February 9, 2010: Give Us This Day.....

When I woke up this morning, I thought it was going to be a lovely, warm, sunny day. I had my coffee, then tossed a load of clothes in the washer, and hung them out on the clothesline to dry. Just as I got the last item hung, the clouds covered the sun, and a chilly wind began to blow. So much for my warm, sunny day!

It was, however, a perfect day for bread baking.......

No, I'm not mooning you *grin*. Two batches of bread dough have been mixed up in the food processor, and are rising.

Fresh out of the oven, the cinnamon rolls have been drizzled with a vanilla glaze.

Eight big hot dog buns, four hamburger buns and four giant cinnamon rolls are cooling.

Believe me, there's nothing better than home made hot dog and hamburger buns. Two of these burger buns were eaten tonight, with grilled ground sirloin, fresh picked lettuce and home made pickle relish. The recipe for the buns can be found on my blog, November 29, 2008: Just Biding My Time.

February 8, 2010: Harvest Monday

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions

*click photos to enlarge*

Yesterday I picked a basket of lettuce leaves from the pots in the garden. Notice the tiny carrot at the front. That was my "test" carrot, checking for size. It has a perfect little root, but I'm quite sure they won't grow to an edible size before we leave. The salad, of baby spinach, green and red Romaines and Red Sails lettuces, just screamed for a loaf of freshly baked French bread to go with the leftover grilled London Broil from the night before. The thinly sliced beef and a pot of au jus made for some really good French Dip sandwiches on Superbowl Sunday. The fresh salad was tossed with an oil/vinegar/sugar sweet and sour dressing.


The longer days and lots of rain have made the lettuce in the mini-garden spring to life! Everything is growing well now.....well, not the spinach, which is still very slow. I only have nineteen more days here in Arizona. On the 27th of February, I'll pull everything out, wash and spin it dry, then store it in a damp cotton pillow case in the ice chest for the trip home. I may just leave the roots on some of the lettuce plants, and see if they might be transplanted into containers once I get home. If not, we and the rabbit will have a lot of fresh salads.

It will be such a shame to pull the carrots. The roots are forming now, and just perfect. You can see the one I pulled to "test" in the harvest photo above. I really don't think 19 days will be enough time to grow them to an edible size, but the rabbit will enjoy them in his salads, anyway.

This lettuce bed is still unharvested, but I'll begin cutting a few leaves this week.

The two larger pots of lettuce have been our only source of fresh cut greens so far, and were the ones picked for this week's harvest. The spinach and onion boxes are bottomless, just used to give more depth to the compost and soil. The pots will (hopefully) go north at the end of the month. Mr. H is already complaining of the shortage of room in the back of the pickup.

The carrots are just lovely. They have grown so well from their toilet tissue seed mats, showing perfectly formed little roots and extremely good germination. The beets have finally started growing, and are looking quite good! I've picked a few of their leaves to use in our salads. The spinach is only growing in spots, where it was accidentally planted atop the beets. I'm thinking this might have been last year's seed, as germination of a new packet of seeds, in the box (photo above this one), was excellent and had to be thinned out a bit.

February 5, 2010: In My Wildest Dreams!

Run, don't walk, to Tatyana's blog, My Secret Garden. There you will see the garden of my dreams! I even have a white pickup truck I could plant. After all, I did use it as a plant harden-off-er last spring!

February 4, 2010: At My Disposal

My daughter, Amy, manages a large mobile home community. Look what the owners bought last week!





They have several dead sycamore trees on the property, and it was less expensive for them to buy the machinery for tree removal than to hire someone to remove all the trees. Bryan, my son-in-law, will be operating this big rig. Now, it's not the lift that will benefit me directly, it will be the trees he cuts down. They are also purchasing a large commercial chipper! Guess who can have all the wood chips she wants for her garden paths. Moi!

