Garden Update

I'm so excited to plant my garden this year. I'm still really new to this (last year is the first time I had a garden) so I'm trying to focus on learning and not the inevitable mistakes. Last years garden started off great, if a little late. Then about halfway through the summer, summer ended. Here in southern Ontario July and August stunk! Lots of rain and quite cool. I had a great bean harvest and the lettuce and radishes did really well too. But my poor tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers (which just happen to be the vegetables I actually was looking forward to eating!). They didn't make it. I only got about 12 tomatoes, maybe 3 cucumbers and no peppers before they were all blighted. I was pretty upset, but from what I hear, most people lost a lot.

This year I am hopeful for a better late summer harvest. I've also decided that I will start a lot of my vegetables from seed. It just makes sense economically. And then if everything dies I won't feel like I lost a lot of money too.

Here is a list of what I've started so far.


March 26
12 roma tomatoes
12 big beef tomatoes
6 cherry tomatoes
9 broccoli
8 cauliflower
9 peppers (5 mixed sweet peppers and 4 yellow peppers)
8 tomatillos

April 17
4 cantaloupe
4 watermelon
4 oregano
4 basil
4 brussels sprouts
4 red peppers
4 yellow tomatoes
4 ground cherry

April 20

5 more tomatillos

I'm hoping to be able to plant some jalapeno peppers in the next few days. I haven't been able to find the seeds anywhere. I guess they think Canadians don't eat jalapenos! So I'm trying to dry seeds out of the jalapeno peppers that I bought at the grocery store. Can't hurt to try, right?

So far the seedlings are doing pretty well.



My oldest helping fill the trays





Tomatoes







Peppers





Tomatillos





Broccoli and cauliflower





A few shots of last years garden







Last year, after we'd tilled our garden, I discovered square foot gardening. We still wanted to use the tilled garden so we decided to plant it in a grid like a square foot garden. Then we built one proper square foot garden. The only real difference was the weeds. The raised bed had maybe a dozen weeds all summer, where the in ground garden had enough weeds for me to spend a couple hours a week (at least) weeding until the plants grew tall enough to block most of the weeds. We might build a few more boxes this year.

That's all for now! Hopefully I have more to show soon!

Happy gardening,

Bethany

Scenes from my backyard

I ♥ spring!

New Purse

So I thought that I needed a new purse design that was quite plain. I decided to try a simple slouch bag, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to really like it. I was so wrong! I'm so loving this new bag! I plan on making myself one very soon.

I also love that there are no pattern pieces for this purse. All the pieces are rectangular so I can just cut them out with my ruler and rotary cutter. One of my least favourite things about sewing is pinning pattern pieces. It also means that there is very little wasted fabric, which also makes me very happy.

Here are a few pictures






















I especially love the inside. Because of the slouch you see a good amount of the lining so I put a band around the top of a coordinating fabric. It's some extra work, but I think it's totally worth it!






Two of these purses will be going to my sisters in Florida (hi Wendy and Amanda!) and I'll be making one for my sister in town soon too (she doesn't read this, but just in case, hi Sondra!).

Have a great day everyone!

Bethany

Not Easter Pictures!

I had hoped to post a few pictures from Easter dinner at my mom's, but I forgot my camera there :) I also had some pictures of the older kids helping me start my seeds. Maybe I'll do a garden post soon!

I've been slacking a little in the sewing department lately so I'll show you some pictures of a few purses I finished a couple of weeks ago. Maybe this will inspire me to start some more sewing :)













I hope everyone had a happy and blessed Easter!

Bethany