Goodbye Oregon, Hello Wisconsin!

Our New Home: Green Bay, WI

The official announcement came out yesterday: we are officially transferring to Green Bay,WI! As announcements go - it was a good one. We had been prepared for a transfer and we knew it was likely to be a Midwestern state, so it wasn't a HUGE surprise. But now that it is really here, all I can say is Holy Smokes- here it begins!

Let me answer a few of the questions asked.

Is it for your husband's job?
Yes. As some of you know, my husband works for Costco. He has been on a upper level management track for years and this move means a big promotion for him (and us!) as he is now the General Manager for a brand new store opening in Green Bay in October. This is especially exciting for him since he gets to staff the entire warehouse and basically - he's in charge!

Why Wisconsin?
With Costco, you generally don't have a huge say in where you are transferred. Well, that's not entirely true. If you want to be promoted to higher management, you have to be willing to go where you are needed. Many employees like where they live and are satisfied with staying in the same position (or lateral positions) so they can stay in their own warehouse. We knew from the get go that we were willing to move wherever the company wanted us to go if that meant promotions and upper level management. That's what brought us to Salem six years ago!
Costco is making a huge push to expand their Midwest market and they are intentionally building and opening many new warehouses there. So we knew that if we wanted a GM position, it would most likely be in the Midwest where they are expanding. The Midwest is slated to open 6-10 new buildings in 2013 and the Midwest vice president decided that my husband would be a fantastic fit for the new Green Bay building! So Wisconsin it is.

Wisconsin is freezing! How will you survive that?
Lucky for all of us - I ADORE cool weather. I'm the opposite of most women - my body temperature is stuck at hot, hot, hot. I start sweating at 68 degrees. I keep our house temp at 62-64 degrees in the winter and crank the A/C all summer long. I'm happiest at a cool temperature - I dont' even wear a real coat until it gets to 35 degrees and even then, I often wear a jacket. In Wisconsin, I'm finally going to get to wear a real wool coat - something I can't do in the mild Northwest winters. I love spring, fall and winter and just tolerate summer and even then - I tolerate summer because it produces my wonderful garden. Which leads me to the next question....

What are you doing to do about your garden?
I won't lie, I am supremely remiss about leaving my little backyard victory garden here in Salem. But if we did it here, we can do it anywhere, right? Yesterday, I ordered a few books about gardening in Wisconsin and growing food there. I'm sure it will be a challenge to learn new methods different from the edible gardening I've done here in the NW for 15 years! But I'm up for the challenge.

What does that mean for your blog?
It means I'll probably blog a whole lot more since that is how most of my friends and family will be able to keep up with us. And with this move, I'll probably get a nice camera which means I'll be a whole lot more likely to share pictures with you all.

How do you feel about all of this?
I'm excited! I crave change. When i first met and married my husband, he played professional baseball in the minor leagues and that meant moving around every month or so. In our (almost) 16 years of marriage, we've lived in 7 different places. We've been in Oregon for six years and that is the longest we've lived anywhere. I'm ready for a change and ready for a new challenge. With four kids, two dogs, a passion for homesteading and DIY, and supporting my husband's management career - challenge is right!!

The latest challenge is getting our house decluttered and staged and ready to put on the market by early June. Right now I'm in the THICK of refurbishing our kitchen cabinets. Since we moved in, they have been this ugly honey oak color.

 



 

I'm working on staining them with a dark espresso gel stain - as per a post I saw on Pinterest - to match our kitchen floors.

So far, so good!

So the adventure begins........

How to get pest-free greens in your garden.

Just wanted to show how amazing AND effective simple tulle (purchased from local fabric store for $1/yard) can be for the health of your plants.

This year I was extremely vigilant in making sure my beets and spinach were covered (as first suggested by Granny). I have one raised bed that my husband installed a simple PVC pipe hoop house. The hoops, which can be removed easily, are often used to extend my growing season by placing plastic and heat lights inside (Christmas twinkle lights as first suggested by Cheap Vegetable Gardener). This year because we've had an unusually dry and hot spring, I never used the plastic. Instead I covered the hoops with tulle as soon as I direct sowed the seeds in the ground.

