Greenhouse Gardening

Plant shelf with heat coils and grow lights

I'm back to blogging again. My commitments are past; my color design class, after a year, is over. I've been busy exploring various textile crafts and taking pictures but not taking time to write blogs.

Lettuces and Greens

My plans for now? To get my garden spaces cleaned up and ready for this year's growing season. Spring flowering bulbs are starting to bloom and things are greening up and starting to grow. I anxiously await this time of year ... 'Anxious' because some things die from lack of Winter moisture, or pocket gophers and voles. I have started veggie and flower seedlings in my greenhouse: broccoli, cauliflower, kale varieties, tomato varieties, and favorite flowers.

Herbs

I will not bother with growing carrots, radishes, beets, or lettuce again over winter - too labor intensive and a huge electricity draw for keeping it warm. What I will always keep going tho are herbs. I enjoyed having fresh herbs all winter: chives, parsley, rosemary, cilantro, basil, mint, oregano, sage, and thyme (I should have typed some of those in the song's order ... it's now running in my head!). The grapevine's leaves are filling the entire greenhouse ceiling space and Monte keeps looking for newly forming clusters. The clematis vine that twines into the grapevine is just now starting to flower - it's the deep violet Jackmanii variety. Tomato plants in the corner have been giving us cherry tomatoes, but I don't know if I'll grow them over winter again either.

Entwined together: Potted Fig tree, tomatoes, and grapevine

Mock Orange - been babying over a year; seeds from Monte's family homestead

Needle-Felted Christmas Wreath, etc.

WOW!!! I've not posted in a long time. But I've been busy and taken pictures of lots of doings, so I'm going to back-date posts from here for catching up with projects closer to their date. For awhile there was lots of garden/yard clean-up as Fall carried on with a longer growing season before frosting out. And I've now got tomatoes, lettuce varieties, radishes, beets, carrots, green onions, herbs and snow peas growing in the greenhouse that's connected to the house.

We have XM Serious Radio in our house (alone - we don't have Dish or Direct TV - only Satellite radio) and I'm currently listening to Christmas Classics as I'm typing this post on my Macintosh computer, eating a Macintosh apple.

The MOPS group of which I've been a Mentor Mom for ten years had it's Christmas Brunch fundraiser yesterday. I dyed some long-sleeve T-shirts with matching bamboo socks for it. I also made a Needle-felted wreath - all a part of an auction. Now I need to make a felt wreath for ME!

The wreath is about 12" made over a styrofoam wreath form. I've found needle felting over foam does not work on the smooth foam. I learned that last Easter when I did some egg shapes. I made some ornaments I'm back posting about, and going to make more.

At my weaving guild once a year is a large sale and I pick up varieties of wools. What I used for covering the styrofoam was some junky dyed green wool - still with lanolin that's gone sticky and I'm betting dyed with Koolaid - well I'm finally putting it to use. Then I wrapped it with some yarn. I separately needled the leaves and then needled them onto the wreath. I wet felted the berries quickly with bar soap and my hands standing at the sink, squeezed them out in a towel, and almost immediately glue-gunned them onto the wreath, straight pinning thru some. (Running out of time ... last minute stuff.)

Early Fall Happenings

Fall has hit. It's been an extended season this year of warmth, so tomatoes, peppers, and beans didn't freeze until the other night. I had them extended for ripening warmth with the white "floating row covers" (remay cloth), and occasionally covering with blankets on borderline nights. Other than kale, chinese cabbage, and chard, my outdoor gardening season is done. Now for mother nature to do her thing with tucking in the scattered flower seeds for new growth next year, and stronger root development for the perennials.

Torkel, my felted tree-hugging Tomte

My last color/design challenge for my class was using Tetrad colors of the Color Wheel. It was a busy month with garden harvest, readying the greenhouse for winter, and LOTS of company! Needless to say, at the last minute I decided felting was my thing I could do, producing something! ... Thinking ... I looked at my favorite sculpted needlefelted head, still needing a body and finishing. His skin colors chose my tetrad colors: blue-green, violet, red-orange, and yellow. You'd think the face is orange, green and gray, but no, not when compared with the 4-in-1 color tool. Since tetrad is a square of double complementary colors, I was thinking square - like plaid, for his coat. So I finished Torkel, my tree-hugging elf (or Swedish Tompte).

