Greens are pushing up...up... up

Baby Leaf Spinach

Tom thumb

Amish Deer tongue & Black seeded Simpson


We have lettuce appearing!

Going Orange for Stellan

Today we declare Stellan healed!

AMEN!


Please stand in prayer with us today
and every day,
for little Stellan,
a mighty servant of God.

Thanks to Beautiful Daughter for manning the camera!

:)


Stellan is a precious little man, who is having heart surgery today.
You can go to this link to My charming kids to learn more about him,
his family and unique situation.

Update from McMama's Twitter:

Stellan made it through!!!
I am with him now in recovery.
They are going to leave him under for a while,
since the procedure took so long.
They will extubate him a bit later.
He needed a blood transfusion earlier and he's still finishing that up.
He looks so sweet and peaceful.
I'm going to work on a post now about all the details regarding how it went. It was a complicated situation and Dr. A did the best he could.

Praise God for his faithfulness.

:)

Live Long...

and light up

Engineering? Scotty?

Live tall and prosper

what? everybody else wore it!

* we got the star trek thingy out of the Apple Jacks box!
and that is Daddy's "Ampeg" star trek looking shirt!
:)

Creativity at play

Rescue Heroes at work

Medium in the playroom
with ALL his toys out

Creating a safer world for everyone
with imagination,
tinker toys, lincoln logs
and
rescue heroes!

Already ???

Aye Blossom!

My Brother's pjs as a Super Cape!

You must be kidding...

Apparently

Klutziness runs in the family

Medium boy accidently knocked over a tray of seedlings.

Innocently enough, he was scooting (still not walking) around the deck

while I was preparing to bring seedlings inside for the evening

He opened the screen door...
effectively knocking the entire tray of cherry tomato seedlings onto the ground...

which broke them into pieces.

sigh

I do have one of each type in an earthbox already

However, I do not have any left to share with friends,

friends I already told were all getting some

that makes me feel great

of course,

it already looked like I was destroying all the other tomato plants

the Brandywines
the Helgas
the Bloesser Pinks

need I go on

I have a lot to learn about

"Hardening off" seedings

Rule # 1 : NO WIND

Rule # 2 : NO WIND

Rule # 3 : GRADUAL ACCLIMATION TO SUNLIGHT

really G-R-A-D-U-A-L
like 1/2 hour increments daily for a week
then move up to an hour daily
etc...


those cherry tomatoes were my saving grace of the tomato plants

HA
!


Well... in other tomato news

the Helgas

(even as puny as they are)

have put out some lovely new green leaves

see... there is always HOPE!


and remember that fabulous looking Doux?

nope, apparently it was S-L-O-W to show it's sunburn

It will be okay, but still.


I'm going to enjoy my glass of wine now

and worry about all those plants in my kitchen L-A-T-E-R

Sunburn, hungry toddlers and ????

This is a Sunburned Tomato Plant

yes, mine.

not Helga; it is one of the few Bloesser Pinks that germinated.

Apparently I am "hardening" them off too quickly and sunburned a few things.

The plant above should recover, some others will not.

I also noticed that one of the earthboxes with the cherry tomatoes,
seems to not be getting any water to the plants, they are all wilty. sigh.

I will try to remedy that...

Like this poor mater plant; he's not gonna make it;

... my hungry toddler (aka small boy) got ahold of it

He was walking around chewing the leaves he pulled off the top.

I tried to put it outside, thinking a little sun would help...

not this time

luckily, it is only a cherry tomato plant... of those I have a few back ups.

Also, I have wilty Eggplants.
Each one of my three beautiful eggplants has a majorly wilted leaf
drooping from a stem. It too, should recover shortly.

Apparently, it was very windy out on our deck today.

Not that the Doux de Espagne noticed one bit...

see how lovely and huge and happy it is.

Bigger than the Eggplant and Green and Strong.


Nice to know that I still have somewhat of a green thumb.



Maybe just not for large amounts of tomatoes from seed this year.


Really.

Most of the Helgas are biting the bullet;
losing all their little leaves and really not thriving.

I have 11 surviving Helgas. They are sad looking.

