Radish Plants Get Surprise Neighbors

      When I was a kid, I didn't like radishes. I thought they were too spicy or hot. My grandpa liked them too, so I thought it was a grownup thing--that grownups liked radishes and other vegetables that kids never eat, like beets. But after trying a radish for the first time in a long time, and checking local planting calendars, I thought I'd try growing my own. I picked up a packet of cherry belle radish seeds, which are a cute, small kind of radish and decided to plant them in the same raised bed as where I planted my snap peas. However, I forgot the radishes would end up competing with some bulb flowers that I forgot can come up in late summer.

 

     The funny thing about planting bulb flowers is there's a chance that you forget where you put them. That was the case with my grape hyacinth after I started watering the radish seeds. Within a week or so, at the the beginning of September, they started coming up. I hadn't watered that area all summer because I thought those flowers were spring bloomers, not fall bloomers, so I figured I could just leave them alone. But they came up anyway, after I started watering that area, and since then they've become garden roommates more or less.
    A couple side notes--first, I've confirmed with a local master gardener that the holes in the leaves aren't worth worrying over this late in the season. Second, because I planted the seeds so late in the season, I've been told that it will take a lot longer for them to be ready to eat than what is specified on the packet. I can't wait!

Planting Spinach in a Hanging Basket

I've never planted vegetable seeds in the fall before. It always seemed complicated to take of. But new this year, I decided to give it a try. I checked the Portland Nursery's chart and found that I could plant spinach at the end of August. I love putting spinach in my sandwiches and eating spinach salads, so I picked up a package of spinach seeds, along with some radish seeds (more on that later) at the Down to Earth garden store.

      My pots were already full of other things, and an empty patch of my raised bed would be used for radishes, so I had to find somewhere else to plant them. (Enter the incredibly dead hanging flower basket.) I was able to resurrect its flowers this season for a little while after pruning, but something got to it and killed it. So, I decided to empty the basket, fill it with new dirt from Bi-Mart and plant the seeds in it.
     That week the seedlings started to come up, so I thinned them apart according to the seed packets directions. It will take a while before they are ready to pick and eat, but it's fun to watch them grow in the meantime.

Stock up on seeds

This might not be the best time of year to look for vegetable seeds, but if you look hard enough, you can find some for a great deal. This morning I stopped at a local drug store called Hiron's to browse. Outside the front of the store, I found a lot of vegetable and flower seeds on sale. Each package marked 59¢ regular price was on sale for 10¢! I didn't want to go too crazy, so I used some of my quarters to get just $1 worth of seeds. I bought carrot, parsley, tomato, bunching onion, marigold, lettuce, pepper, cucumber and radish seeds.

I will save most, if not all, of these seeds for next season. I'll have to do more planning for sure to make sure I don't get overwhelmed.

So as you're getting ready for fall, stock up on seeds, trade seeds with fellow gardeners, and plant what you can for your fall and winter crop.

Hotel Gardens

During my vacation in Hawaii, I've seen so many great gardens and landscaping at the hotels and towns I've visited. Some many of the plants grown here would not grow well in Oregon. It is very humid and warm here. However, the impatients grown at the Grand Wailea do well in my backyard. But they grow so much bigger here and spread like a think carpet or blanket.
Here are pictures of some of my favorite plants I've seen here so far:

Gardening in Airports

Gardens and plants catch my eye when I see them in places where I don't expect them--like airport terminals.

At the Seattle-Tacoma airport on Saturday, I saw some planter boxes in the undercover area where I walked from my plane to inside the airport. I thought it was random to see red geraniums in a place surrounded by loud industrial equipment. Most people would probably just pass by them in a hurry to their next flight, but a few may stop for a moment to enjoy their pop of color against the gray Seattle sky. Hopefully more airports do things like this.

Salad Ingredients Travel Short Distance

It's interesting to think that a lot of the we get at the grocery store sometimes has to travel across states to get to where we live--even produce that can just as easily be grown in your back yard.