Besides getting free wood chips, we have decided to stay in Washington next winter. If our Arizona property doesn't sell, we will have to come back down...but not until January! That means I'll be home when the leaves fall this year. Which means I'll have all the chopped leaves I need for my garden! I've also found a source for free llama poo, which is supposed to be great garden fertilizer. A layer of leaves and poo in the fall, turned under in early spring, should make a wonderful 2011 garden! I've heard llama poo is terribly stinky though, so I may end up buying composted horse manure. My dogs, Annie and Otto, just love to bring stinky stuff inside through their doggy door.

It makes Annie smile just to think of rolling in that lovely, stinky poo.

February 3, 2010: Bang for the Buck

Yesterday we went to Blythe, California to do our grocery shopping and have a nice lunch. I needed to pick up some envelopes so I could send for my SASE Tomato Seeds from WinterSown Org. Yes, I actually ordered more tomato seeds. I'm a glutton for punishment, but I really want to try some dwarf indeterminate varieties in containers this year. That way, if we don't happen to sell our AZ place, I think I can easily start new plants for the winter garden by rooting some cuttings.

I went into the local dollar store, and not only found the long envelopes, but also spotted a plastic covered daily planner that looked like it would be really handy for garden schedules and notes. I wish now I'd bought two, one for practice and one for real!

Having nothing else to do with my life these days, I decided to read up on planting by the moon. My grandmother, who was the best gardener in my world, always planted according to the phases of the moon. Although I'd never paid much mind to the practice, I figured "why not?" I mean, it sure can't hurt, can it? Actually, I had just read May Dreams Gardens, and Carol referred to her blog about "By the Light of the Silvery Moon". There she stated "According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac for 2010, I should plant the onions and radishes and other root crops between the full moon and the new moon. This will be between March 1 – 14 this year or after March 29th. I should then plant the peas, lettuce, and spinach sometime between the new moon and the full moon, between March 15 – 29th."

Armed with this information and my new daily planner, I found an excellent moon phase calendar website, and began plotting my seed planting schedule. Then, to be doubly sure to have the best garden ever, I also noted the best days for planting according to Ed Hume Seeds "Moonbook".

On the planner's calendar, I entered "R" (for root crops) on all dates between full and new moons, and "L" (for leafy crops) on dates between new and full moons. I then entered "P" (for planting days) according to the dates given in Moonbook.

*click photo to enlarge*
Here is why I wish I'd purchased two books. I "practiced" on this one, using an ink pen. I really need to give it a bit more studying. I'm sure I didn't get all my veggies listed, and I need to peruse the time line further. The "P" dates just didn't quite fall on the days I want to "P"! I may have to ignore the Moonbook dates and just go by the moon phase.

*click photo to enlarge*
I printed out my garden plan and inserted the pages inside the plastic cover. That way I'll have my entire garden reference right at my fingertips, in a waterproof/dirt proof cover.

I feel as though I got a lot of bang for my buck at the dollar store!

February 1, 2010: A Bug's Eye View of the Winter Garden

January 31, 2010: Garden Blogger's Death Day

Yes, there has been death and destruction in Granny's Arizona mini-garden this month. Like Erin, I have experienced winter tomato failure.

Those sturdy little Patio tomatoes that looked like this.....

And produced fruit like this.....

Now look like this........

And to add insult to injury, I danced with glee at the heartiness of my plants and rejoiced in "Ha-ha, I'm a better gardener than you" when my friend Esther's tomato plants froze and died. Well, hers came back up from the roots, and are now lovely, sturdy, blossoming plants, while mine are wimpy and dead/dying.

January 27, 2010: That Didn't Take Long!

I'm back. It only took two days of having to drive to the library for an internet connection, before I'd had enough of that! The administrator of the system across the street, at the RV park, was off at college today, but his stepfather figured out how to get my mac number entered into their system.....so I'm good to go!

But I really don't have anything to blog about today :-) I'll just go catch up with all your blogs!