New England, June 2015

Did you guys get the email this afternoon about Johnny's free shipping thru Sunday? 

QB I know what you mean about the peas. Mine just exploded & my daughter can't help herself but to pull them off.

Thank goodness for the rain. My garden seems to have grown by an inch or so.  The only downside is HUGE lack of pollinators for my squash & cucumbers. I've had several fruits simply die on the vine so I'm resorting to pollinating them myself. 

I'm really trying to stay up to date on planting succession crops so I have a few more cukes starting inside to put along my trellis once I pull my garlic. I also started my fall broccoli inside along with some slow bolt lettuce varieties. 

Just curious where does everyone get their seeds? I have become a huge fan of High Mowing with its free shipping.

CAgirlinMA wrote:
Just curious where does everyone get their seeds? I have become a huge fan of High Mowing with its free shipping.

I don't buy many seeds anymore as my fridge is so full of them that I'm all set for years. Plus I started saving my own last year. And of course I do seed trades and some are gifted here and there.  

But, if needed, I will still buy them where ever they are on sale.  Job Lot often has 50% off sales and the other day I picked up some Landreth stringless bush beans at Bennys for cheap, and 2 boxes of Hummingbird mix at the dollar store.  Last year I got about 35 packs of heirlooms for a quarter each at a Mom & Pop grocery store, so I'm growing all kinds of new things this year.


The 25cent sale:

CC, I would have bought those for 25 cents just for the pictures.

Ditto, sanderson, and also that brand has extensive cultivation tips written on the inside of their packets which alone would be worth the quarter. I really like how much trouble they go to in order to add that extra value.

I buy mine from either Johnnys or Fedco because I'm a seed snob. LOL.

But in the future, should a national disaster happen, we know where our resident seed bank manager is. LOL again.

NHGardener wrote:
But in the future, should a national disaster happen, we know where our resident seed bank manager is. LOL again.

I like that.

I accept.

Whole Paycheck carries that brand of seeds, but never for 25 cents a packet.

I applaud Cape Coddess and others that save seeds and use them.  That is the one thing I have not been able to do successfully.  Our seeds don't seem to propagate well.

We purchase from Baker Creek and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Here's a few garden pictures since I don't think I've posted any in forever.  This is the first year that I feel on top of things, but that's really only because I've been outside working nearly to the exclusion of everything else. 



Ack! I'm running out of battery.  More later...

Love your picture beginnings!

Can't wait for the rest.

Heads up, New England... Big blow heading our way. I moved all my pots up against the house along with the porch furniture. I think it's coming from the south southeast in my area so it should blow the peas against the trellis and be ok. The tomatoes have started weaving in and out of their trellis so I think they'll be alright. Everything else is on its own.

Molly, when my tablet runs out of juice I can plug into an extension cord and still use it. Can you do that with whatever it is you are using?

Does anybody grow lavender? I've been reading that it thrives on tender loving neglect, which is my favorite kind of plant, but it needs dry sandy and/or rocky soil. Most of my soil has been so well conditioned over the years that I can't find anything like that

Lavender can survive our hot dry summers with some watering. However, the prettiest lavender I ever had was planted in freshly turned, amended soil with filtered light between the birch saplings.

I bought 2 lavender plants this year and they are in my rock wall garden. They're still alive.  

I see winds tomorrow here of 15-20 mph. And 1-2" of rain tomorrow!

Too bad for my beehive that just swarmed this afternoon. They're in a cluster way up in a tree that I can see right here from my bedroom window. They're sending out scouts to scout out new digs. When the scouts come back, they communicate how excited they are about the new spots they found, and then the hive makes a decision for one of the options, and they leave. How they do that is amazing. But anyway, they could leave tonight or tomorrow, but it will be interesting if they don't leave by wind and rain time. I'll be watching.

I set 3 empty beehives around the property in case they want to move in there.

What's really nice is those charging units that let you run your phone or tablet or laptop off them. Sizes and prices vary, but they're a heck of a handy item.

The Cape is expecting gusts to 50 but only a smidge of rain.  Looks like I'll be out watering tomorrow night.


I don't know if it was all the snow we had or the seaweed I laid on the beds last fall but this is definitely a banner year for SFG. I'm actually packing stuff in the freezer for winter. That was my goal for the last 3 years and I've never been able to do it until now. Very exciting!

