stuff and garden update

 Here we are, halfway through 2021, fresh out of the school year and a week long terrible heat wave.  We've jumped right into fire season now; the village of Lytton was destroyed by fire this week and last night there was an evacuation here in town, after a thunderstorm rolled in and started quite a few fires by lightening.

We had a strike somewhere behind our house last night and the noise and vibration through the house was very scary.  The storm kept us up half the night and today I will be making a list of things we should grab if we have to be evacuated this fire season.

I did a quick search and found 3 Go Fund Me pages to help people from Lytton - 

 Love For Lytton

Helping Our Friends In Lytton 

Help For The Victims Of The Lytton Wildfire 

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I won't judge anyone on how they spent yesterday, but this year we did not celebrate Canada Day.  We did talk about ongoing residential school news with the kids, watched some videos about the schools as well as  some videos of walks and demonstrations that happened yesterday.  I MAY have left a few comments on the social media of some politicians and public figures that decided they wanted to show everyone how ignorant they are, but let's not go down that road right now.

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In my last post I mentioned an online course on Indigenous Canada from Coursera.  I am in week 8 of the course, and am so glad I'm doing this.  The course is free, should you be interested.

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 I don't much positive to say, this last while has been rough.  Let's end with a garden update, shall we?

Our raspberry patch is sparser than in prior years.  I think it needs some new soil and fertilizer in there, but for this year we're just letting it do what it wants.

The Mister planted a few peas in these 2 planters next to the tomato plant planter.  They have not enjoyed the up and down temperatures of the year so far.

Our garden this year became mostly potatos and tomatos - we bought some veg plants from a fundraiser and they weren't the best looking plants I've ever seen.  We planted them in the ground the week before the May long weekend, and bam - we got a late frost that killed a bunch of them.  We weren't happy with the amount of money that we'd already spent so we got a bag of seed potatos and more tomatos - The Mister's favorite crop.  We have one lone lettuce and a few cucumber plants that I doubt will do anything.

The Mister bought me a blueberry bush this year, and it's sitting next to a couple of zucchini plants in this section.  The kids discovered the blueberry bush has some blueberries and so now it's a full time job keeping them away from the bush to let the (very small) handful of berries have a chance to ripen.

Rhubarb, oregano, some other herbs.

My mint.

Our garden is absolutely full of butterflies this year!  I haven't seen this many butterflies in years.  They are so beautiful.  The Mister took this lovely photo yesterday.

garden update

 If you have been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for another garden update post, this is for you, bestie.  <3

Since my only other garden post this year at the beginning of July, the tomatos grew nicely.  This area is all cherry tomato plants, and then we have one roma tomato plant in a pot.  We have been very lucky and had a ton of cherry tomatos this year!  Probably our best tomato crop ever.

The potatos did ok..... I sort of expected more.  I think we need to add more dirt to this bed next year and make it deeper.  I forgot to weigh the tater haul, but we probably made our money back in what we paid for the bag of organic seed potatots that we planted.

Potatos above, potato plants before the kids ripped them up below.

The Mister planted some sweet peas for me.  When I was a kid my mom always planted a ton of these in our backyard, and when I was in grades 3 and 4 she would cut little bouquets for me to take to my teachers.  I'm sure that made me look like a sucky kid, but whatever!  Sweet peas make me think of my mom.

Here's what we harvested that day.  Lets see, what else  - the rhubarb went hard early in the season and then dramatically died off.  I know rhubarb is an early harvest, but our evil plant usually keeps giving and giving much longer than this year. I'm sure the heat and smoke did it no favors.  The blueberry plant only ever produced a couple of handfuls of berries, but it is new, so maybe that was to be expected.  The kale did not grow.  The zucchini did not grow.  We do have some pepper plants in a planter box with small peppers on them, maybe as long as your thumb?  I wanted to give them more time to grow, but it's getting cold at night, so we might pick them soon.  The lettuce bolted early.  We did get 2 small cucumbers that were pretty tasty.  The herbs were pretty stunted.  I'm sure it's mostly due to the terrible heat and fires we had this summer, but I think we will have to add some new dirt and fertilizer next year to try to boost things.  Maybe this winter I will become obsessed with garden tik toks to fill my time.

Garden Update - Week 7

It's that time again....garden catching up time!

We're about seven weeks in, and I'll tell you, it takes all the strength I have not to go to the garden and start pulling up the potatos and onions and beets to see how they are coming along. Then I would re-plant them, you understand, so they will keep growing. I have been advised that this would not work. Drat.

Let's start with some lettuce. It's coming along very well. We made BLT sandwiches with some last week.


Here are the radishes. They are HUGE. I pulled one last night, and when I cut it open it was all brown and obviously rotten on the inside. I was upset. But just now I ran back out there and pulled another. They are white, and long like carrots. This was one good - I just had a bite, and it's mildly peppery. My camera batteries are on the charger right now so you will have to take my word for it.


Carrots, slowly coming along. They're certainly no radishes.



Spinach! I'm pretty excited about when these will be bigger, although I've already sneaked some tastes.


Beets. I think the heat is getting to them, the poor tops aren't looking good.


The zucchini's have really really grown this week.



And, oh, what's that?? Could it be......a zucchini!?!?!


This is one of the heirloom tomato plants my Mom and Dad brought us last month. This one's called Stupice. I just Googled that, and they are a small red tomato from Czechoslovakia. There's 6 tomatos on this one.


Blurry possible beginnings of peppers.


This is another Heirloom tomato - this one is Early Red. My Google search turned up nothing, but let's assume these tomatos will be red and will mature early in the season, shall we?


