Quick Garden Tour, Cleanup, and a New Greenstalk

The 2025 gardening season is winding down. Was it a huge success? Not really. The extreme heat took a toll on a lot of things, but the Bell peppers thrived. The Roma tomatoes did okay, too, even flowering after ninety-degree days. I even avoided the blossom end rot this year. 

I've harvested basil to make and freeze Pesto, canned tomatoes, and made two batches of stevia. I've dehydrated lemon balm and echinacea, and even dried some patchouli. And I've added another Greenstalk for strawberries. 

Along the way this summer, I've been making videos! I love having a video record of what's been going on here at Holly Tree Manor. 

So check out my YouTube channel, Holly Tree Manor with KC Kendricks to SEE what's been going on. And if you would, please like and subscribe to help the channel grow. I want to be an old, old woman with a bunch of videos to prove to old, old men that yes, I did indeed know how to operate a John Deere tractor. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Holly Tree Manor, KC Kendricks, YouTube, gardening, John Deere 1023, Greenstalk, container gardening, rural living, country lifestyle, a writer's life, woven weed cloth

The 2024 garden - ready, set, go!

The clock is ticking. One by one, it's time to plant the 2024 garden. The cabbage is already in and the strawberries are next, maybe even today if our fifty percent chance of showers proves to be no showers. 

All the buckets and grow bags have been filled with amended soil. It was a huge job, but worth it. Next year, I won't need to dump each of them and remix. I'll need to add a few nutrients to each container and use that nice auger bit Ron got me to loosen the soil and mix in the feed. 

Refilling all the containers was hard work. I got a scoop of garden mix soil from the local nursery to refresh the dirt and got to work. I worked across several days so I didn't wear myself out and it was time well spent. I'm determined to pace myself. Ron's passing has left me with a lot of hours to fill. I don't need to hurry through my tasks so that I can return to being his caregiver. I didn't realize how many hours a day I spent caring for him, not that I regret or resent any of them. 

I'm eager to get a plant in each container, but I must have patience. I must wait on the weather. Always before, Ron was my "weatherman," advising me of frost warnings and overnight low temps, and the possibility of afternoon storms. Now I have to remember to check the weather apps every day. Taking a daily screenshot is easier than opening the app multiple times a day, at least for me. 

I will miss Ron's company as I spend time in my little garden. He would pick a sunny spot and talk to me while I worked. When I finished, I'd sit in my garden chair and we'd talk of idle things while sharing memories or wistful thoughts. Deuce is good company, but he's a quiet sort. 

I suspect this next year will be full of bittersweet moments. I just hope they don't overwhelm me and make 2024 my last garden.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, weather apps, country lifestyle, rural living, bittersweet, black Lab dog, frost warnings, life after loss, container gardening, cabbage, strawberries

An update on the 2023 Greenstalk

Earlier this year I purchased a Greenstalk. The Greenstalk has been hyped on a lot of gardening and homesteading YouTube channels, and I thought it did look kinda cool.  I have three acres of ground, but not much of it is actually arable. I'm averse to cutting down trees on a whim when I can work out options. My option for having a garden is to grow in containers. 

Back to the Greenstalk. I had to set it in the old washtub so I could level it. Level ground is also at a premium here. I live on the side of a mountain. We make do. 

I planted seeds in about half the pockets, added a few begonia cuttings for color, and transplanted a few herbs. It's finally looking like I did not waste my money. 

The Greenstalk will be in another location next year. I need to get a large concrete paver and the special base before next season. As with all things, we tend to take cautious steps. This year we observe how things grow in it. Next year we take it as far as we choose.

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, Greenstalk, gardening, rural living, country lifestyle, level ground, using caution, seeds, wax plants, begonias, container gardening

Almost time! Flowers forming on toms!

One of the most pleasurable things about gardening is walking through to check the plants and discovering the changes. Seeds sprout, plants grow, they start to vine, new leaves pop out, and flower buds form. Yea!

Several of the tomato plants, both the Beefsteak and the Giant Pink Belgium, have flower buds ready to open. I'm not at all sure where this fits in the 2022 schedule. I know that by mid-June last year there were green Roma tomatoes on the vines. This year the weather seems cooler, so it may take longer. 