Although not not all of the ingredients in my salad I ate with dinner last night came from my garden, some of it did. It was fun to be able walk two feet from my back door and pick fresh loose leaf lettuce, basil and chives to add to the mix. If I had grown carrots, I would have added them instead of the ones I got from the store. Maybe someday.

The lettuce and basil came from seed, and the chives were from a start I planted last year.

I encourage you to plant produce close you, either from starts or seeds. It's quite fun and satisfying when it comes time to cook, especially when you plant something that is cheap to grow but expensive to buy at the store, like herbs.

Gardening When You're Broke

If you want to bring newcomers to your garden, but you're short on cash, one thing you can do is check places where people are giving away plants for free.

A couple months ago, I looked under the "free" section of Craigslist and found an post for free grape hyacinth. This caught my eye because I planted some of these bulbs on my back porch at least a year before. I called the woman listed, and she set aside a grocery bag full of them that she thinned out in her front yard. My mom and I planted them along my fence and also at my front door. They will look much better next spring. It was a neat experience because I got to get free flowers for my garden and meet a fellow gardener. I hope to return the favor.

So before you go out to buy lots of plants, check online to see if someone is giving any away.

Blooming Chives

Sometimes I think gardens can oftwn resemble the illustrations of a Dr. Suess book. The chives in my garden are no exception. They are now blooming their puffy purple flowers and weighing down some of the long, thin green scapes (the part you dice and eat).

I ate one of the green the other week, and it tasted so fresh. I'll have to make some potatoes or another dish that I can add the chives to soon.

One thing I like about this plant is that I got it for free at a garden event. I'll write another post about how to get free plants later.

Flower Basket Resurrected

When Mother's Day roles around, that's when I start to see a lot of hanging baskets for sale. My mom usually gets one with fushias in it as a gift and has to keep my uncle from popping the blossoms open. He does this to my grandma's fushias as well.

I like to get my own hanging flower basket every year because it's so easy to take care of, adds nice color and hopefully attracts bees. There are a shortage of them partially due loss of habitat.

This past year I decided I would see if the flowers in my basket from last summer would come back. And they have! I think I might call them Frankenflowers. Other gardeners probably call them perrenials.

In the meantime, I've planted flower seeds I got for free at an Earth Day event in between the stems to add some variety.

I'd encourage you to buy or build your own flower basket. Bring those bees!

Apartment Gardening: Basil and Lettuce Plants Have a New Home

I took advantage of this morning's dry, cool weather by transplanting some of my plants. The basil, and especially the lettuce, outgrew their small spaces and needed room to expand. I moved lettuce from three small pots to one large blue pot and planted another round of seeds in the small pots again. Transplanting the lettuce was difficult because I planted too many seeds in each pot, so they were hard to separate and probably not very strong. I hope they survive.

The basil wasn't as difficult to transplant, but again, I should have planted fewer seeds in the small blue pot they were in. The transplants are now in a medium red pot and medium-sized leftover black plastic pot, and I planted some more basil seeds in the small pots.

Elsewhere on my windowsill, the forget me nots still have not come up. I think the seeds might be a bad batch or I should try something else. I need to do more research.

Apartment Gardening: The Peas are Growing!

It's been about a month since I planted snap peas in my garden. Now they have grown a few inches tall!

I installed a synthetic net along the fence this past weekend, so the peas will have somewhere to go in order to grow nice and tall. The first time I planted peas, they were starts instead of from seed. I made the mistake of not researching how to plant them. I didn't trellis them and the bugs ate the pods.

I wasn't about to make that same mistake. Hopefully, the net that I put up will do the trick.

If you have any tips about growing peas, feel free to post them below.

Apartment Gardening: Peas in the Ground

Every year I try to plant something new, and this year I chose to plant sugar snap peas. I love how sweet and crunchy they taste, and since they can be spendy at the store I thought it would be a good idea to try to plant myself.

