Seeds A Plenty

Well January flew by; it went so fast I feel like yesterday was Christmas Eve and here we are in the second week of February. What happened in between is a blurrrrr. As usual I'm ready to start digging in the garden, and so is Lily! Daily she's been asking to go outside and play and she wants her garden tools. Unfortunately it's still damp and chilly and her little fingers get frozen faster than mine. We make a good pair.

While the winter chill hangs around we stay warm inside and dream about our garden. I was able to interest her in the seed catalogues that have been arriving. On Saturday mornings we sit on the bench with our breakfast and page through them. She tries to name each vegetable or fruit, she gets extremely proud of herself, and then we talk about whether or not we want to plant each one. As of now she has us planting everything in the catalogue.

In reality here's what we'll probably plant this year: broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, kale, leeks, lettuce - lots of lettuce - spinach, onions, scallions, snap peas, radishes, zucchini, patty pan, lemon thyme, parsley, mint, basil and lots of strawberries. I want to do more, but my gardening eyes are always living in a different reality than I am. Our blueberry plants are looking good. And after growing the GORGEOUS Black Swan Poppies from seed last year, I'm excited to add some new flowers to the yard, but I have no idea which ones just yet.


Some of the seeds I'll buy; I'll use a few from last year, (the ones that still germinate like my sugar snap peas - yippee!) and a friend just gave me a bunch of heirloom seeds to add to our collection. Oh I can't wait to get started. Hopefully Lily and I will start seeds this weekend, but in the meantime we'll put some flowers in our hair and keep dreaming with our catalogues and our gardening books. If you're interested in some great gardening books for your kids, you can check out my article at Suite101.com. Happy Gardening!

Best Garden Moments of 2010

Lily and I had so much fun in the garden this year, as crazy as the year was. I know 2011 will be another great year, and we'll have Jasper to play with too. I'm already looking forward to it, but for now, here are a few of my favorite moments in the garden from 2010. Not only did we have a great time, we had tons of help from friends and family to make it successful. I hope you all had a great 2010 and that 2011 is wonderful for everyone. Grow veggies!

Planting Pea Sprouts

Our Newest Sprout, Jasper Kincaid Ohlin

New Garden Gloves from Uncle Kevin

Picking Peas

Lily and Greg Plant in the Grow Boxes

My Beautiful Darlin'

Raised Beds in Front, thanks to Transition Port Gardner Work Party!!

Gifts from Dean and Jennie

Lily plays in the Thanksgiving snow and our 2010 garden ends.

Fall Gardening

This is the first year I've planted a fall garden. We have broccoli and Brussels sprouts to look forward to, and we've been eating lots and lots of arugula, kale and lettuce.

Lily and I, haven't done that much to the fall garden. We planted the plants, watered them a bit and pretty much left it at that. Usually by the time fall comes around I'm ready to be done with the garden until the spring. This year wasn't much different except that we had these new, beautiful raised beds and lots of cold-weather tolerant sprouts to plant. So, even though my interests had turned elsewhere, I couldn't not plant them.Lily must take after me because she lost all interest in the garden about mid-September. She's been a little hibernator, wanting to stay inside and play inside games. Pretty much the only way I could persuade her to play outside was if there were swings involved. Until yesterday. Yesterday we got our first snowfall. Yesterday and today big fat flakes fell and covered the grass and sidewalks and raised beds. Turns out Lily thinks snow and gardening go perfectly well together.
If I had taken the time to cover the plants, they might have made it through this snow and f-f-f-freezing temps, but I didn't, so the gardening for this year really does come to an end. But losing the plants was worth it to play with Lily in the snow.

Poop, Poop & More Poop

We've been working on potty training with Lily this summer so, as you can guess, most of our conversations revolve around potties and poop. Then there's the little man, Jasper, who is pretty much a pooping machine. So the last place I thought I'd have to worry about poop is the garden!! Boy was I wrong.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that something or many things were munching on my broccoli and kale plants. As I investigated closer, I noticed these tiny green caterpillars or worms. It took me a few days to realize, that yes indeed these little buggers could devour a plant practically overnight. Yikes! As I discovered, they are called cabbage worms or cabbage lopers and they are the children of some pretty unassuming white moths that I once thought of as cute. Cute is the last word that enters my vocabulary when I see them these days.