But no matter. All happens in a garden in its own time. You can only hurry the season so much without a heated greenhouse. Oh, yes, I'd love to have one but as with all expenses, we'll have to wait and see.

It's enough for now to see the buds in the tomatoes. One lesson that is quickly taught to novice gardeners is that you must be patient. 

The Lady of The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, tomatoes, gardening, flower buds, rural living, country lifestyle, container gardening, greenhouse, Beefsteak, Roma, Giant Pink Belgium

Purple peppers - surprise!

I grew bell peppers and jalapeno peppers in my 2021 garden, and I had a bumper crop! Just a few weeks ago I pulled out a couple of small bags from the freezer to make Hot Pepper Jelly and there is plenty of peppers left. I'm probably going to freeze-dry them before the summer is over to make room in the freezer.

When I planned my 2022 garden, I had no plans to grow peppers. Then I was out shopping and saw a seed packet of mixed bell peppers for a dollar, and because growing peppers is fun, I got the seeds. 

Fast forward until today and one of those "mixed" pepper plants has purple peppers. Now that is cool!

I certainly didn't expect anything other than green peppers. I thought there'd be enough to have two rounds of stuffed peppers and that would be good for this year. But you know what? I really like these little purple bells. They look really cool chopped up in potato salad. Next year, purple peppers are part of the garden plan. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, purple peppers, vegetables, grow your own food, simple country pleasures, rural lifestyle, container gardening, garden planning

Planting day 2022

2022 before

The day has finally dawned in which I'm planting all the little veggies outside. Yes, I'm reclaiming my sunroom office from the jungle it has become. All will be put to rights. I hope.

We already planted eight cabbage and eight tomatoes outside and yes, we did toss a tarp over them the last couple of nights. The Weather Channel said we'd have frost, but we did not. We'll have to keep an eye on the forecast and use the tarps again if necessary, but that's okay. The plants are going outside! 

Yesterday, I filled all the grow bags except one. I ran out of my planting soil with one bag to go. I need to get another bag of Black Kow and mix up another cart full of the mix to have at the ready. (Which we did.)

I'm looking at the starts I have and I may purchase more grow bags. As with last season, I did not expect to have such good germination and survival rates. After I get the basic plan planted and arranged in my garden corral, I'll make that decision. 

One thing I won't short space on this year is tomatoes. I have a cherry, a slicing, and a Roma variety this year. I hope to make a modest amount of tomato sauce from the Romas, and to freeze dry some of the Veranda cherry tomatoes. The other veggie I need to reserve bags for is cucumbers. Those seeds are going in the dirt today. I got one pack of mixed bell pepper seeds, and they are doing great - but I don't really need peppers. They'll be the last thing planted, and I may double up in the bags. Whatever pepper harvest we get can be freeze-dried, too.

Eight hours later...

What a beautiful day to spend outside! I don't have everything planted. I did end up running out of my planting soil mix again, and we do need to go get even more Black Kow, perlite, and peat moss to mix up a bit more. 

We got more than planting done, though. There are always dozens of small chores to do when you live in the country. As I'll be fully retired in a month, we spent some time formulating a plan to gut the shed and reorganize everything in there! That's going to be a lot of work, and probably more than one trip to the landfill. Having all the junk gone and the items we actually use better organized will reap dividends for both of us, though. It'll be worth the aggravation of doing it. 

To top the day off, the spousal unit called for a pizza for dinner. All we had to do was drive to the local pizza joint and pick it up. No, we can't have it delivered because 1) we live one-half mile too far out of the town, and 2) Deuce loves to go for rides in the car and we spoil the dog without any guilt. 

I do love a man who knows when it's not a good idea to ask, "what's for dinner?'

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Seeds for 2022

One of my grandfather's favorite pastimes was perusing the annual seed catalogs. He received catalogs from Gurney, Burpee, and a host of others, but Burpee was his go-to seed supplier. It was a no-brainer for me to order my seeds for 2021 from Burpee. Now that we've arrived at the time of year to start to think about the 2022 growing season, I went to the Burpee website and ordered a few things: 

Cucumber, Straight Eight
Cabbage, Brunswick
Cauliflower, Snowball
Brussels Sprouts, Long Island
Tomato, Bodacious

Tomato, Veranda Red Hybrid (cherry)

Seeds do not magically expire on any given date, and I have a good many left over from this year. The germination rate may fall a few percentage points, but I'll still get good plants. I may not plant any jalapeno seeds in 2022, though. I had an incredible harvest this year and one woman can only consume so much Cowboy Candy on her own. 