I bought some Cascadia pea seeds from Territorial Seed Company at the Down to Earth garden store and some legume inoculant, which helps increase yield but I haven't used it yet. Instead, I soaked the seeds between wet paper towels in a Tupperware container for a few days until the seeds started to sprout. Then they were ready to be planted.

I scraped a trench close to the fence and placed the peas in a row in the trench. Then I covered them up with the dirt. That was a week ago. They are starting come out of the ground now. When they get tall enough, I will make a net with jute on the fence and wrap them around to encourage them to grab it and grow.

Apartment Gardening: Growing from Seed

It's finally spring and the March snow is gone, so now it's time to check on my seedlings. A few weeks ago, I planted basil, lettuce and forget me nots from seed. I remembered to keep the soil watered, and my memory has paid off. The lettuce already has two sprouts and the basil has one. That's not too bad considering my windowsill doesn't get a whole lot of light. I hope they turn out well because a lot of seeds come in a packet.

If you have any tips about growing seeds, let me know.

Chocolate Owls (and other baby shower cuteness)

I've never thought of owls to be a theme of a baby shower, but aparently it can turn out to be really cute. I attended a baby yesterday for one of my co-workers and from the food to decorations to games, it was about the details.

The food: the desserts have to be the cutest things I've seen in a long time. My favorites were the owl cake balls. The chocolate cake was the moistest cake I ever. Anothe co-worker of mine said that it may have been made by first make the cake, crumbling it up, mixing it with frosting, working it into balls and then freezing it. After that you dip it in melted chocolate and set it to harden. However it's made, it sure is some of the best cake I've ever had.

One of my favorite decorations was the photo display that had wires with clips hanging down like a tree. In addition to photos, it had pastel baby washcloths wrapped around white tissue paper and wrapped in clear celofane like a giant salt water taffy. It was very creative and looked easy to make.

The craftiness came full circle with the game that could be called "The Closepin Game." Every guest is given a tiny closepin. If one guest catches another guest saying a certain word, the can keep that person's pin. Our words were "baby" and "peanut", the baby's nickname. Our pins followed the them by having paper owls on them. Too cute!

All in all, the event was not only a treat to see such creativity, but a great time to celebrate and catch up with friends.

Wild Turkeys of West Eugene

One of the things I like about Eugene is the random things I see there.  On March 18, I was load my stuff in my car at a friend's house for a St. Patrick's Day sleepover when I heard something coming from the woods: turkeys.  They weren't just any turkeys.  They were wild.  There were about five of them in a group, and they looked intimidating.  I just had to snap a picture of them. 

I know around here we get raccoons, squirrels and nutrea, which you don't go near, but what about turkeys?  Do they have rabbies, or are they just territorial?  So I kept my distance as they gobbled loudly at me, took the picture with my phone and ran back inside the house to tell my friends about my encounter.  If you see the West Eugene Wild Turkeys, take a picture and send it to me, and I will post it on my blog.

Schef Schwander: Cooking Chicken Paprikash

Cooking chicken thighs is something I've never done before, and last night was my first time. I cooked a dish called Chicken Paprikash. You can find the recipe in the December 2011 edition of Food Network Magazine or here.

This dish was pretty easy. However, with all recipes, it's important to read the directions several times before you start cooking so you aren't as surprised by the next step. If it's your first time cooking this dish, I recommend prepping the food beforehand -- cutting, slicing, portioning out ingredients -- as much as you can so you can concentrate on doing the recipe right. While cooking this dish, I found myself rushing at times while chopping some of the ingredients because I worried others would burn. Thankfully nothing really burned.

This was somewhat the case when I went to prep the chicken. I have only ever cooked chicken breasts, not chicken thighs. I was supposed to cut them in half. But when I opened the package, I found that the thighs had bones in them with sockets, which I left in, so they weren't going to be cut exactly in half. For some reason I forgot that your thighs have a big bone in them with a socket to connect them to the rest of your body and the same was true for chickens. I think the last time that I had eaten a chicken thigh was from  a KFC bucket at a family reunion picnic when I was 9 years old. That just goes to show that I have a lot more cooking and eating to do, which I have no problem doing.

