A Beautiful Flower and a Failed Vegetable

beautiful flower

White Onions

Isn’t this flower beautiful?

You may be surprised that a vegetable produced this flower.

This is the flower from a onion plant.

onion plant

You would expect that the onion plant that produced this flower would be equally impressive, like the one in the picture above.

But sadly, the onion that created the flower in the top photo looked more like this when I pulled it out…

White Onions

White Onions

Kind of disappointing, isn’t it?

This was the first time that I tried growing regular onions in the garden.  I have had a lot of success with green onions, but evidently, my white onions need some help.

While there are only about two onions worth eating, I can chop the greens of my ‘reject’ onions and use them in the same way one would use green onions (scallions).  They have a mild, oniony flavor.

Every time that I try some thing new in the garden, I learn something.

I have learned since then that many of my fellow area gardeners, have had similar disappointments when growing bulb onions.

However, there is one variety that many have told me they have had some good results growing.  It is called ‘Texas Sweet’.

So, next fall, I will be growing ‘Texas Sweet’ onions.

White Onions flowers

In the meantime, I will keep my remaining onions in the ground and enjoy their beautiful flowers.

**Check back soon for a fabulous giveaway that I will be doing where you can win a great TroyBilt tool that has many uses.  I have been having so much fun with mine.

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I haven’t mentioned how my daughter, Rachele, has been doing while in basic training for the Navy.

It has been much harder than she expected.  She has had some injuries to deal with and a cold that has been present much of her time in basic training.

She has been homesick, but as her time in basic training has progressed, we sense her toughness and determination to get through.

On the home front, the first few weeks were very hard because we missed her so much.  But, as time passed, we have adjusted to her absence although we miss her terribly.

What has been so hard is the fact that our main way of communicating with her is by letter. She only gets to send us one letter a week.

Phone calls are sporadic and you never know when they will come.  It has been 3 weeks since we last talked to her on the phone.

I cannot wait for her to graduate from basic training and will be flying out to Chicago soon to see her become a sailor.  We will have one day with her before she flies out to her ‘school’ where she will learn her specialty.

Please keep her in your prayers as she is going through her last tests that she must pass.

Thank you!

Vegetable Garden Transition

About this time of the year, I am busy helping my vegetable gardens transition into summer.  

That means pulling any remaining leaf lettuce.  Yes, it hurts to know that I now have to buy lettuce until next fall when I can grow it again.

Even though not all of my lettuce had bolted, none of it was edible.  Once the temperatures get up to 90 degrees, the lettuce turns bitter.

vegetable garden transition

vegetable garden transition

For the past 4 months, I have been harvesting a few carrots every few nights to include in salads or soups.

Now that it is getting hotter and some of the carrots are beginning to flower, it was time to harvest the rest of the remaining carrots.

I didn’t use the carrots that had flowered, since they had become woody inside.

vegetable garden transition

vegetable garden transition

You know, one of the things that I like about gardening is how unpredictable it can be.  The two carrots, above, were growing just 1 ft. away from each other.

The garlic was already harvested and I concentrated on pulling out cool-season annuals that were serving as companion plants.

I love my crocs

I love my crocs!

These nasturtiums were still blooming, so I will leave them until they begin to fade.

vegetable garden transition

vegetable garden transition

A quick check of my warm-season vegetables showed that my zucchini plant has its first fruit (yes, zucchini is technically a ‘fruit’).

You really have to check carefully for zucchini because they can be hard to spot.

I will have to get my mother’s famous zucchini bread recipe.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are hanging from the vine and will soon be turning red.

In my side garden, I have two new peach trees growing.

peaches

This one has 18 peaches on it.

I planted this peach tree in January.  Now, normally, you would want to ‘thin’ fruit so that there is only one fruit every 6 inches – this creates larger fruit.  But, I was so happy to see so much fruit on my new tree, that I just left them.

Since I won’t have enough to make peach jam, this year, I will use them to make peach vinegar.

I don’t just have peaches growing in my side garden…

blackberries

My blackberry bush has ripe blackberries!