It seems 2022 will be as much about experimenting and learning as 2021. I've ordered a Harvest Right freeze dryer to preserve those things that don't home can well. Cucumbers make pickles, of course, but I like them in different salads, unpickled. I also hope the freeze dryer will be somewhat less labor-intensive than canning. Canning a seven quart batch of pickles is an all-day job. You do not walk away from a pressure canner and "let it do its thing" the way you can with a freeze dryer. 

I'm excited about my 2022 dream garden. My final work day is May 31, 2022 (at the very latest!). I'll retire sooner if an adequate hire is made and they learn my job quickly. By the end of May, all the seedlings will be in their grow buckets and bags, and I'll be sitting amongst them in my expanded garden corral with my morning coffee. In a perfect world. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Dehydrating frozen strawberries

Cheesecake! Yum! Yum! 

We're hosting the Cousin's Lunch this coming Saturday, and I thought I might make a cheesecake. It's that or an apple crisp. Maybe both. The future is unwritten and who knows where the spirit may lead?  Or maybe dessert will be a good, old-fashioned apple cobbler and I'll keep the cheesecake for us. 

Last winter we ordered two dozen strawberry plants from Burpees, a very well-known company. The plants arrived a little late for planting in my area (strike one), and because of that, only nine of the plants lived. That's not a good margin of success. I doubt I'll order roots from Burpees again. A local nursery seems a much better option if I go for blackberries. 

Several of the stronger plants did produce a berry or two which was enough to pick and eat on the spot but nothing more. Those stronger plants have also sent out runners and the sets seem to be taking hold. The plan is to move them into the greenhouse this winter since they are in containers and not yet the ground. I hope to get a harvest in 2022. 

With cheesecake on my mind, I pulled a bag of sliced strawberries out of the freezer and spread them out on the dehydrator trays. Once they've dried to a light crisp, I'll put them in the coffee grinder and turn them into a powder to add to the cheesecake batter. It will only take a tablespoon or three of powder to intensify the strawberry flavor. Powders are a great way to take the flavor to the next level. Beyond that, green powders can add nutrition to soups and other dishes. Himself hates spinach but doesn't balk at a tablespoon of spinach powder added to some dishes. The trick is to only add to the point where it may become detectable and stop. 

Another perk of dehydrating strawberries is that the house will smell of delicious strawberries for several days. The man of the manor is correct in one thing. Spinach doesn't add a thing to the air. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

So how did the potatoes in the grow bags work out?

Last fall I conducted a little experiment on growing potatoes in fifteen-gallon grow bags. It was enough of a success for us to give it a try this past spring. I got a couple of Kenebeck seed potatoes and planted them in a big green bag - and they grew! 

Unfortunately, be it due to the weather or my inexperience with grow bags, the tops of the potato plants browned over the past two weeks. That meant the growing spuds were probably done growing because their source of nutrients had died. I wasn't quite ready to call it quits, but logic and common sense do sometimes prevail here on the manor. I emptied the bags to harvest the potatoes - and there were potatoes.

It wasn't the harvest I hoped for, but it's got potential. These can be used as seed potatoes now. There is no reason at all I can't allow a few of them to sprout and replant the bags for this fall. I even wonder if the plants will survive in the greenhouse over the winter. 

Half the fun of gardening is just planting and standing back to see what Mother Nature will do, and what she can do. 

We'll keep you posted.

Oh, and those really small potatoes? We'll boil them, butter 'em up, and enjoy!

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

The peppers are forming

I have what is to me a new food obsession. I say it's new because I only discovered it last year and I'm totally hooked on it. What is it you ask? A little delight called Cowboy Candy or "candied" jalapeno peppers. I'd never heard of it until I saw a homesteader on YouTube make it. Himself is a big fan of jalapenos and I was always on the "take it or leave it" fence. 