My potatos. I can't WAIT until these are ready, I'm a real potato fiend.


The heat and sun aren't being kind to the poor onions either.


My basil from seed is actually growing, which shocked me. Here's the biggest plant so far.


Here's some more basil.


A full view of the garden.


So update me! How are your gardens coming? What did you plant that's doing really well? Are you harvesting stuff yet?

Happy Saturday!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo or, The Last Garden Update

Wednesday night we got frost. I've been sick all week so I didn't see the weather report that night. Thursday morning as I scraped a bit (and really, only a bit) of ice off my car windshield, it didn't occur to me that it had been cold enough to hurt my precious garden. But it was. After dinner Scott happened to look out the window and saw this:


I know, right? Breaks your heart. Sorry it's a bit blurry - I was quite emotional.

All the above ground stuff is dead. Very upsetting. What is most upsetting to me is I lost all my basil.


If only I had known, I would have picked it all and dried it. Now I am basil-less. And it sucks.

The rest of the potato plants died too.


I didn't share this with you because I didn't want to jinx it, but we had TWO ZUCCHINIS growing.


Dead tomatos and zucchini plants. But notice how green and vibrant the weeds are?


So we pulled everything and saved what we could. We pulled up 1 1/2 lbs of onions, 4 1/2 lbs of potatos, 1 sad wee zucchini, 4 lbs of green and somewhat red tomatos,


and 5 lbs of carrots.


Already almost all the carrots are gone. I took some to work to impress everyone with my mad growing skillz and we are slowly munching through the rest. They are so sweet and delicious.

So Garden 2007 is over. Here's to hoping that next years garden in BC is bigger and better. Or at least the same.

Garden Update and a trip to the market.

I took some new pictures of the garden on Sunday, but I have no patience tonight for sitting here waiting for the pictures to upload, so here's a full garden shot:


Both new and old onions are doing well. The carrots are gorgeous and delicious. I pulled up the spinach after Tanna, Mary and my Mom told me it was beyond saving. I replanted more spinach a few weeks ago, but nothing is happening in there. We've got tons of green tomatos, and have dug up enough potatos for 3 meals! Unfortunately the zucchinis are not doing well. I don't think we'll get anything off of either plant.

Look who's visiting my basil! Awww, so cute.


I went to Millarville on Saturday, and they were having their 100th Priddis and Millarville Fair. I saw some animals, old farm machinery, and the musical ride.


There were all sorts of competitions for animals, agriculture, arts, and food.

And the farmers market.


A literal ton of tomatos, cucumbers, cherries, zucchinis, pepper and Taber corn. I lurched back to my car and put all my goodies on the ground to get my keys out of my bag. An elderly couple was walking by into the market, and the gentleman said "Oh my, that is too many tomatos!". Now that I have them home, I am almost in agreement. So Scott and I have started Operation:Too Many Tomatos. You can look forward to many, many tomato related posts here in the future.

If anyone wants to give me suggestions to use them up, email me!!!

Garden Update - 3 weeks in

We planted our garden three weeks ago and I know you guys are dying to see how it's coming along. Well, I aim to please!
Here's some of the lettuce. Getting bigger!
Thanks to my Mom and Dad we've added 3 pepper plants to the garden.
Onions! Look how big they are.
The potatos are kicking some a$$.
Not much change in the tomato and zucchini plants.
There was nothing happening in the Carrot and Spinach areas. We bought some new seeds are were going to replant and lo and behold, the carrots had started to spring up. So we left them alone and replanted the spinach area with spinach and beets.
The radishes.
Carrots.
A new heirloom tomato plant, thanks Mom and Dad!

So, it's going ok so far. We've had lots and lots of rain; some sun would be welcome I'm sure.

How are your gardens? What are you growing this year?

Update 1 2 3 4.

1. I know it's only 2 weeks since our last garden update, but wait until you see what's been going on! We have progress, people! Behold...the RED TOMATOS!!!!!!

Take a gander at these TWO PEPPERS!!!!

Marvel at these other tomatos too!

Hot zucchini action!


Can anyone help me? What is going on with my spinach? It's not getting any bigger and seems to be flowering. Was I supposed to pick it already? Do I pinch off the stemmy flowering bits? Is it doomed? There's some beets in the corner too, by the way.


Potatos. How do I know when they are ready? Is it too early?


The onions are looking rough. Hopefully the actual onion part will be OK.


The radishes got all crazy looking, so we pulled them up and planted more onions. Two are already poking thru.


The basil is lovely! I can't believe this came from seed. I've been picking it by the handfuls.


Full shot.


2. In other super fantastic news......OK, so I've been wanting a Le Creuset pot for about 100 years. They are expensive, so I don't have one. A few months ago at Williams Sonoma I saw a similar pot made by Emil Henry but it was still pretty pricey. So yesterday at lunch I was at the mall doing some banking and I decide to check out Williams Sonoma before I go back to work. I head directly to the sale tables at the back and there I see.....the Emil Henry pot I wanted. I pick it up and look at the tag. Regular price $140.00, marked down to........$29.99. I nearly had an accident in the store. Behold, my beautiful new 2 Quart pot:


Isn't it beautiful? I'm getting teary just looking at that picture.

3. You're dying to read all about another farmers market, aren't you. I knew it! Ok, go here and read my latest post at Foodtv.

4. I had a busy weekend last weekend and wasn't able to make it to Millarville and I've just learned that my favorite farm there has shut down. I am beyond sad. Whiskey Creek had the most amazing produce, were the nicest people and they were my first stop at the market every week. Please go and read their home page. This is why we all need to support our local growers as much as we can.