My daughter Melanie and I started this blog to keep a journal of sorts on our gardening adventure.  The true is, we were so busy gardening and doing yard work we didn't do a very good job of blogging.  This year I am going to try to keep this one going. 

I have planted some pots already and worked the soil in my gardening boxes.  I have not set out all of my plants because Idaho weather is insane.  Last week it froze for several days.  I have learned my lesson being here six years and that is put tomatoes and cold sensitive plants out the first week of June.  Memorial Day week seems to be the last of the frost.  But, frost aside, the hailstorm did do some damage.  Plus, my dog ate three of my plants, cilantro, cucumber and part of a basil plant.  I am not sure why, but every year for seventeen years Daisy has destroyed a few garden plants.  She really old now and I hope that every season she is done doing her destruction.  I was proven wrong again. 

I also grew some seedlings indoors.  I am excited to get all of this finally in and going.  My pots are doing great and I have several heirloom tomatoes in big pots.  I love watching things grow and love working out doors.  That is why my indoors looks like it does.  We have a short growing season but the garden did well last year and I am hoping for better turnout for this year.

The funny thing is, I have two apple trees that are great.  However, one will bear so heavy one year and the other one very light.  Now they switched and the one that gave me a few apples last year is loaded and the other is light.  I think that apples do that as they get older.  Anyone have information on this let me know.  My raspberries are loaded with berries and I love seeing the bees out there doing their job.  Now, its weeding and a little pruning and waiting for the produce.  I am still planting and preparing boxes.  I can't go to a nursery or Home Depot or Lowes and not buy more plants. 

Bugs

Aphids are still eating my pine tree. Jason poured the insecticide on the tree about ten days ago. I am so MAD!!! I must call the nursery and find out what else I can do. I usually am opposed to insecticides but I have to save my tree!

Other notes. My sunflowers are dead and/or dying but they attract TONS of birds in the morning. Which was why I had planted them. My cosmos still look great which is awesome. Everything is kind of going dormant. We did plant the new lilac from Mom and it is the biggest bush we have now. It looks great.

The neighbors put up a fence on our one side and we are stoked. I am going to watch and see how much shade it produces. We have had rain a lot this last week and that has been awesome. I have started to water the trees and bushes just once a week in prepping them for winter. I am interested to see if any of my plants "heave" which would be awesome and horrible at the same time. I need a few more bags of mulch to put all around the shrubs before the snow falls. I am debating about using straw since it is in abundance right now. And of course I am busily mentally preparing my next years garden. Even with all the bugs and whatever else went wrong this year, I am super excited for next year.

Two of our favorite recipes

We love to eat in this house. Jason and I were trying to find something we had in common and we both like to eat and cook. Here are some of our favorite fresh recipes.

Pesto Pasta with zucchini

For Pesto you need
2-3 cups of fresh basil
2-4 cloves of garlic depending on how big and how much you like garlic
1/4 cup of nuts (pine if you like a sharp flavor or walnuts if you like mild flavors)
1/4 cup of romano or Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Mix everything but the olive oil in the blender or food process. Then add as much olive oil as you want. I put in about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup depending, we like it just barely runny. If the basil is too sharp/spicy you can add spinach or parsley to dull the flavor. So make this and set it aside.

Cut one zucchini per two people into quartered dices. Saute for about 12 minutes in a frying pan with two teaspoons of olive oil per zucchini. Add either a cup of cherry tomatoes or a cup of diced tomatoes for about two to three minutes, until they are soft. Pour over pasta, and drizzle pesto to taste. Mix and enjoy!


Another fantastic recipe is our homemade tomato sauce.
For just one dinner for a few people these are the ingredients.

7-10 large tomatoes
3-5 cloves of garlic minced
1/3 cup chopped onion
salt and pepper to taste
one tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup fresh herbs minced: basil, oregano, parsley are good ones to start with
and if you like veggies in your sauce add whatever you want

I run my tomatoes through a press but you can skin them the old fashioned way by boiling them for a few minutes and then putting them in cold water and pulling the peels off. Then smash them up, if you want to make them absolutely smooth put them in a blender or food processor.

