Todays harvest included onions, carrots, chard and Chinese cabbage
I’ll make cole slaw out of the cabbage. It is a lighter version of slaw. I never make that mayo based dressing any more.
The chard will go into green rice.
Posted in My Gardens, My Homeplace, Oh Grow Up!, Ozarks Travel Examiner
carrots, chard, wasabi arugula, red onions
My gartden harvest June 16, 2012 photo by PBH
It’s a small garden, after all there are only two of us. Plus, I am lucky enough to share with neighbor Patty and Neighbor Dorothy. We are all looking forward to tomatoes.
We can usually eat everything fresh. If not, there is a vegetable pickle crock in the fridge. Or, occasionally, I will freeze or dehydrate the surplus.
Posted in Harvest Basket, My Homeplace
Tagged carrots, Chard, onions, wasabi arugula
I have raised beds and high hopes for Southeast Missouri garden, zone 6A. We are still a couple of weeks away from the juicy giant tomato of my dreams.
“Do you want a tomato sandwich?” I yelled out the back door last summer.
“Tomato sandwich? You mean without the Bacon?” Jules replied.
This was an un paralleled act of generosity on my part. I was offering to share the first big red, ripe tomato of the summer.
Jules won’t come in for a lunch-time tomato sandwich. He will come in for a Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.
Let’s share our tomato favorites throughout the season. Leave a comment, please.
Indigo Rose Saladette tomato. photo PBH
I have a new raised bed that is 4 ft square and I plan to see just how much I can produce in this small space. My point is that we can have fresh home-grown produce in the space of an apartment balcony, or a suburban front porch.
I’m growing great tomatoes in a 5 gallon bucket. Plus, there is room to tuck in a basil plant, some thyme or, some chives.
I am also growing a brand new tomato, Indigo Blue. It is a saladette tomato, meaning bigger than a cherry tomato but smaller than a Celebrity. Saladette is a GIANT Cherry or a really small beefsteak.
All my garden seed is from:
Posted in Herbs in the garden, Herbs in the kitchen, My Gardens, My Homeplace, Oh Grow Up!
Tagged basil, BLT, Garden, high hopes, lettuce, Missouri, raised beds, Southeast, Tomato, zone 6A
Patio planters are filled with salad greens and pansies. Expand your ideas about container gardens and planters. Grow leafy salad greens in full sun in spring and partial shade or shaded location in summer.
A living salad bowl at Southmoreland Urban Inn photo by PBH
I love the idea. Everything in this planter is edible. The mix of pansies and lettuce are a great idea. These flowers belong to the Inn Keepers at Southmoreland on the Plaza – an Urban Inn in Kansas City MO.
frillly loose leaf lettuce can fill a container with color and texture.
It gave me the idea to add the beautiful textures and shapes of lettuce into my planter and hanging baskets. I know you’ve seen lush baskets of ornamental sweet potatoes.
Sometimes by the end of summer, most containers have a few blank spaces. Toss a little red lettuce or beautifully textured arugula in the container.
Grow late season crops tucked in anywhere. Put a few seeds in an empty garden row or an unused container. Fall is a good time for second season or cool season crops.
Once an ashtray, this patio furniture is now a mini container garden.
The bonus is you get a home grown salad. Some lettuces and radishes can take a light frost. The soil is already warmed by the summer sun and crops will germinate quickly. Keep soil moist to encourage germination. Share your combination planters with us. Leave a comment below.
Posted in Bed & Breakfasts, Gardens (not mine), Go Away
Tagged arugula, container gardens, edible flowers, lettuce, pansies
Green Beans are a summer favorite I seldom eat in winter. Because as you know, everything tastes better home grown and garden fresh.
This recipe is made from last summers dried tomatoes and pesto. This summers green beans and onions. photo: PBH
Green beans are grown from Renee’s Garden seed. I pulled the onions from my garden the last week of June. At first the beans were being eaten up by bugs and bunnies.
The bunnies came and went. Bigger gardens next door or a neighborhood full of cats and dogs sent the bunnies on their way. Repeated Safer’s Soap sprays slowed down the bugs.