Until I tasted Cowboy Candy. 

Oh, it's not pepper jelly, no. I've always liked a big spoonful of pepper jelly over some cream cheese with a handful of wheat crackers. Cowboy Candy is better. 

I planted pepper seeds earlier this year and damn if I didn't end up with thirty-three pepper plants for my little garden corral. They are doing so well! There are pepper blossoms everywhere and now little peppers are forming! 

The recipe I use to make and can Cowboy Candy can be found in the Ball Book of Canning and Preserving. It's a wonderful resource for technique and recipes. It's great to have recipes and not just a how-to on canning, say, apples. You get a recipe for apple pie filling which is one of the reasons I want to can apples. 

I'm hoping for a good harvest and a lot of half-pint jars of Cowboy Candy. It's amazing how quickly we went through the batches I made last year. I'm going for double this year. I really can't wait! 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Green and growing!

 We couldn't be happier with our little garden corral! Everything is green and growing and even producing blooms. We worry about the deer finding it, so we did put up a perimeter netting and so far <knock on wood> they're leaving it alone. 

I enjoy going out and watering it every day it doesn't rain. The tomatoes are in grow bags and those can dry out quickly. Next year, the plan is to get the tomatoes into five-gallon buckets. I didn't want to be a hoarder and purchase every food-safe bucket I could find, a notion that may bite me in the ass come next year, but there it is. 

Last year we started with five grow bags and had an encouraging harvest.  This year we've gone a bit bigger and instead of having just a few peppers, I hope to have enough for several batches of Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and more. We had enough cucumbers to eat and make a batch or two of refrigerator pickles, but not enough to store in the pantry. I love, love, love bread & butter pickles and hope this year to put my great-grandmother's recipe to good use. 

Then there are tomatoes. We seem to be cursed when it comes to tomatoes, but with over a dozen plants, we have hopes of some scrumptious tomato sandwiches. Considering we're growing old-fashioned Beefsteak tomatoes, it may happen. 

And so we wait and hope our little garden corral will do us proud. And we also hope our energy doesn't fail when it's time to preserve our harvest. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

The garden corral

In an effort to thwart the local deer, my veggie garden is a container garden located in what I'm calling The Garden Corral. 

The garden corral is located on what was our pool pad. To our sorrow, the Lord of the Manor can no longer safely get in and out of our little pool. Well, he can hold his nose and fall in, but it's the getting out we're not sure about. It's one more thing he's lost the ability to do as his overall health declines. Fifteen years ago chemotherapy saved his life, but the damage it did has lingered long after the cancer was dispatched. Life is a series of trade-offs. 

My little garden space is a work in progress. I started this year with grow bags and quickly graduated to 5-gallon buckets for the peppers. Next year will require something different for the cucumbers and radishes. The much-anticiapted strawberry grow bags are, in my opinion, a real bust. I don't like them so the strawberries have already been replanted. 

So on we go. 

I have fifteen buckets with peppers, thirteen grow bags with tomatoes, five grow bags with cucumbers, one with beets, one with carrots, one with a bush pumpkin, one with a bush watermelon, and one with sugar snap peas. 

The peppers are what I'm most interested in this year. With any luck, Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and a good amount of salsa will be added to the pantry. Past eating fresh tomatoes and making a few batches of salsa, I'm not sure what will be done with the tomatoes. We'll eat the watermelon, and I'll likely freeze the pumpkin puree. I tried canning pumpkin last year and never again. If I'm going to end up with mush, I'll just freeze mush. 

Will the harvest make me sorry I went on this journey? Perhaps, but the idea of having even a small amount of food in my pantry that I know has no preservatives in it is worth a little work. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Garden fail: Radishes

 This is my year to experiment and learn about container vegetable gardening. As I've mentioned, an in-ground garden would be decimated by the deer, so my focus is on what I can grow in my little garden corral. 

Here's the link to a video of the deer in our woods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0JXEfL2vqk . As destructive as they are, we love watching them. 

It's a given that not everything I plant is going to prosper - case in point is the radishes. I purchased good seed from Burpees and got really good germination. It was downhill from there. 

