Garden 2024 Update #4

For many, spring is a very fast moving, things-are-changing-quickly season if you're keeping a productive garden.  Lots of work to be done both indoors and outdoors.  Plus, if you're like me, you've got all sorts of big ideas and big plans for changes and additions to your space, so that's just work on top of the work. 

This year, I'm planting the same amount (more or less) in my staple garden, but I'm not taking as much time to invest in different varieties of things, or what I usually call the "experiment garden bed" as I've done before. Instead, and it's really long overdue, this year my plan is to work hard at beautifying the space.   

Over the last several years I really haven't focused on that aspect of the garden as much as I'd like to, so this is the year to make it as lovely, comfortable and inviting as I know how to make it.  Anyway, that's the goal.  So here's a few shots over the last few days for a mostly pictorial update as things are getting busy out there!

The 6x6 wooden post the mint is sitting on: recycled old clothesline post. 

Thrifted metal window wells turned into a raised bed.

Yukon Gold potatoes in those eight grow bags. Please excuse the wheelbarrow handles 😁

Russet Potatoes in these two grow bags on the left. First year growing them so that's exciting! 

The first 4 white pots are different mints used for tea, then Lemon Balm and Yarrow at the end. 

My raspberry bush relocated for the 3rd time.  Now it's between the Peonies, permanently. 

A Bloomerang Lilac I've had for almost a year now. Easily doubled in size if not more. 

Meet Mr. Ed.  He always follows me around in the garden. 

He just turned 8 years old a few days ago. Happy birthday Mr. Ed! 

A new, faux raised bed/border box. It sits flush with the deck without being attached. 

Future home to rhubarb & strawberries.

I really can't ask for a better view. I mean, wow! 

Garden 2024 Update #3

 I've been BUSY outside, so here's how things are looking nearly mid-April.

We've had the most unseasonably mild weather, and that's allowed for a lot of work out in the garden, getting things ready for spring planting.  It's probably one of my most favorite times of year.  For the first time, after a long winter indoors, being able to walk barefoot through the garden, hearing the birds singing, and the sound of a warm spring breeze rustling through the trees.  There's really no other feeling quite like it.  

I've been doing a little tidying up, and moving furniture around in the back corner of the garden where the pond is.  I've moved grandpa's bench to the Honeysuckle tree and will be doing some landscaping around that area with some wild flowers and mulch, just to tidy it up a little. No pics yet, since it looks pretty rough, but those will come soon.  I added these cute solar lights in the Lilac bush, and will be hanging solar string lights in a canopy from the fence to the garden cottage.  These red Muskoka chairs will be replaced hopefully sometime soon. My goal in this part of the garden is to make it as inviting and cozy as possible, so I'm hoping for some lovely, thrifted bistro chairs here, with nice waterproof cushions.  I love  having multiple places in the garden to just sit for a moment with a cup of coffee in the morning, or a glass of wine in the evening, and simply enjoy being there, in the beautiful moment.  

My garlic is coming in nicely, with a 99% success rate.  20 cloves planted, and 19 have come in.  This location for my garlic was supposed to be a temporary experiment to see how it did in this bed, but it's become rather convenient and now this is the 3rd year I've grown it here.  It's planted on Halloween then harvested usually by Canada Day or the 4th of July.  After the garlic is harvested in July, beets will take their place. I have to say that now I fully understand the popularity of those stainless steel raised beds that are up to 3 feet tall.  Being able to amend the soil, plant the seeds, water and harvest without ever bending over or getting down on my knees is rather enjoyable.  These kinds of raised beds would be perfect for anyone with mobility issues where bending or kneeling may be difficult. 

These chives I planted very last minute last growing season, and I wasn't sure if they'd survive winter at all but sure enough, they survived just fine and have made a sweet comeback this spring.  I didn't get a chance to use them much last year but I did manage to snip a few here and there for salads & baked potato toppings.  Very pleased to see them come back so strong, and so early.

My indoor growing space has been wonderfully productive. 

