Enjoy all that, @coracle!  

Everything is harvested here in our gardens except one row of beets (which I planted later than the others) and a few cherry tomatoes. Oh yes, and some peppers. We dug up the potatoes (a great yield) last week and have now buried them (and the beets) in sand to keep better for use over the winter. Our beautiful Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up, so we hope to use these very potatoes for our BBQed ham meal, in the form of tasty homemade scalloped potatoes. We shall also use some garden beets and beans (the latter I froze). Most items on the table that day will be either from our garden or from local farms. Love that!

Early this morning after my long, brisk walk I trimmed a number of perennials in need of TLC. Many are still looking great, but some were starting to become tired and needed sprucing up. You should see the pile of yard waste by the side of the driveway.  

Have I said how much I love this Autumnal time of year?  

We are in the deep mid-winter now, which is really lovely in its own right—magical with the pure white snow; invigorating with the colder air; stunning with the wintry clouds—so no where near outside gardening yet. But inside, I have an amaryllis bulb that I planted a month or so ago which has grown two very tall stalks and is about to bloom brilliant red—four large buds on each. And then, to my delight, another stalk has begun to grow. In all my years of growing amaryllises, I don't think I have ever had a third stalk before. I gave away a number of planted bulbs this year for Christmas, and am curious to know if this has been the case with any of the recipients' bulbs too. Most of those folk send me updates, particularly when they finally bloom, so I'm sure I'll hear.  

Our Christmas cacti (red and pink) bloomed prolifically just before Christmas - beautiful!

We have been using our beets and potatoes from the garden (all now buried in sand to preserve them as long as possible), but I am finding the smaller beets didn't keep as well this year: they kind of shriveled up. I know I made a mistake after the seeds began growing last June, and never thinned them out, so my crop this year was not as good as the year before. Live and learn: plants need thinning! But our potato crop was abundant, hurrah!

Back to amaryllises, the bulbs I had planted in the garden over summer, then dug up in the autumn have been hunkered down in the dark, cool basement since the end of October. I will be bringing these up to re-grow them at the end of January, giving more away, keeping a couple here, and re-doing the same process over again next winter, ad infinitum. These should be blooming indoors in March, I'm thinking. Lovely!

Other than this brief news, gardening is not in store for us until winter detritus cleanup mid-spring. Then planting late May/early June. I have never started seeds indoors, and sometimes wish I had. I might still do this some year, but ... this is not the year.  

Nobody's gardening except me?

My garden looks scruffy and neglected, partly due to the gardener not coming (he usually comes every second Monday, but it was wet one day and a public holiday this week, so I've seen him just once this year!).

The weather has been less helpful, either hot and cloudy or raining. And I have an invasion of bugs called passionvine hoppers (juveniles are called fluffybums, as they have white fluffy backs). Nasty pests which have only just come to the South Island. I sprayed yesterday with a product designed for roses! It was all I had.

Other insects are attacking my wide leaved plants, including flowers and green veg. Not happy! 

Edit: just found a recipe for spraying roses and other plants, for fungus and insects:

1 teaspoon each of dish washing detergent and Baking Soda (bicarbonate of soda), in a litre of water.  I will try this for my next round of spraying.

Posted by: @coracle

Nobody's gardening except me?

I'm thinking about it. St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner and tradition says "plant your potatoes now!!!!" I have not ordered potatoes, nor have I started any gardening prep aside from clearing my flower beds. 

BUT! I did order my favorite onions yesterday from RH Shumway. Their onions actually grow to useful sized onions unlike the small bulbs you buy around here which are really nothing more than oversized green onions. The problem is they come in packets of several hundred, which means I have to find homes for them elsewhere. LOL

I also discovered something via Mousehunt of all places, called an ube or purple yam. After reading about them it piqued my interest enough I decided to give them a try to see if I can grow them and ordered a couple starters. It looks like in the southern USA they can be a bit of an invasive species, but I think it gets cold enough here in Kansas they'll die over the winter. At any rate, I'm excited about them. I guess they're used a lot to make purple desserts. One of my daughters and I are hoping to make a purple cake this Fall.  

Those two things aside, I need to get on the ball and plan what I actually want to do for gardening this year. I have a few raised beds in my own backyard and the option of my in-laws farm an hour away, but with gas prices skyrocketing, I'm not sure I want to drive up there often to help take care of things. 

Anyone have blueberry bushes? Any tips? We are going to try growing a few blueberry bushes in 5 gallon buckets this year. We don't know where we want to plant them yet, so we are trying buckets this year. Ordered organic Toro bushes, hope to order Top Hat as well. We choose the Toro because they're organic and the Top Hat because they're small bushes.

The last of our garden seeds will be here next week. We currently have herbs, greens, tomatoes, and peppers sprouting indoors.

SnowAngel

@snowangel Make sure you soil is very acidic for blueberries! We planted 3 bushes a few years ago and at the time I added what I thought was a lot of peat moss to the soil and also sulpher. We had berries for a few years, but the last 2 years, nary a blossom. We had the soil tested and it's still too alkaline. So, the plan is to dig up the bushes this year (heavy sigh) and just buy blueberries from the grocery store. 

@coracle , there's still plenty of snow on the ground here! But I have ordered my seeds and yesterday I planted pepper seeds in little pots under lights in the basement. In a couple of weeks, I will also start tomatoes. I do need to sit down and make a garden plan (layout). It doesn't take much time since I basically just move everything over one bed in a three year rotation.

The plan is just tweaking things. Like this year I will only have 6 tomato plants, down from 8 plants last year (and down from 10 plants the year before that!).I've found they do better when not so crowded and I had more than enough tomatoes last year for use and canning!