Originally, I hadn’t planned on growing blackberries in my garden, but my mother had an extra blackberry plant that she gave me last year, so I planted one.

I decided to go ahead and add more this year and planted 5 more bushes.

I only have the original blackberry bush covered in fruit because blackberries form on 1-year old growth.

blackberries

My family wants me to use some of our blackberries to serve over ice cream.

I was thinking of using them for making blackberry vinegar, which I’ll use to make salad dressing.

What do you think?  Ice cream topping or fruit-flavored vinegar?

A Tiny Investment And a Huge Harvest

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I love getting a great deal, don’t you?

Back in October, I spent $2.40 for eight heads of garlic, from my local grocery store.

I planted them and 7 months later, it was time to harvest them.

vegetable garden

As I stepped into the side vegetable garden, I took a good look at my garlic.  It was a lot bigger then in previous years.

vegetable garden

I started pulling and realized that it was a lot harder to pull out then last year.

It was the biggest garlic that I had ever seen in my garden and I was thrilled.

Until I realized that I had planted twice as much garlic as last year and still had to pull out all of the remaining garlic.

A couple of hours later, I hauled in my garlic harvest…

garlic harvest

All this for an initial investment of $2.40!

I had so much garlic that I couldn’t carry it in one load.

harvest garlic

harvest garlic

The larger heads were almost 4 inches wide.  However, the garlic that I grew in containers was quite a bit smaller – more like the size you find in the grocery store, which was fine with me.

Now all I have to do is to let my garlic ‘cure’ for a month in a dark, dry spot.  That usually means that I put them on top of my large freezer in the laundry room.

Garlic will last about 8 months if kept in a dark, dry spot out of the heat.  I don’t think we will be able to use all our garlic.  Thankfully, I have plenty of people to share it with.

For more info on how to grow and ‘cure’ garlic, you can check out my earlier post “Got Garlic?”.

Overwintered Pepper Plant

There are few types of vegetables that don’t always survive winter in my zone 9a garden without protection when temperatures dip below freezing.  

In the past, I have protected my San Marzano tomato plants with success by covering them completely with frost cloth.

This year, I decided to protect my bell pepper plants.  The reason was because they were producing so well up until December and I didn’t want to have to wait a long time for new peppers.

I believe I’ve told you before that patience isn’t my strong suit.

bell pepper

Of course, this was the winter when we broke records with temps in the low 20’s for five days in a row.  I wasn’t sure that my peppers would survive, even with protection.

The upper leaves did suffer frost damage and had to be cut back.

I wasn’t sure if the base would form new leaves.  I have been checking every week now that the temperatures are warming up.

Guess what I saw last week?

bell pepper plant

Bell Pepper plant planted among garlic and nasturtiums.

There are new leaves growing from my pepper plant!  I can hardly believe that it made it through the coldest winter we have had in over 30 years.

How about you?

What warm-season vegetables have you been able to over-winter?

Look At What I Grew From Kitchen Scraps…

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houseplants

houseplants

Who knew that you could grow ‘houseplants’ using kitchen scraps?

I was inspired to find gardening projects that could be done indoors, for those gardeners who are stuck inside during cold winters.

The photos below were taken over a 14 day period from planting, to what they look like just 2 weeks later.  I must admit that I am quite impressed.

I started with growing a radish…

houseplants

I am hoping that my radish plant will flower at some point because I have heard that radish flowers are quite pretty.

houseplants

My garlic cloves grew quickly and I will use the greens as a garnish, much like I would use green onions.  Garlic greens have a mild garlic flavor.

Kitchen Scraps

My lentils are quite pretty and delicate looking.  I am waiting for them to flower, which will make them even prettier.

Kitchen Scraps

I realize that many people have grown a vine from a sweet potato – but I hadn’t tried it.  After it grows, the vine will be a pretty addition to my kitchen windowsill garden.  Now that the roots are growing, I will hopefully see some green sprouting on top.

