Planting Bulbs

I finally got around to planting bulbs. I hope it's not too late. I figured if I could still dig in the ground I was okay. We put in some tulips, daffodils and crocuses. My girls love flowers and I thought this would be a fun project for them.

Duchess told Maiden, "We are going to plant them, then it will snow. After the snow melts we can see our flowers come up. Isn't that exciting?"

I put the crocus bulbs in random places in the yard. I can't wait to see if they come up or not. this is my first bulb experience, so I'll let you know in the spring.

Blessings my friends,

New Addition

The King of my castle excitedly came in the house on Saturday, "Hey honey, want to come outside and see what I got for you?"  Oh, was I ever excited.  Great White is causing us a lot of problems and I thought maybe he had gotten me a new vehicle.  As thrilled as he was, I expected to see a Cadillac Escalade sitting in the driveway with a HUGE bow on top with and a big tag that read, For The Queen of my castle.  Nothing is too good for you.   I couldn't get out the door fast enough.

Instead, this is what I saw on the lawn: 

He was grinning from ear to ear and said, "It's a new addition to our tractor family.  Don't you like it?"  He had made an attachment for the lawn tractor.  He went on to show me the places he had welded, and how he made it into a three point hitch.  "This will work so good in the garden."  I tried not to show my disappointment.  But when you are expecting this:

It's a little hard to swallow this:

Thank you honey.  I love my new digger cultivator thingy.  I'm sure it will bring me many years of happy gardening.  (Now, can we talk about replacing Great White?)

Getting Ready for the Garden

I have finally gotten all the seeds started for our garden.  This has taken a few weeks.  First we ran out of potting soil, then decided we should plant some hybrid tomatoes along with the heirlooms.  After many trips back and forth to town, this task is complete.

 

We have many varieties of tomatoes this year.  A mixture of heirloom and hybrid.  We have never planted heirloom, but really liked some a friend of ours gave us last summer.  

I saved seed from some of my favorite heirlooms from that friend.  I hope we will get results from them this year.  If the fruit of the seed I saved works to be of good quality, I plan to save heirloom seed this fall as well.  I have never saved seed before and am wondering if cross pollination will be an issue.  Only time will tell.

The King got me started by mixing my potting soil with water and then into the trays.  That's the part of the job I do not like, so I am thankful for his help.  Along with the tomatoes, I also planted a variety of basil, peppers, and eggplant.  I saved half the eggplant seed to see if it can be directly sowed into the garden.  I've never done eggplant before, so this is a new experience for me.

(Yes, that would be me working in my pajamas.  I do my best work in jammies.)  Another new thing for me this year is perennials.  I planted delphinium, bee balm, hollyhock, red poppy, purple coneflower, white coneflower, lavender, shasta daisy and lemongrass.  

Side note:  I want to infuse lemongrass in vodka to see if I can get a lemongrass antiseptic type cleaner.  It's just an idea I got when I was in California.  I have found a lot of ways to use vodka in my cleaning (and no, I'm not drinking it while cleaning).   Last spring I could not clean my sister's wood floor without leaving streaks.  I used vodka which evaporated quickly and the floors looked great! Recently I was able to get some washable marker out of dry clean only fabric with vodka...no stains left behind.  It sounds weird, I know, but it's my new miracle cleaning product.  Anyway, I'm excited to make my lemongrass cleaner.

Here is our setup for the seedlings.  This sits in The King's office.  The florescent lights each have one warm bulb and one cool bulb in them and the timer is set so the lights are on for 16 hours per day.  This seems to be working.  The kids take turns spritzing the dirt and young plants to keep them moist.  The larger plants need more than a daily spritz to keep going.

Now to get them all growing, hardened off, and eventually transferred to the garden.  I'm getting excited for warmer days!