Winter CSA

Winter CSA Week 1

On Thursday I picked up the first box of our winter CSA membership. This one was more expensive since it runs from November to approximately March, but my friend and I decided to try it out for a year to see how it’ll work out. So far, so good!

- Peach Mama Peppers – Haven’t tried any yet, but they’re beautiful! The pic makes them look orange, but they actually are a gorgeous peach color.
- Kale – I love kale, and I’m going to try kale chips at some point next week. I think I’m going to have to ger creative with this if we get a lot, bc my hubby isn’t a big fan. If I get too much, I can always pawn it off on my mom. My dad loves kale – specifically the kale my Mom Mom used to make (add bacon/ham hock and boil/simmer for evvver), but any kale is good kale to him
- Salad Mix – I actually got less than half of this because I didn’t realize that the bottom of the bag was the radishes when I was splitting things up (pictured above is only what I took). Very good tho – ate it that night!
- Radishes – I love radishes in salads or roasted (salt, pepper, olive oil, oven until toasty). Again though, hubby is not a fan.
- Sweet Potatoes – always a winner! These seem perfect for fries. It was actually a very full small brown paper bag. What you see is prob only 1/4 of the total – I took less because my mom had just given me a big bag of large sweet potatoes.
- Bell Peppers – I don’t like them and my hubby likes them but doesn’t eat them much, so I gave them all to my CSA-mate.

All in all, a great start for the winter CSA! It’ll be interesting to see what we get through the winter. Hopefully I don’t have to bog my hubby down in greens, which I like but he can only handle so much of.

Fresh things I still have

I still have some fresh veggies.

HERBS (need to dry some more!):
•The genoa basil is kind of sort of hanging on. the opal basil still looks pretty good.
•The sage looks OK, but isn’t really growing any more. Should be back next year, though.
•The rosemary is mostly evergreen, so that’s cool.
•The lemon thyme is still nice and lush.

VEGGIES:
I pulled all the tomato plants, but I rescued some green tomatoes. Some of those are turning quite nicely. Please also note in the picture below how I TOTALLY ON ACCIDENT color coordinated things. How awesome am I? Also note that I can only claim the tiny tomatoes on the left. The apples, red tomatoes, and beet are all from good ol’ WalMart.

tomatoes etc.

Peppers! The pepper plants still need to be pulled (just didn’t feel like it last weekend). They still have flowers and small peppers, but they’ll never reach maturity. I did pick a LOT of jalapeños last weekend. I may slice up some of them and add them to my freezer bag of peppers for winter salsa, but I’ve also been letting a lot of them dry. They’re kind of pretty to me – I want to figure out how to make a pepper string to keep in the kitchen somewhere. (Apparently that’s called a ristra? And wow, they look super hard to make (scroll down)).

Not pictured: a bunch of pimento peppers

Do you still have any edibles going strong (or well, going at all) in your garden?

Rainbows! DOUBLE Rainbows!!

I’m actually kind of glad I left work a bit late because of a meeting with my boss. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I saw a rainbow. When I looked harder, I saw another! Thankfully, I had randomly thrown my camera in my purse this morning. Luck!

I stopped and snapped a few in the business park, and then as I was leaving I noticed a few cars pulled over by the cornfields outside the park looking and taking pictures, so I pulled over as well. I kind of love that after a busy Thursday at work, there were still people who pulled over together by a cornfield to look at a rainbow. Makes me a little verklempt, actually (and believe me, I hate myself for that). Even those that didn’t stop got a gorgeous show. Unfortunately I was driving away from it to go home, but it was still gorgeous.

I can’t decide in the pics below if I like the “enhanced” or the non-enhanced ones better. I should prob do some actual Photoshoppery to enhance them better (I just used the auto thingy in iPhoto), and the enhanced is prob more close to how I saw them, but they’re both so different (the bluer ones are the enhanced versions). What do you think?

in the business park

Total karma on the road line lining up with the end of the rainbow. I win!

This guy had a great view (taken while driving over the bridge)

Umm…I still have to do all those things.