@grandmama I put in one little blueberry bush six months ago. I've had two small handfuls of berries over the summer, but the bush is still tiny, about a foot tall and wide.

I'll look into the acidic thing. It replaced a bush I didn't like, but I'm not sure it's a good location. I'll try feeding it better and wait another year.

Posted by: @grandmama

@snowangel Make sure you soil is very acidic for blueberries! We planted 3 bushes a few years ago and at the time I added what I thought was a lot of peat moss to the soil and also sulpher. We had berries for a few years, but the last 2 years, nary a blossom. We had the soil tested and it's still too alkaline. So, the plan is to dig up the bushes this year (heavy sigh) and just buy blueberries from the grocery store. 

We are saving coffee grounds to mix with the soil and peat moss in the buckets. What I have read about soil for the blueberry bushes reminds me of taking care of hot tub water when we had a hot tub years ago, the right soil/acidity is highly important to the bushes producing much like the ph balance in the hot tub water. We ordered our bushes from fast-growing-trees.com, so we are hoping to get a few berries this year.  

The rest of the seeds are suppose to be here on Monday.  

SnowAngel

Posted by: @snowangel

We are saving coffee grounds to mix with the soil and peat moss in the buckets.

I have read from a couple sources that USED coffee grounds do pretty much nothing. Apparently once they're brewed it pulls the bulk of the acidity out of them. But I did run across this gem today and thought I'd share it here....

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/much-vinegar-add-tap-water-watering-blueberries-90897.html

In fact, I mixed some up myself and ran out and watered my blueberry plants with apple cider vinegar water. I will have to do that throughout the summer. I've never done well caring for my blueberries even though one plant I've had for years and years. I wish I knew what variety it was so I could buy a bunch more. The other two are.... not so great.

My kids and I did start some celery seeds yesterday. It's awfully late in the season to start these from seed, but I did it anyways. And then we also started our two ube yam bulbils in a big pot. 

Still waiting for my onions to arrive and will need to start tomatoes and peppers soon if I want to do that from seed. I also jotted down on the calendar to get some potatoes in the ground in early April.  

@fantasia please keep us informed as to how your blueberries progress.  Mine is still only about 10 inches high, after a spring and summer (with possibly no acid)..

I posted in the weather thread but I'll post here too. I got my onions in at my house yesterday. 🙂 I think I planted around 45 of them or so? The funny thing is that I always order the giant batch of them from RH Shumway which is about 450 plants, so I give several away and then plant the remainder out at the in-law's farm. I bagged multiple batches of onions for family members last night and I STILL have a ton of onions to plant.  

It's been quite cool for the start of Autumn, and my gardening is mostly tidying now, with a few things still to pick. I have an apple tree so full of cooking apples that this will be its last year - the roots aren't strong enough to support it, and it's leaning at about a 60 degree angle from the ground. Then there's my well-pruned, wildly sprouting peach tree with two huge peaches almost ready!(I call them Apha and Omega).

Still growing are green leafy veges that I can cut leaves off for a meal, and a bean/pea hybrid that has a few pods left to grow for seeds for next year.

There are three modest-looking late sunflowers, which won't last much longer, and the last of the potatoes which I'm leaving in until needed.

So, I've read that 3 different types of blueberry bushes and 3 of each type will help increase the yield of all the bushes. We currently have 3 organic Toro bushes (from fast-growing-trees.com) and 3 Brightwell bushes (from Lowe's, purchased last fall and wintered in the garage) that we planted in 5 gallon buckets a week ago today. Scarlet brought worm castings and Organic REV for them, the Toro bushes got Root Rocket from fast-growing-trees.com as well. Now we wait impatiently for them to grow and produce.  

I've saved that tip for blueberry bushes, @fantasia, just incase we need something else. My gardening folder on this browser is getting full and messy.  

We still have not gotten the dirt for our raised bed, but we do have the boards cut and ready to assemble. 

And we are having a hard time with our sprouts indoors, so my brother and I are looking into this product. I'm thinking about ordering 1 brick to try it.

SnowAngel

It doesn't appear that the tomato plants are not going to be ready to go in the ground soon enough, so looks like we will have to buy some tomato and peppers plants. Any recommendations on spicy peppers?

We've got radishes, onions, beets, broccoli, lettuce, and spinach all thriving in raised beds. We've had to cover them a couple of times because of the danger of frost. Yesterday a raised bed for carrots was assembled by the guys, they mixed a couple bags of sand with the top soil.

We got the third variety of blueberries, Top Hats. These came with leaves and one even has some berries on it already. We've been keeping the one with the berries in the house on cooler days since it's not in a bucket yet, although probably need to get it in a bucket by the weekend.

SnowAngel

Garden update we got tomatoes and peppers from a local nursery, all those plants seem to be doing okay. We have a few green tomatoes scatter across several plants. We have Hungarian Wax Peppers that are already 3.5 inches long and growing quickly. The bell peppers look like they are really close to blossoming.

The radishes are doing okay, we have harvested some of the leaves, but not the radishes. I pulled two over the weekend and they weren't very big yet.

The Toro blueberries bushes seem to have stalled, and two of the Top Hat bushes died. But we have harvest 9 very tasty  blueberries off the plant that is still alive. Scarlet has been using the vinegar water on them for a week or so, we think they are improving.

Oh, and I think the Minute Soil stuff from True Leaf Market is working especially for the zucchini we started in it. I'm going to get more to try with the blueberry bushes.

SnowAngel