Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year!

This morning I'm taking my coffee in my little garden. I've begun work to consolidate my growing areas to this sweet little area and this is what I have so far. It's a lovely little salad garden right now and filled with carrots, beets, sugar snap peas, collards, lettuce, and radishes along with some baskets of my favorite herbs.

I've planted some Sweet Alyssum to boarder one side of my garden. I just love it! Oh, it smells exactly like honey.

The sugar snap peas are blooming and my little red romaine lettuce is starting to take off.

And since it's a bit cool, I have my tomatoes and 2nd year peppers in pots on the west side of the house in full sun.

Looking forward to another adventurous year in homemaking!

Dressing up the Front Porch

I've been dressing up the front porch lately. I can't go crazy with paint and completely new landscaping, but I can keep it clean and do little projects that give it some style. I started with finishing up a coffee filter wreath I started making at least two years ago. I got the itch to finish it when I realized I wanted it on my front door.

Next, I tossed an old potted plant and made this little arrangement for my garage sale spray painted chair. I used a satin Krylon (my favorite brand) white spray paint to turn this plain old terra cotta pot into something that matched my porch and was a bit more classy. Then I did my very favorite thing and went to the local nursery. I was planning on buying a simple green and white Hosta, but then I spotted a massive row of Caladiums in a dozen different colors. I was super excited when I found one in the perfect shades of white and green with a hint of red to match my chair. Then I bought this little green and white Glechoma to fill and spill over the bottom of the pot. Both are shade loving plants that are doing great on my porch.

My next goal was to yet again replant my two dollar store hanging baskets. They look so nice for the first couple weeks after I plant them, but they dry out so very quickly in the heat and are impossible to water thoroughly once the soil has dried out. I've been experimenting with different liners for the baskets that will hold more water and not let the water drain through so fast. The typical coir fiber liners are worthless and my experiment with a multilayered burlap liner wasn't much better. So, I settled on a duck cloth canvas liner that has a tight weave and doesn't allow water to drain off too quickly. I decided the water problem could also be too little soil with too much exposed surface area. To fix that, I combined my two baskets by inverting one and making the shape more like a ball. I planted the custom made liner with a basic Gold Child Ivy (hedera helix) on the top and bottom to make a hanging topiary ball.

It doesn't look amazing yet, but the Ivy is a fast growing variety that can reach 10ft long and will more than adequately cover the basket frames. I can't wait for it to really fill out! And if this one does as well as it should, I plan on making another for the other hook I have with a different type of vine that likes more sun.

Some Garden Harvest

We've enjoyed some delicious fresh veggies from the garden this week. So far, I've harvested about 20 oz of tasty Cherry Red tomatoes from the one plant. I've been really impressed with this plant and its little 1-2oz fruits and have already started some seeds from the harvested tomatoes. I planted them about three days ago and think I see a little seedling poking its head up already.

I picked two average size acorn squash from one of my two acorn squash plants this week. The other plant has one squash greening up right now.

I cut them open and they smelled just like sunshine! The flesh was more of a butter color than other acorn squash I've purchase, but I'm not sure if that was due to the variety or picking them a bit early. To prepare them I scooped out the seedy middle, put a tablespoon of butter in each half, tucked them all cut side up in a glass baking dish with about an inch of water in the bottom, covered the dish tightly with foil, and baked them at 350F for about an hour.

They came out soft and yummy. I fluffed mine with a fork and ate it with a bit of salt. It was so so good! Each half provided a nice serving size for one person. Redding ate his with cinnamon and sugar. In spite of how delicious these were, I don't think I'll grow this variety of acorn squash again because the 1-2 squash each plant provided doesn't justify the space required to grow them. I may try the Table Ace acorn variety as it has good reviews and higher expected yields per plant.