You know all the stuff that I mentioned I had to do before it gets cold in this post? I still have to do all of them. Well, not *entirely* true—I did pull up the big gigantic zinnia, bringing in a bunch of blooms before sending it on its way into the woods. I’m hoping maybe it’ll reseed next year randomly there? A girl can dream. The nice thing about cut zinnias is that you can but them when they’ve just barely started blooming and they’ll still finish and be pretty.

Proof that I pulled the zinnia. Prob should have taken a pic of these before they got all wilty, huh?

But ummm besides that, I really haven’t done anything outside. We’re even still waiting for the shed moving to be scheduled (Note to self: take pic of the yard before it gets moved for reference). The gravel pad is done, but it’s still not moved.

I know, I know. Alice is ashamed at our lack of progress.

Perhaps this weekend. We have some tentative plans (including organizing the sheds if we move the new one on Friday), but I could prob fit in a few garden tasks. Siiiigh.

Question: Do you plant your decorative mums each year or treat them as annuals? I can’t decide what to do. I want to plant them, but I don’t really have a ton of space for mums. I have 4 very small ones and 2 slightly bigger ones to think about. hmmmm.

I pick up the first CSA delivery of the fall/winter season tomorrow! Will report back.

Hank is ambiguous about our lack of progress.

To Do (Before It Gets Too Cold)

Sooooo I still have some stuff to do before it gets too cold. It may or may not happen next weekend (Halloween), but maybe I’ll feel ambitious after work this week.

• Plant the rest of my coneflowers. I had been waiting for the new garden we’re planning on, but that may or may not happen before it gets too cold. So I just need to find them a home. I already waited too long on 2 hostas, so hopefully they make it through the winter and come back in the spring.
• Pull up the gazanias in the front by the steps and replace them with the rest of the pansies I bought today. I actually planned out my pansies better this year and it looks nice. Pics TK.
• Pull up the rest of the stuff in the veggie garden (including the zinnias pictured in this post) and harvest the rest of the jalapeños.
• Get seeds from the pink gerber daisy if I can before trashing it. Two gerber daisies, the gazanias, and a few petunias are the only annuals left aside from the veggie garden.
• Plant bulbs! Crap. I keep forgetting. I actually had to come back and edit this (future)post when I remembered! I have 15 Apeldoorn’s Elite tulips, 15 Daydream tulips (my tulips didn’t do great this spring, so I wanted to replace them/freshen them up), 20 pickwick crocus (I like mine but don’t have very many, and I may have lost some when I planted other things nearby), and 15 Meleagris Mixed Fritallaria (I saw them and they looked neat). No daffodils because they were still OK last year and I have enough. I kind of don’t know where to plant them – probably most will go in the triangle garden, maybe a few in the front. It’s hard because I want to be able to plant them and leave them, but not have an empty ugly spot after they’re done. hmm.

I think that’s about it. Today I dumped some more annuals that were just done, did a few pots of pansies and violas, and potted up the bonsai azalea for the winter.

Hopefully, we’ll be finally moving our shed to our house, too – which is more exciting than you know! It’s still at my in-laws’ – we bought it when we were living there because storage costs were crazy and the in-laws suggested we just get a shed and keep it there instead. Our house already had a shed (a small crappy one), so we’ve procrastinated on bringing it over. But we really need to now, so I think it’s finally coming. Which means I can organize my gardening stuff *much* better in the old crappy shed now – the new nice one that’s being moved will be for actual storage (we don’t really have any storage inside the house). Yay!

THe Hibiscus’s Last Hurrah

The Mango Mist hibiscus is now officially in for the winter, but it gave me more blooms at one time right before coming in than it did all summer long. Gorgeous! I really hope it makes it through the winter.

Also, an official goodbye to our resident spider. He’s lived by the deck door all summer long. I left him there, figuring maybe he’d keep some bugs from coming in. Every night he comes out for dinner, and every day he goes back into the siding somewhere and hides. Before long, I guess he’s done for.

our friendly spider

And lastly, excuse the blurry pic, but can anyone ID this weed? It’s pretty.