Radishes are said to detoxify your blood, help lower blood pressure, boost immunity, and taste de-lish! I know not everyone agrees on that last item, but we like them. My plan was to serve up some fresh in a few salads and dehydrate the rest. Once dehydrated, they're stored in airtight containers until you re-hydrate them for use.  

But back to the garden fail. I did pull a few young radishes out for salad toppers, enough to be sad we missed out on the rest. 

Good seed germination doesn't equate to a good crop. Lots of things can go wrong like the gardener putting the grow-bag in the greenhouse and allowing the radishes to get too warm. Radishes are a cool weather crop, liking temperatures anywhere from about 40F to 70F. When the weather prognosticators predicted a hard frost, I set the bag in the greenhouse for protection - and then forgot to take it out the next morning. (There was NO frost, by the way.) And so the radishes died before their time. 

I'm disappointed, but I'll try again this fall. Radishes mature quickly so if I plant again about six weeks before our average first fall frost date, we should, hopefully, be able to harvest a nice little batch. 

Maybe, come fall, the radishes we harvest will look like the ones in the picture I ripped-off of the Internet and I can post a good photo for everyone else to use. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

A daily ritual

We utilize Google calendars, and a frequent topic of snark is about how long it will take for Google to either discontinue the service or make us pay for it and how much they will charge. If they do decide to charge for using the service, I'll need to reach deep into my pocket. Yeah, I have more than one calendar, plus we subscribe to the NASCAR calendars. One of the calendars we share keeps track of what we have for dinner. 

You can roll your eyes. It's okay. I get it. But without this calendar, I'd abandon all hope of having an idea of what to fix when it's my turn to cook. Same for him. It helps me know what's available in the pantry and the freezer. For dinners we really like, such as his chicken parm, we set the calendar for it to pop up in the rotation about every ten weeks on a weekend. 

It used to be the vogue for ladies in upper society to keep a daily diary. My Google calendar has become mine. I record appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, and anything of importance I did that day. It means very little to anyone other than myself, but that's the way diaries are supposed to be. 

As I ease into more gardening, I've found it very helpful to keep track of when seeds were planted, seedlings transplanted, and just general information. Getting older, my brain is already so full of things it's like a full glass of water. When I pour new information in, something old runs out the other side. So keeping track of things becomes important. Like Friday is payday. That's a good one to remember. Checking and updating my calendar every day has become second nature, and as an important part of my life journey as my blogs. 

Daily rituals may seem to some to be boring and using a calendar antiquated. I find it a quiet reassurance that all is going well in my world. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

'Tis spring!

Spring is a busy season at Holly Tree Manor. The outside work ramps up and the inside of the house suffers from a lack of attention. Thankfully, we're both old enough to know a couple of dog fur dust bunnies won't harm us but tall grass harbors critters that may. This past week I talked with the cousin as he was removing a little, relatively harmless, hognose snake he found "sleeping" under his pickup. The theory is the little guy was drawn there by the residual heat off the engine. It's definitely time to watch where I put my feet when Deuce and I are in the woods. 

Last weekend, I got the mulching done around the patio and along the front porch. There is a bit more to do after I replace a rose bush that died over the winter. That will happen sometime later today. 

The plan for the new patio grilling/canning/storage area has been finalized, at least in my mind. With lumber prices being what they are, we're purchasing pre-made cabinets and countertops for a fraction of the cost of building them. It's unreal. 

Yesterday, I made a sweep around the yard and picked up those sticks large enough to damage the John Deers 370 and tossed them on the brush pile. I got the front yard mowed and decided the back could wait a day. I wanted to get soil into the food-safe five-gallon buckets in preparation for getting the pepper plants outside. After filling the buckets, we made a fast trip to the garden center for another bag of Black Kow, some peat moss, and vermiculite. Burpee's sent me an email saying my strawberries should ship soon and I need to have soil ready for them. 

One of my biggest concerns this year is digging a drainage swale in the backyard. Our property is about one-third the way up the side of a mountain and we get a lot of water flowing through during hard rains. The earth isn't static and something above has changed enough that we have a developing problem. There's no way to prevent the water from draining through so we can only attempt to manage it. Thank heavens for the John Deere 1023. 