Marc, some of the folks at work have those portable chargers...and they aren't expensive either.

Thanks CC. 25 cents is unheard of for Botanical Interests seeds. They happen to be a favorite of mine along with High Mowing. I haven't ventured into the seed saving (except for some beans & cukes)....hmmmmm. May have to start looking into that.

Wow CC, that's great! 

Today I picked 3 spaghetti strainers of strawberries, and I'll be cutting and freezing those tonight. I should pick and freeze the kale since there is more than we can eat right now out there. I did freeze some garlic scapes. That's about it for now. The peas have blossoms but no peas yet. The green beans are still small plants.

This year I'm going to plant late peas too, because I never have enough peas. Maybe late July? Maybe I'll use the empty garlic beds for the peas.

NHGardener can you post a picture of your strawberry bed? 

CC what have you been freezing? I'm not at that point yet (need a deep freezer) but we've been having fresh spinach & salads since April which is a huge success for me. Now if only I could figure out how to have tomatoes & cucumbers in June 

So far I've been able to freeze kale, collards, strawberries, and in the fridge right now I have a bowl of sugar snap peas and a container of snow peas that keeps getting larger and larger. Both will be tomorrow's blanch and freeze. The garden is loaded with lettuce which will bolt up any minute so I'm thinking I'll blend it up and pour it into ice cube trays and freeze for soup bases and smoothies later on down the line. There are also excessive amounts of turnip greens that could be blanched and frozen, as well as more kale and collards.

Go garden go!


CAgirl, I found out this year that lettuce will reseed itself if you leave it to bolt and seed. I'm growing lots of lettuce this year that came from last year's plants ,and will do the same this year end. At some point I won't have to plant any more new lettuces. I must've also broadcast some collard seeds around in different boxes last fall because it seems I have an awful lot of volunteers this year. I'm always experimenting with ways to make the garden be self sufficient and produce without me. Haha. Now if it would only water itself...

My mother, who is in Florida right now, told me that she has a friend that goes out of the beginning of the season and just squeezes her favorite tomatoes on to the ground and the next thing you know she has tomato plants.

Too funny about the tomatoes, CC!

Maybe we should just eat our meals in the garden and let the seeds fall where they will? 

I don't know if my lettuce will regrow. I do know I have beautiful lettuce heads out there! They've been beautiful for a month now, and bitter as well! Since I can't eat them, I think I'll let them go to seed and see what happens.

 I just lost the whole post I spent the past hour working on, so I'm afraid my pictures will have to wait until tomorrow.

I hate losing a reply that I have spent a lot of time on.

I think a couple years ago someone posted that if we hit the F5 key on the keyboard the last page will reappear and we can get our posts back. I don't have F5 on my tablet so it won't work there. That's why I post an edit so many times. But when we're on a regular computer we could it. Does anyone remember that post and if F5 was the key to hit?

All kinds of things blowing around out there today. Little bit of rain too. Forgot to mention that I would have all kinds of Swiss chard to freeze to if I quit giving away huge bunches of it to anybody who walks by. Swiss chard will go on all season until frost so I should be able to freeze a bunch of it by then.

Waaah...can't use the emoticons because I'm using Firefox as Chrome seems to have some kind of weird virus thingy going on. They want to give me all kinds of prizes if I would only click here. Not!

Uh oh... Big thump just hit the back of the house! Better go investigate...
Yep, tree branch up against the house. And obviously hit the roof because the gutter is bent down. I'll have to get up to the roof and investigate once this is all over. I sure hope it didn't do any damage up there. Crud.

Wow CC, you sure have had your share of wind this season!

It's rainy and blowing here. Watching that hive swarm hang onto the limb blowing around, only supposed to get to 59F today.

It took a long time to get the strawberries into freezer bags and freeze them last night! I decided that even tho strawberries are low maintenance perennials, the real work comes in picking and then freezing them! I can't imagine having to pick those all day in a hot sun. After an hour I'm pooped. And you have to pretty much get them right away so they don't get overripe. These are the June bearing, so it's 3 weeks of intensive picking and then they're gone till next year. 

They're worth it tho. Yum.