Kitchen Scraps

I did have one plant that didn’t come up.  The book that I was inspired by said that you could plant fresh green beans, but mine didn’t grow.

**You can also plant dried beans after soaking them overnight and they should come up.

The goal of this project wasn’t to grow ‘food’, but to enjoy the foliage of the plants themselves and brighten up a dreary winter for those who live in cold climates.

I really had fun with this project.  I think it would be a great activity to do with kids, don’t you?

What’s Happening to My Green Tomatoes…

The temperatures outside are not just chilly – they are COLD (21 degrees outside yesterday morning in my garden).  

You may recall that I wrote about picking the green tomatoes off my vines a few weeks before the first frost appeared.  

I had quite a few.

My Green Tomatoes

Well, I decided to let them ripen indoors. So, I placed the tomatoes on a cookie sheet and left them alone.

And this is what they look like four weeks later.

My Green Tomatoes

They are starting to ripen!

Every day as I check on them, I find more starting to turn yellow and then red.

I love that you can pick unripened tomatoes and let them ripen on their own.

If I had left them on my tomato vine, they would have frozen during our first freeze of the season.

Now, we can enjoy them in salads or even in making pasta sauce 🙂

Vegetable Garden Before The First Frost

This morning, I spent some time outside in one of my vegetable gardens with my granddaughter, Lily.

cool season containers

While I worked, she had fun with the plants in my containers.  

cool season containers

cool-season containers

My cool-season containers are in full bloom.  Leaf lettuce, petunias, garlic, parsley and nasturtiums are growing very well.

cool season containers

My 1-year old tomato plants are huge.  They extend over the fence between my containers.

There is even a small tomato seedling coming up in front of the yellow container.

vegetable garden

They have taken over this part of the vegetable garden.  I admit that they aren’t particularly beautiful with the dead, brown area in the middle (the result of sunburn before I got my shade cloth up this summer).

There are a few green tomatoes on the vines, but they won’t have time to ripen before the first freeze.  So, I plan to keep an eye on the weather report and pick my green tomatoes just before a freeze is scheduled.

The green tomatoes will ripen indoors in my kitchen.

bell peppers

My bell peppers are doing just fabulous.

Last summer, I treated them with epsom salts, which helps to promote fruit production.  (You can read more about my experiment with epsom salts and my pepper plants here).

bell peppers

The epsom salts did their job.  I have over 6 bell peppers ready to be picked.  I’ll pick them before the first freeze, dice them and freeze them until I need them for making my Mexican rice.

Both tomato and pepper plants are damaged or killed in freezing temperatures in my zone 9a garden.  I will protect my pepper plants from frost by covering them with old sheets.

I will not do the same for my tomato plants because they are very large and it would be hard to cover them all.  The other reason that I won’t bother to protect them is that many gardeners report that the size of tomatoes decreases as the plant gets older.

I will start again with new plants in late winter.

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I hope you are enjoying this holiday season.  You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting as often.  Partly this is due to the fact that I get busier in December preparing for Christmas.

The other reason is that I am having tendon trouble in my thumb.  I wear a splint, which helps somewhat – but it is very hard and laborious to type one-handed.

I do have some new posts coming up though, so stay tuned 🙂

One-Year Old Tomato Plants

My tomato plants are turning one-year old this week.

tomato plants

I didn’t plant them.  They sprouted up from fallen tomato seeds from a stray tomato that was unpicked the previous year.

When I saw the little seedlings coming up, I decided to protect them from the winter frosts in hopes that I would have a jump start on the growing season in spring.

I covered them with sheets when temperatures dipped below 32 degrees and even put a light bulb underneath the sheets to provide additional warmth.

In the spring, I did get a jump-start on the tomato growing season.  They performed very well.

In May, as summer temperatures arrived – I put up shade cloth to shield them from the sun and keep them from burning up.

My hope was to be able to enjoy a fall harvest of tomatoes once the temperatures cooled.

Now that November has arrived, my tomato plants are covered with flowers, just waiting to form into new tomatoes.