Nothing fancy at all, just a couple of wire shelves, a few heat mats and some grow lights. Growing here are strawberries, onions, ground cherries, tomatoes, rhubarb, lemon balm, peppers, green onions, cucumbers & potatoes.  My carrots have already been planted, and the onions will be going out as soon as this latest rainy weather system passes by, this weekend. 

A really fun new addition to the garden this year is a DIY Feeder Cam station I set up with a spare Ring spotlight cam.  A couple of years ago the lights stopped working on the camera, so instead of using it to capture the night time wild life, I'm now using it to record all the birds and other critters that venture into the yard and dine at the feeder. I've made over my old Youtube channel thats been sitting dormant since 2006 and now it will be home to my Feeder Cam videos.  Brand new content so not a lot there yet but there's a lot being edited & prepped for uploading soon.  My hope with this fun little hobby is to create enjoyable videos that are also educational. You can see that here, at Barefoot in the Garden.

I hope I've encouraged you to get out there, and get planting your own garden! 

Simply, Grow Up

When I decided to resume blogging at the beginning of the year, one of the first things I did was give my blog a complete makeover.  From the layout, to format, to the content. 

I even painted and redecorated. 😊  Everything was refreshed and updated to more accurately reflect the content I prefer to make public in 2024. Well, everything except my profile pic which is at least 10+ years old. I was having a fabulous, flat-iron hair day at my favorite steak house.  That pic will eventually be updated as well.   

In any event, while in the process of doing all of that the thought occured to me how vastly different it is to "meet" someone online, than it used to be meeting someone in person. Up until about 20 years ago (give or take), when you met someone (in person) and began to form a friendship with them, you were simply meeting that person in the context of who they currently are. 

What they think, today.  What their politics are, today.  What faith or lack of faith they have, today.  You had no way of digging into their past to discover who they were or what they thought or believed 5 or 10 years ago and the very idea of even being willing or able to do that probably struck most of us as sort of sketchy, stalker type behavior. That's the sort of thing you may or may not learn as you get to know the person and they share some of that information with you. A sort of natural progression in an actual relationship dynamic. 

It's probably not a small thing that we are literally the first people in all of human history to ever write down (or in our case, type out) every thought, every opinion, every like, dislike on every topic under the sun, political or religious position, and then publish it for the entire world to see.  Day after day, month after month, year after year for nearly 2 decades now on social media platforms alone, but even blogs like this from the early 2000's and personal web pages going back to the early 90's for many of us.  While the world has always had writers and dreamers, the internet and social media in particular, has given a platform to the entire world to be a writer, a dreamer or as the world likes to call it now, an influencer.

We're also the first people in all of human history to be able to just "google" anyone you want, and read everything they've ever posted, good, bad & ugly. It's like we're all writing our own reviews of ourselves that anyone can just log on and read. 

Kind of wild when you think of it that way but, that's what we're doing. 😲

Earlier this year while tidying up my blog, I found countless posts containing positions I no longer hold on various social issues, opinions I no longer have on all sorts of things, and loads of sinful, cringe attitude I no longer entertain. These are things I no longer want "out there" in the world, representing me today because it's simply no longer who I am.  Those who knew me then may or may not recall how I was 5, 10 or 20 years ago, but I've decided I prefer to do things the way human beings have done since the dawn of humanity.  

Simply, to grow up. Then allow the young, full of girl-boss attitude, mouthy, crass, often unkind, immature me to just fade from memory, hopefully, the way those kinds of memories fade in a natural progression in any normal relationship. Instead of being documented in an easily searchable format to showcase every dumb, immature, ignorant thing I ever said. Not that every post I ever published was full of this kind of immaturity, enough of them were over the years that it demanded my attention to be sure.  While we all go through that phase of life, I'm leaving that in the past where it belongs. And simply, starting over, from here. Starting over from a far more compassionate and quiet spirit, as the Lord has led over the years. 

