April Snow

snow.

i hope my over-anxiousness in planting the tomatoes and peppers doesn't prove fatal.

Planting Time

planting times for hurricane valley courtesy of alison from alisorganics.com

FEBRUARY 15 - MARCH 15
radish
cabbage (plants)
kohlrabi (plants)
onions
peas
spinach
turnip
swiss chard

MARCH 1 - MARCH 15
carrots
cauliflower (plants)
endive
lettuce
parsnips
potato
beets

MARCH 25 - APRIL 1
bush beans
corn
cucumber
spinach

APRIL 10 - MAY 1
corn
cucumber
cantaloupe and melons
winter squash
summer squash
tomato (plants)
pepper (plants)
pole beans

JULY 15 - AUGUST 1 (FALL HARVEST)
beets
cabbage
carrots
corn
cucumbers
lettuce
onions
pole beans
spinach
turnips


LAST SPRING FROST - APRIL 15

FIRST FALL FROST - OCTOBER 20

i just wanted to get this out before it's too late...especially for new and beginning gardeners.
happy planting!

Green Beans

Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time there was a girl that loved to garden. She loved the planning, and the planting. The watching and the waiting.

But one year, the girl didn't grow a garden. 

In the beginning, there were too many things happening all at once, and it just didn't seem quite possible. Then the spring came and went. And then the summer came and went too. And then the fall came.

The girl was sad. She missed her garden.

Luckily for her, she had a grandpa. A grandpa that loved to garden. Every year. Without fail.

This grandpa also loved to share. And so the girl was blessed.

(not) The End

 This recipe is from a girl in my ward that was kind enough to share it with me. Her husband, our bugman, raves about these green beans. So I thought I'd better give them a try. My grandpa has more beans coming on, so I will most likely be bottling more later this week. Next time I'm doing pints.

Angelene's Green Bean Recipe

1. place washed green beans into quart jars

2. sprinkle 1 tsp. sugar then 1 tsp. salt

3. fill jars with water

4. put lids on jars

5. place jars in pressure cooker with appropriate amount of water   (check the instruction booklet)

6. steam for 10 minutes

7. then cook for 25 minutes at 15 pounds pressure (depends on your elevation)

(the cooking time for pints is 20 minutes. halve the sugar and salt as well.)

Around the Garden

Just a few pictures to get the week started.

Garden Sanctuary

Enter...

I love this spot of the garden. It's lies just behind the squash and pumpkins. To me, it's a small sanctuary. Hidden behind green, growing things... with small bursts of color and texture on the inside... looking out onto the world of our own backyard. I could stay here for awhile.

Just A Couple of Things...

The three older kids have been away for the week. They've been visiting their Grammy. I get to go pick them up tomorrow. I am really excited to see them. They each have had their moments, but Isaac has definitely had the hardest time... Other than the homesick phone calls, I have to say, the quiet around the house has been nice. It's been peaceful.

There were two things I wanted to get done while the kids were away: mopping the floor, and cleaning out the van. I got them done right at the first, so I could enjoy them for the whole week. Those two things probably sound a little silly because I DO mop and I DO clean out the van while the kids are at home, but the thing is I wanted to enjoy them for a whole week, not just one day. There you have it.

So everything else I got accomplished this wonderful week was just icing on the cake. Yippee! A few things I've been meaning to do are pictured below.

The trellises and netting with fence posts. These trellises should have been put up weeks, MONTHS ago! Squash to the left. Pumpkins to the right. (I like these two pictures a lot for some reason. The orange with the green, maybe?)

Bunk bed painting. Glorious day. I started painting these things in March over Spring Break. First with my sister, then with my mom. Now they're finally, FINALLY getting finished. You know, we only got them for Christmas. It's now June. I'm telling you, we move at a slow pace sometimes around here.

More pictures of the netting and trellises Gene and I installed. This is part of the Square Foot Gardening method. Plants and vines are supposed to grow UP, rather than OUT. I sure I hope it works. Our soil in the North garden is really sandy, so I'm not quite sure whether the rebar and posts are going to stand up to the weight once the plants start getting heavy with fruit. (Okay, I like the top picture because it shows Isaac's fort. And the beautiful lavender. Those babies are humming with bees. I'm loving it.)

I just want to say one more thing. No, two things. hehe

1. I am enjoying talking with so many of you about gardening. I love running into you and talking about how things are going in your garden. I am LEARNING so much.

2. I'm hoping for a GIVEAWAY next week sometime. So stayed tuned...

Thank You

Thank you, bees...

For so many things. Especially these...

...for the wonderful experience my children have of being able to go outside and eat them. They've been picking them for a few weeks now, even though they've only just started to taste good....most importanly thank you to our Heavenly Father, for the bees and the cherries and the wonderful memories I get to make and the pictures I hope to always keep in my head when my children are grown.

A Garden Lesson

My Grandpa Heaton's garden last week.

