and gnats invading my house as they sit there, looking so pretty and ready to eat!

The return

Brian and I returned from vacation on Friday, and yesterday I had major clean-up in my gardens. It looked like a jungle due to the heavy winds and rain we received the previous week! My hollyhocks were sideways, my russian sage had split down the middle and were lying flat. Time to get the twine and pray! This is the year where I had to see how everything grew together, and next spring is the year to fix everything. I know there are a lot of people that do dividing in the fall, but I've never had a lot of luck with that here in Colorado. I'm not sure if it's because I wait too long and then the roots don't have enough time to establish or what, but a lot of things die over the winter time. Color combinations and size of plants are the main obstacles right now. I planted some crazy daisies and some daylillies right by my sidewalk walkway and everything was too huge to walk through. I had no idea the crazy daisies would flop as much as they have and have to move them pronto. They flopped so much I just cut them down and didn't even get to enjoy the flowers!

Moving on to my veggie garden...I have little grape tomatoes EVERWHERE, and I have to restake all of my tomatoes because they have outgrown what I previously had. I have peppers that are very close to harvesting, and saw our first cukes and beans coming along strong. FINALLY the heat has come through and things are growing with gusto.

My backyard is missing summer color so I will be dividing like crazy and bringing new color to it next spring. It's hard to know for sure what will bloom because when you buy things new, they don't necessarily bloom the same time the first year. I have two types of hibiscus that should be blooming now but haven't yet...and my Limelight Hydrangea is about to pop. Other than some daisies, foxglove and columbine blooming, that's the only color besides green that I really have in the back.

All of my trees are doing very well. I was surprised they don't have any signs of stress from the heat. This week should be a bit cooler to give them a much needed break.

All in all, it's been a pretty successful summer in my gardens. I have one side trained to only need water once a week, which is great. If I could stop planting on the other side, I could get that down to twice a week waterings, I think. Saving water is the plan...

Oopsies in the garden...Part Deux

When planting my vegetable garden, I put plants that had already started, and then planted seeds, telling God a whole bunch of lies if only He'd make them grow. For several weeks...nothing. I figured God knew me too well and didn't believe my baloney.

However, with all of the rain that we received, the seeds took off. When I was watering, I just didn't water long enough for the soil to get wet...so those poor seeds were baking underneath. OH...you have to WATER the seeds to make them grow.

I'm a midwest girl that is used to putting things in the ground and they are full grown the next day. I'm not used to the coddling and sweet talking that needs to be done to these seeds. I just found out that a city nearby used to be the tomato capital of the world (or something like that) so I know it's not impossible to grow things out here. However, it takes a lot of conjoling to get 'er done.

I'll be happy if I get one pepper this season from 6 plants. Beans? I think I have two popping up. The carrots are going wild, but that could be because I just dumped the packet in a row. I know I'll have to eventually thin them out, but I'm just so damn happy something is green in that area. My cucumbers look like they've gone through WW3, which is sad because those were actually started for me.

I am sure that the problem is the soil, and that this is the first year...and I need to be patient. However, because I'm a woman that has a sign in her perennial garden that says, "Grow dammit!" you might see what the problem is.