Winter Renewal

My garden is now covered in a few inches of snow.  I miss all the fresh vegetables I used to eat during the summer.  I also miss digging my hands in the dirt with the sun on my back and seeing my kids faces when they picked a ripe vegetable.  Uggghhhh,  Is spring coming soon?!?!?!?

Stop Mint From Spreading Through The Rest Of Your Garden

A few years ago, I planted a packet of mint seeds behind my house.  I was surprised to find that they came back the next year in abundance!  They are almost like weeds in the way they spread.

To stop new growths from spreading further and getting into the grass, I put small, decorative bricks around the mint plants.  It helps, but the root system still spreads outside the brick area and we still have to cut a few mint plants down at the root system.  We have clay soil and I find Mint to be a very hardy plant, that can handle almost anything if it is planted outside.

Attracting bees to your garden for pollination

This summer, I noticed that lack of bees for pollination in my garden.  I had vegetables growing an inch, drying up and falling off the plant repeatedly.  I learned that my problem was that the plants were not being pollinated.  One day, I dropped a few spoons of jelly around the garden.  Within hours, I had bees all over the place.  I would not recommend going near the bees since they seemed very excited by the jelly.

After a week, the jelly and bees were gone and I checked on my garden.  I had several cucumbers and zucchinis that had grown to a few inches long!  After another week, I had full-size vegetables!  The jelly trick worked!  It would probably work with anything sweet that you put in the garden, so you can come up with your own sweet treat to attract bees to your garden!

Hand-pollinating Zucchini & Cucumber plants

Over the summer, I learned how to hand-pollinate zucchini and cucumber plants.  My cucumbers and zucchinis would flower, the vegetable would begin to grow and when they got to be about an inch long, my cucumbers and zucchinis would turn brown, dry up and fall off.  This kept happening, so I did some research and found that they were not getting pollinated.

I learned that I could pick the stamina (covered in pollen) off the male flowers and rub them around in the female flowers to get some of the pollen in there.

I waited a few days after attempting this and noticed that my cucumbers and zucchinis were not falling off.  A week or two later, I had full size cucumbers and zucchinis!  You can only pollinate the female cucumber flowers with the pollen from the male cucumber flower and the female zucchini flowers with the pollen from the male zucchini flowers.   I am pretty sure this would work with other squash type plants too!

Thanksgiving Compost

I had lots of vegetable scraps left over from our Thanksgiving dinner.  Lots of white and sweet potato peels, green bean ends and other vege peels and scraps.  I threw it all in the garden and dug it under with my hoe for composting.  I think my garden will be pretty happy with its Thanksgiving Day feast!

The Last Vegetables of the Season

Today ended up being above average outside, a balmy 66 degrees!  I had already pulled up my tomatoes and peppers about a month ago, but I still had a few carrots and onions in the garden.  They seem to enjoy the cooler weather, so I let them stay until today.

I pulled up tons of carrots and onions.  I planted the short, stubby carrots at the beginning of spring.  I am not sure why it took them so long to grow since this was my first year gardening.  I brought in a whole bag of carrots from my raised garden.  Now I have to figure out what to make from them.

I pulled up all my onions today too.  I thought they looked nice until I gave them a squeeze and found that they were squishy.  It must be because it has been so cool for the past month?  I threw them all into the garden and dug them under with my gardening hoe.  Hopefully they will decompose and give nutrients to next years plants.