Back in November we posted about our first time planting winter onions. There were several interested so we wanted to be sure and give an update on them. They are growing nicely and are starting to really get some thickness. We are very excited as last year our onions were disappointing (albeit it our fault).
Our First Winter Onions
4 Month Update
5 Month Update (Comparison to Annual Onion Sets)
6 Month Update
Harvesting and Curing Onions
One Year Update
I love wind chimes. I do not think Jon shares my passion for them. I believe to him they are more of a racket than melody. On our front porch we I have three wind chimes. Two of them I got years ago at the same time. They are identical except one is black and the other is just metallic.
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| Black “Coated” Wind Chime |
I love daffodils. I like flowers in general, but I believe I love daffodils so much because they are usually the first flowers to bloom. Many times I am almost surprised when I see them. I excitedly think “the daffodils are blooming already”. They are the first signs of spring around here and it just makes me smile.
Saturday morning as I pulled into the driveway after running some errands I caught a brilliant yellow glimpse of spring in my flower bed. As soon as I got out of the car I had to go right to it and soak in the beauty.
Continue reading “For the Love of Daffodils”
First let me discuss the fine print. I have never tried this. This comes from conversations with one of my relatives and it sounds rather plausible. So, if anyone has tried this, please let us know.
The basic theory is that you can take a growing grapevine and simply redirect it back into the ground and back up. You bury the end of the vine four to six inches in the ground. Bend it into a U shape so the end of the vine protrudes back up out of the ground. That end then becomes a new grapevine with its own roots.
The basic concept is the same as using cuttings to grow new grapevines, but you do not have to cut them, or wait until next spring to plant them. You can do this in the middle of the summer, any time you have a cane long enough to reach the spot you want to start a new grapevine. The draw back to this is you have to start the new grapevine pretty close to the original. However, if you happen to have an unruly grapevine that you are planning to begin to use, you probably have several very long canes. You could start several new grapevines and start a mini grape vineyard.
New grapevines can be propagated from the cuttings pruned from your grapevines. Since grapevines must be pruned every year, this gives you the opportunity to plant more and more grapevines every year without going out and spending hard earned money for more. We like free.
You will want to plan your pruning with the plan of planting your cuttings. The cuttings must be planted in the same direction they are growing, that is the end of the cutting that is closest to the base of the vine needs to go in the ground. An easy way to keep track of which end is which is to cut the bottom of the cutting straight across, and the top of the cutting trimmed at an angle. This way you can always tell which end of the cutting goes in the ground.
Continue reading “Growing New Grapevines From Pruned Cuttings”
It is the time of the year to prune grapevines. It is best to prune them during their dormant stage in the winter, but it is also a good idea to prune them as late in the winter as possible. Pruning them late in the winter leaves less time before the open wounds caused by pruning to naturally heal themselves. During the winter, the vines are dormant and will not heal the wounds caused by pruning. This leaves a slight chance of disease to enter through the wound. Now, it is still better to prune them early in the winter than to wait to long, but to be on the safe side, I like to wait until late in the winter.
There is a lot of information to be found on the internet about pruning your grapevines, but a lot of it is very difficult to follow. I have read and reread dozens of posts about pruning grapevines, and to be honest it was mostly very difficult to follow. Luckily this is our first year, so the pruning this year is rather straight forward.
Continue reading “Pruning the Grapevines”
Recently I was given the opportunity to review the newly released “The Gardening Notebook” E-book by Angi at SchneiderPeeps. I’ve had it for about a week now and quickly glossed over it when I first received it. However, I did not want to do a review until I could spend more time with it.
Gardening Notebook
Continue reading “The Gardening Notebook E-book Review”
Yesterday after church and our grocery run in Walmart, Jon planted our new raspberry vines that we bought from Tractor Supply Company Saturday. These were packed in peat moss and the raspberries we ordered online last year were shipped in a dormant dry root state.
I apologize the posts have been sparse this week. Work has been hectic and very full days all week and it seems life has just been a bit busy.
My oldest came by Monday after work to discuss his taxes, all the details about getting his wisdom teeth cut out this coming Monday, and to drop of his laptop for some software installation. It was good to spend the evening with him as sometimes I may not see him for a couple of weeks.