The list of things to do goes on, seemingly into infinity. Crossing one thing off the list adds two more. It's good to stay busy but it's also good to stop and enjoy what has been accomplished. I'm sure that will happen in a few weeks when the air warms to the point that I don't need to be active to keep warm. 

Until then, spring has sprung and I'll enjoy ticking items off my to-do list and marveling at the many shades of green. 

And adding things to the list. I just noticed it's time to tie the peonies. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Pepper dreams

 

We're a big fan of peppers. We love peppers in all sorts of food dishes, stuffed peppers, Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and even savory bread. Last year, 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis, I grew two pepper plants in grow bags and had more success than I'd ever had planting them in the ground. Hmmm. 

I purchased several sets of grow bags, some seed starter trays, good Burpee seed, and as of this morning I have thirty-three pepper plants happily growing in transplant cups in my sunroom office. I can't safely get out the door at the moment, but I don't care. I don't want to risk kicking a delicate transplant over and breaking it. I'll walk through the house to get outside for the next few weeks. Having happy peppers is more important. 

It does occur to me that peppers are hardly a crop to sustain us through a true food crisis. Well, I planted two fifteen-gallon grow bags with potatoes and those plants look hale and healthy. Again, not enough to sustain us for long. Living on the side of a mountain has a few drawbacks and flat land to have a proper garden is one, and the neighborhood deer is number two. That I'm still working is another consideration. My "drop dead" retirement date is May 31, 2022, so next growing season will likely look different. This year, I experiment and learn. 

The recipe I use for Cowboy Candy was pulled from the Living Traditions Homestead YouTube channel. Cowboy Candy isn't candy, but it's good. I drain the peppers, finely chop them, and mix them with a block of cream cheese for a dip to have with raw veggies or crackers. The Living Traditions Homestead channel contains a wealth of information about small to medium homesteads. We like to catch up with them on Saturday mornings while we enjoy our coffee. 

Today I must replant tomatoes. Unlike the peppers, none of the tomato seeds I planted germinated. It's hard to say why, but I purchased the seeds at a home center and not a specialty seller like Burpee's or Baker Creek. It's also possible the soil in the starter trays didn't get warm enough being that the peppers held the best spot. We shall see. 

Now I must get on with my day and stop writing about doing and actually go do. 

Maybe just one more cup of coffee and a few more searches for recipes that highlight peppers first. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

The first seeds of 2021 are planted

 

Yesterday was a busy day here on the manor. Saturdays are frequently filled with bits and pieces, drips and drabs of chores, and other small items that need attention. Most Saturdays it's a shared half-hour over a cup of coffee and we set off in our own directions for a few hours. I had one thing on my "must do" list and that was plant pepper seeds. 

There was a more pressing item, however, and I did see to that as soon as I had on shoes. We had to replace the sump pump this past week and the discharge hose needed to be secured, something I didn't do the other night. Because it was night. Like after ten o'clock. Why do these things always wait until after dark to go bad? We had a replacement pump on hand, but could it not have waited until the weekend to die? Nooooo. Anyway, I securely zip-tied the discharge hose and moved on to playing in the dirt. 

It's been a good many years since I tried to have more than a pot or two of tomatoes. Last year I had some small success with tomatoes, peppers, and a cucumber vine, enough so that I'm expanding this year. I have seeds for peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, pumpkin, and watermelon, as well as a few herbs which I plant every year. Basil is a wonderful plant to have on the patio. 

I found some small seed starter trays that have a dial in the lid to help humidity escape. They seem like a good idea for me since I've had issues with damping-off in previous years. Each planter has twelve sections. I planted bell pepper seeds dried from last year, Ring Leader jalapeno, Biker Billy hot peppers, and Great Stuff sweet peppers. I hope the mix of Ring Leader and Biker Billy will make some awesome cowboy candy. If, of course, the usual curse of being able to grow peppers was truly broken last summer. We shall see.

I also have a new celery re-grow started. In just a day it's sending up a bit of new growth. It will join the other three re-grown stalks in the greenhouse in about two weeks. 