For some reason at the beginning of the season, I always seem to compare my garden to my grandpa's (particularly the onions). His vegetables always seem to be bigger, healthier, and more abundant.

In comparison, mine are smaller, more insect eaten, and the seeds don't always sprout. I begin to question myself and all the time and work I've put into this garden.

Our north garden a few weeks ago.

Our south garden today.

Then, I go out into our garden, and I start to work. I water, and weed, and watch the plants. And something happens. I change my mind and my thinking.

I begin to see that the plants are growing a little bit everyday. I start to notice the beneficial insects, like ladybugs, that are crawling on the plant leaves. And then Asher and Zoe notice them. So I get to watch their wonder and fascination.

The pomegranate flowering.

Tomato blossoms.

I get to see little miracles happening, blossoms here and tiny new fruits there. And I begin to know that this little garden is such a blessing to our family. And for a brief moment, I realize that I no longer need to compare. And that feels good.

Spinach, Anyone?

We had our first harvest from the garden last Tuesday. SPINACH.

I made Lasagna Roll-ups. I learned how to make these while in college. I lived with some girls that wanted to share food and cook with everyone instead of cooking our own food for ourselves. It was fun, and I got to try a bunch of new things!

Aryn loved, LOVED them. Isaac picked out the filling. (He is one picky kid.) Zoe sort of ate them. Gene and I both enjoy them.

Lasagna Roll-ups

Cheese Filling:

2 cups ricotta cheese

freshly chopped spinach (or 10 oz. frozen spinach)

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

Additionally:

12 uncooked lasagna noodles

1 jar spaghetti sauce

grated mozzarella cheese for topping

1. pour 1/2 of the spaghetti sauce into a 13x9x2 baking dish.

2. cook noodles as directed on package

3. mix the cheese filling ingredients. drain noodles.

4. spread 3 Tbs. of cheese filling down the length of 1 noodle. roll up. repeat for each noodle.

5. place rolls in baking dish. cover with remaining spaghetti sauce. top with mozzarella cheese.

6. cover with tin foil and bake in 375 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Sweetmeats Squash

This past Thanksgiving, Gene's mom had a different kind of squash for dinner. She said it was a Sweetmeats squash. It tasted so good. And so sweet. The color was unbelievable. So bright. She had an extra one, and gave it to our family to take home.

It was so unusual looking to me. I couldn't get over the blue/green/gray color. I sat it out on a shelf by the back door. It sat there until Christmas. It was easy to cook, and tasted just as wonderful as it had at Thanksgiving.

I saved some of the seeds, hoping that it was an heirloom squash. (Heirloom, meaning the squash would grow true to the parent plant. Rather than hybrid, meaning it might not). A little while ago I checked out a book called Heirloom Vegetables by Benjamin Watson from the library hoping to find the squash within it's pages. It wasn't. I looked up the name Sweetmeats Squash online, and found it. (Scroll down the page a little here for a picture and find more seeds here.) EUREKA! Heirloom, open-pollinated.

I planted the seeds in small pots a week or so ago. And they've decided to grow! I gave some seeds to my grandpa (and to some of you) just to be on the safe side. I'll be replanting them into the South garden sometime soon. Now we just get to wait and see...

Bunny Trouble

This

and This

means THIS!!

There's another one too (shown here). They are the neighbor's bunnies. We noticed them coming into our yard a week or so ago. At first we all thought they were so cute. (We still do.)

Then I started to notice nibbled edges on my plants and flowers around the yard. And now they've eaten all the leaves off all the eggplants, and a pepper plant!

Bunnies and gardens do not mix well.

Dans le Jardin

The north garden is now mostly planted. There are four squares left to plant.

We've been busy the last few days planting all sorts of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. We've also needed to replant some turnip, leek, beet, and spinach seeds. (Our Littlest seems to think that the garden boxes are his personal playground. This is rather frustrating, but more importantly, I feel our family needs this gardening/learning experience.)

Last time I wrote about the garden, I mentioned that the leeks had sprouted. I was wrong! It was actually these lovely little plants. I forgot where I had planted things, I've since remedied that mistake by writing it down on the garden map. When the leaves started to show, I realized it was actually the spinach!

A few creatures have come to visit the garden. Most recently the ladybug. The lizard runs back and forth between the garden boxes in the north garden and the pomegranate bush. One time he ran himself into a plastic bag of soil. When we dumped him out onto the tarp he got buried in the soil. I started panicking a little bit because I didn't want him to suffocate! Luckily we found him.

One more little anecdote...

Yesterday when Zoe, Ashy, and I went back to the nursery, we saw my grandpa there. He was getting some more tomato plants for his garden. I told him a few varieties we were trying. One in particular caught his attention. The Wilford Tomato. I told him I got it because on the tag it said it was a local variety developed in Kanab. He then proceeded to tell me that it was his dad's brother, Wilford Heaton, who developed it. Pretty cool, eh? Ahh, the things we're learning...