New Year - New Tool

A look back at the 2010 garden
Crocus naturalized in the yard - I planted 90 more bulbs this past fall.
Wild ramps - a great spring tonic
Jack in the Pulpit
French Sorrel - a wonderful green for every garden
These copper bands were not too successful.
Our front yard living sculpture.
Mother's day is pink roses.
The fig tree and the 'Earthbox" planters - good idea- excellent harvests.
Who can resist sunflowers.
Potato flowers - the beauty of nightshade flowers.
Grafted tomatoes - a fun experiment.
Tomatoberry - good little variety
Green Doctors - sweet fruits.
We just like zinnias.
A Monarch beauty.
The greenhouse cucumbers were a success worth repeating.
The makings for Mango jam.
Mother Nature's way of recycling.
The garlic harvest.
Footies were not too effective against apple pests.
So we will continue to use plastic bags.
A delicious pepper harvest from the 'Earthbox' planters.

Oh, those zinnias, they were a favorite of my grandmother.
Harvested cardoons ready for cleaning and cooking.
Our new hoop house.



Welcome to 2011 and another year to experiment in our Wisconsin backyard garden.

I got a new shoulder for Christmas - rotator cuff surgery on 12/22 - and am happy to be on the mend. The recent rain and spell of warm weather was going to make a parsnip harvest possible but not after my surgery - oh well, we will just have more when we dig them in spring.

I went back to the pictures of last year's garden and those are the choices you see. This past season had some good experimentation and a few successes of note - the grafted tomatoes worked but will need more efforts this next season; the apple bagging was again successful; and some of the tomatoes new this year will get as repeat this year especially the 'Tomatoberry'; the 'Earthbox' plantings were wildly successful for peppers so much so that I will add a third box and grow all our peppers in them with none in the garden; and lastly the fig tree was very productive and I intend to buy another small variety mail order this spring.
We won't be using footie's for organic apple production next year because of expense and the fact that did not succeed against coddling moth. The copper bands around the peppers were not too successful and with all the peppers in containers that eliminates the slug problem for good so
I will just have to fend off the earwigs.

Maybe the most successful endeavor of 2010 was our successful work to get the ban lifted prohibiting bee hives in the city of Green Bay. Now that one can legally have a hive, I think I will look into the class about bee keeping that is scheduled this month - my wife has always wanted bees - they might be what we get instead of the chickens that I have always wanted (they too are legal in the city limits now too).

I hope you both learned and enjoyed our garden this past season and will join us again this season.
Happy Gardening