Garden update

Lots of growth and new life with pictures to prove it!  Let us not tarry:

Broccoli, peas and beans - this bed isn't doing very well.  Perhaps I should take some time to weed it?
I've harvested a handful of YUMMY beans and peas - no broccoli yet.

This is our salad bar - producing black-seeded lettuce, purple basil, cilantro, spinach and swiss chard galore.  We are waiting for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and peppers. 

Here we have watermelon on an old fire pit - it seems to be doing alright.  I'm ready to see some flowers on it, though.

Summer squash - harvested 2 beauties so far and don't see any others coming.  I was hoping to have at least a dozen by now.  Alas, beginner's luck.

This is, by far, the cleanest bed we have.  It is filled to the brim with peat moss, rockwool and little clay balls that I don't know the name of.  VERY little weeding needs to be done here, thankfully.  My lazy-time is quite precious to me.
Unfortunately, only radishes have been harvested from this bed so far.  Tomato plants are lookin' ready to flower (or so I hope), strawberry plants are shooting out runners and we let them take root to transplant them into pots.  They make great gifts, by the way!  I don't anticipate having berries for at least another year.  The plants are most important for now.
More lettuce, cayenne peppers are fruiting, thyme to go with the purple basil (makes wonderful tea for upset tummy), radishes and carrots.

The newest bed has corn, peppers and tomatoes.  (They're already sprouted, this is about a week old photo but, LOOK AT THAT BED!)

New sprouts of canteloup, strawberry plants (from the runners), cilantro and tons of tomatoes.

New life - oregano, chamomile, catnip and other stuff I can't remember :)

Two years ago, a fellow Freecycler gave this Southern Magnolia to us in a pot...and that's where it stayed until a few weeks ago.  Now she has a home in our front yard and is looking very nice.

For two years I've mowed this area down not knowing what was planted there.  Oopsie!  Looks like whatever these are have survived just fine despite my ignorance.

From garden to table and it was DELICIOUS!
Grow organic.

The gardens

I can't even consider 2009 being the first year of having a garden; it was a total flop due to negligence and ignorance.  Alas, we had one lone green pepper plant survive but it did provide us with about 8 yummy peppers.

2010 is a different story.  Here's what we have so far (all are heirlooms, free of GMOs, pesticides and chemical fertilizers):

Calabrese broccoli (3 rows), Oregon sugar pod peas (3 plants growing inside the trellises) and Burpees stringless green beans (2 very healthy plants grown where the lone pepper plant was in 2009)
The border to this garden is made from a tree Joe chopped down in late 2009 from the very back of our property.

Here we have Marketmore 76 cukes (6 plants, WOW!), Black-seeded Simpson lettuce (6 plants), America Spinach (3 or 4 plants), Swiss chard (6 plants, I think) and some Marigolds that haven't sprouted yet...hmmm.
For now, this garden isn't going to have a border but we want to get some river rock when finances permit.

Golden zucchini squash (6 plants) and green onions from 2009 (oh yeah, those survived too).

The first bed we planted - Everbearing Albion strawberries (2 plants...wish we had more and these are actually not heirloom but the grower said they were organically grown and GMO-free hybrids), Joe planting some more seeds (we had to yank a zucchini plant that had a broken stem and powdery mold which gave us room for more lettuce and carrots), to Joe's right we have Thyme (5 plants), Scarlet Nantes carrot (only 1 plant until the new sprouts come up) and Early Scarlet Globe radishes (at least a dozen) and long red cayenne pepper (1 plant).
I regret the decision to use the cinder blocks as a border - even though it's laid very nicely, it just doesn't evoke a 'natural' feeling.

I'm excited for this round of sprouts!  We have Minnesota Midget cantaloupe, Mammoth dill, Gold Summer crook-neck squash, Beaver Dam pepper, Black Hungarian pepper, Tequila Sunrise pepper, Southport bunching onions, Purple Dark Opal basil, Cilantro, Amish Paste tomatoes and King of the North pepper.

Another sprout table has Lima beans, black-eyed peas, cantaloupe, watermelon and a few others that I can't think of right now.

Here is our composting and worm-y area.  We bury food scraps and put grass clippings here. 

Cloth wipes tutorial

You don't need a serger to have attractive and sturdy cloth wipes.

Cut two pieces of fabric into squares or rectangles, put them wrong side out and pin three of the four sides together.  (We like big wipes!)
The top is not pinned, I am not going to sew it.

Using a straight stitch, sew around the three sides that you pinned.

You should end up with this:

Turn the whole thing out and get those corners good, too.  You should now have this:

To close it, tuck the edge in all the way around - about an inch.

Get it nice and even and pin it shut.

Finally, sew all the way around to finish up :)