Instead of putting the chicken and the sauce on top of egg noodles, I served them on top of whole wheat spaghetti. I also used half a teaspoon on dried parsley instead of fresh parsley. It tasted really good. I served it with a side of cooked mixed veggies -- corn, carrots, and green beans.

Photo courtesy of foodnetwork.com

Schef Schwander: Cooking Yummy Pork Chops

Thinking of something great to cook tonight? You should try out this recipe I did on Friday. I made pork chops from a recipe I found in the December 2011 edition of Food Network Magazine. By the way, I love how the table of contents in the magazine has pictures of the food from the recipes inside. That way it's easier to look up what you want to make. Genius!

The pork chops I made were really tasty. The sauce wasn't as thick as gravy but was a great dipping sauce for the biscuits I made to go with them. It took about 40 minutes or less to make just like the recipe said.  What I did differently is I sprinkled dried thyme instead of using fresh time, because that's what I had.

If I could change anything about the recipe, I would have used boneless pork chops instead, or bought a better cut of pork in general.

I can't wait to try another recipe in this magazine!

Photo courtesy of foodnetwork.com

Living Your Life on a Tightrope: Reviewing the Documentary Man on Wire

In my search to find a good documentary to watch, I came across Man on Wire.  It's the story of Phillipe Petit, the man who tightrope walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.  This film came out in 2008.  It was based on Petit's book To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers written in 2002.

During the first few minutes of the movie, it was kind of hard for me to watch.  That's because there were all sorts of shots of the Twin Towers as they were being built.  I went to New York in the summer of 2000, so I had some sort of idea how high these were.  But knowing what became of those towers a year later, it was eerie for me to see footage of the crews putting the towers together piece by piece.

As far as the movie goes, I think it was put together really well.  There was so much footage that Petit and his crew took that it seemed like he knew someone would put a movie together about the event someday.  I think the situations that were recreated in the movie were pretty good too.

I also enjoyed the music.  It was mostly classical, and there were some songs that were probably released during that time period.

Risk taking seems like an obvious theme in this movie, and Petit seems to tell the people who watch it to challenge themselves.  Toward the end of the film, he briefly talked about how to "live your life on a tightrope".  To me this seems like it's easier said than done.  I think it's hard in a world where I often pressure myself to to stay safe, be smart, do only what I know and not take too many risks or else I might lose what I have.  I wonder how many people my age feel the same way.

Petit didn't seem to let those kinds of things get to him.  Sure, he felt nervous and scared that his plan wouldn't work, but he kept going.  I think he's crazy, but sometimes being kind of crazy brings out something good.  For the people in New York, I think it brought them a new thought that seeing something out of the ordinary is kind of refreshing and amazing, like what the police officer thought and recalled during an interview after "Le Coup", the name Petit gave to the incident.

I think Petit's feelings when he was at the World Trade Center tightrope walking incident and his outlook on life, and hopefully for us, was summed up well in his following remark: 

"What a beautiful death, to die in the exercise of your passion."

Image courtesy of imdb.com

Fresh Blueberries Worth the Sunburn (But Next Time I'll Wear Sunscreen)

Summer arrived in Eugene Saturday (on July 23, no less) with a double-dose of sunshine.  To celebrate, I went blueberry-picking with my friends Britni and Angel.

Instead of going during the cool morning though, for some reason we decided to go during the hotter part of the day, around 2 p.m.  Oh well, it was worth it.  We arrived at Green Hill Aire Blueberry Farm to find a few cars lining the rural road off of Royal Avenue and Greenhill Road in northwest Eugene.  Apparently we weren't the only ones with the bright idea to satisfy the craving for freshly-picked berries.  Britni says it's not truly summer until you go berry picking.

