Well it has been a little longer than I had hoped to update my blog but here it is now.  My potatoes are starting to come back which makes me happy.  My greens are a little slow to grow but this is the first year I have grown them so I am learning as I go.  A few days ago I transferred my tomatoes and basil to my little green house.  As you will see in the photo, I put a strand of standard Christmas lights (not LED) and plug them in at night keeping them about 5 degrees warmer than outside.  Tonight there is threat of frost so it will be interesting to see what I wake up to.  Here is my photo update.  Soon I will be trying some DIY weed killer methods to see what works.

 My mustard greens and a red rock cabbage in the top right, still small but growing.

One of my kale plants. 

My green beans are now ready for their support.

One of the fuchsia's looking happy.

My greenhouse set up.  It is a small 2 tier set up that works great for me.  On top of the second shelf I have a thermometer that I can read from inside to check temperature and humidity.











That is it for now.  Happy gardening everyone!

It has been a while since I have posted last but here is my update.  My starts are doing very well except for the herbs.  None of the herbs have grown and it has been long enough that I believe they won't start.  So that will be some plants that I buy instead of start from seed.  There is something satisfying to me to start my garden from seed and not starts (though there are certain plants like herbs and cucumber that I will only do starts due to bad luck).
I bought a flower pack from Costco and hope to get that planted soon.  It is for the shade garden and has hosta's, columbine (red and white), and astilbe (red).  I want to wait a few more days to see how many of my hosta's from last year come back.
Now the photo update:

I want people to know that everything I do with my garden is trail and error.  Here is one of my beds.  Being that I don't use round-up in the garden I need to be on top of weeding, this is what happens when you get behind.  There is buttercup, dandelions, thistle and grass.  Nothing easy to get rid of.  This coming fall/winter I may try covering the beds to see if I can deprive the weeds light, it will be worth a try.

                               

This is my strawberry, another plant that I don't have good success in when I try to grow it from plain crowns, this is mine I got a few years ago, the new crowns I planted this year have done nothing.
To the right is my raspberry.  I didn't cut any of the canes back and I have grass growing in the pot so I need to figure out what to do to make sure it doesn't get overrun.

 A photo looking towards the house.  My lettuce, cabbage, kale and mustard are in the bed on the right.

  

My potatoes just started to pop.  A side note, these photos were taken on Monday, since we have had 2 frost and the potatoes didn't fare so well.  We will see how they do.

         
A photo of my maybe future gardner and my dog Smokey walking off to see the neighbor cows.








Lastly for today, my "salad garden" both tucked in and untucked their floating row cover (they did great with the frost).  There are even bigger now.

Good night everyone.  More posts next week.

Well, it has been a few day since I have posted last but I got some work done this weekend getting my little starts into bigger pots.  I went to Home Depot and they were having a sale on fuchsia starts only 50 cents, and they are having a sale on early blooming plants (half off!)  I got my starts from a coworker and got them all potted up as well.

Fuchsia starts, the three varieties I have are rough silk, red shadows and deep purple.  As they start to bloom, I will post more photos.

This is the front shade garden with a new Hellebore Jacob to the left, I don't remember the plant I planted on the right, there are Hosta's in there too, I hope they come back.

My peas!

These are some of my melons (I have watermelon, cantelope and honeydew this year).  I have yet to successfully grow any of these so each year I try something new to see if it works.

One of my rhodies.

This is what I have for now, more updates later!

After looking at all the seeds that I have planted (and the ones I haven't yet) I have decided to increase what I think my total pounds of food grown will be.  I will put it up to 50 pounds.

Below are some photos of the amazing ice storm of January 2012 and how it affected us and our landscape.  As I take photos of these areas now you will be able to see the difference.  Though we lost a lot of limbs, the grape and blueberries like having the extra sun!

 One of our rhodies encased in ice.  I love the look of the ice frozen in mid drip.

 The top of a mail box, you can see the ice glistening on top of the snow

 This tree didn't make it

 This tree branch is the reason we were without power for so long.  All the trees in the photo were either severely limbed or cut down to try to prevent this from happening again.

 The top of this plum type tree decided it wanted to be on our deck, we had the tree removed.

 More broken limbs

 This is me in the garden looking north.  These trees really took the brunt of it.

 Looking towards the house.

This tree did just fine.  The boughs that are touching the ground normally are the hight of the roof.  We did get the tree limbed to help keep the house safe.

Hello

I am starting this blog because I have been inspired by a local blog that I follow.  Also, there are friends and family that may not be on Facebook but this is a way that we can all stay connected as well.

I am also starting to go hog wild with my garden and want to share that experience with everyone that wants to follow.

 This first one is from 2011.  The garden area when be bought the house in 2009 was all grass.  I borrowed a rototiller and still had grass.  I then decided to make raised beds with the dirt for that garden year.  It felt very good to get that all done by hand.

 This is a photo of one of my roses.  We have about 12 or so rose bushes around the property.

 This is what the garden looked like last year (the previous years beds are under the cardboard you see).  I decided to make raised beds with 2x6s, that measure roughly 4'x8'.  I like using cardboard as a natural way to help suppress weeds.

 This is the before image of one of the planting areas next to the front door.  I am making it a shade garden and plan to be adding more plants to it this year as well.

 A photo of the corn and tomatoes from last years garden.

 More tomatoes and green beans from last year as well.

 Onions and cucumber.

 A little harvest from last year.

This is what I have been working on over the winter.  I now have a total of 9 raised beds and plan to plant something in all of them (some will be flowers).  

The blog that I follow, the writer grew over 2000 pounds of food last year.  I have set my goal for 35# this year not knowing what I will actually get.  I am very excited to see what I get.