Herb Garden

 I am trying an herb garden this year.

I ended up with not enough soil so I had to get more and replant.  They are looking good so far.  I need to do some reading up on the herbs.

 

Garden Inspiration #1

I really like this stone path.

We spent a bit enjoying Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah about a week ago.
I found this interesting:

And upon closer inspection of a few of the trees:

Already?  I love planning ahead!

Carrot Harvest

I've been digging up (and wishing the soil wasn't quite so hard in some places) carrots. I got a couple buckets of these beautiful Scarlet Nantes. They only grow to be about 5" and I was glad I didn't have to try to unlodge anything longer. I'll keep amending the soil and it'll get easier but for this season, I am thankful for these little guys.

Easter Favors

I made these for a few of my neighbors. I used this tutorial to make the bunny seed starter, included a couple verses from a hymn, instuctions for planting and a bow.

Fence

We have declared this the Week of the Fence. We are spending all our free time getting our fence put around our property. It makes my muscles sore.

Mystery Seed

My daughter found a seed while we were on a walk.  She wanted to know what it would grow up to be.  I have no idea.  So we planted it.   It's a fairly large seed (this is a little girl hand).  We planted it maybe five days ago and haven't seen anything yet.  Anyone have any ideas what this could be?

Spring Bulbs

My children were playing outside and came in saying they had picked me a flower from the yard. I wasn't sure what I expected to see but it was actually a flower - a big and beautiful one. "Where did you get that?!" They showed me. I planted a bunch of bulbs in the fall. Most of them where planted to line the sidewalk up to our front door but I planted a few off to the side in a place that I didn't really expect them to grow. But they did! And early! There were probably ten of these little beauties scattered around.

Do you see my little man's cowboy boots?  So cute!

I let them each pick one (maybe they will grow back?).

Then I checked around the walkway and a few are coming up there!  Spring comes early here!  Hooray!

So as it was raining and even snowing a bit yesterday, I kept picturing this:

surrounded by all of these:

Flower photos from Van Engelen Inc.

There will also be a few surprises because my sister and brother-in-law brought me some bulbs from Holland, Michigan when they visited.  I don't know what they will look like but there are five already coming up where I planted those.

Oh, I am hoping for a beautiful spring!

Already!

Look what I found yesterday!  It's the sweet basil.  That was quick!

Garden Starts

I discovered a few years ago that I love to garden. I'm still learning (and probably always will be) especially having moved somewhere new last fall. The soil here is clay. From what I understand, I'm going to have to really work the soil over or I won't be growing anything but pottery. I hope to have a garden this year...

In the spirit of this hope, I started a few seed indoors. The season isn't long enough for green peppers to just be planted in the garden in the spring so I started some of those and decided I'd give some herbs a try while I was at it.

I tore a newspaper in thirds the long way,

found a container that I liked the size of,

wrapped a length of newspaper around it,

tucked the ends in,

pulled it off the jar and made a biodegradable container to put my sweet little seeds in.

I cut the top part off a gallon milk jug.  The milk jug works as a nice little green house for the seeds.  If it gets too warm, I can just take the lid off and let a little heat out.

and placed my newpaper pots inside. 

 
To help them stand a little better, I pour a some water in the bottom of each one.  That softens the paper so it doesn't knock itself over.

I figured out what I was going to plant where and went to it.

After having planted all these things, I got to thinking and remembered that the teacher of an herb growing class I took said she replaced the peas in her garden with basil.  Peas haven't even been thought about yet...I may  have started my basil too early...we will see.

I had a couple of helpers dump in some seedling mix.

we added the seeds and ended out with:

The container on the bottom right held doughnuts, I believe.  It works perfectly.
I just need to keep them moist and in the sun as much as possible.  Not having an accessible south facing window is not ideal but it is what it is...

Have you started planting anything?  What plans do you have for your garden?

The Harvest Begins

It snowed two days ago. Today I pulled these beauties from my garden. What an exciting day! I only wish I knew how to cook these so I like them! Any suggestions?

Sunflowers (not Snowflowers)

It's been snowing for the last couple of days on our Earth Day Sunflower House. I covered many of the flowers with little milk jug "greenhouses" in hopes of keeping them a little bit warm. The rest I covered with a sheet set that has silly putty stuck all over it. When I checked the sunflowers yesterday, they were doing okay. I haven't checked today -- it's too cold to go out! That is why the picture is from so far away. I didn't want to leave the comfort of my warm home to snap a picture of my garbage (and snow) covered flowers.

Earth Day

To celebrate Earth Day, we planted sunflowers and morning glories to make a sunflower house that the kids can play in during the summer. The idea came from Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots I bought heirloom sunflower seeds from Seed Savers so I can harvest the seeds and replant next year. We also reused household items that would have been thrown away or recycled for the containers (newspaper, milk jugs, toilet paper tubes, paper grocery bags, etc.) when starting the seeds. We talked about the things we love about our earth and what we can do to help the earth.
These are our sunflower starts. We used most of them.
This is what the base of our house looks like:

Now we just have to watch the weather carefully to make sure they don't get too cold. We love our earth!

Oh, and we bought second-hand bikes for the kids today so they can spend time outside enjoying our earth.