How Does Your Garden Grow, 2013 Edition

This year's garden is so awesome.  I'm so proud of all we've learned in the past two seasons.  But I'm super embarrassed for the mistakes I've made this year because now that I have my garden bible I'm smacking myself in the forehead for not doing such things as: buying the garden bible BEFORE we started gardening this year, .... and that's pretty much it. 

But seriously, I also should have harvested my radishes all at once because they get bitter if you leave them in the ground too long.  OOPS.  And I should have started the basil inside because it's having a really hard time outside... the monsoon season drowned a bunch of tries.  OOPS.  Then I should have harvested the lettuce more aggressively as it matured so it would give me a second and third harvest (maybe?) instead of being on the verge to bolt, as it is now.  OOPS.

Since this photo was taken I have added twine to make the trellis more trellis-y.  I'm pretty excited to try the pole beans because we've never done that.  I've also taken out the radishes and cilantro cause they were done... and added a second try of basil and chives.  Which don't seem to be going that well.

All in all, we're still doing pretty awesome out there.  And it's good to learn things for "next year" (which won't be next year cause we'll be in limbo-land and homeless at the time we need to plant) and try things a little different with how I'm caring for the plants this year. 

Oh oh and I've also tried something pretty revolutionary this year... you may have heard of it... it's called weeding.  I know.  Apparently if you take out the life-sucking weeds that compete for nutrients with your garden plants then you'll have better crops.  Amazing right?  This is the first year I have somehow found the time to properly care for this aspect of the garden (I blame Double Trouble) and I've already done a full weeding TWICE!  I'm a wild woman!

The radishes were really fun!  No one besides me really likes them, but I just wanted to experiment.  They were so easy to grow!  And the fresh bright color and crunch made every salad so delicious and PRETTY.  Cause we all know how much pretty means to this food-photographer.

And even if everything else in our garden shrivels up and dies right this second I won't care... because the TOMATOES ARE COMING!  Jesse's garden house is still holding strong and they are just doing so marvelous.  I'm pretty proud of us for how much improvement we've seen in the tomato department since year one.  I think we only got a bowl of tomatoes that year.

I saw Mr. Upstairs Neighbor harvesting some tomatoes from his garden today... so if my la-la-land-ever-the-optimist calculations are correct, we'll be tasting ours within three weeks.  Can you say bruschetta?????  Nom nom.

And with that I give you this completely un-related picture of the girls.  Because some of you appreciate a daily-ish dose of Aiduk Girl cuteness.  And the rest of you can just scroll back up and look at the beautiful radishes again.

Have a happy Monday y'all!

Our Last German Garden!

Hey look!  Tomato plants!  In all the chaos of the past two months, I totally forgot to blog that our seedlings were started and doing splendid.  Thankfully, I didn't forget to water them.. for the most part.  So I'll go with at least I remembered that!

I planted some flowers just for fun, but I tend to kill things like that since I don't know a blessed thing about them.

We also planted cherry tomatoes, big fat tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, lettuce, dill, parsley, cilantro, basil, chives, radishes, zucchini, pole beans, and... I think that's it.  I ordered The Vegetable Gardener's Bible and it should be here soon.  I'm hoping to guess less this gardening season ;o)  

I'm also hoping to actually weed.  My kids are old enough to play in the yard while I accomplish outside chores this year. Which may lead to weeding the garden.  Or it may lead to me sitting in the sun reading a book.  I haven't decided which is more important, yet!

So we planted during Jesse's last three day weekend.  It really didn't take much to weed and turn over the soil.  After that we put up our little "tomato house" as I like to call it.  I'm curious if we'll keep doing that even back in the States.  It's definitely helpful here in Germany, but I don't know a blessed thing about the science behind it.

We are literally copying our upstairs neighbor on this.  In fact, we even copy him by spying on his tomato house to see when he plants his!  We got ours in the ground about a week after he did.  I like to think he's proud of us as he watches our garden from his living room window.  Which I know he does... they're a tad creepy like that ;o)

Speaking of proud of us, I think Lilo, Dianna, and Harold are super proud that we've kept at this whole gardening thing.  I don't think they thought we would.  Apparently their stereotype of Americans are that we aren't the gardening type. But I don't think they know what a hippie SAHM is, either.  

After we got the tomatoes in the ground I planted the rest.  I had intended to start the lettuce from seed in the house about a month ago but I forgot.  (seems to be happening a lot lately!)  So we won't have lettuce as early as we'd planned but oh well.

All in all, I'm really excited for this gardening season.   BRING ON THE FRESH TOMATOES BABY!!!