I’m growing “Tricolor Bush” and “Tricolor Pole”. Why bush and pole? because the pole beans are ready about a week after the bush beans. I’ll keep replanting beans and hopefully get another crop or two here in Missouri.
We love pickled green beans. These long straight beans are meant to be stuffed into tall skinny jars and pickled. They are refrigerator pickles, meant to be eaten fresh out of the jar. My crisp pickled beans are not cooked by the long process of canning.
Maybe we will have enough to freeze a few of these three colors of long straight green beans. The multi colored beans are beautiful in winter time vegetable soup.
Earlier this summer I grew a great crop of French, “Rolande” bush beans. Extra-slim,
“Roland” is a “haricot vert” of filet bean. Pick them and cook them. These straight, skinny beans are tender and need very little cooking.
long and deep green filet or “haricot vert” snap beans. These are a long, skinny French bean that does very well in my zone 6A home garden.
They grew in a square 4′ x 4′ garden. Every week for four weeks I planted another quarter of the garden. It kept us in fresh beans and a bit more to share with Neighbor Patty.
They are extra-crispy, making it possible for Jules and I to come to a middle ground in the kitchen. One of us likes Southern style “cooked to death” green beans and the other likes the California style “crispy and full of vitamins” version.
Green Beans are meant for sucession planting. Planting one patch and a little later planting a few more beans will stretch out fresh green bean season spring to fall. The best way is to plant a few beans, or part of a row every week.
When the first plants are finished producing beans, cut them down, mow them or, snip off the plants. Replant that spot again with more green beans. If you want to freeze or can a lot of beans at once, this method is not for you.
If I have a few too many green beans, I can share them with the neighbor. Or, it is quick to blanch and freeze a quart size plastic zipper lock bag of green beans. Next, I’ll plant cow peas.
Had to do a little research on how to harvest and store onions because I’ve never had much luck growing them before. It was not a great crop. But the variety of onions were so much more successful than ever before.
Red onions are still in the ground. As are the leeks and shallots. Garlic was lifted mid June.
Alabama Sunset' is a popular and durable sun-tolerant coleus.
This coleus is on my friends back deck. She knows – because I just had to tell her — that coleus should be pinched back. I admit this trailing plant is very pretty and continuously blooming. Most long time gardeners would have rushed to this plant and made 2 dozen cuttings imediately.
Pinch Plants for Better Growth
It just occurred to me when I saw this plant, that we don’t have to follow the rules or even an experienced gardeners advice.
Relax. Be happy. It is OK to NOT follow the rules all the time. You don’t Have To pinch plants. If you don’t, this is what will happen.↑ (see above photo) That’s OK too.
Posted in Bed & Breakfasts, Gardens (not mine), Go Away, Ozarks Travel Examiner, Traveling
Tagged coleus, pinch plants
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day and Vegetable Garden Report
This is named Watermelon Charm. What a great name for this watermelon colored annual from Proven Winners..
These sweet Superbells survived the winter and are blooming again this summer.
They are Calibrachoas, named Sweet Tart and Grape Punch.
Pepperbox Poppy grown from seed. Renee’s Garden has several varieties of poppies.
Echinacea or Coneflower, Little Annie. Perennials aren’t at their best till they are fimly rooted and call your place their home. I had little hope for Little Annie last year. Now she’s a garden show off.
Calendula in several golden shades is blooming everywhere in the garden, all planted from seed.
Our Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hostess with the mostest is Carol at May Dreams Gardens.
Vegetable garden report. 6/15/12
Cucumbers, tomatoes and beans are blooming away. We’ve picked beans a couple of times already. I’m ready to harvest loads zucchini, as you can see on by my Pinterest Courgette board. Can’t wait to try that refrigerator zucchini pickle recipe.
I pulled up all the lettuce because it was so bitter.The chard is beautiful this summer. Who knows if we will have eggplants, the plants are being eaten up by bugs.
I lifted the garlic this week and it is curing in the shade. There are still onions, shallots and leeks in the garden. I thought I planted too many onions, but not so, we eat more green onions when they are handy and plentiful. The alliums and potatoes are busy growing underground.