Then Tuesday I worked a little late as I was on the brink of a coding breakthrough and I just could not let it go! I got my program working fantastically and headed home. My boss was in the parking lot as I was leaving work and texted me that my car didn’t sound right and I should probably get it looked at. I had not noticed, but I turned the radio off and did hear the humming/whirling sound it was making. I had just had the oil changed last week and there were not issues. So, naturally I am really concerned as my Envoy is a 2005 and has 145k+ miles on it. After getting home, since Jon was closing I worked on George’s laptop. I installed his AVG virus protection, Microsoft Office, and then did some “clean up” on his laptop as he does not. He would not be offended if he never had to use a computer again, but alas he must use one for college.
Jon was off Wednesday and had already planned on taking his truck to the dealer as his check engine light had been on for a few days and his truck was less than a year old. So, he did that super early and luckily all was well. They said it was some code due to the aftermarket gas cap he has (we all had our gas syphoned awhile back and bought locking gas caps). OK, whatever at least it wasn’t anything big. So he was done at the dealership about the time I was heading to work. So I dropped my car off at another garage for them to take a look and Jon picked me up and took me to work. I had a bad idler pulley and they replaced it for $159. Well, that wasn’t in the budget, but at least it wasn’t worse. I was worrying the whole time until the garage called to tell me the problem. Then Wednesday evening we all went to church after work and school.
Thursday I actually went to Zumba to work out. I have failed miserably at working out recently, but am glad I went. I should report the instructor for attempted mass murder! It was brutal or ummmm I have gotten out of shape.
Then Friday I picked up George’s 4 prescriptions in preparation for his wisdom teeth surgery Monday and went to Sarah’s indoor soccer game. They won.
Then today Jon and I went to Sarah’s last soccer game of this indoor season and the girls won again. It was cool to wrap up the season with 2 strong wins as the beginning of the season was a bit rocky. Then we went to Tractor Supply after the game. We love TSC!
We were mostly going to look for onion sets as we need to start planting in a week and supplies for chickens. Yes, chickens. We have been discussing and preparing for awhile. The TSC employee said the baby chicks will be in Monday! Yay, I thought it would be a few more weeks. So, we went ahead and got some starter supplies for new baby chicks. Continue reading “Chicks, Onions, Garlic, and Raspberries”
Yes, it is the end of January. Since I cannot get out there and plant the garden, and I have the soil all ready to go, I am starting to get cabin fever waiting to get my seeds in the ground. So, all I can do right now is talk about the seeds I have for this year’s garden.
Last year, we kind of threw the garden together in a quick hap-hazard fashion. We used whatever seeds we found. We used good seeds, purchased from local stores mind you, but we did not take into account any properties of the seeds, mostly because we did not know there was much of a difference.
We had decent success from our garden in the first year, all things considered. The onions were a complete failure. The corn produced little ears, tasty but small. We did get enough carrots to can half a dozen pint jars. The beans did good, except for the one row that never germinated (bad seeds). The zucchini went nuts, we still have a lot of zucchini in our freezer. The leaf lettuce did good, and the broccoli was almost a total failure, we got enough for one side dish at one dinner. The crowder peas did very good, and thanks to my wonderful wife’s advice, I now absolutely love crowder peas. We will be planting a lot more of them this year.
The majority of our problems were from low soil pH, and generally poor soil preparation. This year we believe we have done a much better job. We have raised our soil pH from around 5.0 to 6.5 which should be pretty close to where we need it to be for all of the plants we intend to grow. The soil has been tilled much, much better, so the weeds should be a lot easier to deal with this year. We have also added what we hope to be enough organic matter (horse manure compost) to the soil. We also have a fair amount of partially composted leaves and dry leaves to use as mulch. So, we feel ready for a successful garden this year.
Only one thing left to do. Get some seeds. We have been constantly researching any and everything we could think of for our garden. During our research we learned a lot about seeds. Genetically altered seeds seems to be rather prevalent in retail stores. I am not going to spend my time judging the use of these seeds. The advancements in seed technology has helped produce more produce to help feed the worlds expanding population, and has also allowed things to be grown in area that they could never have been grown naturally. But as for me and my house, we will use heirloom seeds.
Heirloom seeds are natural seeds passed down from natural plants. When you save a seed from a plant grown by heirloom seeds, the plant that will grow from that seed will be the same as the plant the seed came from. This is not the case with a lot of hybrid seeds. We did retrieve some seeds from our crowder peas this last year, and we are planning on trying them out. We have no idea if they will grow properly, but they are very hard to find and we are gonna take that chance.