maricybele's Blog

My seed fermenting bowl. I put the tomato seeds to ferment.

I dry my seeds in a strainer for a few days.

Germination testing in a plastic baggie. I will let you know how it goes.

My prettiest tomato yellow stuffer that I think went mutant

The green plastic tubs were donated by a neighbor, now I have daikon radish growing as well as some black Spanish Radish. The tomatoes I am still waiting for have plastic around them and are doing well.

Some forgotten squash this summer got huge!

This is a tomato trail I am doing. I am trying tomango. Still waiting for them. But cute tomatoes.
By the way garden friends, duct tape is fabuloso! This is duct tape added to chop sticks. It has worked the best for me for anything I want to keep.

Some lovely stuffer tomatoes. Well that's the update for now, more garden adventures later.

My bounty of cucumbers, onions, heirloom tomatoes, peppers, squash,

I processed many of my tomatoes by drying with fresh herbs, salt and pepper or chopped and froze.

This is my cheapo deepo pvc pipe hoop house with plastic cover to cover my eggplants, and peppers and tomatoes to extend the season. It's working great and Jack frost has been around a few times. The cucumbers and squash are pretty sensative but the peppers and eggplants and tomatoes are holding up surprisingly well.

The roses bloomed so lovely this year. A little coffee mulch and fertilizer made a huge difference it their look this year.

Merlot lettuce is beautiful both in the garden and on salad and it tastes fantastic!

Definately planting more as soon as my seeds come in.

My greens bed with an eggplant tucked in. Note the refreshed Swiss Chard, I cut it low and small leaves re grew. Yeah, we love Chard.

I ended up making the place a garden after we regraded due to how long it took us with all the rain we had this year.I needed a place fast for my plants so instead of a raised bed this are became a garden. Well, that is less lawn to mow. Note the pots in the ground, I am experimenting with deep watering. A woman at the community garden uses this method and her tomatoes are thick strong and huge with earlier tomatoes than the rest of us.

The before and after of the berry and community area of my garden.  I am trying to take out as much lawn as possible so I made this side area a berry and community area. I have tomotoes, peppers, eggplant, cabbage, tomatillo, lettuce, upside down tomatoes, hanging cucumbers, strawberries and several types of raspberries. The kids just loved picking, washing and eating strawberries today on this 100 degree day.

The Egyptian onions doing their thing. They should be ready in the next few weeks to harvest, but I just love the show on the the scapes.

A three sisters bed, but I think I planted the corn too late.

What a lovely bunch of strawberries! The flavor was so sweet and the smell was heavenly.

I have a little hill in my backyard which I suspect is an old yard clippings and rabbit dung area because of the quality of the soil. It's nicer clay than the rest of the yard, and many more worms. I didn't want a tractor to go through there in the summer last year when the yard was looking great (there was a little yard tractor at my neighbors and they quoted me $200 to re grade) my lawn guy said he would do it for 300 bucks plus cost of rototiller but he didn't think a rototiller was going to the trick. Well, I have to get my asparagus in asap! And then next I need 3 more veggie beds which won't sit properly with the hill there. So I thought, what would Grandpa do? Well, he would get out his shovel, start moving and turning that soil !  Which is exactly what I am doing. It is a bit of a mess, but the soil is nice right now, easier to shovel and a little crumbly. It will probably take me about 4 more days to get it evened out the way I want it or at least decent.  I tootle around and don't like to spend too much time doing any one thing

Today I planted my orchard! I am so happy. Photos to follow. My lawn guy planted it, I just followed around with some newspaper and  mulch. In the ground are 2 gauvas, 3 in one plum, 3 in one cherry, 3 in one pear, I already have a 3 in one apple, a gravenstien, apricot and fantasia nectarine.  My clay soil is so thick, it ate 14 bags of compost/ top soil and about 8 bags of  used coffee grounds, 5 bags of live (worms included) worm castings, 1 bag bag of peat moss, some glacial rock and green sand. I covered most of them with newspaper some used coffee grounds, cheap mulch and topped it with cocoa shells and twiced crushed filbert shells for keeping out the cats and hopefully the sqirrels. I planted it in the middle yard in curve with a future a path in the middle following the curve of the grape support fencing.

I have been reading about grafting and since the trees are young and I have limited space I would like to graft on more of my favorite types of apples, netarines, and apricots to the trees. I am still reading up on it and watching utube videos.

This weekend I planted radish and lettuce that came up from winter sewing on Christmas Eve. I am starting to prepare my new beds and I need to get some more beds. Trying to be creative on how to fill these new raised beds, I am a regular at Starbucks gleaning there coffee grounds for the public and their freshly used grounds( they just give me the plastic bags) I have some compost resting, that I will put in the beds also.

I might have to get into pottery with all the clay on my property.  I have the clay in the compost corner to be worked in with compost at some time.Happy gardening!

Today I found a trade raspberries for grape cuttings online. I know raspberries can can take over, so can grapes, but I love them! And I will place them in an area I dont go so it will cut down on the mowing. I just love gardening exchange sites.  By communication, we can get a lot of our garden wants met just by asking and collecting things to trade. It amazes me how next years garden will be a cornecopia of vegetables, plants and seeds collected, traded and gifted to me.

It saddens me to think there are farmers killing themselves over their debt and buying special seeds when local seeds do just fine. I am thankful for the bounty and abundance I have received just for seeking and asking and hope that everyone can enjoy this abundance.

I saw a pbs show about farmers in 3rd world country farmers were getting into debt by buying their seeds instead saving theirs from their crops. If they only had a little more education and sharing there wouldn't be this misery. I hope seed saving and exchanging can spread on a grass roots level over to the areas of the world where it is most needed. I feel that seed saving , exchanging and community gardens could really  help sustain everyone.

An exciting day, today I found  some Egyptian Walking Onions and other traveling onions hopefully they will come in the mail soon.

 Worm experimentation - As an experiment I dug in hole and put compostables in there. I found a blog that says to put cardboard in your yard to collect worms. Ahaaa, I might have the missing link to what my worm hole needs to have worms in it. I shredded some paper bags and some cardboard and now I will wait again.

I found a new type of berry for my yard. Honey berry. It looks exotic  like a bell shaped blueberry and I want a few plants.

I planted the bottoms of a bunch of green onions today to see what happens. I put some in the cold frame and some outside.

I am waiting for an opportunity to plant my lemon grass stalks I got from the grocery store, and the one cloved garlic I got from traders. Don't know what is going to happen, but I love it.

I have been waiting to do winterowing. Today I sowed a few of my plentiful tomatoes to see what happens, lettuce, onions, leeks, beets, radish, cabbage. Hopefully I didn't do it too early. This is my first time trying.