Posted on by Cara

Better Late Than Never–Catching Up with 2024

Well, I have been continuing to garden and preserve food, and last year I also added studying herbalism. So despite what the blog shows, I have actually been very busy.

This year has been a weird one. As the first year of my blgo can attest, I’ve had problems with my knees for a while now. Thats’ actually how this blog got started–Feb 2021 I had a knee surgery which was was supposed to help me put off a total knee replacement. The recovery for it involved me having to keep all of my weight off of my knee for 6 weeks–right at the beginning of my first real year of gardening at my new house. I felt stymied, and poured out my frustration into the blog and a somewhat embarrassing number of excel spreadsheets.

Skip ahead to October 2024, and I finally had to have the dreaded knee replacement. It was kinda a hellish year all around, for a lot of reasons. I did plant a garden and had a successful seedling sale, but my health issues kept my involvement in my garden to much less than I would have liked. Good news is that my surgery went perfectly; I’m recovering well, and, in theory, I should be fit as a fiddle for gardening season 2025.

That said, here are some of my gardening successes in 2024:

My orchard! I now have a veritable small orchard in my .15 acre city lot. Currently I have: two peach trees (one Contender and one Reliant, both of which should be able to survive in our 5b climate); one cherry tree (Romeo, technically a bush variety); and five apple trees (Macintosh, Honeycrisp, Liberty, Arkansas Black, and Whitney–a crab apple that originated here in IL.) I believe that I also have a Cox Orange Pippin (a prized old English variety) on order; if they does end up shipping to us this year, it’ll replace the Arkansas Black, which is kind of a useless apple tree, but it was what was available when I grabbed replacement apple trees in fall of 2023.

My berries! This year my berries really stepped up–the ones planted in the ground, at least. (I’m realizing that anything I try to overwinter in a pot is just not going to be happy. And with the really dry summers we’ve been having, it’s a hassle to keep up with the watering.) The bushes that really took off this year were the Prime Ark Freedom blackberries and the Joan J raspberries. Both are cultivated thornless varieties, so they’re easy to pick. I also had an Anne Gold raspberry bush do well. I had several Double Good raspberry plants in large containers, but they did not do well this year. I’m not entirely in love with the Double Good berries–they can be very prolific, but the taste is just so-so, in my opinion–so I’m not sure if I’m going to plant them in the ground or if I use the ground space for another blackberry or Joan J plant. TBD.

My elderberries! I have two bushes (I’m blanking on the varieties, sorry) which really took off like crazy this year. Last spring they were little 1′ tall plants, which I then planted into the ground in the fall of 2023. This year, they grew a good six feet and I spent the summer trying to keep them from growing into the neighbor’s yard as well. My berry harvest was not huge, but should be enough for one good-sized batch of elderberry syrup. I have high hopes for next year’s crop.

My herbs! In generally my herbs did well this year. I grow both medicinal and culinary herbs, because buying either kind of herb in the store is outrageously expensive. For my culinary herbs, my parsley, thyme, and rosemary did quite well. (I’m still struggling to get cilantro to grow and be ready when I need it.) As for my medicinal herbs, I grew and harvested a bunch of new ones–California poppy, elecampane, skullcap–as well as old favorites such as lemon balm, comfrey, marshmallow, and lavender. I intend to expand this next year as well, just because homegrown is so much tastier and higher in the medicinal compounds than store-bought. It’s just about finding where to put them all 🙂

Well, back to dehydrating and canning. It’s mid-November now, but thanks to an extremely warm fall, my garden is still producing tomatoes….

Posted on by Cara

February and March 2022: The Gardening Frenzy

As often happens in spring, I’m so busy doing the gardening that I don’t have the time or energy to write about the gardening I’m doing. So, here’s a summary of that’s all gone on the last few weeks.

All spring crops and spring flowers have now been sown. I’ve built two new small raised beds close to the back deck which will serve as my greens bed–several types of lettuce, spinach, and chard, as well as leeks and green onions. Herbs have been planted in my smaller greenstalk, also near the back deck. I planted some broccoli seedlings as well, but the snow/hard freeze we had at the end of March killed them off.) I also broke down and ordered some onions starts from Dixondale Farms when my leeks and other onion seedlings did not seem to be faring well; those are all now planted in my large raised beds farther back in the yard. My various onion, leek, and shallot seedlings are still coming along, and will hopefully be ready to plant out later this month.

As for spring flowers, I’ve had a lot of success with my sweet peas and pansies/violas, as well as my lobelia. My snapdragons, not so much. I put a few out before what turned out ot be a hard freeze, and they did not survive. 😦 On to round 2 of sowing snapdragons.

