The Potting Bench and a Look Around the Garden and Yard

Hey y'all! Hope everyone is having a nice spring day. It's gorgeous, here, in South Carolina. Mid 80's, no humidity and plenty of sunshine. I've been outside, today, planting flowers and poofing some things. 

Cliff and Sawyer built my potting bench Saturday. Holler! Cliff built it from boards that he salvaged from an old dock that we found submerged in the lake, in front of our property. Originally, I wanted to use the boards to make a table for an outdoor kitchen area, but there's construction going on in that area right now (Cliff is having a shop/garage built). So, we decided that the old dock would make a great potting bench instead. 

I took a lot of pictures.....so, I'm just gonna let you go ahead and take a look around the garden and yard.

 I love that Cliff is teaching Sawyer to use power tools....he sure won't let me use them. LOL!!

 He's almost finished. I was so excited!

 And here it is....my potting bench! It looks a little bare right now, but I'm not finished with it yet. Cliff is going to put the cleats back on that once held ropes to tie up boats and I have some cute little hooks to hang on it, too.
I'm, also, thinking about putting a chair and umbrella there to the right of the potting bench. You know, so a girl can relax in the shade for a few minutes after doing all that gardening.

 The shelf is the perfect place to store things up out of the way of my work area.

 See that metal colander hanging there on the right. It's one of my new finds. I have a smaller one just like it that I use in the house, but I'll use this one to gather my vegetables.

 

 There was a lot of planting going on here this morning. 

I have a new friend...do you see her? She's Glory the goat.

 Oh, and I also have chickens in my garden. This is Marvin and Matilda. It would be nice if they would help fertilize. Ha!

 Around the yard, the Day Lilies are starting to bloom.

 The hanging basket is up for Mama Bird to enjoy, when she comes home.

 I'm planting these Dianthus tomorrow in the side flower bed.

I absolutely love purple flowers!

Speaking of loving some flowers.....Glory gives new meaning to stopping and smelling the roses or in this case, Zinnias. 

 

The garden is doing great! Lettuce and carrots. I've already picked the lettuce, twice.

 The Lone Ranger....the only sugar snap pea that came up. I need to go back to the drawing board with these. I think I should have planted them earlier.

Or maybe I should have just hooped the sugar snap peas in the compost bin. Everything comes up in there....with reckless and wild abandon. These are pumpkin seeds. I'm letting them do their thang. 

Oh law! There are those chickens again.

Happy day! Talk soon!

~~**Laurie**~~

In Case You Were Wondering...

This is my garden post. 

HaHa!

I have really had a lot of fun getting out in the garden this spring, planting and watching things grow. The plants are still small and I can't wait until they fill in the beds and start giving me lots of veggies. 

My garden is still under construction, so to speak. I still don't have a potting shed or a potting bench, for that matter. Hopefully, I can hogtie Cliff long enough to at least make me a potting bench, soon. Or, I just might have to pull out his power tools and make one myself....even though I'm forbidden from using power tools. HaHa! He does get brownie points, though, because he made me an extra raised bed and another compost bin.

I have a couple of garden accents I want to hang and I am patiently waiting for my zinnias and marigolds to grow big enough to plant around in different spots. Perpetual progress, I think, sums up the garden pretty well.

Well, as you can see, I took lots of photos and I'm just gonna go ahead and let them do the talking. 

I just love my little garden. It looks so cottage-y.

I've planted more vegetables this year than last and if I had the room, I would plant even more. I'll give you a quick list.....carrots, lettuce, onions, kale, broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, celery, tomatoes, cantaloupe, jalapeno, beets, radishes, squash, zucchini, watermelon, cucumbers, string beans, okra and dill. I also planted some spinach and sugar snap peas, but I think I planted them too late. Only one sugar snap pea germinated and the spinach never grew taller than an inch before dying off. 

My new raised bed is under the window and is home to the string beans and okra. And, do you see the pink tub and a tiny bit of a blue tub sticking up beside the new bed? That's where my other compost bin went. Cliff had not installed it yet before I too these pictures. 

From this view, in the top left corner of the garden is where some sort of potting shed or bench is going....one day...some day...whenever. 

And do you see that metal bin hanging on the side of the house? I use it to store a few small garden tools, extra gloves, garden string and scissors.

Last winter, I direct composted in the garden beds as well as topped dressed them with leaves. I really used too many leaves, though. They didn't break down all the way before it was time to plant. I probably spread the leaves 3 to 4 inches thick. However, the leaves that did break down made some good compost for the beds and the remaining leaves, although not very pretty, are helping to hold moisture and keeping the soil somewhat cooler during our long hot days. Because of the direct composting, I had a few volunteers. This is a watermelon volunteer.

....and, this is cantaloupe volunteers.

One way to get free plants and is so much fun to experiment with is to cut off the bottoms of certain vegetables that I buy at the store and root them in water. I've done it with celery, romaine lettuce and this one, bok choy.

