BeanDreams 2007 wraps up

My veggie growing adventures are over for another year! It was an early end, as I grew short season crops - turned out pretty well! I would certainly grow all of the crops I grew this year again - each one to a greater or lesser extent. :)

Read all about it in the wrap-up!

Best. Borscht. Ever. (BeanDreams 2007)

Wow. I harvested some of my beets (yay!), and here's the best part: the borax I added to the soil DID THE TRICK!! The beets were no longer bitter. And, they're getting bigger, too! (only about an inch wide, but way better than they were) :) So, a double-whammy of positive results from the borax. I guess I did have an imbalance. (If I was sure I'd have a garden next year (we might be moving), I'd get a soil testing kit to help fine-tune my soil more). I'm so very glad I found that awesome article all about beets! If you need to know ANYTHING about growing beets, be sure to read this article.


And, since beets are the heart and soul of borscht, good beets mean good borscht! I must have put in just the right amount of vinegar to my simmering beef as well, because it turned out extremely tender and yet there was no trace of vinegar taste to it.


It was so tasty! So earthy and comforting. Well, it should be earthy-tasting, all of the main ingredients (save the beef) are root vegetables. :)


Of course, if you wish to make my family's recipe for borscht, I have it listed here. It's great in the spring, but it's equally great in the fall. :)

BeanDreams update!

All done! Read my update regarding the mini-harvest of my garden!

Me, happily shelling peas, with my Coke Zero.

Peepers Approves of the Harvest

I did some harvesting from the garden today, picking all of the radishes, peas, and thinning the beets. Peeking out from behind my Coke Zero, Peepers supervises the shelling of peas, and seems to approve!


More on my BeanDreams 2007 update, coming soon!

BeanDreams: When the heck did THIS happen???!!

Last I saw, I had a lot of flowers on my sugar peas, but all of a sudden, BOOM! It's covered in peas! I've been totally absorbed the last week dealing with Peepers (more to come on that) and in researching my genealogy that I haven't gotten out to the garden. Apparently it was a good week for it!

More to come...

[EDIT, July 18th - added my update to BeanDreams, with new pics!]

BeanDreams - comin' along!

The garden's been doing really well so far--most of the plants I'm growing are really thriving with the cooler temps we've been experiencing this summer so far. The bok choy has been growing so wonderfully, we've had it for supper several times already this summer. Crispy, lightly spicy flavoring, really excellent!

Read the full report on my BeanDreams 2007 page.

Lilacs & BeanDreams

Some lovely white lilacs growing nearby - aside from Mayflowers, I think Lilacs are my favorite scent! Such a heady perfume!





I'm also glad to report that my second planting of beans is starting to come up today (I had to replant because of such a rainy spring rotting the first batch). Everybody needs more sun though, they're a little behind where they ought to be...

Read more on my BeanDreams 2007 page...

BeanDreams Update: Cold and Rainy

It has continued to rain, and be very cold for this time of year (still around under 10 deg. C). We had risk of frost for 3 consecutive nights here, even though the last frost was supposed to be around the 6th of May. Between the cold and all the rain, I think the beans I planted have rotted in the soil, I'll have to plant them again. We keep being promised warmer temperatures & sunnier skies "in a few days", but by the time that day comes, the forecast's changed, and it's still cold and damp. Everything that sprouted in the garden hasn't really grown, the cold has stunted its growth (it'll get better once it warms up - but it means that I'm not as far ahead of the game as I would be if the weather cooperated). Hopefully, it won't turn out like last year, with the whole month of June raining. It doesn't usually...but the last few years...

Fingers crossed.

BeanDreams: Radish is up! And strawberries are blooming!

After a week or so of careful watering and watching, I was rewarded with seeing my radish come up today!



It's the bright green line of little sprouts up the middle. As you can see, there are weeds sprouting all over the place too, so I had a few days there where I couldn't be sure if the weeds were radishes or not. But now that the radishes are there, it's pretty obvious which ones they are.