We ate our first successful harvest of carrots last night in a cold pasta salad. There are a couple of celery plants, several kinds of basil, 6 or 8 pepper plants just blooming and a few setting fruit.
We will see how long we can stretch the garlic harvest.
Posted in My Gardens, My Homeplace, Oh Grow Up!
Supertunia hanging baskets
Does not need deadheading. Can take the full sun. What could be better?
Supertunia® Watermelon Charm Petunia hybrid
Normally, I wait until the end of the gardening season to report on Proven Winners trial plants. That is still the plan. But, I couldn’t wait to tell you about a new arrival.
The name is a perfect match. Every time I look at this flower, I think of the name. This Supertunia® is exactly the shade of pink/red that tells you its name is watermelon.
Watermelon Charm is just beginning to tumble over the edges of this hanging basket.
Like other Supertunias,® I expect this plant to be heat tolerant. I’m sure the bright pink blooms will attract butterflies and hummers. 
You may remember another Supertunia® standout, Pretty Much Picasso® from an earlier post.
Pretty Much Picasso
Posted in My Gardens, My Homeplace
Tagged Charm, petunia, Proven Winners, Supertunia, Watermelon
This is my favorite rain gauge. I’ve tried a lot of them, but this is a keeper.
They start out as shiny copper and age to what the marketing guys call a patina.
I like it so much, that when these were on sale (they still are), I bought another one. I can see this gauge across the street in my garden. And the other one goes in the back where I can see it as I have coffee and water my deck flowers in the morning.
I like that this gauge has a bit of science and history. It works on Archimedes displacement theory
Gardeners love rain gauges so we can talk about the weather with some accuracy. If we don’t get that guide post amount of 1″ of rain every week, we know how much to water.
I only have them close so you can see how they age. The one on the left is new.
These gauges read different amounts because I added water to one, just to show you how they work. After this blog post, the shiny one is going to the back yard.
I don’t work for Gardener’s Supply. I just like this raingauge. Its durable, easy to read and attractive.
In fact, a substantial portion of my income goes to them annually and sadly does not com from them to me.
Bring it in, in the winter time and it will last for years.
By then, you will have figured out how to replace the inside piece youself
Get it here:
Gardener’s Supply
Floating Rain Gauge
Item # 39-047
Actually Gardeners Supply, you should hire me to do your Pinterest accout. I have so much of your stuff I could post daily until fall.
Hey garden guru. Picked up some PW super bells. Yard boy (otherwise known as Dan) planted them… And two days letter they are a wilted dying mess. Any ideas what might have gone wrong? Becky
Becky, You made a good choice. Superbells are a favorite summer anual. I suggest you give it plenty of water. Even if the plant was well watered the surrounding dry soil will wick off the moisture.
A newly planted flower has yet to establish it’s root system. It needs extra water and attention for a few days until it is well rooted in it’s new home.
The Yard Boy did everything right, in fact, he deserves many tall, iced drinks.
Last summer I grew some beautiful superbells :
Because we had such a mild winter, these Superbells survied the winter and are blooming again this year.
I’m growing more superbells this year.There is a new bright yellow and white striped superbell coming. Next spring, look for ‘Lemon Slice’ at the garden centers.
This year, I’m growing containers of mixed annuals. It is a test, to see if I can keep these full sun flowers well watered and blooming.
Superbells are a Calibrachoa. This new type of plants looks like little Petunias. They are related.
Plants in containers live or die because we remember to water and fertilize. I love that you dont have to deadhead old flowers or pinch back stems.
Once established, water only when the top of the soil feels dry. Too much water makes roots rot. Full sun. Fertilize once a month.
Only 6 – 10 inches tall, these long, trailing branches cascade over the sides of hanging baskets and containers, or spread over flower beds.
These superbells are hummingbird magnets.
Posted in My Gardens, My Homeplace, Oh Grow Up!, Ozarks Travel Examiner, Trials
Tagged Proven Winners, Superbells