From there you can see some white-capped mountains off in the distance.  I think they were the Three Sisters, but I'm not sure. 

We were welcomed by some friendly folks who have lived there for about 30 years.  They told us they planted the blueberry bushes about 29 years ago.  I thought, if the bushes are older than me, they must be good.

And good they were.  There were so many tasty blueberries, we could have stayed all day.  But then the owners would have had to weigh us before and after we arrived to determine how many berries we actually ate and picked and should therefore pay accordingly.

After guiding pincher bugs and spiders out of our buckets and trying to not to knock off the berries that were still green, we paid for our treats.  To our surprise they only charged us for three-quarters of the two-gallon bucket even though the berries were about an inch below the top.  But I think we would did pick a full two gallons.  We just ate the difference.

I hope we go back again soon.  Until then, I need apply plenty of aloe to the sunburn I got and decide what to do with my berries.  Muffins perhaps?  Or maybe just freeze them and eat them during the next hot summer day.  That is if they all make it home without ending up in my stomach :) 

 

 

Savory Side Dishes

I think side dishes often get overlooked when it comes to trying new recipes. I know I have a habit of looking for a great main dish recipe but I forget that a strong side dish can almost always be modified into a main dish.

I recently tried cooking a couple of side dishes that can be made any time of the year.  They both came from Food & Wine Magazine.  I'll talk about one of them in this blog entry.

But first I'll tell you how I found the recipes.  Whenever I find a recipe in a magazine, I take a picture of it with my phone and use that when I go grocery shopping. That way I don't have to worry about losing a piece of paper, but I can add it to a recipe card later if I like it. I started doing this when I found recipes in magazines in the break room at work.

The first side that I cooked was called Summer-Vegetable Casserole.  The ingredients are very simple, but it does take a while to complete.  You'll need the following ingredients:

1. Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
2. 1/2 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
3. Salt and freshly ground pepper
4. 1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
5. 1 small onion, thinly sliced
6. 1 large garlic clove, minced
7. 1 teaspoon thyme leaves
8. 1/2 pound plum tomatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick
9. 2 small zucchini (1/2 pound), sliced on the diagonal 1/4 inch thick
10. 3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese 

Instead of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, I used Parmesan cheese.  It wasn't until after college and started really cooking for myself that I realized that I could buy a block of hard cheese and grate it myself instead of buying it in a can.  I think it tastes much better too.

If you want to get really "fancy", buy a wedge of Pecorino Romano cheese.  It's kind of expensive, but it has a great flavor and is a nice change from other standard hard cheeses.  But for this recipe, I think your favorite hard cheese will do just fine.

Here are the recipe instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Coat a 9-inch baking dish with olive oil. Spread the potatoes in the dish in an even layer; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. In a bowl, combine the bell pepper, onion, garlic and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Arrange two-thirds of the bell pepper mixture over the potatoes and drizzle with oil. Top with the tomatoes and the zucchini; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Cover with the remaining bell pepper mixture and sprinkle with the cheese. 
2.  Cover the casserole with foil and bake for 40 minutes. Increase the oven temperature to 425°. Uncover the casserole and bake for about 20 minutes longer, until the vegetables are tender and glazed on top. Let stand for 10 minutes. Serve warm.

This dish would be really good with baked or grilled chicken or your other favorite meat.

Shooting My First Gun

A couple weeks ago, I went to Florence to visit the Campbells. While I was there, Nathan's dad Kim offered to teach me how to shoot a gun.

"Sure," I said.

"Which one?" he asked. They have a lot of guns.

"I don't know," I said.

He picked up a Weatherby pump action 12 gauge and told me it would be a good one to try. I thought it was big, considering it was about three-quarters of my height.

So after getting instructions on how to load it, hold it and use the safety, he handed me some ear muffs and we were off to the back deck to give it a try.

It was a little heavy, but was able to manage. He told me to aim for the trees, not the wood carvings shaped live cute bear cubs attached to the trellis arch.