[Pics from] Bloom Day – October 2009

It’s been raining since Thursday! ughhh. On Thursday/Bloom Day, I actually had to take a (rainy, and cold) trip to Baltimore for work. So I never got around to doing a post, but I did take some pics that day when I got home. And…it’s STILL raining on Sunday.

I really like how some of these turned out – the rain makes everything look different. The mums look like candy to me.

I love how the mums get a purple tinge after a while

Rudbeckia cappucino

mutant rudbeckia cappucino

furry rudbeckia

gazania - these will be replaced will pansies soon

helenium - w/ nasturtium in the background

icy-looking ice plant

nasturtium - *finally* starting to actually climb a bit on the jessamine's trellis. Did a good job of covering up ugly rose foliage, though. Will do that again next year.

Hibiscus is still blooming a ton - but it needs to be brought inside soon. What should I do to bring it in - prune it? Does it need a lot of sun? Help!

Finally got a couple more blooms from this gerber daisy - love it! How do I save seeds from it? I'd love to have it again next year.

Cats + Tomatoes = ?

Actually, I think cats aren’t supposes to eat tomatoes (at least not green ones or tomato plants). But since I have nothing else to say and I just ran across these (thank you icanhascheezburger widget!, here are some lolcats. Note: Kittehs pictured are not my kittehs.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Does that last one look familiar? Yes, I think it does.

Garden Art – Mosaic Stepping Stones

This weekend I finally took out a stepping stone kit I bought last summer. I bought 2 of them using the weekly 40% off coupons from Michael’s, and also got anothet box of just the cement mix (I have a lot of random mosaic pieces, so I didn’t need all that stuff). One of the kits I did last year, and the other had these fun letter presses (and I also got letters in another font, but I haven’t used that yet. I love these!

Pics of all of them are below. The one from the actual full kit is the “Watters est 5-5-06″ one. The others were from the supplemental box of mix (the mix is really just portland cement, which you can get at Lowe’s, but you have to buy it in GIANT bags which you have to both store and carry out of the store, so I’ll stick to the small ones). I combined the glass from the kit and other glass and jewels I had (Michael’s and dollar store) for all of them. For the smaller ones, I used various containers – the rectangles are the bottoms of the containers some of the mosaic pieces came in and the round ones are the plastic pot drainer things (do they have a name?). One of them actually has cool little feet because the drainer thing – might have to try and think of some cool way to utilize that if I make more of these.

So anyway – enjoy the pics! Some are repeats because I took pics before they were totally dry and then rearranged them. What do you think? And a question – do you think I can leave these out all winter, or should I bring them in because water might freeze in the letters and crack them? Also on the smaller ones, some are slightly brittle (too little water) and some the letters didn’t work well on (too much water). I don’t want any of them to break, but I’d like to have them out over the winter if I can…

Going to put these in the garden by the shells that I have from the beach.

I finally put together my pumpkin man, too - love this guy!

Sorry, little guy! (Garden apologies)

Some garden apologies.

He was pretty on fall cleanup day, but this dahlia is now in the composter (and possibly still alive there, since he went in with the whole pot and we’ve had a lot of rain). Sorry, little guy! Just no room to overwinter the likes of you

Also sorry to this little guy. He was SO huge last year that I decided to pinch this aster back this year just like I did the mums so it didn’t flop over again. Only the bunnies and caterpillars also helped with the pinching back, so now he’s only got 3 blooms this year (and his counterpart asters don’t have any as of yet). Sorry!

aster

This guy I left in a pot way too long. My mom got him on clearance last fall (some sort of daisy?). I stuck it in a pot over the winter, left it there in the spring, and just planted it last week. So the leaves look kind of crappy and its weirdly leggy. But the blooms are emerging and seem happy enough.

This guy is a victim of something I apparently have made a habit when dividing and replanting things. I kind of like the habit though, so I’m not sure if I’m totally apologizing or not. With daylilies, I accidentally combined a stella d’oro and a red one (unlabeled), so the one plant blooms for longer with both kinds. With this mum, I somehow combined an orange and yellow one in the same planting.

confused mum

Sorry, plants! I’m sure there are some more apologies due, but you all know who you are. I’ll try to do better next year!