Water and sun pass quite easily through the tulle so there is never a reason to uncover. This past week we've seen upwards of 88 and 90 degrees so all my plants leapt up. I uncovered this morning just to check.

Sure enough, gorgeous and plentiful beet leaves met me. Wow! First time in forever that I've had unblemished leaves.

As a test, I also threw some extra Chiggico beets in another bed and left them uncovered. Sure enough - you can see the leaf miner damage on the leaves. I will never grow my greens uncovered ever again and if you have problems with these pests I recommend this gardening technique!

I'm in the dog days of the salad garden. I grew a mild mesclun mix from Territorial Seeds - not sure what is in the mix - but everything has been producing steadily. I adore eating a fresh organic salad very day ;-) I don't know the reason, but I rarely have a problem with any sort of pests in my salad garden so I leave it uncovered.

I was surprised to see some Romaine heads growing in the bed. I had not set out to grow Romaine, but considering I used last year's seeds and I did grow Romaine last year, I guess it is not a stretch to see a bunch of heads in my garden. Kind of a fun surprise.

The arugula did not like to heat last week and promptly (as in, overnight) bolted. I think arugula has pretty flowers so I'm leaving it in there for now.

 

Linking to Tuesday Garden Party

A snapshot of growing up in a male dominated family

My almost three year old daughter came up to me today and said, "Chase just punched me in the balls".

Pinterest win! aaannd fail...

I'll be honest. I really like Pinterest. It's a great way for me to organize all my blog links and look book for my designing and sewing. And every so often I'll see a project that seems reasonable so I'll try it.

Such was the adventure of painting fabric on old furniture. I'm mobile blogging right now and the link capabilities are non existent, but if you are really interest leave a comment and I can try to send you the link.

Anyway, I had these old funky Louis XVI chairs that I bought at a thrift store and I figured it would be a great way to add a pop of bright color to my piano room. I waited until Lane was,out of town for the week with my mom and I embarked on the project.

And guess what? the chairs turned out great! Even better than great. I was super pleased!!!

Then Lane came home and within a few days the littles had stuck (pretty stubborn adhesive) stickers on the back of my newly painted chairs. And to that, I say of course, why would any mother get a big Pinterest win?

god love my littles and always knowing that a big slice of humble pie is always ready to be served

Winter mulch review

Linking with Tuesday Garden Party from An Oregon Cottage

I'm going into my tenth year of serious gardening - fifth year of serious victory gardening. In all those years, I've experimented with mulching TWICE. yes, you heard me correctly, only twice. Once a few years ago when my cousin told me to put my long grass clippings on my vegetable bed to prevent summer weeds (it did) and again last year when I laid down black plastic on my tomato and pepper beds and got huge, gorgeous fruit and watered MINIMALLY (like every 5-8 days). Both of my attempts were successful. So this past winter, I tried to give winter mulching a college try.

All of last fall, I collected leaves and grass. Well what i actually did was tell my neighbors who had large leafed trees in their front yard that I would mow their yard all of November. I attached the bag to my lawn mower and ran over the leaves and grass. In the end I had a lovely mulch of chopped leaves and grass clippings. I mowed only lawns that I knew the owners didn't use fertilizer and sometimes I would even run my mower over the huge piles of leaves in the street. I looked like a housewife who had gone crazy - "mowing" the leaves in the street.

Typically, this bed in my backyard is covered with weeds come spring planting time. Last November, I laid down unprinted cardboard, newspaper, and an inch or two of my leaf/grass mix. You can see that there are no weeds to speak of! 

This bed is in my front yard - it has housed strawberries for the past three years. I didn't lay down any cardboard and newspaper, but I did put the leaf/grass mixture. There are lots of weeds and grass starts that have migrated from the lawn. Moral of the story: you need cardboard, newspaper and grass/leaf for mulch to work against weeds.

In the backyard, I planted a cover crop of white clover, legumes, rye, and vetch in october. You can see in the front two square beds the green plants covering the soil. I didn't plant cover crops in my other raised beds. I did this to see how cover crops work as well as seeing if they prevent weeds. I don't know why this is, but I get very minimal weeds in my raised beds regardless of cover crops or not. In the beds with cover crops, I chopped the plants down in early February to begin the decomposing process. In early march, I hand tilled them into the ground. It was really hard as the plants had really deep roots. By late march, there was still quite a bit of green plant material that had not decomposed. I wanted to get my peas and salad greens in, so I had to mix in the seeds with the cover cops. In the future, I will chop them down in January and till it in in February so there is more time for decomposition by planting time.

