Spring 2024

 The 2023 - 2024 winter was fairly mild. 

Spring has arrived and we are, once again, looking forward to a garden. Of course the first Spring chore is trying to rid the garden beds of those nasty weeds that grow during the winter months.

Terry began weeding the Rhubarb bed next to the garage.  This bed is the home of the five Rhubarb plants we grew from seed. We were excited to see them sprout this Spring and they will now be named.

The first photo shows one of our "home grown" Rhubarb plants where Terry has begun weeding. 

This photo shows more of the new Rhubarb bed and the nasty winter weeds that Terry will eradicate this week.  Three of our Rhubarb plants (Joshus, Fanny and Daisy) had been planted at the north end of our property but we found that two flowering bushes were too close and only Fanny was thriving.  Terry transplanted Joshus and Daisy to the original Rhubarb bed and hopefully they will like their new home.

Daisy is in her new home and should be able to grow into a nice large, productive plant.

Poor Joshua doesn't look too healthy yet but hopefully will begin to thrive along with the rest of the Rhubarb plants. 

While Terry was near the garden digging out the Rhubarb plants he looked over at the Asparagus bed and was shocked to see sprouts. Normally we don't harvest the first Asparagus until mid April.

Our first Asparagus, harvested on March 18th. It may not be an abundant first cutting but it will be a very tasty vegetable for dinner this evening.

The End of Another Season

The end of another successful gardening season! 

The garden was a challenge this year but we survived. A late start due to weather and then a month with no rain!  This year it was either feast or famine when it came to rainfall.

Even with the challenges, we were blessed.  The freezer is full. We have asparagus, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, green peppers, Butternut squash, rhubarb and plenty of green beans for the winter.  Oh yes, we can't forget the containers of frozen cucumber salad. We were especially thankful for the watermelon we enjoyed.

The peppers will continue to grow until the first frost but by the end of next week the garden beds will be empty and ready for a nap. 

We harvested enough green beans to feed Rebecca and her husband for the winter and had extra beans, and tomatoes to share with neighbors.  God is good!

Another Success!

 Our second success was picking a watermelon that was actually ripe. After the last fiasco, disaster, bomb, failure, or whatever you want to call it, this success felt good. So good that we ate almost half of the melon before we remembered to photograph it.

Now we know what is meant by the "Sweet taste of success".

There are four or five more melons in the garden and we hope that we will be wise (or lucky) enough to harvest them at the proper time. Another of our gardening  "trials" this year was planting a second bed of watermelon  a few weeks after the first planting sprouted.  If the weather cooperates, we are hoping to prolong the melon season.

Success!

On the posting of July 30th, we showed a photo of an experiment we wanted to try. Cookbooks all state that cucumbers and zucchini are interchangeable in almost all recipes.

 

After the watermelon error, we have a success!  We made our favorite recipe for cucumber salad but used zucchini. We allowed it to remain in the freezer for three weeks. After thawing it in the refrigerator overnight, we served the salad along with our grilled cheese sandwiches for our Monday lunch.  We both pronounced the experiment a success. The zucchini flavor was a bit more sweet than the cucumbers but delicious.

Another Error!

The garden has been doing well in spite of the uncooperative weather but we have had a few set backs to keep us humble.  This last error was so embarrassing that we didn't even want to take a photo.  

We picked a second watermelon that showed all of the signs of being ripe.  It was even much heavier than expected.  After the first rather pale melon that we ate, this one was going to be delicious.  Wrong!  The flesh was so pale that we couldn't even eat it.  How can a melon that looks so ripe be so white inside.  The seeds were even still white.

Maybe the third time really is the charm!

Landscaping

 Time out from posting about our garden!

We bought Terry a new riding mower last year for his birthday in order to make mowing easier for him.  Enough said, there is a post about the reason for the purchase on the blog last year.

Our property still had a number of places that required Terry to use the walk behind gas mower.  This chore made it difficult for him to breathe.  It didn't help that Pennsylvania has such high humidity too.

We decided to hire a landscaper to redesign the large area that required hand mowing.

We hired "Earth's Edge", a father and son team from Jonestown.  Here a line is being marked for the new area. The slope of the yard to the fence line is impossible to mow with the riding mower and more than Terry should mow by hand.

Step two:  Edging the area.  Too late to change our minds now.

Step three: This team thinks of everything!  Here they are installing a metal barrier to prevent any mulch from washing through the fence.

Step four: Spraying to kill the grass.  After a week, they came back to check the area and spray the second time to insure nothing new would sprout. 

Last day: The men  raked up the dead grass and cleared the debris from the area. Now it was time to start spreading the mulch.  

It's remarkable how quickly and efficiently these two work. This area is seven by  about seventy feet. Next spring we plan on planting Hydrangeas and Dwarf Butterfly Bushes if we can find the type we want.  A total of five or six bushes should be ideal. 

The job is finished!  We are very pleased.  Check this blog in the spring to see what is being planted to finish this project.

Tomatoes

 Yesterday was a good day for tomatoes. We also picked a few zucchini and cucumbers.  The cucumbers have been made into cucumber salad and ready for the freezer. The larger zucchini has been sliced and flash frozen and then placed into two vacuum packs to be taken down to the freezer. One of the other zucchini will become two loaves of pineapple zucchini bread and the last zucchini will be a vegetable for tomorrow's dinner.

Tomorrow I MUST process these tomatoes because there should be more tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini ready for picking.  The one green bean bed is finished and the next won't be giving us any beans for another week.  It gives me a break so that I can catch up on other chores.