Check out this monster tomato!! It was the highlight of my morning. I’ve been canning for 12 hours now! Luckily, I’m done with the hard part. Now I can sit back and relax and just switch out the canner every so often. Yahoo! These are my pitiful little onions…I’m still not sure exactly why they flowered instead of growing. They are so cute that I almost don’t mind except that they’re already gone! Don’t they look almost like little purple light bulbs?
Continue readingCategory: onions
Onion Confusion
I planted onions in the spring… So apparently I’ve been having a blond moment for the last several weeks now. I’ve been excited to collect seed from whatever garden plants I can. My onions sent up nice big flowers that now have thousands of seeds in them. I thought great, yippee, I get to save some onion seed. Ummm, no. Well, yes, I get some onion seeds. But no freakin’ onions!! I pulled them up today and the aren’t much bigger than the sets I planted.Duh, I guess I should have thought about that. Apparently onions are not supposed to flower in their first year and if they do the bulbs will be very small. The bulbs also won’t store well since they have been pierced where the flower stalk pushed up. The only explanation I can find for this is extreme temperature fluctuations during the growing seasons. Yep, we’ve got that going on here in Michigan. So what do you think? Has this happened to you? Am I missing something? Is this more likely to happen when you grow from onion sets? I’m so bummed.
Continue readingSunday Stroll: Garden Update
I have been taking a stroll around my yard every morning and evening lately. There is a lot of activity to keep up with! All of these pictures are from the garden today. I thought I would combine the garden update and Sunday Stroll this week to keep things simple. Plus, I have a lot of other things to post about this coming week. Potatoes are finally up! Yay!! I have picked and picked, eaten and shared, and yet till – the asparagus is going to seed. The first row of peas is really growing. The second row is up and about 1-2″ tall. My little bitty lettuce. This was one of the first things I planted. It is growing very slowly but I’m just glad it lived. The onions have doing great all along. The garlic is huge! I saved the best for last. Check out the blossoms on our new pear tree! This is the one that I just planted a few weeks ago. The pear tree that I planted last year has a lot more leaves but no blossoms yet. I can see this little blossoming tree from my window. See who else is strolling on Sunday
Continue readingSunday Stroll… Sort of
I just really didn’t feel like doing much today. Yesterday Brian cut up our old rabbit cage so I could have 2 pieces of plywood for our new farm sign. I painted them this morning. Then we went to breakfast with Brian’s Grandpa. I’m pretty sure he turned 93 this year! After breakfast I put on a second coat of paint. We watched King Corn. I was really disappointed! I guess it might make a bigger impact on people who don’t farm but it really didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I was hoping the film would help Brian to see why corn in everything is a bad thing, but it wasn’t too convincing. After the movie Brian worked out in the shop for awhile. It was pretty rainy and cold today so I didn’t go out. I’ve been working on our website like crazy and it is almost done!! Get ready, I’m going to want everyone’s opinions of it once it is done! 🙂 Then I worked on tracing our logo on to the farm sign. I’ve got one piece almost done, then I can paint it. Anyway, since I’d really like to get back in to
Continue readingPlanting Onions!
This should by no means be taken as a tutorial since I am planting onions this year for the very first time. I wasn’t even going to post about it until I saw that little paper bag sitting next to the freshly planted row and thought what a cute picture that would make. We don’t eat many onions, just a few in casseroles and such, so I probably didn’t need to plant any. Our good friend Rob shared some of his last year and is growing plenty again this year. These ones just caught my eye in line at the feed store so I picked up a couple bags. I figure it can’t hurt to learn a new skill. The paper that came with the onion sets had decent directions: plant 2-3″ apart just deep enough to cover the tops in rows 12″ apart. Thin later to 4″ apart, then harvest in July or August when tops dry and fall over. I pretty much followed the directions except went about 4″ apart right from the start. I’ve never been one to “thin” plants out, I just can’t bring myself to pull up the little buggers just when they get going.
Continue readingHow Do You Start Your Seedlings?
I am happy to be back to blogging after the holiday. I meant to leave a more upbeat post up over Christmas but have been having a lot of trouble with my internet connection and therefore gave up. I have some nice Christmas pics to post and I’d like to share what gifts we gave this year, as well as some nice things we received. Today, though, I would like to discuss something that has been on my mind a lot, and apparently on others too. Let’s talk about garden plans! The latest edition of Hobby Farms is full of tips and tricks for garden planning. Sharon Astyk posted awhile back about signs of a possible seed shortage so I sorted through what was left of last year’s seeds and made my list for this year. I order my seeds almost exclusively through Baker Creek Seed Co. at rareseeds.com. They are a great company to deal with and produce a wonderful catalog chuck full of good information. The real reason I prefer them is because they care so much about seed integrity and I trust them. Frankly, I don’t have to time or the knowledge to sort through other catalogs
Continue readingOne Day Weekend
After interning Friday and Saturday and picking up an afternoon shift driving carriages on Sunday, I was very ready for Monday to arrive. It seems kind of sad to me that more people don’t recognize what Memorial Day is really about. I am proud of my relatives that fought for this country and when we have kids I want to take time and explain to them how important that is. This year we didn’t do anything special and like of lot of other people we took advantage of an extra day off to get a lot done around the farm. Here is a before picture of a little spot on our sideyard. There are a few big pine trees along with some large rocks and our Centennial Farm sign sits right in front, facing the road. Our garden ends just a few feet to the left of this picture. I needed a good place to plant my raspberry bushes and since this area needed a little sprucing up I decided to “kill two birds with one stone”. We don’t have any hedge trimmers (I added them to the wedding registry list 😉 ) so I used a hand saw and
Continue reading