Tuesday, April 27, 2021

2021 Garden plans

 I planted beets, radish, and cabbage yesterday afternoon.

And then 3 hours later, I was outside, in the rain, checking to see if anything had sprouted yet.

Y'all. Not only is 3 hours not a very long time for seeds to sprout, but it was also around 45°F at the time, which is not warm enough, really, for seeds to sprout.  That deserves a facepalm, yes?  I just can't help myself, though.  There is something magical about an entire plant being contained in a tiny little seed.  And that first sign of growth?  Awe inspiring.

Here's the garden plan for this year.  As a reminder: I have three 4x4 raised beds, three large pots, and two window box rectangular planters.  There are also other places I can plant things around the property, like in front of the chicken coop.  Which might be behind the chicken coop, depending on your perspective.

In the raised bed that is farthest east, I am planning to plant sugar snap peas.  That's it.  Sixteen square feet of sugar snap peas.  I bought a bush variety for this year, so they supposedly won't need trellising.  I may do something crazy and plant another crop after the peas are done.  If that happens, it'll be something like Brussels sprouts or radishes or lettuce.

There used to be strawberries in the raised bed that is in the middle, but I pulled them all out last year because I was fighting a losing battle with little white worms and we weren't ever going to get enough of a harvest from that bed to make caring for the strawberries hand picking all of those little worms worthwhile.  In this bed, I'm planting flowers.  I have some marigold and zinnia seeds that I saved from last year's plants, and some nasturtium and sunflower seeds.  I will probably plant a cherry or grape tomato in this bed as well.

In the raised bed that is farthest west, I am going to plant Sakata's Sweet Melon and  Otome Watermelon.  I started the seeds indoors yesterday.  No growth yet (double face palm).  Y'all.  We came so close to having edible watermelon last year.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but of course I am hopeful.  Gardens are all about hope.  I may also plant beets and/or radishes in this bed.  Both of those are small plants that don't take long to mature, so they'll probably be done before the melons start to shade them out.

Also in the garden enclosure, I may plant potatoes in a huge bucket that AKD brought home from work a couple of years ago.  We'll see how I feel about that when it comes time to actually do it.  And also, we'll see what kind of seed potatoes we can come up with.  Lately, we've been eating the grocery store potatoes before they sprout, so that might not work for us this time.

As I mentioned, I planted cabbage, radish, and beets yesterday.  The cabbage is in the three large pots--I planted it mostly because I had the seeds (they were the free seeds included with one of my Baker's Creek orders) and I wanted to see what would happen.  There were no planting guidelines on the packet, so I just threw some seeds in there, and I'll probably have to do some thinning.  I planted radish in one of the window boxes, and golden beets in the other.  Last year was disappointing for both radish and beets--the beets never came up that I could tell, and the radishes ended up going to seed.  Yes, I planted my homemade radish seeds--we'll see what happens.

I have some butterfly bombs that I think I will deploy in front of the chicken coop.  Or maybe I'll try corn there again?  Or sunflowers?  If I do plant something there, I need to protect it from the girls, because they're currently using the area for dust bathing.

And that's all I have planned for now.  I'll keep you posted.  Maybe.  We'll see.

Monday, April 26, 2021

Email subscription changes and menu plan for the week of April 26

Well hello there, friends.

You may have noticed that I did not publish an actual post the next day, nor did I publish a menu plan the following week.  But you probably didn't notice.

Whether you noticed or not, I'm going to tell you why right now.

I got an email from my email subscriber service saying that they were discontinuing the service in July.  Even if you didn't notice the non-next-day post and the non-next-week menu plan, surely you have noticed a, shall we say, content shift in this space.  

My heart's not in it, y'all.  Not anymore.

So when I heard that my email subscribers weren't going to be subscribed any longer, I wondered if maybe it was time to give it up.  I mean, it's not like people who don't know me go looking for my content.  It's not like people who know me go looking for my content, either.  People being emailed when I post new content is kind of important if I want anyone to read what I write. 

But I'm just not ready to give it up yet.  I may be delusional, but I do think that someday I might feel like writing something important and real again.  

So this weekend, I did something that was hard.  I figured out how to migrate my current email subscribers to a new service.  I know, I know: that doesn't sound difficult to some of you, but I find learning about this kind of abstract, can't-see-it, cyber-stuff to be excruciating.  The feeling I get is similar to the one I felt solving AKD's Rubik's cube all those years ago.  I can follow instructions, and the instructions work, but it really bothers me that I don't know how and why it works.

Anyway, I left the old service in place for just this one blog post.  So if you subscribe by email, and you get this one twice, you're good.  You are subscribed to the new service and you don't have to do anything--I will delete the old service, so this should be the only time you get a post twice.  If you subscribe by email and you only get this post once, you probably didn't get migrated to the new system, and you should sign up again using the form on the right under the Popular Posts widget.

It looks like this: 


If you think you're subscribed, but you don't get this post via email, at all, you should also sign up.  And if you don't think you're subscribed, and you don't get this post via email, you should probably also sign up.  So you'll know if I ever publish again.

Anyway, on to this week's menu.

Supper:
  • Nachos
  • Grilled chicken with salad and garlic toast
  • Spaghetti
  • Fend for yourself
  • Pizza, salad
  • Mini corn dogs, raw veggies
  • Chicken tenders, raw veggies
Other:
  • Yes, there will be other things.
  • No, I don't know what they will be.

Monday, April 12, 2021

Menu plan for the week of April 12

 Hi friends.  I think I might write an actual blog post tomorrow.  Wouldn't that be exciting?  Hasn't happened for a while.  In the meantime, you'll have to be content with this.

Here's what's on the menu this week.


Supper:


Other:

Monday, April 5, 2021

Menu plan for the week of April 5

 Hi friends.  Here's what's on the menu this week:

Supper:
  • Fend for yourself
  • Nachos
  • Spaghetti
  • Hot beef sandwiches
  • Hot dogs or brats, buns, raw veggies, chips, jello
  • Grilled pork chops, grilled veggie, garlic toast
  • Takeout pizza & breadsticks, funfetti cake, ice cream
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