Kale

Broccoli

Dill

Carrots. Yes, they need to be thinned, but I can't bring myself to do it. I've never had good luck growing carrots until this year. And they look so pretty that I hate to bother them.

Mixed lettuce. I picked quite a bit last weekend. It was delish.
I did a succession planting of this lettuce, Saturday. I'm not sure how it will fair since we are getting some really hot days, lately.

Tomato. I planted several varieties of tomatoes this year....some heirloom and some cherry tomatoes, too.

We've already been enjoying the radishes.

Since space is limited, I'm trying planting in pots this year. The one in the center is cucumbers and the two on the sides are zucchini and squash

.

Zucchini

  Cilantro, also growing in a pot.

String Beans

Okra

And before you go, I just had to show you one of my flowers in bloom. I am so happy with this Catmint. This is the second year's growth. I've planted them beneath my crepe myrtles. I love them so much that I ordered three more and planted them in the back of the house to help hide the AC unit. 

Last, but not least....do you remember
The Hope and The Potential?
This, my friends, is The Promise.

I've already picked the early cabbage and this head is in my crock...fermenting...as we speak. It will be sauerkraut in a week or so. I can't wait....man, I love that stuff. I have a later planting of cabbages growing, but once again, it's getting hot and I'm not sure how they will do. I'm still learning the best time to plant things, but with our unusually warm February and then a freeze in March, I'm sure the plants are as confused as I am. 

Hope I didn't keep you too long. I'll give updates as the season progresses. 

How's your garden growing?

Oh wait, I wanted to show you our salad from the garden. It's just lettuce, radish and a few sprigs of dill. I dressed it with plain white balsamic vinegar. Soooo good! 

I also wanted to show one of our favorite plant-based meals. A beans, rice and vegetable bowl. The possibilities are endless. And, depending on the combination, each bowl has it's own unique deliciousness.

 

Check back in a few days. I'm going to share another favorite recipe.

~~** Laurie **~~

The Potential

True leaves beginning to emerge....just in time to set out in the 

garden in a couple of weeks. 

Oh, the potential!

⁕

Canning and Preserving

 

I'll pick my garden once more this morning and then summer gardening is over for me. The garden is still producing, but I'm off to Colorado for a month. Emily will continue to pick vegetables, while I'm gone. And while I'm gone, I'll be dreaming of and planning a fall garden to start on my return home. 

You may remember that this was my first year gardening at the lake. Even with the learning curve of gardening in a little different climate and completely different soil, I consider the garden a complete success. The fruit trees were a sweet treasure and gave us lots of fruit to enjoy and preserve. The discovery of our Granny Smith apple tree was the best and although it only had two apples, I'm sure that next year there will be even more. 

I'm going to leave you now with a few pictures of our rewards.

Our peach tree was loaded this year, but the two cold snaps we had in early spring stunted their growth, I believe. They had their fair share of bird pecks, a few had worms and we had a branch break from a combination of a lot of peaches and the branch being weighed down by rain. The deer and squirrels finished those off. But all in all, we harvested quite a few peaches. And with the plums we picked earlier, I was able to put up quite a few jars of peach and plum jam. I, also, froze a few bags of peaches and made a couple of peach cobblers.

 My tomatoes did really well, this year. 

This tomato came from my garden and I probably have a dozen lying on the kitchen counter with that many more in the garden ready to be picked this morning. I've enjoyed quite a few tomato sandwiches and I'm surely going to miss them. And although I didn't plant enough to can, I bought enough from the farmers market for that. I canned 21 jars of tomatoes. Oh my gosh, we are going to enjoy tomatoes and rice this winter. 

21 jars

By the time I took this picture, I had already given away quite a few of the 31 jars of peach and plum jam that I preserved. That's a table full of hard work right there.

I planted one zucchini plant and it took over a 4 x 4 raised bed. The thing was a monster and grew monster fruit.....well, mostly because I didn't get to them in time. 

I was away for a week and when I came home, I had two gigantic zucchinis. You can see one of them lying there behind the zucchini bread. I really thought they weren't any good, but after cutting the seedy part from the middle, there was plenty of flesh left on the sides. From those two zucchinis I blanched and froze four bags, made two loaves of zucchini bread, grated the last one and got enough to make six more loaves of zucchini bread or maybe add to a pot of soup, this winter. 

 6 cups grated zucchini

 2 cups in each bag and each bag will make 2 loaves of zucchini bread.

For the zucchini bread, I followed this recipe. The only change made was that I used pecans instead of walnuts. It was delicious....more like cake than bread. I will make this recipe again. 

 

And lastly, while Cliff, Sawyer and I were at lunch yesterday, we must have had a heck of a storm blow through because we had a fallen tree across the drive, when we got home. 

My posts will take a turn, now, to our adventures in Colorado. If you don't mind, I would appreciate it, if you would whisper a prayer for safe travels. You know I can't stand to fly!

Talk soon, 

Laurie