I've had some pretty extreme thoughts about social media over the years but at the end of the day it's really just a tool.  I know some use it the wrong way but I see so many people using it for really good things and I've deliberately decided for 2024 and going forward, I'm choosing to use it as a tool that hopefully showcases God's grace, some encouragement for whoever might need it and maybe even a smile or a laugh or two, to brighten someone's day. 

I hope this has encouraged you in some way. 😊

Garden 2024 Update #2

I'm doing these garden updates mostly for myself to keep accurate records of what worked, what didn't, and why. 

I thought it would be fun to make them public, in hopes of inspiring or encouraging anyone else out there attempting to grow their own. 

I accidentally deleted the actual #2 update. Some pics from the now-deleted last update:

Since my last update I'm thankful to say overall, things are still going really well.

Seen in the pics above are sweet potato slips at about 30 days after clipping off the sweet potatoes, and there were roughly 18 of them.  Things have changed a lot since then. 

The yellow onions are still doing really well.  So far, after many years in a row of yellow onion failure (in one form or another) I'm delighted to say this is the best they've ever done for me. Since my growing philosophy is simply to grow what you eat, and this household goes through a lot of onions every year, this has been my most challenging crop. I'm hopeful this is the breakthrough year where it all goes well!  I greatly overplanted with the hopes they'd all do well, so whatever I don't use will be going to my daughter and son-in-law's garden to feed their family. 

For the last several years I've gone between a growing station in my dining room to a cheap plastic/aluminum greenhouse on my deck. I loved the greenhouse (and it held up impressively well, but wasn't designed for the harsh, southern Ontario winters)  but it was too much work to dismantle & rebuild every year. This is my set-up now in an almost 0% traffic location of my laundry room.  It really didn't take much to re-imagine the space, move a couple of things and create a very convenient indoor, temperature & light controlled grow room for all my seed starting needs.  What's growing here currently is sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes, yellow onions, Alpine strawberries, 3 varieties of tomatoes, 3 varieties of peppers, ground cherries and a pot of lemon balm I planted from seed last spring. 

In a couple more weeks I'll start my zucchini and that will be it for the indoor seed starting this year. One major change is not growing my pickling cucumbers from indoor seelings.  I'll be direct sowing cucumber seed this year, and seeing how that works out over starting them indoors.  

Overall, germination has been really successful except for a couple of things I used older seeds for, that were purchased last spring. That was sort of an experiment to see if year old seeds did as well as recently purchased seeds.  Results: they do not. Lesson learned.  This year I'm also going to be more geared toward seed saving with all my most common crops. 

This is my kitchen window shelf now, where the sweet potato slips live in their jars of water, while they develop their lovely roots.  I've lost an accurate count but after I snipped more off the potatoes today and added them to the jars, there are roughly 60 slips here. One slip will produce roughly 6 sweet potatoes so, assuming each one remains healthy until time to plant ... you're looking at roughly 360 sweet potatoes here. 😲

I don't have nearly enough room prepared for that many slips so all the extras will also be going to my daughter and son-in-law's garden.  One of the coolest things about these slips is that they all came from only 3 medium sized sweet potatoes. If this is something your family eats a lot of, this is a fantastic way to save money on groceries. 

All of my tomatoes are doing well.  I'm growing sauce tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.  Germination rate has been really good for most all of them except the sauce tomatoes.  Only around 50% there, so I re-seeded a few days ago and we'll see how it goes.  If I don't have what I have already planned for by outdoor planting time I'll pick up plants at my local organic greenhouse.  Which is always a dangerous trip since I tend to then come home with extra peppers, some different herbs, and sometimes another fruit tree. 😂

I have experimented enough over the years to know for sure now, that I need to toss out any and all seeds over a year old.  Every time, they've proven to be very low producers in germination rates so it's time to get rid of them.  I'll only be keeping any flower seeds I have, and creating a spot for those in the front yard.  I have some really big ideas of turning my front yard into a Pollinator Paradise, so this will be a fun step this year to see how that goes. 

I hope this blesses you and encourages you to be a good steward of God's awesome gifts.