Our Garden

Today I want to talk a little bit about our garden. Marlene has started to take some interest in it and is helping me plant and water. Usually I raise most of my plants and veggies myself from seeds that I safe from the previous year. But since we were in Germany in feburay/March when this needs to happen I was not able to do it this year. And I paid "dearly" for it. I had no idea how much money I safe. I spent a lot of money on a few tomatoes, squash, herbs and, off course, flowers. So next year back to the old ways. Last year I had saved seeds from heirloom tomatoes from whole Foods, so I guess they have to wait another year. Last year was a very bad year for fruit trees in the Northwest. There was no harvest to speak off; so when my pear tree only had 3 pears I was not surprised. Usually we have literally tons of pears. And since I still had many jars of compote and pear sauce left, I was not too sorry to be spared the canning. Our dwarf apple did not even have flowers and the 2 quince that made it beyond the flower stage fell off soon afterwards. This year is very different, we have many apples, quite some pears and we still wait for the verdict in quince. Last year I planted one of the tomatoes in a planter by the house and it outgrew everything else, so this year most of the tomatoes are by the house and in only 10 days the plants are twice as big as their piers by the fence. So we will see. The raspberries are sprouting all over the place and I think next year I will have to dig up the shoots for the first time. We will have raspberries coming out of our ears this year. The rhubarb is settling in very well in its new bed. I hope by next year to have enough to add to my jams. This year we added two new plants to our family. One is a lime tree, that stays inside and that I already half killed. I hope it survives. The lemon tree is doing good and we might get lemons again this year. The other one is woodruff(Waldmeister). It took me a while to track this herb down. It is indigenous to the Northwest, so it should not be hard to grow. Some even call it a pest. We will see. I love the flavor for yello and lemonade, so I hope by next spring I will be able to harvest some. I missed the time slot for picking the leafs for Maywine; I will have to learn more about it until next year. Marlene expressed her wish to have an own garden. So we moves the big planter from the front of the house (where it is dark and nothing grows) to the back. She got to pick flowers for it and she gets to care for it. So far one impatient fell victim to the squirrels but the rest is doing fine. The last 2 pictures show the progress and we will keep you updated.