Last but not least, I have used my homemade compost as a spring mulch. I have not perfected composting at all as I have lots of weed seeds in my compost. It does come out the way it is supposed to - all earthy smelling, black, holds it shape if I squeeze it in my hand - the texture is exactly what I read it is supposed to do. However, if I top any beds with my compost, there are a million, bizillion weeds within a month. Last year, I used my compost as the bottom layer in planting soil or the bottom layer in my newspaper/cardboard covering in summer. Some weeds made their way to the top, but mostly stayed pretty neutral. I look forward to when I have the space and time to figure out correct composting temperatures so I don't have to worry about weeds infecting my compost.




So there you have it, my review of a few mulching techniques I have tried. I'll review my use of plastic as a mulch in my garden soon. Cheers!

Seedlings!

If you follow any gardening blogs, you will see that they are peppered with eager hard working gardeners starting their seedlings. I didn't start seeds this year because I'm most likely going to be gone during the dog days of summer. I can't remember the last time I didn't start some kind of seeds - it's been that long!
Anyway, my seed starting routine is pretty simple and requires only a few key items so if you are thinking about starting seeds- try using some of my tips.

The first thing I highly highly recommend is a seed starting mat (pictured below). It is a subtle heat element that I put under the flats of seeds. It takes the ambient room temperature and raises it by only 10-15 degrees which I find is just enough to germinate even the toughest seeds (eggplant are toughest for me). My tomato seeds will germinate in a few days if I cover them and put the seed mat under them. 

I also put some seeds on top of the fridge - if they haven't germinated by day 5, I'll put them on the heat mat.

. Once everything has come up, I use my south facing kitchen window. You can see how much bright sun gets in, but it is a bit filtered since it's through a window. I set up a table next to the window and every morning I rotate my seedlings so they don't bend too much. The kitchen is a warm place, lots of activity (so there's a lot of air circulation), and my seedlings have thrived here. It looks a bit crowded with two tables in there during April and may, but I don't mind.

This morning when I came out to take pics, my dog followed me out and sat patiently with her hair blowing in the wind. She is such a nice dog!

Okay you can't tell too well, but this is my pea garden. I planted a bunch of sugar snap bush peas into the ground ( you can see them poking up in the background next to the trellis) well I guess my 2 year went back after she saw me planting, because in one corner (in the foreground on the right side) there is a bunch of,peas sprouting. Ha! It's really frustrating to me now that she messes up my garden, but I figure I should shut my mouth and let her do her thing and one day she'll have mad gardening skills, right?

I also direct sowed all my lettuce this year directly in the ground. They have all come up pretty well. I can see that I really did a haphazard job (probably trying to manage my toddler while planting seeds) as most of the lettuce is clumped together. Oh well. I'll thin as I pick the baby lettuces. I'll be honest, I'm not a super meticulous gardener, I mean how can I when I have four young children and two big dogs? So I usually consider it success if I get anything to grow and get it on the dinner table.

I tried to link to Tuesday garden party. My computer is down so I'm doing all of his from mobile blogger and it is very primitive which means no linking. But click on my side button and you'll get here soon enough if you want to see other garden goodness.

Tuesday Garden Party

Follow my Garden Pinterest board or my Canning board

 

This year, I'm making a very concentrated effort to participate in An Oregon Cottage's series - Tuesday Garden Party or TGP as we like to say.

If you are even remotely interested in gardening, preserving, homesteading, etc - you must check out this series. I've participated for three years (since the beginning - hi Jami!) and I cannot tell you how much I have learned from the participants. So, so much. So check back every Tuesday(ish) and link to TGP.

 

With that- let me tell you what is going on in my garden. Hi TGP'ers!!