End of this Year's Garden, but the Tomatoes Live On!

Last weekend was "winterize the garden" weekend.  We pulled up all the remaining plants, took down the tomato house, and added some of the composting soil to the garden before turning it all over.  

I have a lot of hope for next year's garden.  I can't wait to research some of our mistakes from this year and do even better next year!  Sometimes I think it's too much work, but then I go out and pick some veggies for dinner and I think "this is so fun!"  Plus, next year the girls will be that much more excited about picking food with me, and who knows... maybe they'll even be able to help me with the weeding!  

I brought in ALL of our green tomatoes a couple weeks ago.  Like, tomatoes coming out our ears.  And this "ripen with bananas" trick is working really well!

These are some of them this week.  All you do is switch out the bananas every few days and "harvest" your tomatoes as they get ripe.  (I keep the box closed but not tightly... and I check weekly for bad fruit because they rot quickly.)  As the bananas ripen, they off-gas some sort of magic that helps the tomatoes ripen, too!

What am I doing with all these tomatoes?  Bruschetta.  Buckets of bruschetta!  

No recipe really... just tomatoes, basil, garlic, salt, pepper, a splash of olive oil and baslamic vinegar, and boom. Bruschetta.  It's delicious.  In the absence of a yummy loaf of crusty bread this week I tried "Italian flavored skillet potatoes"...

...Jesse thought it was a tad weird to combine potatoes and tomatoes in such a manner.  But I was feeling adventurous. (and also needed to go grocery shopping so I was out of... everything and anything.  and it was lunchtime.  This was my solution.)  Potatoes, butter, oregano, parsley, salt and pepper.  Medium high until well browned.  I love using cast iron for this.  Get's em nice and crispy.

Top with fresh bruschetta and feta cheese (kind of ironic that I had fancy-pants cheese in the fridge but no bread anywhere!) and eat happily.  The kids ate the "shetta" and not the potatoes, which they usually love.  Weirdos.  

Does anyone else agree with My Love that potatoes and brushetta don't mix?  I thought it was pretty yummy.  And a simple yet satisfying lunch.  Okay, okay, and I was pretty proud of myself for throwing something "themed" together when we really had nothing going on in the fridge/pantry.  But I digress...

Bye-bye garden, see you next season!  Hello huge box of green-turning-red-tomatoes.  Bring on the bruschetta!

Growing Like Weeds, Literally and Figuratively

Here's the garden!  It's doing great!  Well, parts of it are.  The weeds are doing fantastic (shame on me... I weed about as often as I dust!) but so are the tomatoes, beans, pepper, zucchini, carrots, and herbs.

Then you have the lettuce and broccoli.  And the cucumbers.  I've had to replant them cause I'm not sure what the heck is going on.  Well, with the cucumbers I don't know what's going on... I put them in directly as seeds and only one in three whole big rows grew!   But I know what happened to the lettuce and broccoli.  I killed them.  Oops.  I left them inside too long and over-watered the crap out of them.  By the time I got them to the ground it was apparently too late for some!

I've been able to harvest a few hand fulls of tomatoes and they taste AMAZING!  And look at how much bigger they are than last year!  It kind of pains me to be going to the States before I get to fully enjoy the harvest this year.  It's weird to have done so much work and then have your husband and friends eat all the fruit of your labor.

Side note: Jesse's done more true work in the garden than I have... but still!  He broke the ground and sifted the soil (with a little help from me) and built the garden house (with a little help from Mark) but I take care of the daily chores once it's planted like pulling weeds opening the tomato house and watering the garden.  And picking ripe veggies and herbs for our favorite breakfast of tomato-basil scrambled eggs!

Not getting to see the harvest (yet) kind of reminds me of how I don't get to see the fruit of my labors with these little monkeys right away.  It seems like each day is so full of so much work.  And then you get up and do it all over again! The illusive "harvest" with children... when does it come?  Probably not for another 18 years or so, huh?

When they're all grown up and normal, healthy, functioning adults.  You know, the kind that can make ME some scrambled eggs.  The kind that don't poop in the bathtub (I'll spare you the details).  Those kind of adults.  And until they get to that point (and probably even after as most experienced Moms will warn me) I just have to keep working hard.  I'll surely see the fruit someday!

In the meantime, Dad better have some rockin' tomato plants in his garden or I'm going to be scouring the neighborhood in search of truly fresh tomatoes to enjoy!  Less than a week till I'm in America!

Garden Update

See Steph?  You were right about the beans!