In the above picture are vased zinnias, brought Saturday by my friend Marty. We had a houseful that day. Various peoples have come to help cut wood, taking some home for themselves, so Saturday was the Johnson's day. Dawson and Splarah came, Gary, and our house guest Michael, who cooked the supper main dish (he's now in a place of his own closer to his new job). I've not gathered many flowers to dry this year, not thinking I'm making anything with them, but did gather some, so that's pictured, along with the "pumpkins?" behind (volunteer squash we don't know for sure what they are, but as I posted on my kitchen blog, I'm still roasting the seeds and using them as pumpkins).

The round circle is the broken glass.

I was just upstairs checking on my home brews and heard a crash, expecting it to be something in the greenhouse. SHOCK! The middle window in the dining area was broken - the outer one of a two-glass window. The culprit still there, most likely stunned, so not flying away. His victim lay dead. So what happened?  What I've identified as a Sharp-shinned or Cooper's Hawk was chasing a chickadee for it's meal, and they both bashed into the window. Because it was stunned it stood around for a long time for me to capture many pics!

The hawk and broken glass fallen between two-glass window

Sharp-shinned or Cooper's Hawk?

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Wood cutting. We like burning aspen - our "hardest" wood for longer burning

Cleaned the back porch corner for extra wood storage

Wood storage by front door with ore buckets, etc

Collecting Seeds & Rubber Stamped Seed Packet

The garden is winding down. Normally we've had a frost by now, wiping out all the tender plants like beans, basil, squash and tomatoes, and then some flowers. Indian Summer will kick in with it's warmth for another month or so, and an occasional snow storm. This is the warmest September ever and we've not had rain for over a month, but a few spits. My watering keeps things going, but I'd planted more salady seeds for producing on into the late fall, but it's like the ground wicks away moisture instantly from the surface, so not many of the seedlings have sprouted yet. Monte and me covered tender plants a couple nights when temps threatened, and that saved them.

I've been collecting seeds from flowers I like to replant next year, starting seedlings in the early spring in my greenhouse. Like I've grown black hollyhocks for years and keep planting more and more - as biennials they do need to be replanted, but mine also keep reseeding. The calendulas sometimes reseed, I collect their seeds to. This year I'm collecting more. Like I like how the hyssop adds it's purple flowering at differing times than the flowering sage May Night and too, catnip. Another I collected is a perennial that my friend Marty wants to see if she can get started - I don't remember it's name.

Years ago I bought a rubber stamp that's like a seed package. I've given seeds as gifts using this stamp. As you see in the picture, you'd fold the paper and glue the tabs to make a seed packet. And I cut out the window - I enclose the seeds in snack-size zip bag and push the bag into the packet, then the seeds don't fall out, but you can see them. My daughter-in-love Sarah, recently stamped some for her gift-giving and used a multiple colored stamp pad. It looked great, so I'm going to be doing that too.

I'm posting pictures of some of the flowers I'm collecting seeds from.

Garden Pics

Our backyard from the roof

Clematis and Black Hollyhocks

Clematis entwining crab apple tree

Echinacea

Heirloom Hollyhocks

Kale and Lettuce

Calendula in midst of carrots and lettuce

I love gardening. But our first frost is around the corner ...

Weaving in the Garden

Monte built me this weaving loom for our yard. It's made out of cedar, so it will weather as all our other fencing, gates and deck - that is, neutral gray. When reading a garden color book last summer I learned that nature's neutrals: rocks' and woods' grays, are the best surroundings for showcasing nature's colors.

In this summer's "Living Crafts" magazine, there was an article with instructions for building this loom. Because of my love of textile arts, which includes weaving, Monte thought this would look cool in our yard. More on these kinds of looms are at www.weavingalife.com.

It's warp is jute. I'll be weaving in garden materials. As weeds and flowers dry birds may make use of stuff - like for nest building and feeding. I might plant vines to climb up the posts some years.



'Tis the time of Summer Solstice, Midsummer Nights Dream, and John the Baptist Day. I did a post on this season before.

Dawson's welded me some metal arches for vines to climb. Everything's planted for this season's enjoyment and eats. I totally enjoy summer and gardening and sitting out on the deck reading and enjoying the gardens, butterflies, and birds.



The black pots are growing potatoes and some winter squash. I did a post that mentioned planting potatoes in pots with a link to more info about.