I've been trying to avoid spraying anything on these pests to kill them. So, I've been in the garden every day trying to hand pick the cabbage lopers off the plants hoping they will survive. I thought I had it under control when last night I realized they also like my beautiful lettuce plants. The ones on the lettuce were fat and extremely well-fed. AND, what's worse, as fast as they eat, they POOP, leaving thier poop behind on what's left of the plant they just decimated. Gross! Gross! And Gross! (You can see the black poop to the right of the lettuce in the above picture.) I'm on the verge of spraying something organic...The good news is, that Lily is potty trained except for overnights, YEAH!!!

A Different Kind of Gardening

This year has been a hard one for me and gardening. Obviously I'm learning that two kids are a heck of a lot more work than I ever thought possible. But also I feel like we had maybe a month of summer, four pathetic weeks, and not all in a row. It seemed like it was either mid sixties or ninety-eight degrees. The in-betweens were few and far.

Last year, (maybe because we had such gorgeous weather,) Lily was in tears most days when it was time to come in from the garden. This year she didn't even want to go outside half the time. And when she did, gardening "tasks" weren't always on her to-do list. This alone would be no big deal, but also unlike last year, she's way more demanding of my every-minute attention.
Independent play in the garden definitely wasn't her thing this year. If she was digging for wormies, then I had to be sitting in the dirt right next to her digging for wormies too. If she was playing trucks and cars in the dirt, then I had to be bent over playing trucks and cars in the dirt too. And not just playing trucks and cars, but inventing and creating the activities for the trucks and cars. And while playing the same cars and trucks or baby doll games over and over and over again can kill more brain cells than drugs, we've had some silly moments and lots of fun, like chasing Dizzy, watching our sunflowers grow and discovering dragonflies. And hopefully it's not over just yet!

Fun in the Raised Beds

I knew I would have a ball with the new beds, but I had no idea Lily would enjoy them so much. The first morning after the work party she went out, sat her cute buns down and started digging with her digger and filling her buckets with dirt saying, “Look, look at my new raised beds.” She planted some old pea seeds, which was super cute to watch because she meticulously digs the hole with her finger, drops the seed in, covers it with dirt and does her pat pat pat on the dirt to cover it up. Who cares if she planted them all within the same two inches of each other, right?

A few weeks ago I gave her some leftover seeds to play with so she planted an egg carton full of bush beans and lettuce mix. She helped me transfer those starts into one of the beds. Okay, she helped me with one plant and then got bored so I planted the rest. We’ll see if they have time to develop into anything before it turns too cold. Our friend, Ingrid helped us plant some broccoli and kale starts in one of the beds and another friend gave us more broccoli starts to plant. For now, we’ll probably just fill the rest of the space with more lettuce, arugula, kale, carrots and spinach. Oh and I’m going to try to plant garlic and onions in October. It’s like having my very own room to do whatever kind of decorating I want. I will have to figure out how to keep the dog out and how to encourage Lily to leave the plants planted.

Raised Beds Work Party

Yeah! We now have raised beds in our front yard. Our front yard faces south and gets tons of good sunlight, unlike the backyard where the old raised beds are. The first Saturday in August we had a Transition Port Gardner, (formerly Transition Everett,) work party, the first ever! So instead of turning the yard into raised beds by ourselves, we had tons of help, which not only made the work go faster, but also made it more fun. Of course it was raining, because we’ve been having the weirdest summer, and to have a nice day might have been asking too much. But really the rain was great because it kept us all cool. I actually got to help do some of the work too, because a few of the people who showed up to help, including my mom, watched the kids so I could dig in the mud.

Greg had already rotor-tilled the yard, (not fun) which was a huge help. So when everyone arrived we worked on building the beds, ripping out old dead lilacs, pruning the wild rose bush, and bringing in loads of compost from Cedar Grove. We still have some work to do like lining the paths with mulch, planting a winter garden and deciding what to plant along the east fence line, but Lily and I have already started playing in the raised beds and boy are we having fun!