Wow, another year has gone by. I had such an incrediable year, I traveled, I camped, I grew things and most importantly I ate what I grew. I learned so much this year, about myself, my surroundings and the people in my life. I am so thankful for everything in my life I can't really bring words to how I feel.
2014 is going to be a fabulous year, I'm planning to stay a little closer to home and instead of a few little trips my family is planning one big trip in the fall. I found that I regretted leaving in the summer months when all my plants are starting to grow and bloom, and besides it's not fair to make my friends and family take care of everything while I'm gone ;)
I have a few new things coming for 2014 and am super excited about it, once my new toy arrives I will share it with all of you.
But for now have a very happy and healthy new year!
I have an update on my baby orchid. So earlier this year (I think it was early March) my orchid grew a keiki off its old bloom spike. I was so excited because everyone I asked about it had never been able to grow one before, and here I was hoping to just not kill the thing and it grew a whole new plant for me.
I have now expanded my orchid collection to 6, one of which is a gorgeous light purple dendrobium, the rest are phalanopsis orchids. All are doing really well.
So this is my keiki in the picture and you can see its stages of growth, now I'm really excited because with any luck it will come full circle. In the bottom right picture you can see a tiny bloom spike starting ( I've marked it with a red arrow), I'm so excited!! The blue arrow is where you can see the cut bloom spike from the mother plant.
It's doing very well and I can't wait to see it bloom, I'm not using any grow lights just the good old sun :) oh and momma is also producing another bloom spike!
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!
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!
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.
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.