I lined up with the sight, took a deep breath and fired. The air started to smell like fireworks, and a green piece of plastic from the shell shot out with it. The kick wasn't that bad. I just had to make sure I didn't move very much.

Nathan kind of smiled or laughed and said I needed to pose for a picture. I held the gun and smiled for the camera, but Nathan said, "No, you need to stand like this with the gun on your thigh."

I thought that would be really weird, but he said, "Everybody does it that way."

Because I'd hardly seen pictures of people with guns, I figured he was right. So I posed and smiled.

After that, Kim asked if I wanted to try another gun. I said okay and we went back inside to pick out another one. I chose a 357 pistol.

I held on tight and fired two shots. The kick was definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

After Nathan shot some bullets, we headed back inside. Kim showed me how to unload and clean the guns before putting them away.

I'm glad I finally learned how to shoot a gun, even if probably looked a little silly doing it.

Thanks Kim!

Waking Up to a House on Wheels

As I was going through some of my old pictures, I completely forgot about the time I woke up on a Sunday morning to the sound of crews moving a house down my street.

An old white house on 18th and Patterson was being moved to a new location in order for an apartment complex to be built in its place.

To tell you the truth, the sound that I actually woke up to was a police officer making a phone call to get somebody to tow a car that was in front of my apartment.

There were sandwich board signs up and down Polk Street and other areas of town that said you couldn't park there during certain hours on Sunday, August 8, 2010 or else you would be towed.

That car got towed. I don't know whose it was. It had been there for a few days. I wonder if anybody else got towed.

But shortly after that, I heard a big truck and ran downstairs and outside to see what exactly was being moved.

I wasn't the only one ready to watch. Three neighbor ladies were already there watching with their cameras ready to snap some pictures. Somebody even set up two folding chairs so they could sit and watch the house go by. You would think they were waiting to watch a parade or something. I think we were the only ones outside.

If it was a parade, it was the slowest one I've ever seen. It took what seemed like forever for crews to lift up the power lines one by one as the house passed underneath. The house snapped a few tree limbs off in the process.

A couple of motorcycle cops got the cushy job of escorting the procession. I heard the house got moved to somewhere in west Eugene.

Brush Up Your Civics

During this year's election season, I found that there were a lot of things about government and the election process that I didn't know.

Because I'm out of college now and working a full-time job, I don't have time to take political science classes to brush up on the civics lessons that I should have learned in school -- or did learn and just plain forgot.

So in order to fill that knowledge gap in time for me to vote, I went to the library in search of a book that would help me understand how U.S. civics work and not put me to sleep.

I checked out a book called "The Everything American Government Book" by Nick Ragone.

Upon first glance, it looked user-friendly with clear subject headings, chapters that weren't too long and margins that were wide enough that the book didn't look too intimidating to read. That last factor is especially important because I'm not a fast reader and I would be reading about government (snore).

But, surprisingly, I did not fall asleep while reading this book.

Ragone starts from the beginning by explaining how the United States formed its government and why. He goes on to break down the articles in the Constitution and what each of them establishes. He then does the same for the Bill of Rights.

Ragone then goes on to explain the function of each branch of federal, state, and local government, and then he concludes with how citizens can get involved.

He also touches on other subjects in chapters called "The Media", "Presidential Primaries and Elections" and "The Federal Budget".

The appendix includes the Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America and a brief timeline of landmark events in the history of U.S. government.

Before reading this book, I would look at my ballot and wonder what the State Treasurer does, or what the Secretary of State does. After reading this book, I now have a better understanding of what those and other job functions are for federal, state, and local government officials.

I think this book would be a great addition to any classroom or personal library because it contains a lot of valuable information that a lot of Americans -- young and old -- don't know and should be aware of in order to be well-informed citizens. I believe it will help readers better understand how government works in the U.S.

Baking Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

When I bake chocolate chip cookies, I usually follow the classic Nestle Toll House recipe found on the side of the chocolate chip bag. I never tried to think outside the package until a co-worker of mine brought in freshly baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Genius! I knew then that I would bake those for the monthly baking contest at a local culinary store.