This year is going to be very different from other gardening years. You see, I'm so sad, but we're moving from Salem. We don't know where we're going, but all I know is that it is very likely I will be leaving by summertime. What does that mean? Well it means I probably won't be planting a regular hot season garden like tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and peppers (insert very sad sigh and frown). I decided to make lemonade out of these lemons and figure out how I could make the most of my limited time and space. On a side note, do you know how utterly SAD it is for me to leave this space that I have lovingly created? I adore my victory garden and I am so forlorn to leave it.

Anyway, this is what I have decided to do. explanations under pictures

 

 I planted an assorted mix of cover crops in most of my beds last fall. I knew I would be moving, but I wanted to experiment with the technique for future gardens. It was a good success. The covers grew well over the winter and in early Feb., I cut them down. A week later, I began working the green crops into the soil. Now, in early March, the crops have almost completely composted into the soil. Success in my book!

 

 Remember when Jami from AOG or TGP came and visited my garden last year? She was impressed by the size of my potted blueberry plants. Well, you simply won't believe how gorgeous they are looking this year - they easily surpass last year. This is the fifth year for the plants and they are loaded with buds about to burst into bloom. What's my secret? Who knows. But I do empty out my used espresso grounds in the pots, top off with peat moss every spring, and mix in compost as it becomes available. That's about it!

 

 

This past winter was pretty mild as we only had about 10 days of below freezing temps and absolutely no snow to speak of. That means I had overwintered Italian parsley (pictured above). I also planted garlic for the first time. They look pretty good to me! Anyone know when to harvest these? 

I spent a whole Saturday afternoon in February (right before any of the buds leafed out) pruning and tying up my raspberry bushes. I followed this tutorial I found on the web and it is the best berry tutorial I've seen so I had to share. I dare say that my raspberries are looking amazing and I can't wait for the fruits of my labor (literally). I figure I'll get to enjoy a few berries and then the new owners can have a cobbler or jam courtesy of me.

Because of our move, I decided to explore the joy of container gardening. This way, I can plant some warm weather plants and take them with me when we move. The three big containers in the background are my blueberries. The smaller ones in the foreground are where I'm experimenting with planting potatoes. The green one of hte left is a pot made out of tarp-like fabric and planted with a russett potato and the red one is a resin pot planted with french fingerlings (my fav fav favorite potato to grow). I'm thinking about either hilling up with straw or peat moss. I'm not decided yet. Maybe I'll do both and see what I prefer.

 This is the gigantic clematis that grows on our fence. Any day now it will burst into bloom and load up our yard with delicious spring fragrance (which will hopefully overpower the everpresent dog poo smell in our yard)

 

 I also moved several strawberry starts from our front yard to one of the backyard beds. I normally use this bed for peppers, cucumbers, or tomatoes but since I'm leaving, I thought a nice strawberry bed would be nice for the new owners. I've been saving my eggshells over the past month and I sprinkled some crushed shells over the plants for extra slug protection (white sprinkles you see on top of the dirt). I noticed that at my local U-pick farm, they "hill up" their strawberry plants. I don't know the reason for this (easier to pick?), but I thought I would copy the technique and use a sort of mock hilling planting row. can you see that in the picture?

 

 Since I know I WILL be here through the spring, I went ahead and planted salad greens, spinach, and beets. I had a dickens of a time with leaf miners last year on my beet greens and spinach. So I am trying a method recommended by my new best gardening friend - Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden - where she takes simple tulle purchased from a fabric store and keeps it over her greens all season to prevent miners. You'll notice I haven't stapled down the fabric yet - that is because the seedlings haven't come up  and I want to be able to get in there to thin them before locking myself out.

THANK YOU FOR CONTINUING TO READ IF YOU'VE MADE IT THIS FAR! I HAVE ONE LAST QUESTION FOR YOU GARDENING FOLK.

 Why don't my daffodils  bloom?

What I mean is, the first spring after I plant my fall daffodil bulbs they will come up with flower buds and bloom. However, every year after that, they only send up leaves and not any flowering stalks. Does this happen to you? I do wait for them to turn brown and die down before I clear them away in the summer, but still, no daffodils the following spring. My tulips come back every year and all my neighbors have daffodils that come back year after year in the same spots. Any ideas?

 

Well love you all and hope you are off to a great gardening start! Cheers. (This post has been linked to TGP)