My lost and re-found amaryllis!

Last year about this time, my sister had bought an amaryllis which produced three beautiful white blooms. After these had gone by in January, I transferred the bulb to a spot in the garden and basically forgot about it.

As the summer wore on, I did notice that the plant had put up some beautiful green leaves. Then, I forgot about it again until it was late fall and I was doing some cleanup in the back yard. That’s when I decided to dig it up, place in a paper bag and tossed it into the lower part of my refrigerator. Then, you guessed it, I forgot about it yet again.

Only now, on Christmas Day did it come to mind. Sure enough, there it was right where I had left it; in the back of the vegetable bin. I rescued it this morning and low and behold, it looked to be in pretty good shape! So, I figured what the heck and have re-planted this Christmas bulb back into a pot to see what happens.

If this bulb produces anything at all, I’m sure it will be sometime in February or even later. But, what the heck, if it does I’ll enjoy it just as much!

Update: This bulb never made it. I threw it out on January the 14th.
Update: Actually, as I was preparing to dump it on the 15th - lo and behold.... a bit of green!

Growing onions are popular! Who knew?

For many years now I've made it a habit of grabbing a small bag of onion sets in late winter at my local frocery store to plant in and around my two raised beds. Each bag generally contains something like 40 to 50 minature onions that, once place in the soil, require very little maintenance. Then every summer and fall, I have had a continuous supply for salads, soups and burgers.

But, imagine my surprise when a short video I made on YouTube two years ago, became popular. In fact it has received over seventy thousand views so far, to date. That was amazing to me, at first, but after thinking about it for a while maybe it's fitting. When you take home gardening as a pastime, it far surpasses most other hobbies by an incredible margin. Someone once told me that the money spent on home gardens in America even surpasses all the money made in professional sports!

This coming season, I think I might even consider doing a few more videos that focus on garden basics. I've come to realize that there is a whole new generation of young people out there who want to learn to garden but who lack some of the basic knowledge required to do so. So, we'll see what I come up with.

January is the pits for us gardeners!

Forsyth Mo. - At least for many of us here in the Midwest, and even though my birthday falls in the month of January, it's still my least favorite time of the year. Sure, the days are getting marginally longer (from Jan 1 a day will be 19 hours and 39 minutes to Jan 31 when they will be 10 hours and 19 minutes), but so what? I mean who can jump up and down when the average temperature is the same as the freezing point of water? Give me July and those nice and hot fourteen hour plus days!

At this time of year the garden out my window looks to be beyond repair. The ground is frozen and pretty much the only thing growing (outside of my cold frames) is a couple of hardy kale plants! I guess I could spend my time looking at garden seed catalogs per chance that I might dream of a garden yet to come… but that’s not as fulfilling as the real deal.

Speaking of catalogs! Have you seen the price they are charging for seed? Add in the hefty shipping charges and I don’t see how anyone would want to buy anything over the internet. This year, like the last, I’m planning to go to a garden center like Home Depot where I can get the same seed for half the price! I also need to plan on buying some more soil and compost to rejuvenate what's already in the raised beds. Every year the amount of soil seems to go down and I have no idea of what happened to it!

One of my other challenges for the coming spring will be what to do about the wooden borders on one of my raised beds. The lumber is rotting and needs to be replaced. Trouble is, the cost of lumber has gone sky high also. I may elect to make some trips to a nearby river where I can haul up some rocks to use instead. Hey! The exercise couldn’t hurt either!

Cost of making a loaf of white bread!

For fun, I computed what it actually costs to make a loaf of bread in a bread maker from West Bend. I used a traditional recipe (see insert), containing bread flower, sugar, salt, 2% milk and bread machine yeast. Here is the result:

Ingredient	Amt in grams	Unit cost
Yeast	10	$0.40
Flour	549	$0.33
Butter	28	$0.26
Milk	312	$0.32
Electricity	.5 kWh	$0.05
Total		$1.36

When compared to the cost of a regular loaf of commercial bread this seems quite sane. Also, there are no preservatives in the bread, which will shorten the shelf life, but that’s OK with me!

Here was the end result!

Where is winter? Not in my cold frames!

It’s mid November and after a string of seventy degree days, the temperatures have dropped all the way down to the sixties! Wow. I can hardly believe how nice it is right at the moment! A quick excursion out to my small cold frames disclosed some very happy campers in the forms of lettuce, kale and even basil!

Now, I’m aware that it’s going to get cold at some point with even some frigid days thrown in when January hits, but all the same, it’s great to get some added food on the table this time of year.

A mini November harvest!

Actually, it's still fall and will be until December the 21st! But, after going through a few frosty nights now, I was surprised once again by how vegetables do endure. That came home to me when I went out back to harvest some kale to make for my dinner tonight. I harvested a few leaves and then noticed a nice bell pepper hanging on a pant that was devoid of leaves. I then discovered three beautiful and ripe cherry tomatoes! And just when I thought my cup had already 'runnith over', I cam across radishes that were huge! I brought a few inside thinking that they must be pretty tough, but again I was wrong. They tasted fabulous!

OK, I am now ready for winter! Maybe....

Free tulips from a very nice lady!

One afternoon, recently, I had just finished raking leaves and had sat down to rest when a Champaign colored car stopped in the road in front of my place. A pretty young woman looked at me and asked if I would like some tulip bulbs she had left over. I said ‘sure’ and then later on that afternoon when I got home from the grocery store, sure enough; there was a plastic bag full of bulbs by my front door!

Now, I’ll admit that though I’ve seen this lady in the past, I could not for the life of me come up with either her name or in which house she lives on my street. My bad. I would have like to ask her a few questions as to how and when I should plant them (if you read this, please leave me a comment so I can get in touch). In the mean time, the net came to my rescue. Turns out the ‘now’ is the right time and that tulips are pretty tolerant of soil conditions.

So, trowel and bag of bulbs in hand, I went out and planted bulbs all over the front area of my house where I already had other things growing. The few extra’s I had left over went into the backyard. Now, hopefully all I have to do is wait patiently for spring to arrive and I’ll see just what kind of tulips they will turn out to be!