Huzzah! I now have things sprouting in my garden earlier than I even planted anything last year - so things are looking good for a productive season! But if the weather should turn out like last summer, it might still go downhill...have to wait and see! :)

On another note, the wild strawberries that grow all over the place on the Eastern shore (and maybe other parts) of Nova Scotia are blooming. Lovely little white flowers, and when the berries come, they are tiny (about the size of your pinky nail), but SO sweet! Very nice!

BeanDreams: Some planting done

Yesterday, the 5th of May, I finished moving the soil over to the new garden plot, and sowed some of the "cool weather" crops: the daikon radish, the beets, and the bok choi. I'm really excited, because these crops (especially the radish) will be ready way sooner than the crops started to come in last year. Hooray!

BeanDreams - getting closer!

Phew! I did a LOT of digging this weekend! When the garden plot was first put in many years ago, it was put in off to the side of the backyard. Which was fine, back then. But the trees have grown quite a bit, and now the garden is in their shade for the entire morning. According to the info I got from Vesey's, plants do most of their growing in the morning hours, so I felt it was worth the effort to dig up and move the garden over a few feet. We don't have any topsoil in our backyard - it's been cleaned up and leveled since Hurricane Juan's destruction, but not "finished" as it were (which has actually been a blessing - the wildflowers and grasses grow freely, and are a huge hit with the local birds), so moving the garden to a completely new location would have been too monumental a task - there's just too much rock. However, moving it over a few feet - do-able. Now, if we don't have the terrible growing weather we had last year locally, my garden could do really well this year! :)

Dave and I finished putting up the fence this morning, and I have just a little more soil to move and turn over, and a couple of plants to move (my sage and chives from last year), and it'll all be ready for planting! A couple of the plants I plan on growing this year are able to be sown BEFORE the last frost (unlike last year), so I'll be able to get things started nice and early. Yay! :)

While I was digging up the garden, Casey had a great time being a total spazz, and dug up rocks in the woods. :)

Aside from all that, we had a close encounter with a VERY nearby Ring-Necked pheasant who has started to add a vigorous thumping wingbeat to his turkey-with-a-sore-throat "gobble gobble". Springtime, so he has to show he's tough enough to defend his territory and take care of his 2 lady-friends...and maybe add some more, who can say? He IS a big, beautiful boy, after all! :) His wing beats are very intimidating when heard up close, I must say - Casey and I went indoors for a while after that, to let him go by unimpeded.

Great weather, so glad I had a chance to get started on my garden!

Here's an overview shot, so you can get an idea of how far I moved it.

Here's a shot of the new garden plot from a different angle - I've actually added a little to the square footage, so hopefully I'll be able to plant a little more this year, too!

BeanDreams 2007 - Beginning Plans

Time to start planning the garden for the upcoming growing season! As I did last year, I will be doing a detailed log on my BeanDreams page, and mini updates here in the blog of my gardening adventures. This is my second year of vegetable gardening - aside from personal mistakes made, we also had really lousy weather last year - BUT, things still went pretty well, I did get some produce out of it, and this year I'm looking forward to even more!

One big change I've made from last year is that all the crops I'm growing will mature in under 60 days - things with longer times, like the tomatoes, didn't get a chance to finish up outdoors last year, because the weather got too cold. I ended up starting to cover them in August, for goodness sake! (Tomatoes love the heat, and even though the weather was great, August was uncharacteristically cool at night - so I had to go out every night for weeks to cover my plants with plastic. Quite the hassle). With shorter maturity times, I'll be sure to have enough time for everything to come to fruition in the garden before the weather starts to get too nippy for more delicate, longer-season plants.

So, for more information and details on my growing garden here in Nova Scotia, check out my BeanDreams 2007 page. I'll be posting regular updates here too, all garden-related posts will be labeled BeanDreams 2007.