And here's some baby zucchini.  Unfortunately you can see that a few slugs got in the do some damage before I could lay down a perimeter.  The organic slug pellets I ordered seem to work great but I'm out.  So I might have to go with a conventional-toxic-icky-but-easy-to-get killer. 

As you can see, I have baby carrots now.  But I'm waiting till they get bigger to start weeding... just want to be sure I know what to pull and what to leave ;o) 

Tomato sticks are in.  Tomato sticks?  Is that even a gardening phrase?  Probably not!

A (Tomato) House to Call Home

Check it!  Our tomato house!  It's all the rage in Germany (according to Mr. Upstairs Neighbor) because we get so much rain.  And apparently tomatoes don't really like to get rained on.  Who knew?  So we bring the top cover down to cover them (like a greenhouse I guess) at night and also when the weather's bad.

Mostly we just go to our laundry room or back yard and look up the hill at Mr. Upstairs Neighbor's tomato house to see if his is open or closed.  I'm not even kidding, we're totally copying everything he does in hopes to get more fruit this year!

We've barely gotten our garden in the ground and already learned a few really helpful gardening lessons this year.  Mainly, to be more careful about the timing of your seedlings.  Example: we planted the tomatoes way too early but we put the rest of the goodies in the planters or the ground a bit late.

Another oops is that we didn't start everything from seed in the house... and we're kind of regretting that now.  The zucchini, beans, cucumbers, carrots, dill, and chives went straight into the garden and then we got a monsoon for about a week... the garden was a mud puddle and we're not sure if the baby seeds are going to survive it ;o)  So next year, we'd feel better about making sure we get all of our plants strong before releasing them to Germany's crazy mother nature!

Luckily, we aren't planning a May vacation next year ;o) so hopefully we can be more timely about getting the plants in the ground when they need to.  And it's only our second year, so I'll just be happy if we get some of everything!  I'd obviously love to can lots of tomatoes.  But I'll take what I get!

The jalapenos and bell peppers are definitely doing the best so far.  But I also have high hopes for the zucchini... that stuff always grows a ton even when people don't want it to, so it should be fine.

And the beans are like "rain shmain, we're just poppin' up left and right anyways".  It's nice to see at least one sign of life from the seeds that went right into the ground!

Speaking of signs of life, Lilo's roses are just beautiful this time of year.  But I always get a twinge of guilt and sadness when I see all that her garden/yard used to be or could be... there's a huge gap between the love I have time to give the yard and the love I'm sure she used to give it.  I'm pretty proud of myself that I went out there the other day and pulled up all the tall grass that was choking out the rose bushes... but even that I wasn't able to do thoroughly before Double Trouble were getting whiny for lunch.

I always feel like it's the like the Secret Garden, you know?  Just a shadow of the glory it once was... no one to really take care of it.  Kind of overgrown and crazy... but blooming nevertheless.

Poor, sad, neglected garden.  Overrun by weeds with no one to take care of it anymore :o(

Garden Happenings

Jesse transplanted all the tomatoes and peppers this weekend.

The tomatoes not only needed more space for their roots but more space to spread out their limbs :o)

And there are the peppers.

He also planted the broccoli and lettuce.

My indoor parsley, cilantro, and basil are doing well.  Now to learn how to harvest from them without killing them.  Anyone have any tips?

It's hard to believe Cassie and Zave will be here next week!  I feel like I have a list a mile long of things to do before they come... one of them is that we  need to finish sifting the garden so that it's ready for planting before we leave.  Mark and Toni are possibly going to plant the actual garden for us while we're gone in May, so it needs to be ready by the end of April.  

I also need to research some organic slug pellets.  A hippie friend tipped me off to these beauties... apparently she found them on amazon last year.  Cause I just can't handle slugs eating my beautiful plants!  

It snowed a little yesterday morning.  Kind of makes it hard to get motivated to go dig in the dirt ;o)  But the periodic sunshine and the stubborn Spring flowers outside tell me that yes, Spring will be here soon!  So we need to get on the ball and prep that garden!

Our New Sandbox

The rectangle on the right side is last year's garden.

This is what Jesse's dug up so far for this year.  (We're going to have one more small section.)

So all we're really doing right now is sifting the dirt to get all the big rocks and grass chunks out.  Lilo has a metal screen we are using... Jesse does most of the hard work of shoveling the dirt through it and I just help take the debris to our junk pile after I sort out all the rocks into the bucket.  

And we had some lovely sunshine the other day so we decided to dig as a family :o)

We got about half of the garden ready.  Just waiting for another nice day to get out there again :o)

Spring is definitely here!  It's so nice to be able to get outdoors again!  Long walks in the sunshine, playing in the dirt.  It's a great feeling :o)