Sunday Afternoon Blueberry Picking

I recently discovered a blueberry you-pick farm right near my house! The place is amazing; I can't believe I've lived here eight years and never knew about it. I had no idea what I was missing!

Every bush was loaded with gorgeous blueberries! The farm is owned and operated by a family, right on their property. And even better, they're completely organic!

The price was nice too. Even cheaper than the store's non-organic berries, plus you get the enjoyment of picking them yourself. I made sure to take home enough to enjoy for several days. We did a taste test and confirmed they do taste better than store-bought. I'm having them with everything!

I'm completely obsessed. Sadly, the blueberry season in sunny Florida is ending now, so I'll have to wait until next June to get my fix again. But I may just be there every Sunday afternoon in June from now on!

Spring sprang, But now it's summer

Spring is the time for planting. For new growth. For churning the soil and planting a seed and getting your hands dirty and anxiously awaiting that tiny sprout that you pray actually grows after you worked so hard for it. Spring is grand.

While that's all nice and everything, I sort of missed spring. I didnt take any pictures or even contribute a whole lot to the beginning of our garden. And gardening is one of my favorite things, so I'm a little bummed about that.  But now it's summer and I'm going to try to make up for it.  We've already picked a few vegetables from the plants that matured the fastest. I can't wait to watch their progress as we get to harvest more and more.  See below for a glimpse of our summer garden of 2010.

This is the tractor that plows the ground that nourishes the seed that turns into the plant and sprouts a flower that turns into a vegetable that the farmer picks and the family eats.  YAY!

Silver queen corn - 3 different crops so we're not overwhelmed at all once.

Green tomatoes and tomato blossoms. Don't they look happy?

Baby eggplant. It's our first year growing them.

Squash 3 ways: Yellow crooked neck squash, Acorn squash, and Zucchini squash!

Onion blossoms

Collard Greens

Watermelon!

Red potatoes... We planted way too many and they're growing like crazy.

Well, hopefully there will be more to come! Hope you enjoyed this bit of our lovely garden, and lucky you got to do it without leaving the comfort of your air conditioner..  :)

2010: The Year of the Garden

A group of my friends has decided that 2010 is going to be "the year of the garden."  This suits me just fine as I love growing all things.  Especially when I can eat them afterwards.  2009 was the year of the beard.  I didn't participate in that one for obvious reasons.  But the year of the garden is right up my alley, and we're planning to make it a bit of a competition.  Sadly, I failed to plant a winter garden this year, but I'm trying to get a jump-start on spring to make up for it.  Here's a look at my progress so far.

To start off, here are my smallest and easiest plants: the cute little indoor herb aerogarden.  It's my first attempt at growing herbs, so it's good to start small.  I'm growing Genovese Basil, Savory, and Thyme.  I planted it 1/28/10, and this is it's progress as of 2/15/10.  We'll be cooking in a few weeks!

The beginnings of our maybe future orchard.  They will be planted when it warms up a bit.  It may take a year for any of them to fruit, but after that they should be pretty established.

The first tree is my favorite little citrus, a calamondin.  The fruit looks like an orange but is very tart and can be substituted for key limes to make a similar pie.  My grandpa has always had a tree and when I was younger I loved picking these and eating them in the yard.  They're very sour but their skin is thin, edible, and sweet!  This is my baby and I love him.

Next is another delicious citrus, a Kimbrough variety satsuma tree.  It's a type of tangerine and is usually seedless.  Everyone knows how good these are.

This is a flame red grapefruit tree.  It's supposed to be fairly sweet for a grapefruit, but I'm not sure I've ever tried this variety.  When I was young we had a pink grapefruit tree, which I usually ate sprinkled with sugar.

The last tree is a shell apple.  It looks sad now, but I was promised it would branch out and become a real tree shortly!  We've never grown apples before so this will be an experiment.  Shell is a self-fertilizing variety, which means you only need 1 tree to be able to produce fruit.  Many of the more common varieties require 2 or more trees in close proximity to each other to fruit.  The apples are supposed to be crisp and a bit tart, mixed red and green, and similar to a Fuji apple.  I guess we'll see how they turn out!

All the trees came from Just Fruits & Exotics Nursery.  It's an awesome nursery with a great variety of trees to choose from, the staff was very friendly and I really enjoyed walking through their grounds.  They also guarantee their trees for a year.  Visit them here.

 And lastly for now is my old friend, the cactus.  He's definitely not a 2010 model, but I love him just the same.  I've had him about 5 years now, and he started out with 1 main stalk about 10 inches high.  Every summer since then he's had tiny baby cacti sprout out all over him.  He's a monster now, riding out the winter inside the house.  It's not easy moving this heavy, prickly, very awkward to carry thing around, so once I move him he tends to stay for a while.  He needs to be re-potted this spring, but it's a daunting task that requires gloves and an extra set of hands to accomplish.  I've told a couple people I would cut them a "baby" off my granddaddy cactus, but I haven't had the heart to cut him yet.  Maybe one day.