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5 tips for Overcoming Being Overwhelmed by the Garden
photo by Amy Kiel With the arrival of Spring, and the official start of gardening season, I thought I would welcome in the new season, by talking about something that I experience every year around this time. No matter how diligently I put my garden to bed in the Winter, I always walk out to a yard that overwhelms me in the Spring. There’s dead stuff that needs to be pulled out and chopped up for compost. Then there are the beds that are compacted from a Winter’s worth of rain that need to be forked up (and root systems removed), so the soil is loose again. What has become my…
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Happy Birthday Rake and Make… and Goals for 2013!
Well, I did it. My first post was on February 19th, 2012, so Rake and Make is one year old as of today. This will be my 53rd post, which means I met my goal of posting an average of once a week! I recapped 2012 in another post, so I won’t go into that again. Instead, I’d like to take this time to talk about my goals for 2013. Since Rake and Make is a gardening, cooking and crafts blog, I have goals in all three areas and a few overall goals for blogging in general. GARDENING– Grow more blueberries– I really need to work on my blueberries. A couple…
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2012 Year in Review
So I had plans for the some blog posts that I just haven’t had a chance to get around to, such as post about my lovely Renfrew cowl neck shirt that I made to wear to holiday parties (and did wear…a lot). I will do a full post later, but here are a couple of photos in the meantime. I also really wanted to write a “year in review” post to highlight some of my accomplishments this year with gardening and crafting. As many of you know though, my mom has not been well since June. I wrote about it here. She never got much better after that and just…
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Putting my garden to bed
It’s been raining like crazy (even for Seattle), so I hadn’t gotten out in the yard in awhile. The dead pole beans, wilted eggplants and red, cracked jalapeños had been haunting me every time I pulled into the driveway, so I finally got out there last weekend. It was a super foggy morning, but it wasn’t raining and the forecast was for sun, so I bundled up and went for it. I like to “put my garden to bed” in the fall, before the first frost if possible. Some aspects of what that means change every year and some stay the same. It mostly consists of putting stuff in the shed…
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Braiding Garlic
Okay, so I harvested my garlic about a month ago. Curing only takes about 2-3 weeks, so my garlic is sure to be well cured by now. Now it’s time for braiding! One quick note before we begin. I learned a lesson about curing garlic this year. In past years, I have always hung my garlic on string to cure. This year, since I harvested so many heads of garlic, I cured my garlic on old screen door on a couple of sawhorses. Here’s why hanging them works better. A few heads had rotten spots on one side and I am attributing that to lack of airflow on the side…
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Harvesting Garlic
Matt and I love garlic. We put it in everything. Last year I grew garlic for the first time and cured it in the basement for a couple of weeks and then made a braid of about 13 of the heads. I then hung the braid on my baker’s rack, thinking it would last us awhile. We went through it in about four months. So this year, I planted three times that amount. Some people don’t bother with growing garlic, because it takes up space and stays in your garden a long time. I planted this crop last October and it is just now ready. I think it’s worth the…
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Farmy photo shoot!
I am usually the one taking the pictures, so I am rarely in them. That said, I am so excited to have some pictures of myself doing the things I love; working in the garden and in my sewing room. Thank you to Amy Kiel of Amy Kiel Photography for coming over on a sprinkly Seattle day to photograph me in my element. I have long been a fan of Amy’s work, so I feel honored to have been photographed by her!
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Chicken Coop and Urban Farm Tour
Seattle Tilth’s Chicken Coop and Urban Farm tour is next Saturday, July 14th from 10am to 4pm and I am a host! There are over 50 urban farms on the tour that are showcasing veggie gardens, chickens, goats, bees and more! Buy your tickets from Brown Paper Tickets and get the map. Come see me and my garden and as many of the other gardens as you can! I have been a host and a participant (I tend to alternate years, so I can go see gardens too), so I can say it’s well worth it!
