Garden Bounty

I know I have neglected to post much about my garden goings-on this summer. It survived! We've had awful heat and drought, but below is an example of some of the things I was able to harvest before clearing out the garden of spent plants and planting some things for fall crops.

That bloated, green thing you see is my last zucchini. It went into a very delicious Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake that didn't last more than 48 hours! The bottom of the basket is filled with basil. I cut down all eight of the plants and got a huge bag-full. I made three batches of pesto for the freezer and still have an abundance left in the fridge for cooking! I may dry some more, but I really have quite a lot from drying batches throughout the summer. I have LOVED my basil this year, but next year will keep to only 4 plants.

We had success with our jalapeno plant. You can see some green and also red jalapenos. We've had green all year, not sure why we had a few red ones this week. I need to research that.

Finally, finally, finally, I was able to harvest some tomatoes.  These are the first tomatoes that have been picked. There are many more - our tomato cage actually toppled over and we had to reinforce it with a fence stake. Next year we will look into more sturdy cages and I will also plant an Early Girl variety to have some tomatoes earlier in the season.

There is a lone yellow pepper. Notice it is lime green.  We haven't had great success with the two bell pepper plants. The yellow pepper plant has many fruits on it, but they don't ever ripen to yellow.  I picked this one to see if it will ripen off the vine.  The green pepper plant has nary a fruit on it, but it is just as tall and green and lush as the yellow pepper plant. I see flowers on it, so I am hoping we will yet see some peppers.

Notice those wonderful carrots? I grew em! I had so much anticipation to see what these looked like and they turned out wonderful. I only pulled out a few - there are many more still in the ground. I had to taste one as soon as we got inside and it was delicious. You can definitely tell a difference from the grocery store carrots. Crisp and crunchy and fresh. Yum!  I will have quite a few to harvest and am researching how to store them. Some people say to bury them in a bucket of sand in a cool place (root cellar). Also, you can slice them, blanch and freeze them.  I may try both methods just to see. In the meantime, they are in my fridge being snacked on and used in recipes.  I see carrot cupcakes in our future!

Last AND least are my poor shallots.  I was so excited to harvest these, but they were a total bust.  They didn't grow any bigger than the cloves I planted in May. I harvested them when the tops fell over but was so disappointed to see their small size. Not sure what went wrong here...

I may go back and add some historical shots of the garden over the summer. I took pictures, but just didn't blog them. It will help me next year to know what and when I did things this first go-round.

As for the fall - I planted some lettuce where the zucchini was and some more green onions to the green onion square.   I also purchased two blueberry bushes and four more broccoli plants.  Fingers crossed, my garden will continue to grow until the frosts shut it down!

First Day of First Grade!

Official first day of school shot:

Look at that big backpack! I am hoping it will last through college...

Waiting for the school crossing guard to walk the kids to school:

The crossing guard walks them all the way to the school doors:

Waiting for the bell:

  Getting off the bus at the end of a long day. She made it!

Hardware Renovations

One of the ways we decided to save some money on our renovation was to paint our kitchen cabinet hardware, rather than to buy new. I really like the pewter look, but we estimated that would be about $110.  I found a kit on Amazon to paint our existing handles and was pretty pleased at the look!

We saved almost $100 by going this route.  Here is a before and after (keep in mind the flash on our camera is broken so all my pictures will be crappy until Christmas):

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Demolition Day

There's no turning back, now!

We decided to do some redecorating in our family room and kitchen, thanks to some money we received from Great Grandma C's estate.  It's something that we've been talking about for several years and now we decided to go for it.

The plan is to put up a board and batten wall treatment, paint the upper portion of the walls, replace hardware, do a faux granite treatment on the countertops, install new flooring and maybe even get some new furniture. All that on a tight budget! Wish us luck...

Table Talk

In December, we rearranged our living room to accommodate our Christmas tree. The little craft table that the girls have used and abused, was moved to the other side of Sadie's kennel.  After Christmas, we realized that the girls had really outgrown the little craft table and decided to let them use Doug's old kitchen table for crafts.

My dad donated his old laptop for the girls to use for their computer time and the little table made a perfect computer desk:

This arrangement was working out quite well, but we began to fear for Doug's table. It is a very nice solid oak table (from Amish) and was a graduation gift from his parents. While we liked that it was being used, we didn't want it to be abused and suffer the same fate as the previous craft table:

I did some thinking and researching and came up with a solution to protect the table and our budget.  I cleaned off the glue and marker coloring that had already accumulated on the table top (love Magic Erasers!)

and bought a 4x8 piece of wall paneling from Menards.  The wall paneling has a smooth top, which is great for coloring, and is thick enough to protect the table top from scratches and stains. It also comes in a variety of colors and patterns. The one we chose has a "leather" look.

We inverted the table onto the wall paneling, traced the outline, and cut it out. One thing we didn't anticipate was that the cut paneling did not sit flat on our table top. :(  But a couple days with some weights and quick-grip clamps had it lying flat.

The girls can now craft away to their heart's content!

My First Garden Harvest

Here is the result of my first garden harvest:

It's not what you think it is! :)

My basil has been growing quite well, and after reading up on harvesting it, I decided to give it a nice trim.

  I left two sets of leaves under the stalks I clipped.

 For this first batch, I decided to break out my underutilized food dehydrator and try to dry some basil.  The instructions say to use the lowest setting, about 95 degrees, for 2-3 hours.

There was barely any noticeable progress made during that time, so I let it run overnight. The next morning the leaves were still not dry! So I cranked up the heat to full power and they were dry within a couple hours.  Not sure if my machine is not working correctly or if the instructions were way off?

In the end, I was left with crispy basil leaves that I put into a plastic bag to crumble up:

 I added them on top of my bottled oregano and look forward to using it in my future dishes!

Mulcha, Mulcha, Mulcha

On Monday, E and I did a little gardening. I love it! The weeds are starting to pop-up all over, so I am taking my friend Lisa's advice to put down some cardboard and mulch around my mature plants.

I had hoped to buy a straw bale to use on top of the cardboard, but the one and only source I had was all sold out.  So, I decided to be frugal and use what I had on hand! Since we have not treated our backyard with chemicals, I raked up some of the grass clippings to use for some mulch.  However, this did not amount to very much mulch... Next, I turned to the abundance of dried pine needles that cover the ground under two enormous pines on the south side of our property.  I've read mixed reviews about using pine needles as mulch for vegetables. The biggest drawback being that some people believe it makes the soil too acidic. But many others think that is not a major issue.

So, seeing as this is a year of experimentation (and frugality), E and I filled up our little sled with the pine-straw and spread it out over the cardboard. It looks pretty! (Doesn't E look like she's up to something?)

In other news, my tomato plant has clearly bit the dust (it's that limp, straggly white thing in the photo):

There's a Master Gardener sale at the county fairgrounds on Saturday and I plan to go check it out. I bet their tomatoes look better than this!

Not a single lettuce plant survived, so E and I planted some more romaine and crisphead seeds. The bibb seeds we planted on the 9th have sprouted up.  We also planted a little row of scallions to see what happens. I need to plant my zucchini soon, as the nine squares I've set apart for it are being encroached upon!

On a happy note, my shallots have all sprouted and are quickly growing wonderful, green, spiky shoots:

The sweet onions got the grass mulch:

And if you look closely, I believe there are two little cilantro sproutlings that survived the great transplant tragedy of 2011 and are going to make it after all:

Here's the latest garden snapshot: