Last BIG Harvest of the Season

Even though we've got another small heat wave rolling in this weekend, autumn is still coming..time to start thinking about cleaning up the garden and trimming back landscaping around the house.
This will be the last big tomato harvest of the year. Which is sad and fantastic all at the same time. My freezer can't take ANY MORE tomatoes!

Had about five gallons harvested when the dust settled. I also trimmed the plants back quite a bit - hopefully they'll get a little more sun and air this way, and they can focus on ripening the fruit that's still left on the vine. Not sure where I'll put all the fruit that's left on the vine..but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Inspiration

After coming back from California, I was just so ready to try new things here in Iowa. I've done a little research about hardy varieties of fig and am playing around a little more with my succulents.
In finishing up some of the detail paint work on the backside of my house, I came to a point about halfway through the back wall where the neighbors' peach tree was starting to grow over the fence. She and I had talked about it and she was going to trim them back. After checking with her to make sure it was OK, I snipped off a couple smaller shoots, shaved off a little bark near the cut end of the branch and coated it with rooting hormone, and potted it.

It's going to look a little sad for a while, but hopefully the cut end of this shoot will send out new roots and take hold in the pot. I amended the soil with a little organic fertilizer before planting, firming, and watering the branch. If it doesn't work, at least it hasn't cost me anything...if it DOES work, I'll have my own peaches a couple summers from now!

'Tis the Season

..what? You thought I was talking about something else? No! It's seed shopping season! Received my Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalogues within a day of one another :)
http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://rareseeds.com/

Tomatoes, tomatoes, everywhere..

Remember my bowl of tomatoes? Quintuple that..this is my life.

With many of the tomatoes from the picture above, I hulled them, roasted them with garlic, salt, pepper, and sugar, and ran them through the food processor for sauces. I've got a couple quarts in the freezer. This is in addition to the multiple bags of tomatoes and peppers I cut up and froze for use in chili later in the year.

Another batch...holy crap.
See the "split" tomato in the front? I learned today that's due to inconsistent watering. The drought has been terrible for crops this year..especially those that need so much water. 

Roasted tomato Caprese salad. Tomato off the vine, basil out of the yard :)

Tomato sauce base from the puree in the freezer, basil and oregano from the yard, onions and garlic from my farm box.
I didn't make the wine or the pasta...I feel like such a failure ;)

This weekend

This weekend saw lots of changes around the house – most noticeably, paint!
As I mentioned in my previous post, my friend Anna came down for a couple days last week to start the painting project. She was excited for it and I was not..so it was a good match.

I have no idea why, but for the last several months I've just felt like part of the dining room needed to be blue.

The other two walls are the tan color from the living room and kitchen.

Moody blue..

Well, once she started, I got the fever and have been picking at it ever since. I stopped to attend the Iowa Craft Beer Festival Saturday afternoon in Des Moines (work-related…I promise) and to putter around in the yard a bit on Sunday.

My painter: I know how to pay my debts..

Painting around the kitchen.

My bedroom door. Even with this lighter color, the trim paint really pops!

Living room: painted, sans TV.

The other big change is that I’m flying solo again. No more roommate, no more cat..no more rent money. It’s really for the best – this was always meant to be a temporary thing, and it was. Roommate found a place of her own, and I get my house back. Free of cat hair and other people’s laundry. J

The other (random) project I created for myself was sort of…just more work? I moved the large pile of foundation stone out of the side yard and into the driveway. This way, I’ll be able to see what I’ve got when I’m using it to edge around the landscaping. I’ll also be able to kill off the weeds in that area and start fresh with new grass once I’ve got everything the way I want it. It will also be nice to have that out of the way when we start up the siding project in the front of the house.

I still have that little bit of siding to replace on this side..and, of course, the lawn is overgrown and weedy here now, so it will be easier to deal with all of that with these stones moved. Did I mention these stones before? They came from the foundation of the house next door. $30!!

You have no idea what this did for my OCD. Soo goood.

Speaking of which, I’m getting ready to refinance my construction note so that I can actually AFFORD to start the siding project in the front of the house. When I bought the house, my banker and I decided that it would actually be better for me to go the way of the construction note – this way, I didn’t have to put money down (my sweat equity and the improvements made counted as a down payment) and it afforded me a lot more flexibility. I pay a higher interest rate for it, and it expired after a year (had to get a small extension to finish up the kitchen), but now I’ll be able to refinance (at 2.86%, thankyouverymuch), get a little more money for this last big push, and then – one day – just come home and ENJOY being here rather than feel like I have to work at it all the time! J

If you've never had fresh broccoli...

OOH, I’ve also got broccoli popping in the garden! Several green tomatoes on the vine, lots of carrots, a few herbs..peppers..a cucumber..Brussels sprouts, and a lot of weeds. Pretty exciting stuff!

Let the hippie gardening begin!

Spring has sprung in Iowa! Actually, from what I’m reading, spring has sprung a little early everywhere this year. Temperatures have already been in the 90s, which – for us – is pretty unusual. But, combined with the mild winter, we’ve had it pretty easy so far in 2012.

That said, the farmers are worried about the lack of moisture we’ve had (no snow is not always a good thing) and people are waiting to see what the rest of the spring and summer hold. All I know is: if a warmer winter means a warmer summer, I’m toast. Humidity and I don’t get along.

Anyway, I’ve talked for quite a while about turning the enclosed front porch into my greenhouse and I’ve finally done it. For real. I ordered my seeds through a company called Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com), bought some trays so I at least look like I know what I’m doing, and raked up some soil from the backyard to get everything started. I sprinkled a little bone meal into the soil mixture to assist the plants in establishing strong roots and I check for proper moisture every morning before work. The soil should be moist but not water logged.. check it with your finger to see. If it feels dry, water it; if not, no worries. It’s also important that your trays/pots have proper drainage because the plants will rot if allowed to sit in sopping wet soil.

My greenhouse :)

So I’ve been watching these seeds like I’m going to see something. Standing there waiting for something to pop up out of the dirt. Obviously I haven’t seen anything. However, over the weekend while we were building and painting kitchen cabinets..BOOM!



I borrowed a pair of grow lights from a friend at work who isn't starting her garden from seed this year.

Nearly all of my tomato seeds have sprouted! I’m still waiting on a couple herbs to show signs of progress, but so far I’ve got all kinds of tomatoes (about 6 different varieties, actually. Would you like any tomato plants? J) carrots, basil, thyme, oregano, and a bunch of different medicinal type herbs that I’m going to play around with. I bought a book quite a while ago that talks a lot about holistic remedies for stomach aches, sore throats, acne, you name it and I’m going to give it a shot. Of course, the backyard might be so thick with tomatoes that it chokes everything else out.

A Grappoli D'Inverno - an Italian varietal cherry tomato. I chose to grow mostly cherry tomatoes in the garden because - in my experience - larger tomatoes are more prone to rot, disease, pests, etc.

I was in Des Moines yesterday for an appointment when I remembered I had a Lowe’s gift card saved back from Christmas (it’s been so long, it was like getting a new gift!) After my appointment ended, I had lunch at a little French place and stopped off at Lowe’s to see what I needed to spend free money on. I couldn’t think of anything hardware-wise that I needed immediately, so I wandered around the landscaping side for a while. I ended up with a giganto bag of mulch, a blueberry bush, and a stick that promises to one day be a Concord grape vine.

A little mulch cleaned up this corner by the side door. I pulled out some of the old daylillies and planted them elsewhere. Otherwise, I've got a couple hostas, some oregano and pineapple mint for ground cover (and kitchen use) a mystery plant, and a peony that has yet to decide if it wants to live. With the exception of the daylilly, all of these were gifts from a friend - thanks!

So while dad finished up spraying panels for the kitchen cabinets, I mulched, dug in some new plants, and used up a pile of bricks left over from the old west chimney.

There's no reason my composter can't look good on the back of the garage!

This is my backyard - all staked out and ready for planting once the seeds have gotten a little bigger. I plan to mulch the middle row and every other plot with straw so I've got room to move around in here once the tomatoes have taken over. :)