I also ended up purchasing a bunch of tubers/bare root plants, because I was inundated with a million garden catalogues and I only have so much restraint. I received a great looking bunch of purple viking potatoes from Gurney, but they were so fresh and juicy that when I cut them up, they all got very moldy and I had to toss them. Still chitting up are some french fingerling potatoes and red gold potatoes. Still to arrive are two types of raspberry bushes (most of mine died last year, due to some kind of disease); a trio of blueberry bushes; and some thornless blackberry bushes as well. As none of my asparagus seems to have survived the winter, despite growing very well last year, I also had put in another order of asparagus crowns.

I also picked up a new dwarf Fuji apple tree (“Reachables” variety, from Gurney) because I was finally able to find one in stock! The full-size Fuji apple I’ve tended since last spring will go to a friend with a much bigger yard. I also picked up two bare root yellow roses from Costco at $15 or so a pop, which was a great deal. (The red roses I picked up there last year are all thriving.) And my dahlia tubers are all ordered, but not shipped yet as I’m in Zone 5a/b.

Still to sow are my warm weather crops. This weekend I will finally get my tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos sown. The flowers and all of my curcurbita crops (melons, cucumbers, squash) will get direct sown in May, as they don’t like to have their roots messed with. Also, I only have so much space left in my grown room in the basement!

Spring is definitely here, and I’m swamped. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the blogging this summer, but no promises. Happy gardening!

Posted on by Cara

Seed Starting 2021–First Batch

So I did my first real batch of seedling planting this past weekend! (Technically, I had started a batch of leeks and decorative peppers in the basement before we realized my knee surgery would keep me upstairs for six weeks; they did not far well.) But my first really big batch of seeds went into the dirt this weekend.

I based my seed starting chart on a variety of other calendars. I tried to use to Moon Dates from the Farmer’s Almanac chart for my zone (5b) along with the sow dates on the various seed packages. It was a huge headache to put the calendar together, especially as this is the first time I’m starting the vast majority of these plants from seed. I’m hoping next year it will be easier; at that point I’ll hopefully have some experience to draw from.

The planting medium I’m using for this first set of seeds is Black Gold’s seed starting mix. You can get a great price on an 8qt bag at Pinetree Seeds. Don’t buy it from Amazon–I haven’t seen any seller selling these exact same bags for less than twice as much on Amazon.

My first round of planting included mostly flowers, with a few herbs that I intend to keep indoors.

Flowers: Autumn Colors Rudbeckia; Dwarf Cactus Dahlia and Redskin Mix Dahlia; Lobelia (Crystal Palace); Sugar Stars Phlox; Rainbow Loveliness (dianthus); Pink Carnations (also a dianthus); Arena Red Lisianthus; Peach Melba Nasturtium and Single Blend Trailing Nasturtium.

Autumn Colors Rudbeckia

Herbs/Veggies: Listada de Gandia Eggplant; Lettuce Leaf Basil; Holy Basil; Pennyroyal; Mild Microgreens Mix; and Bull’s Blood Microgreens.

Listada de Gandia Eggplant

The Rudbeckia (black-eyed susans) I know for a fact grows very well in my climate–the garden I inherited already has several bunches of the Indian Summer rudbeckias that have survived many a cold, frozen IL winter. I’m not a fan of that color, however, so I’m trying to grow the “Autumn Colors” instead. They should turn out to be a lovely mix of oranges and russet colors. And I have grown Nasturtiums from seed, and in my experience they take forever to get big. But once they are full-sized, they put out and endless supply of tasty, peppery flowers. I’ve never grown these varieties of Nasturtium, though; last year, I grew the Alaska Dwarf Mix–they have lovely variegated leaves, but true to its name, the plant stays very small).

Every other type of flower I’ll be growing this year is new to me. I’ve seen carnations, obviously, but I’ve never grown one from seed. And I’d never heard of any of the other varieties until I started browsing seed catalogues and Gardening channels on YouTube. I’ve seen enough videos to know that growing Lisianthus is a massive pain in the ass–they take forever to germinate/grow, and they are very sensitive to temperature and humidity fluctuations—but people also say that despite this, they are worth it, so I figured I’d give at least one a try this year.

This is my first year using any kind of heat mat/humidity dome/LED light set up. I had to jerry rig a temporary greenhouse in my living room as I can’t get into the basement, but it appears to be working well! My dahlia seeds popped up in two days (!) and my beet/mixed microgreens mix was not far behind. Currently my rubeckia (black-eyed susans) are also showing their little green heads, as is my lettuce leaf basil (which will be kept indoors). Even one of my carnation seeds has popped up! Apparently this heating pad/humidity dome thing really works.

I’m actually a tad worried about the dahlias as they were not supposed to pop up for at least a week or two. They may need to be potted up before I’m able to put them out, as they’re huge and also frost-tender, iirc (the bulbs are, at least, so the flowers from seed are likely frost-tender as well.) So it may get a bit crowded in the house by mid-April. But still! Seeds are growing! There may still be a foot of snow on the ground in some places, but my garden is finally started.