Six more weeks till Winter. Or so the story goes told by Alaskan Natives and sourdoughs alike. When the fireweed has bloomed all the way to the top, we have six more weeks till the snow flies. So far this break up and then into summer, we’ve had some successes….and some failures. That’s pretty typical though. The garden is doing well but could be doing better thanks to the late
So now here we are, in the middle of our second spring back in Fairbanks, Alaska after a reasonably mild winter. In late March we started our seeds, mostly tomatoes, a mixture of beans and a few herbs. This, I knew going into it, would be challenging since we would be going on a weeklong vacation in May. Trying to keep little seedlings going for a week without any attention
Life in Alaska moves infinitely slower than it does where we came from on the East coast but our gardening season is much much faster. So much so that it stunned me how quickly it ended. By the middle of September we were getting close to the type of temperatures that would kill the cold loving brassicas so we knew, the time has come to harvest what was left. Gardening
Where do I begin? Well, a good place to start is at the beginning I guess. Yard is looking rather unkept. Lawnmower broke around this time! Yes, I’ve been away. With our move coming closer and closer we’ve been absorbed in other pursuits, namely preparing ourselves, our household for our final move as my husband retires from the US Army. I’ve been jokingly saying to my husband that this years garden
I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve written and yet it was only earlier last week that I wrote! So much has happened since the last time I wrote so, this is one of those moments when I take a huge sigh and try to figure out where to begin. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the King said to the White Rabbit “Begin at the beginning and go on till
This weekend I decided to bite the bullet and tear out our lovely, beautiful lone tomatillo plant. If you remember right I posted earlier that I made the rookie mistake of only planting one tomatillo plant. You know, the old saying, it takes two to tango? Well that applies here. Tomatillo plants are self infertile which means they need two plants to produce fruit. Since I only planted one plant the tomatillo was
This is my second year growing eggplant and oddly enough I did not have issues with flea beetles last year. I don’t know why they suddenly decided that THIS year they will come to my yard to munch on my eggplants and tomatilloes. One day I walked out and just suddenly noticed all these tiny holes in my leaves of my eggplant. Upon closer inspection I found the tiny beetles
This year was my very first year dealing with these little monsters! I’ve never tried growing Kale, Cabbage, Brussel Sprouts or Kohlrabi before. These types of plants are VERY susceptible to attacks from Cabbageworms. They will actually attack almost any type of brassica plant. Amusingly enough, around mid summer I noticed these lovely little white butterflies with little black circles on their wings. I even commented on how pretty they
I’ve decided to start a running guide on how to deal with pests. My first one was Aphids. Now I’ve dealt with hornworms the past two summers and I’ve done numerous things to get rid of hornworms. Some have worked great and some have had some not so great results. Hornworms LadyBugs: These are only beneficial when the hornworms are still just eggs. The ladybugs will eat the eggs which,
This year I have encountered pests I NEVER knew existed! Here I thought aphids were the worst of my battles. Whew. I had a lot to learn. For all of these recipes I use (except for the ladybugs of course) a cheap Walmart spray bottle. Don’t need any kind of fancy sprayers. Aphids: Ladybugs: Whether I have to order them or they just naturally occur LadyBugs can cause massive death
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