I believe there must be a problem with the seed;
only because the other tomatoes were germinated at the same time,
in the same soil, light and water conditions,
and they are all twice the size of any Helgas.



The Strawberries on the other hand... I ordered bareroot from Gurney's

they look to be doing well...

There are 3 of these baskets. I am excited about them.

We will be covering them soon in bird netting to protect any fruit.

I also planted 11 strawberry seeds
half of which I lost when I dropped them one day while watering
the little tray of peat pots. sigh

They are very small because I started them late
and the basket from the dollar store is well,
kind of messy with all that spagum peat moss:
dripping everywhere...

yet, 6 of the strawberries are growing well

I also, just ever so slightly, sunburned the blueberry bushes.
In spite of me, they will still do very nicely.

The Brandywines have decreased in number to 6

some falling victim to small boy's cute little grabby hands

and some getting too beat up in the violent? wind on our porch

and I think I actually kicked one out on the deck trying to use the hose to fill an earthbox
sigh

but this is what they look like...

These are the whole reason I wanted to grow from seed

Black Brandywine tomatoes; mmm


and this is what one looks like next to an average Helga

That's a Helga on the right. Pretty sad.

Not that I am sad really.

I think I am doing pretty well for my first year growing from seed and I have no proper set up for it (lights etc). I only have a two little spotlight type lights with grow bulbs in them. And a sunny spot by the window.

That explains the leggy Nasturiums!

Anyway... this is a fun experiment in growing our own food organically
without hurting my back.

Fun to try the Earthboxes, containers and seed starts.

Next Year, I will have gotten some proper grow lights and shelves for the seed starting.

This year, I still have yet to finish even germinating (outside in containers!):

2 Earthboxes of Beans

1 Rubbermaid container of Beans

1 Earthbox of Dwarf Blue Corn

3 containers of Lettuce (4 types)

1 container of Spinach

1 container of Chioggia Beets

I still have raised beds to plant up too! Yes, I am doing well.

Happy Birthday to Me!

My cute little birthday cake... Fun!

This is pretty and sweet...

Well, there was this...

Is there anything sweeter...

...than the laughing face of a baby.

perhaps, but not today.


Tonight, I planted the beans, Royalty Purple Pod, Blue Lake #276 and Jacobs Cattle Gasless (yes, really)


How lame if I put up another pic of newly planted containers?



so, you get pics of my lovely children! Enjoy!

Helga Update and general seedling growth

All the "Helgas" seem to be fine
they are losing some of the leaves that were curled under,
but new growth is appearing on all of them. Yay!

The Doux de Espagne look fabulous!

Who knew Crazy Straws would be put to practical use in our home?
I am using them to support my droopy Eggplant... I took them out yesterday for a short breath of sun and fresh cool breeze and they rewarded me with droopy unsupporting stems... They have perked back up more firmly since then, but I think the straws are fun!
Hardening off is so much fun.

Speaking of hardening off, I am doing this with all my tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings right now. Taking them out for an hour or so each day and gradually getting them used to longer time outdoors in the wind and sun.

I think the Brandywines loved it, but some of their leaves got tangled together, for future reference, space seedlings farther apart then the pot trays they sit in normally. If they have any height and it is windy, they may tangle and tear some of those beautiful leaves.

These are my nasturium seedlings, yes, they are a bit leggy.

What I did this weekend... or GARDEN UPDATE

Earthbox of Corn
(Dwarf Blue!)

Bi-Color Cherry & Aunt Ruby's German Cherry
Planted in Earthbox
(awaiting hardening off to dwell outside)

2 Bloesser Pink Beefsteak Tomato Plants in Earthbox
(two planters behind are my gorgeous dwarf Blueberries - my how they have grown quickly)

Easter Goodies

MMMmm eggies full of candy

Peeps for Breakfast!
small was stripey egg

MMM blue sugary gluey
medium was tye-died egg

"not the ears, aaaugh"
tall was Blue Mouth egg
no, it did not occur to tall that
THIS IS AS CLOSE TO HER OWN BLUE TOOTH AS SHE IS GOING TO GET
FOR YEARS!


All the little egglings were happy eat to eat too much sugar today.