I checked over my tomatoes today and this is what I found…

tomato plants

A single ripening tomato.

I’m not too sure I will see any more tomatoes form because soon we will be getting too cold.

I must admit that I have mixed feelings about working hard to help my tomatoes survive another winter.

I’m not sure why I feel this way.  It was worth it because I did get a jump-start on the growing season and as a result, got more tomatoes.

Even when working to protect tomatoes from the occasional freeze – there is no guarantee that they will survive.  A colder then normal winter will kill them no matter what protective measures I try.

Oh well.  At least I don’t have to make a decision for a few weeks.

**How about you?  Have you raised tomato plants for over a year?  Was it worth it?  Or was it easier to start off fresh with new tomato plants in the spring?

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Grand Canyon University is getting ready for their third Run to Fight Children’s Cancer, which is a 5k/10k run that will raise money to support children and families dealing with childhood cancer.

The run will benefit the Children’s Cancer Network & Phoenix Children’s Hospital (a wonderful hospital – our son, Kai, had surgery there on his hip).

Please take a minute to check out the video link

which shows childhood cancer survivors in an honest, heartfelt way that will leave you inspired. 

What Am I Growing In A Grocery Bag?

You’ll probably never guess what I am growing in a recyclable bag…

recyclable grocery bag

Lettuce!

So what made me think of growing lettuce in a grocery bag?

Well, it wasn’t my idea.  I actually saw an article about it and thought it would be fun to try in my own garden and share with you.

Here is how I did it:

recyclable grocery bag

recyclable grocery bag

I took my recyclable grocery bag and made a few little holes on the bottom, using scissors, for drainage.

Then I placed the bag where I wanted in the garden.  It is hard to move after you fill it with soil.

I filled the bag with planting mix and then planted my lettuce transplants.  Of course, you can simply plant lettuce seeds instead.

recyclable bag

Add slow-release fertilizer because all vegetables need fertile soil.

Then water.  I simply put a drip emitter on my new lettuce planter.

I love how it looks and just a few weeks after planting, I can already pick lettuce.

recyclable bag

So how about you?  Is this something you would like to try?

Why I Haven’t Planted My Vegetable Garden Yet…

I have two vegetable gardens, just sitting there, ready to plant.

my newest vegetable garden

my newest vegetable garden

This was my newest vegetable garden, last February, just before I planted it.

Just a couple of months later, it was full of growing bush beans, cucumbers, corn and much more….

my newest vegetable garden

The flowers not only made the garden look pretty, but they also helped to repel bad bugs and attract pollinators.

So why haven’t I planted it yet?

Well, I had all good intentions to get it done last weekend.  BUT, my kids, specifically my youngest daughter, had other plans….

1. On Sunday morning as we were getting ready for church – she decided that she wanted to run away and live in the desert with the coyotes.  She has this idealized view of the desert from one of her favorite tv shows.

Thankfully, she only made it to the next door neighbor’s house before she reconsidered.

2. Monday was a crazy, busy day and I was happy that I was able to keep my head above water.

3. Tuesday, as I was making my toast for breakfast, I noticed teeth marks in the butter.  From the distinctive shape of the teeth marks – I knew that my youngest daughter was the culprit, eating our butter.

My husband then told me that he caught her eating flour.

*Have any of you ever had your kids eat some strange things?

4. Finally, last night, she started crying and it turned out that she had stuck a plastic fork up her nose and one of the tines had broken off.  We used a flashlight and we could see it, but it was too far up her nose for us to get it.

So, we made a trip to urgent care.  Thankfully, they were able to get it out easily with long tweezers.

Tomorrow, I have 2 consults.  BUT, come Friday morning – I will be out in my garden planting seeds (by myself, without my kids who will be in school).

I must admit that I am looking forward to the break from being a mom and just enjoying working out in the garden.

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How about you?

Do you have any fun stories of things that your kids have done, ate or stuck up their nose?

I’d love to hear about them 🙂

‘Friendly’ Plants in the Vegetable Garden