The next step was to find a recipe. The one I used comes from allrecipes.com. I baked a test round last week before I submitted the official batch.

Instead of baking them for 10 min. like the recipe called for, I baked them for nine minutes and had them cool for two minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

What I like about these cookies is that they're so moist. This is due to the canned pumpkin. Unlike most cookies I bake, which dry out over a few days, these cookies were still soft and yummy days after I baked them. I highly recommend them for the Thanksgiving holiday, especially for those who do not like pumpkin pie. It's a great alternative.

Photo courtesy of Allrecipes.com.

Apartment Gardening: Preparing for Cold Weather

Brrrr! It's cold today. Cold in relation to when I last wrote a blog entry. Today's high temperature was about 59 degrees with rain and wind, and judging by what my impatients and tomato plants look like, they're on their way out.

This season was quite the contrast from last year. Only about eight of the red pear tomatoes made it, and the Lemon Boy tomatoes never made it to the color or size of a lemon. I think this is partly because of the lack of heat this summer and the lack of sunlight that reaches my patio. I feel sad because I was looking forward to finding out how the yellow tomatoes would taste. But because the startings were less than $2 each, I'm not too bummed out.

However, I did experience déjà vu with the impatients. Like last year, they spread out like a carpet almost a foot high. They were really pretty.

The fern and hosta also did well. They grew quite a few leaves and are pretty well established.

Yet with the cold weather creeping in, I'll have to say goodbye to my tomato plants and impatients. I'll dig them up soon and loosen up the dirt before more rain sets in.

I'm open to suggestions of what I should plant next year.

Apartment Gardening: Growing Tall

It is already the beginning of August, and my garden continues to grow. The first two red pear tomatoes have come out, but it will be a little longer before they are ready to eat. The Lemon Boy tomato plant is still growing, but not fruit yet. Both plants are much taller since I last wrote. I'm not sure though how high is too high.

The basil plant smells wonderful, and I can't wait to make Caprese salad. Mmmmm :)

The impatients are spreading like two beautiful carpets on both sides of the gate. On one side, I planted some begonias bulbs (right). The yellow one has come up, and the red one is almost in bloom.

The hosta (also from a bulb) keeps growing. Every time I pass by it, the plant seems to sprout another leaf. Some of my neighbors grow hosta (below) too, and the plants get to be a pretty big.

Apartment Gardening: Trial and Error

One thing I've learned about gardening is don't be afraid to try new things. Last year, I planted tomatoes, impatients and basil. Everything did alright except for the basil, because the pot it was too small.

This year I tried planting coleus for the first time. Unfortunately, since the last time I wrote, we got a spell of cold weather and the coleus pretty much died. Coleus apparently is very sensitive to cold weather, especially when it comes without warning. So, I decided to stick to what I know and planted impatients again. Impatients (right) like to spread out like carpet, so I chose bright colors and a couple of white ones to balance them out. They like the rain, and they need plenty of water and good soil when the weather is dry. You can find them for as low as a dollar each in some places right now. They're an annual, which means they'll die about the time the first frost hits.

With the cold and wet weather in May and June, I was worried that my tomato plants would also die. Luckily, that didn't happen and they're still growing. There are a few yellow blooms on both plants right now, so the fruits should be on their way. This season I planted Lemon Boy and red pear tomatoes (below).

As far as the bulb plants, the hosta (guacamole) is still establishing itself. It has three leafs right now. The Lily of the Valley doesn't seem to want to come up (not sure why), and the begonias are still growing. The grape hyacinth is on its way out for the season. So to give it a proper farewell, my grandma suggested I tug at the leafs and pull them out when they give. She says don't cut them because the leaves are still collecting nutrients before the bulbs go dormant until next year.

So if you're gardening for the first time or the tenth time, don't be afraid to try something new, even if it doesn't work out.