Seeds, seeds and more seeds

I was going through my seeds today, not a good idea. Now I'm ready for spring, lol. Anyway in an earlier post I talked about storing my seeds using the dried flowers.  Well that didn't work, they rotted and looked horrible, a couple of them were ok but the majority of them just rotted and got moldy.  So instead I took pictures of all my flowers and got the printed (2 X 3) and pasted them on the outside of the little envelopes instead :) 
Worked much better.  I have so many seeds, I'm excited to start them all in the spring! 

Been awhile

Hey guys!  Sorry it's been so long, I had a very busy but amazing summer.  A little update on my garden. It was fantastic, the veggies were amazing and tasted fabulous.  I will change a few things though, I will still put peas in the back row, but will plant a lot more carrots, beets and radishes.  I will keep the squashes out of the beds and put them in their own containers :). 
I had a decent hall of apples this year, and they tasted very sweet and crisp. I ate them all! This was my third summer with this baby honey crisp apple tree and I had about 15 apples this year.
I'm hoping to be back here a little more frequent now that things have slowed down, have a good night! 

Breakfast for a week

I just made these for the first time today. So simple.  Spinach quiche cups, I added onions and fresh basil from my garden. I also used tomatoes from my garden.  It's a nice low carb high fat and gluten free breakfast :)

http://www.manilaspoon.com/2012/08/spinach-quiche-cups.html

It's good eaten

Well we are really enjoying the veggies from the garden.  Last night we ate our first cauliflower and I was going to cook it.  My husband usually doesn't like raw cauliflower but one bite of the fresh out of the garden one and he said "nope don't cook it", it was so sweet and tender, one of the best we've ever had.
A couple of days ago I had peas, carrots and garlic shrimp, it was delicious.  Seriously nothing beats fresh veggies out of the garden.  My speghetti squash is looking amazing, can't wait to eat that sucker.  My mom and dad were up visiting for a few days and I put them to work ;) my dad shelled a big bowl of peas for me and my mom helped me deadhead all my flowers.  Unfortunately the sugar daddy peas that I thought you could just eat off the vine are a bit stringy and need to be shelled.  My search for the suger snap pea continues.

Cucumbers

Look what I found.  That's right, one lonely little cucumber.  I had just about given up on getting any cucumbers this year, the cucumbers I planted in my garden boxes got overrun by other plants and didn't flower.  But one of my cucumber plants I planted on it own in just a plastic container flowered and I have one cucumber on it.
I think next year I won't start them early, I will plant them directly into their own boxes outside and there they will stay.  The squash wasn't quite as finicky as the cucumber so I might start them again. So far I'm very happy with how my first year of gardening has turned out, I will change a few things for next year but I'm loving being able to eat food that I've grown. 

Collecting seeds

So I was trying to figure out how to store my seeds nicely and to see exactly what colour flower is in the packet. This is what I came up with.  I went to the dollar store and bought small plastic re sealable bags, they didn't have the small brown envelopes so I went to staples and bought those there. They were a little more expensive then I would have liked them to be but I did get 250 of them so they will last me awhile ;)
Last year I just put my collected seeds in plastic ziplock bags, but I wanted to do something a little prettier this year.  I haven't collected to many seeds yet this year but I did collect a few pansies. So the flowers in the picture are from the seeds I collected last year and so are the seeds. I'm hoping to collect more seeds this year and maybe some veggies too, we will see.
Ok back to the envelopes, I cut some of my blooming flowers and layed them flat in the plastic bags and sealed them. Then I took what I had left of my seeds from last year and put them into the brown envelopes. I taped the plastic bags onto the envelope and wrote on the back what it was. So along with the text there is a visual as well.
I just hope they dry nicely, the bags are not airtight.

Veggies on steroids

Wow!!! So I went on vacation for almost two weeks (which I'm never doing in the summer again btw) and I came home to giant veggies. Thanks to one of my best friends who took really good care of all my plants, they look amazing.  I had my first kohlrabi out of my garden today and it was delicious.
All my vegetables are doing amazing in the soil mixture I put them in, even my squash are now starting to produce fruit. Here again is what I put into my soil.
In a 6' X 2' X 2' garden box
12 bags 50 L organic all purpose potting soil
1 bag 50 L sea soil
1 bag 50 L sheep manure 
1/2 bag 25 L worm castings
1/2 bag 25 L vermiculite 
1 C Epsom salts
1 C egg shell powder

It's been about 5 or 6 weeks since everything has been put in the garden and we are now starting to eat veggies from it. My peas are blooming and carrots and beets are doing great too. It's a little crowded in there and I will be doing things a little different next year, but I'm quite pleased with how things are turning out.