Put the oil, onion and garlic in the pan and saute them for a few minutes until the onions turn translucent. If you want the onions to brown add two teaspoons of sugar in with them. Then add the tomatoes and the herbs and salt and pepper. Bring to a rapid boil for five minutes and then reduce to a simmer until it reduces in half. That can take anywhere from one to two hours. Just beware. If you don't have that kind of time, add a can of tomato paste. Then you can brag that you made homemade sauce in like twenty minutes!

These are our favorite meals to eat during the summer. Hope you enjoy!

What happened to the heat?

So I have loaded tomato bushes and tons of flowers still on them and no heat!!!!!!!!!! Everything has been weird this year. It has been cooler, wetter and more humid than any Utah summer that I have spent in Utah! It is crazy.

Here are some observations from our yard.

Mom and Dad were right of course, the lilac just needed a friend and some shade. I moved one of the pots of basil out there and it perked right up. The wind killed the basil on Sunday. So much for that.

The sunflowers that I planted really early have still no blooms and are small. The ones Daniel and I planted almost the end of june are about four feet tall and opening up. I think it is because the other ones get no house protection from wind, which has been bad this year. I also think they get too much water because the ground over there never dries out between the lawn sprinklers and the flower bed sprinklers. Any other ideas about why the early sunflowers are sad? Maybe I planted them too deep?

My square foot garden was good but not like super fantastic this year. But I think we did pretty good for our first garden out of pots. Next year will be even better, the tomatoes will be planted differently for sure. I am still glad we did it.

My cosmos are beautiful and just starting to really bloom. we had one that was like a really awesome dark pink. It was really cool and Daniel loves to show people the yard.

The butterfly bushes are now twice the size and they look awesome. They are not over two feet tall and are about three feet wide. They have attracted lots of pollinators our way.

The trees are all doing good and we didn't lose one in the wind on Sunday which was nice. One of our ash trees is a hornet hangout and it is not doing as well. It's leaves are brownish and the new leaves take a long time to uncurl. Not sure what to think about it. The other ash tree is really pretty and doing well. The pine trees and other trees are all doing good so we are glad.

I have heard that if it can last for one year, than it will probably stick around. So is the planting news in the area. It will be interesting to see what happens in the yard through next year.

I have read a few phenomenal books and wanted to write them down before I forget. One is "Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West" by Marcia Tatroe. I loved this book because it helped me not hate our rocks. The other one was "Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture" by Toby Hemenway. This book was just amazing. It wasn't fanatical but a very realistic way to approach your yard. Permaculture is a functioning garden/landscape that both wildlife and humans enjoy. It has been very helpful in provided good ideas about catching rain water, planting for your area, and bringing nature to life and work in your yard. Jason has agreed to let me put some of the less extreme ideas to work in our yard. Anyone have a tractor we can borrow?

Utah has announced/legalized the ability to put two one hundred gallon rain barrels in our yard. Or anyone's yard in Utah. This will be our first step in letting nature help us in our yard. We are still debating about chickens.

July

Here are some things on my mind grapes about the yard and garden.

I think we are watering too much. Most of the things in our garden/yard are good matches for our soil but it is hard to tell if they are getting all the water they need. I know the weeds have been getting enough water so the plants should be too right?

The grasshoppers are not as plentiful around our garden area but I have found a lot in the grass. While weeding with the kids the other day three green grasshoppers jumped out of the grass and Daniel shouted "Mom!!! Grasshoppers!!!" Thus I proceeded to squish one with my shoes and kill the other two with the spade. It was awesome.

So I sprayed some soapy water on the plants to help with bugs but I think my solution was too high on the soap. The leaves on some of the plants turned an odd color and when I sprayed them with water to wash off the soap bubbles were everywhere.

The ash tree that was doing poorly is recovering and we are so glad. The lawn is looking better considering it is July. The lilacs are struggling the most. The one has been eaten alive by bugs and has rust colored leaves. The other one is still dried out like crazy but I know it is getting water because I water. Any ideas?

I have been reading about weeds and xeroscaping and all sorts of gardening things. Slowly but surely I will be enlightened enough to kill things in the yard. Mostly I am hoping to kill the weeds with out killing my children or the things I want growing.

