Garden
Our garden has a variety of fruits and vegetables - pick up helpful tips and tricks I've learned over the years to help your garden thrive.
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Cutting Flower Garden Plans: 2023
I am thrilled to share that I will be planting my cut garden with Floret seeds this year. Floret is local to where I live and has been a huge source of inspiration and knowledge for me throughout this journey. I have many different varieties I am going to be planting this season and I absolutely can’t wait to get into the garden. To accommodate my seed buying & flower growing obsession I am adding three new raised beds this year! Here is the line up… Amaranth ‘Green Tails’– I love the long green tassels this adds to my bouquets and this will be my first time trying to grow…
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Planting Thanksgiving Tulips in 2022
Every November I plant tulip bulbs in honor of my Mom. My Dad, brothers, and I did this just a few days after she passed away (check out my Living Lessons: Tulips post) and now it’s one of my favorite annual traditions. This year I took this tradition to a whole new level and planted 650 bulbs in my garden and surrounding our home! Planting each one brought me so much joy and I absolutely cannot wait to share photos with all of you in Spring 2023! Here is what I planted in the garden and around our property this year; Tulips represent “perfect and deep love” and are given…
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October Bountiful Garden Harvest: 2022
As my Dad and brothers harvest the Iowa sweet corn and soybeans I am harvesting my own crop here on the island in our garden. This year I experimented with my very first cut flower garden (4 out of 6 beds) and then planted strawberries, raspberries, and tomatoes (2 out of 6 beds). I had some serious competition with the snails and slugs and lost quite a few crops to them but it was still a bountiful harvest. The cut flower garden is still producing beautiful blooms – here are some photos showing the flowers that are currently in the garden. I had to completely replant the garden in early…
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Cutting Flower Garden Plans: 2022
Many of you know how much I love to create fresh flower bouquets. After many hours of reading and being inspired by Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden book I selected my flower varieties for 2022 all from Renee’s Garden. Here is the line up… Heirloom Zinnias; Cool Crayon Colors – These are long-stemmed, deeply petaled, full double flowers in deep lavender, carmine-rose, soft pink, and white. Heirloom Cutting Zinnias; Moulin Rouge – These zinnias are bright scarlet, rich true crimson, and deep dark red that attract native pollinators, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Cutting Zinnias; Raspberry Sorbet – These are deep raspberry-tinted double blossoms that attract butterflies and promise to provide jewel…
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Grateful Heart Garden Plans : 2022
My 2021 garden was a complete flop – I didn’t harvest one vegetable or fruit the entire season. I moved my garden from a small flat space with plenty of light into an area that was gently sloped and had too much shade. This was very disappointing since I used the garden seeds from my Mom but it was a good lesson in the basics of gardening – as much sun as possible is essential to success. So, back to the drawing board for 2022 with the goal of a bountiful harvest. Here is my timeline for a successful garden in 2022: January 2022 – Start daydreaming about my new…
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Expanded Garden Project 2021
One of our goals for 2021 was to relocate our garden into a bigger space to free up the current garden area for the greenhouse we plan to build later this summer. Below are the steps we took to prepare the area for the new expanded garden – you could follow these same steps if you wanted to do a DIY garden yourself! Step One: Identify the area for your new garden – this should be an area that gets plenty of sunlight. It does not have to be level, although, that is ideal. Step Two: Clear the area of any growth or grass. The grass can be dug out…
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Agronomy 101
The key to a healthy prosperous garden is healthy soil. Agronomy is the study of crop and soil science and my Dad is an agronomist (aka “crop doctor”). To make sure my garden is successful in growing the seeds I have started from my Mom’s collection I need to make sure my garden has the vital nutrients the plants need to grow. The macronutrients (the nutrients I need the most of) are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and calcium and then there are many other micronutrients (the nutrients I need but in smaller quantities). If you’d like to get your soil tested the first step is locating a place that you…
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Garden Lessons: Iris
The week after my Mom passed we planted tulips, iris, and crocus bulbs in my Mom’s garden in Iowa and at our home in the Pacific Northwest. The irises are now in bloom at our home but are still nestled into the soil in Iowa. This is a beautiful lesson, that all things emerge at just the right time and that we are all in our own stage of growth and development. Iris represent faith, hope, courage, wisdom and admiration. My Mom blessed me with a strong spiritual foundation and faith in God, she gives me hope for a bright future, courage to move forward with grace, the wisdom to…
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Second Round – Seed Starters 2021
I decided to do a second round of seed starters to add to the variety of plants in the garden and to try out biodegradable pots that can be directly transplanted into the garden when the weather is right. I was able to purchase some seed starting soil from my local hay & feed store along with an organic fish and kelp emulsion (plant food) that can be used after the seedlings sprout. In this round of seed starts I planted: Oregon sugar pod II snap peas Kentucky Blue pole beans Melting Sugar snow peas Microgreens Chives Evergreen white bunching onions Ancho poblano peppers Sugar baby watermelons Black beauty zucchini…
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Seed Starts 2021
This is the first step in our garden expansion dreams for 2021. I decided to start my first round of seed starts this past weekend (February 20th) by planting one tray of seeds and nine pots of wildflowers that will be transplanted outside when the weather warms up. All of the seeds planted are from my beloved mom, Kelly. I look forward to continuing her legacy in the garden and seeing the beauty and bounty it brings. Step One: Gather your seed packets and decide which ones you’d like to plant. I start with seeds that have a longer harvest timeframe – for example, my Kentucky Blue pole beans will…
