Gone Crunchy

Our last frost date was May 10th, but the weather sure didn't feel like it! I decided to wait until this week to plant, and I'm glad I did. We had a light frost on Sunday night. But the temps are showing in the 80s for the rest of the week and I think the danger has passed.

Every year is a learning experience. This year I learned about what NOT to do when hardening off plants. I hardened one so bad it died! The cold frame is a nice place to keep plants overnight, since it protects them from frost, but that is it. Even while cracked wide open, the temps in there reached over 100 degrees F. Seedlings should be gradually adjusted to sunlight - start them in a sheltered shady area and then increase exposure to direct sun over days time. I just basically baked em. Yup. Live and learn, folks!

I planted one trellis with sugar baby watermelon and one with sugar pie pumpkins, two plants on each side. The pumpkins look a lot better than the watermelons! As with all the plants, I will give them a few weeks to see if they will make it in the garden. If not, our master gardener sale is coming up at the end of May and I will just purchase replacements.

I also planted some buttercrunch lettuce underneath the trellises to see how that does.

I also planted some Black Beauty Zucchini. I'm very curious to see how it does on the north side of the house.

In a few more weeks I'll finish my planting with the bush beans and cucumbers! Happy dance!

I have a recipe blog that my sisters and I use to share recipes with each other. Occasionally I will share my "crunchy" recipes here, too. :) This granola is crunchy in all senses of the word. It is healthy AND has a wonderful crunchy, munchy texture. Perfect for yogurt topping or in a bowl with milk.

So on a whim, I purchased a little $1 box of wildflower seeds from Menards today. It is supposed to be a shade mix and I sprinkled them on the wood chip mulch we had laid down by our south fence gate. I raked it in, watered it, and will wait to see what (if anything!) comes up. Here are the varieties supposedly included:

• Siberian Wallflower
• Chrysanthemum Shasta Daisy
• Farewell to Spring
• Lance Leaf Coreopsis
• Rocket Larkspur 
• Sweet William
• Purple Coneflower
• Baby's Breath
• Candytuft
• Blue Flax
• Forget me not
• Baby Blue Eyes
• Baby Five Spot
• Corn Poppy

So I watched this documentary online, called "Back to Eden."  It is about  Paul Gautschi's approach to gardening which he developed by observing nature and receiving wisdom and revelation from God through prayer and Bible reading. I know, I know. It sounds a little weird and mystical, but his garden looked AMAZING and I was completely intrigued. I began to do some more research on the Back to Eden gardening philosophy online and became convinced that it was something I wanted to do.

The concept is very simple. He heavily mulches his vegetables and orchards with raw wood chips. The mulch keeps water in when it's dry, absorbs excess water when it's too wet and slowly decomposes over time to fertilize and compost into the soil. Paul does not water his garden and spends little time weeding, since the weeds that do manage to grow in the mulch are easily plucked out since the mulch does not compact. He also never tills the soil. Paul also has chickens and he rakes in the compost that they make for him each spring. There are many people who have used this method with success. Watch the movie and see what you think.

ANYWAYS - The very next day, I was very blessed to happen upon a tree removal in our neighborhood just as they were finishing up. They kindly dumped about 5 yards of raw wood chips in my driveway for free! We had enough to mulch our entire house - landscaping, garden, walkway, plus extra to save up for future raised beds, and composting. I will be very curious to see how our garden does with all this mulch.

Here are my garden notes from my spring seedling planting:

March 5, 2013
Planted indoors: 2 California Wonder, 2 Golden Treasure, 2 Buran and 2 Orange bell peppers;4 Amish Paste, 2 Stupice tomatoes. Planted in peat pellet/pots.

March 12, 2013
Planted indoors: 2 California Wonder, 2 Golden Treasure, 2 Buran and 2 Orange bell peppers; Thyme. Planted in potting soil in leftover plastic cell containers except for Thyme which I planted in a 3" plastic pot.

March 12, 2013
Planted indoors: 2 California Wonder, 2 Golden Treasure, 2 Buran and 2 Orange bell peppers; Thyme. Planted in potting soil in leftover plastic cell containers except for Thyme which I planted in a 3" plastic pot.

March 10, 2013
2 Amish Paste tomatoes sprouted. White mold growing on top of other peat pots. Probably too moist to sprout other seeds?
1 Stupice tomato sprouted as well as a 2nd seed sprouted next to an Amish paste tomato. Maybe peppers will still sprout given time? I replanted peppers just in case. Will compare peat pots to potting soil. Just looked up and it says 10-15 days to germinate peppers. Oops! I was just too impatient. Also, it recommends 3-4" pots for peppers. May need to transplant into larger containers if they start to grow.

March 19, 2013
Thyme is beginning to sprout. All 6 original tomatoes have sprouted.

March 24, 2013
Thyme sprouts doing well. Some tomatoes have second set of leaves growing. I plucked out
extra seedlings so there are only one per peat pot. Three of the original peppers have sprouted!

March 27, 2013
Transplanted tomatoes into potting soil in 3" pots

April 14, 2013
Transplanted peppers into 3" potsPlanted indoors: 4 pumpkin and 4 watermelon (2" cells and 2 together in a 3" pots)

Well, it's May already! I had good intentions about writing regularly in this blog. But, as you can see from the last (and ONLY) blog post, intentions only go so far without actions.

But, I really do want to post about my garden, if nothing else. I may be the only person reading this blog, and it has been really helpful for me to look back on the past two years on my previous blog to see what and when I did things in the garden.

This is my third year gardening. I plan to fill up my two raised beds and expand my growing space by planting veg in my landscaping around the sides and back of the house.

This year, I am going to plant zucchini on the north side of the house. Not a great spot for sunlight, but in my experience, they have done really well regardless of where I plant them. It may be a total bust, but we'll see! The pumpkin patch from last year is along the south fence. Hubby built me two huge, sturdy vertical trellises that I plan to use to grow both sugar pumpkins and sugar baby watermelons. Another experiment! :)



We planted three raspberry bushes (bare root stock) along the south side of the house. I actually think those will do well there, since it has more sun. We'll see! If they do well, we have room for three more additional bushes. So far, they have not shown any signs of life...



The herbs will go in the same spot as last year. The chives and oregano are perennial and the cilantro usually reseeds itself each year. However, with last year's extreme heat and drought, the cilantro died off completely and I harvested the seeds to use for cooking. I planted some of the seeds I saved in the same spot and am hoping they will grow back this year.


Another big deal this year are the two columnar apple trees we planted . They are south of our raised beds and north of the deck in the middle of the year. They were bare rootstock, but already have lots of little green leafy buds sprouting up and down the sticks. I am so hopefully these work out!



The final newest growing area is the strawberry patch. I have cleared out some ground cover that was growing in our landscaping along the west side of the deck and plan to plant some strawberries there in a week or so. My concern with that location are the chipmunks. We may try to work out a wire box for protection? I don't know. I am not holding my breath that this works out long-term.


My hope is to add one or two more raised beds in the fall to plant for next year. If we could make one a dedicated strawberry patch with a custom cover to keep out birds and ground pests, that would be ideal. I just have to talk hubby into it!