With winter knocking on our back door, our fall garden is still producing vegetables for the table. We have enjoyed lettuce (romaine and leaf), radishes, and chard.  The combination of vegetables grown turned out to be a good idea.  Once winter arrives it will be interesting to see how long we can still get the fall garden to produce.  My guess is once January rolls around I wouldn't have and abundance of time to spend playing in the current garden.  

I am going to break free from ordering plants from local suppliers next year and order seeds from a catalog online.  I have had tremendous success growing from seed and I hope over the next few years I can learn how to produce my own seeds. For the time being, I will have to purchase the seed.  

The economy kind of hit us were it hurt this year.  Even through the economic crunch we managed to bring another child into the world.  We recently had a stork deliver a beautiful 6pd. 5oz. baby girl on 11-17-08.  She is a delight and a blessing.  This next year we be a year devoted to getting used to having a baby in diapers and many sleepless nights.  We'll keep you posted.

Lunch

Here is a photo of a lunch I made for Beth and I using fresh cut swiss chard, and a tomato from the garden.  Although you cannot see the swiss chard, it is certainly in there.  I have had much success with this vegetable.  Chard loves organic matter and mulch.  If fact, I have had made several trips to cut leaves off of the six plants I have and they continue to produce.  

Adding to the Soil

I have been building up the soil in the raised bed that the swiss chard and pumpkins are planted.  My pumpkins used to thrive here as the grew larger and the vines started spreading the original vines and leaves died off.  I never understood why until I discovered the roots were exposed to extreme heat during late July and early August.  While the chard is happy the pumpkin plants slowly showed their sadness because I wasn't amending the soil with the proper nutrients.  As I have added more compost, coffee grounds, and grass mulch I have notice new growth on the pumpkin plants coming through the mulch.  I do hope that by nursing the pumpkin plants I will see some new growth and eventually before winter an actual pumpkin.  By my calculations the swiss chard should be in full bloom in about three weeks.  I actually enjoy the taste of the chard and it goes well with a salad or with in a stir fry.  More from the yard coming soon.

A Long Story Short

Organic gardening is very difficult.  Eating this cantaloupe(when its full grown) with no harmful pesticides and no added extras except organic compost and love: priceless. 

Attention

Life has been busy.  New passions have ignited over the last 6 to 7 months leading me to abandoned this blog for long while.  I probably will have more meaningful content down the road as I venture into other areas of interest.  So stick with me, more to come.

A Real Local Legend

Check out this inspiring story about a local musician named Andy Olgesby.  Click here to read the story.

Blood line Severed

Hope to catch up with Blood line Severed on Feb. 28 2008.  More coming soon.  Check out this promo.