I pulled up the bean plant (I just had one), because I could not figure out what was wrong with it. The yellow pear tomato is the biggest plant I have ever seen. It has taken over the other plants next to it and has tons of babies, we are so excited. The peppers are not doing well, but not a big loss for us since we don't really eat them. The cantaloupe has tons of blooms but no fruit so in two weeks if it is not showing fruit I will pull it up.

We are thankful for the rain today. Daniel and I saw a bunny, frogs, and at least ten kinds of birds at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens today. I love that place.

Grasshoppers and other garden annoyances

I gotta say, I am not loving our lot as much as I thought I would. We love that no matter what we will not have close neighbors but it is huge and sometimes I want to just cement the whole things and be done with it. But these are some things we have been battling and enjoying.

Weeds. I hate them and don't know which one is which. I only know two weeds coming in my yard by name so my hunt for a good weed book (hopefully from the library) is going to begin soon. We got weed killer for the lawn and the weeds in the back and then our landscaper told us some other things to do. But hopefully I can get a leg up on them. I just can't weed with the kids out there because we have small cliffs and my kids are too involved climbing the rocks to notice how lethal that is.

Grasshoppers. Thanks to my awesome parents I killed a flying grasshopper with a rock yesterday and it was awesome. I have killed a bunch and put out some poison so hopefully that will help. I read on the USU extension page that grasshoppers are supposed to be bad for a few years. I think I will get some powder poison and spread it casually in the emptiness behind us.

All my plants are blooming with small fruits on them. The peas and carrots are done I think. My pea plants have dried up. Some of my onions are starting to fall over which is awesome to watch. I love the garden and am so glad we put it in a box where it is super easy to maintain.

My plants are all doing alright. One of the ash trees looks a little sad. Two of the boxwoods are doing well but the other ones are struggling. Our sunflowers are doing well except the ones that Alice steps on every time and hopefully they will survive the heat that is coming.

The heat makes it hard for me to go out and weed and do other maintenance because it is too hot for the kids outside. But some of the plants are loving the heat, like the basil is doing much better.

Next year hopefully we will have more flowers.

Gardening woes and woohoos

I love our garden. Here are some things I have learned already.

Square foot gardening is super easy and your garden looks really awesome. I love it and think I will (hopefully) add to my one box next year.

Radishes are not all that great. But they are fun to grow. We ended up throwing a lot of them away. It was much easier to do this than to throw out a tomato plant that I have no room for. Funny isn't it?

My kids love the garden. Daniel helped me thin the carrots. Alice helped by sitting on the echinacea and breaking it in half. Amazingly things still survive.

Our soil is so crummy. The clay wouldn't be nearly as bad if our soil wasn't about solid rock. All we do is dig up rocks. So if anyone ever needs rocks please just come and take them. We have learned lots of good tricks though. Pick axes are much better than shovels around here. Our neighbors lent us this huge iron bar that you smash into the ground and it helps with digging huge holes. We are exciting to get our own huge iron bar. It is absolutely amazing to me that things survive in this clay soil. We are waiting anxiously to see how our plants manage. So far most things look pretty good.

So far we have four different kinds of trees planted, butterfly bushes, raspberries, boxwood, dogwood, forsythia, cotoneaster, lilacs, and a bunch of herbs and a few flowers. We are awaiting the emergence of our sunflower seeds. It has been hard to plant the seeds since it is always windy or raining. Daniel loves shoving the seeds into the ground. He is the best helper. Until he tries to dig up and move all the topsoil, then he is a bad helper.

Here are a few things we are managing and learning to manage. Weeds. The lawn and mushrooms on the lawn. How to deal with empty lots all around us. Wind. So more on these subjects to come.

On a good note. Our seven different tomatoes are doing awesome as are our peas, carrots, peppers and onions. The basil in the garden looks a little sad but hopefully will snap out of it. We are really hoping for at least one super fantastic cantaloupe this summer. Only one bean seed came up but I think that is great considering we left for Hawaii two days after I planted them so when the neighbor kids watered the garden they thought that box was empty and ceased to water it. Maybe I will go stick another few seeds in there. I love green beans.

Recent health findings in our family has made eating healthy a top priority for the year. I am excited that our garden can help us with these new goals.