The plan for today is to plant the basil and dill seeds in cherry red pots that I'll keep in the sunroom for the next several weeks. Once the sprouts are of a size to have good leaves, I'll transfer them to the greenhouse for a few more weeks, and then it will be time to set them on the patio to enjoy and harvest.

Also on the agenda is to put together three more racks/trellises to support growing veggie plants this summer. I'd also like to get the snowblower off the John Deere 1023, and my grow bags filled with a soil mix. Things go so much smoother when you stay ahead of what needs done. 

Spring is an exciting time on the manor. We know we won't accomplish everything in one weekend, but sometimes we try. Stay tuned. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Can you read? KEEP LEFT!

Once again my faith in our education system has been validated. 

I posted a KEEP LEFT sign to help delivery truck drivers keep from sliding into the lower stone fence, or worse sliding OVER the stone fence and down a fifteen-foot drop. And, by the way, there's no driving away if you drop over that ledge. It'll be time to call for a rotator tow truck to lift your ass out of there. 

"Keep Left." The sign even has an arrow pointing to the left for those people confusing their left with their other left. It's not difficult at all. 

So far, ONE delivery driver has gone left. One woman out of all the drivers can actually read. Should I be impressed?

I've done my part. You idiots are on your own.

If you can read this, thank a teacher that you didn't become a driver for Amazon, UPS, FedEx, or a postal worker. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

So I'm obsessing over it

 

I'm obsessing a bit over how healthy the celery and green onions are in the greenhouse. We've had night after night after night of temps down to 20F, and even one night that dipped into the teens. We've had three frost-covered mornings in a row, and yet the celery and onions are doing fine. 

The celery actually needs to be harvested at this point. That may be the end of it, but I plan to cut it and dehydrate it. I've found The Purposeful Pantry on YouTube and the content creator has a lot, and I mean A LOT, of dehydrating tips.  I need to dehydrate the green onions, too, and I'm very sure that will end them and I'll have to start over. That's all part of gardening, though. It will give me the opportunity to restore the soil in that grow bag so it's not a bad thing. 

We made a quick trip to Lowe's earlier today so I could get potting soil, vermiculite, and cow manure. I already have a scoop of screened garden soil that was purchased last summer. The weatherman says tomorrow will be about 50F and if it happens, I'm going to mix up enough of the elements to get a few of the grow bags filled. I might even sow some radish seeds in one. 

The season is coming. I can feel it. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Strawberries 101

 

And so, she decided to grow strawberries...

My grandfather had an excellent traditional strawberry patch. Long rows, evenly spaced, stretched across the hillside. If memory serves, he had five rows and practiced a rotation to keep his plants young and healthy. For example, row one would be an empty row. When the other four rows sent out runners, he'd snip the best set and plant them in row one. Then at the end of the producing season, he'd dig out row two. The next year, he'd replant row two with new sets. It worked wonderfully. For decades, we all had an abundance of fresh strawberries every year. 

Fast forward to 2020 and my own aspirations to grow strawberries. It won't be on such a grand scale, that's for sure. Pop put in a lot of work to keep his berry patch going. I don't need to supply strawberries to five households plus sell to the neighborhood. I want enough to make a batch or two of jelly and perhaps freeze a few quarts to make ice cream throughout the next year. Make a batch of strawberry cordial. Small things. 

For us, right now, container gardening is our best option. I've purchased grow bags, and yes, they have one made for strawberries. Check.

Where to place the bag? In a location that gets six to eight hours of sun daily. Check.

Soil requirements. Strawberries need loose, well-draining soil. The plan is to add some vermiculite to a bag of garden soil, and they'll be in a grow bag that drains well. Check.

Feed the plants something with potassium in it. I use Miracle-Gro. Check.

Should I treat the container-grown plants as annuals or perennials? I'd like to see if they'll winter over in the bags so they'll need to go to the greenhouse in the fall. 

What variety did I choose? AC Wendy from Burpees. We'll see how these do. The plan is to plant in this first set of grow bags with the purchased bare-root plants. If they live and do well, I'll get a second set of bags to plant the sets. 

Will I be the gardener my grandfather was? Nope. It'll never happen. But I do hope to enjoy fresh strawberries free of pesticides again. Trust me - homegrown berries are a lot sweeter. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor