Bye Bye Basil

After the pledging to the basil the other day, I didn't know how much more of it I could take. Then, like a sign, the garlic I ordered showed up in the mail. Some of the garlic has to go where the basil is, so the basil came out and the garlic went in.




Last year I planted soft neck and this year I seem to have gone all hard neck, so we'll see how it goes. I'm eager to see what these garlic scapes are all about! I've never seen cloves so large as the Russian Red. Those were impressive. I put some in a small 3x3 of the corner yard and the basil box (3x2) and then the left overs in the other corner yard where I'm hoping the rotten squirrels will leave them alone. That box doesn't get much sun in the fall, so we'll see how they perform out there.

I was going to put them out where the jalapenos and eggplants are, but those suckers just keep on churning out the goods, so they can stay for now.

It all had better be worth the while. UGA won, SC beat AL and now LSU is running over FLA. I'm half thinking the world is coming to an end. Thank goodness I've got on clean underwear.


Sent a Keychains for a Cause order out to Idaho this morning! All three are wristlet sized and represent a variety of causes including transitional cell cancer and Autism. The purple is indicative of so many causes including general cancer awareness, Crones, Fibromyalgia, Cystic Fibrosis and so much more. They should be there soon!

The morning comes early. Sweet garlic dreams. Take a breath mint to bed if it makes you feel better.

I Pledge Allegiance to the Garden....

Yeah, I don't get it either, but the girl has insisted this is the way it is. She has an affinity for dandelions and blowing their seeds directly over the garden beds. Today, each time she pulled a weed, she would say the Pledge, but not to the flag, to the garden. She's three and started three year old preschool this August so I'm assuming she learned the official Pledge there.

This was all well and good until she saw me cutting the basil and insisted I say the Pledge each time I snipped off a stem. It was a much longer process than I had anticipated.
After the first 16 times, I started cutting the branches lower and lower in hopes of speeding up the process. There's a teacher at school that promised me pesto if I cut her some more basil. I've never made it before, so I'm excited I got one more cutting out of this plant before the frost came. The way it grows, I may even get one more.

Today I'm putting up some more black and white ribbon for the Keychains for a Cause.

I think it's a bit classier than say....the monkeys. Although those really are fun.

The morning comes early. Sweet garden pledging dreams.

No Contest

I've already mentioned it, but now it's really fact. All though this summer I kept fawning over other's pictures of their bean harvests. Mine were curled, sparse, bug laden and generally non existent. It made me sad.

I had an extra trellis spot open in August and planted some more in a hail Mary attempt and sure enough, they've grown and now that the weather has gotten cooler....BAM! Green beans abound!
I honestly think it was the heat of June and July that did them in. Now the struggle is going to be rearranging my own planting tendencies to make sure I understand that just because "they" say I can plant beans in the spring, they really do better for me in the fall and if I want pretty, straight beans, I need to revamp my way of thought and go with what works for me, regardless of what the extension agency says. That's going to be the hard part, but look...they're straight and there's more than three of them at a time! They were even clustered together on the vine. I've never had bean clusters. Woohoo!

Keychains for a Cause is still going strong and we're still running the free shipping offer for October. We had another custom keychain order from a woman who's father had both bladder and kidney cancer so we made a keychain to reflect both colors. If you'd like colors that aren't on the website yet, please email me and we'll get them up right away.

I'm very sad to say her father lost his battle weekend before last, but now she uses her key chain as a way to garner attention for cancer research and honor her father's fight.

The morning comes early. Sweet green bean gardening dreams.

Harvest Monday : The Verdict is in - To Trim or Not to Trim Sweet Potato Vines

I decided to harvest the sweet potatoes in the corner yard this afternoon. I looked up on the blog and realized that I pulled them the same day last year so my experiment would be perfect.

Last year I did not trim the sweet potato vines and got this for a harvest

Small and pitiful was my opinion. There were two out of the whole batch that were baking size.

This year, I put them in the same box with the same growing conditions and got THIS!!

The largest one wasn't a sweet potato so much as it was the size of a new born baby!

Most of these will most likely have to be turned into a pie or mashed or something because they're too large to eat, but man, are they awesome. It's about 11 pounds of sweet potatoes from two slips which doesn't hurt my feelings one bit.

I don't even think there is a debate that needs to be had. I know the more roots a sweet potato plant sends down the more chance it has for tubers, but if you trim, the energy goes to a fewer tubers instead, making them larger. I'm a fan of trimming those vines, my friends. Hop on over to Daphne's to see what everyone else is harvesting!

Two new keychains went up on the Keychains for a Cause page today.

The grey is for brain cancer Awareness and Diabetes and Asthma Awareness,

and the green is for kidney cancer awareness, missing children awareness and many other causes.

The morning comes early. Sweet potato dreams!

BTW, any good sweet potato recipes that call for MONSTERS you'd like to share would be much appreciated!

I Suppose Halloween IS Right Around the Corner.....

Completely off gardening, but I suppose today I'd finally had enough of the comments about my grey hair. It's really started to come in heavily these last two years and although I don't think I consider myself to be overly concerned about my getting and looking older, I figured it was time.

So I went and colored my hair a medium brown to try to cover the grey and their idea of medium turns out to be a whole lot darker than my idea of medium.
It's really dark. Really dark. I can already feel the obligatory teen angst rising within me, but at least I'll blend in with all of the Cathedral/Goth kids at school. Eh, but then Halloween is right around the corner and the dark hair really goes with the spirit of it all. Speaking of Halloween.....there's a new sparkle spiderweb design going up on the Keychains page tomorrow, most likely.

The morning comes early. Even on the weekends. Why is it that you wake them up at 5:45 and they scream like some one's done shot their dog and yet when they wake up all on their own at 5:47, all seems to be right with the world. It's just not fair. Sweet gardening dreams.

How Ya Like Me Now?

My plan seems to be working...at least for now. Seems like I may come out on top and foil those lettuce eating squirrels after all. I left the stumps in the ground because lettuce can sometimes come back and sure enough, there are a handful that have started to do just that.

Who knows if it will have time to get to an edible size before our first frost, but I think we've got about another 3 weeks or so, so I'm hopeful. I was debating pulling out the rest of the sweet potatoes this weekend, but we just had rain. I may now give them the week to dry out.

Today we added three more keychains to the Keychains for a Cause page. We added a burgundy velvet ribbon, a red ribbon with purple polka dots reminiscent of the Red Hat Society colors and then this orange ribbon used to show awareness for leukemia and motorcycle safety.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

It's Straight to the Hunt and I Win!

Most of us run in the same blog circles and I know you've found me rather redundant all summer in my posts on other's blogs saying, "Oh, I wish my green beans were as nice," or "My green beans just never look that straight!" Well, my friends....I've won the green bean lottery....

Look at the straight beans!!!! Now I'm seriously wondering if all of the thin, woppy beans I got all summer was because of the unrelenting heat as these beans are planted in the same place and with the same packet of seeds that the terrible performing ones from the summer were. Man, am I glad I got some good beans for once and we've still got a good time to go before the frost. So, there you have it folks...I think beans are going to be a fall crop for me!

The bush beans in the side yard are teeming with flowers, themselves, so I know I'll get more in before it's too late. What a relief. It makes the dull, no harvest months of July and August almost bearable again.

So the beans are straight and it's now time to get your hunt on! Bow season has opened in Georgia and the firearms season is only a week or two away, so we added a new camouflage key chain to our selection. It's not centered in the picture, but that's because to save costs, we make each one to order and this one isn't sewn down. We're already running a free shipping offer in October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but Keychains for a cause is also happy to say that we're donating breast cancer awareness fobs to every teacher in our school cluster (our elem, middle and high school) who has battled or is battling breast cancer. It's a staggering number of teachers and we're so glad to support them in their fight for a cure.

The morning comes early. Sweet hunting for straight green bean dreams!