In the middle of last week, we said goodbye to the garden. The kids helped me pick the remaining tomatoes. There were quite a few green ones! So we have lots of green tomatoes, little and big!
Maggie’s tomatoes are amazing– they are striped! I have never seen a striped tomato before! They came from heirloom seeds our friend gave us this spring. Amazing!
I have always wanted to cook with green tomatoes– I am excited! The southern girl in me (southern Wisconsin, that is) is doing a little dance.
I have a few ideas for blog projects involving sound and music files. This is a test:
Hmmm. I would like it to play while you browse the blog. I will have to do some more research on this…
YES! This is cool. I will explain what I did later.
I was weeding and watering the gardens last night when to my surprise I came nose to nose with a nice fat caterpillar! It was scaling our tall Rose Milkweed, looking for a good spot to start munching. I think it is a monarch caterpillar. Here are some great photos Gaelen took of the little guy:
Erin McSparron is the entrepreneur behind Slings and More. She designs and constructs baby slings, car seat covers and towels for babies. Everything she designs is innovative. For instance, she makes baby slings made of netting material for carrying baby while swimming.
Every sling she makes is custom made and she is extremely helpful when determining the size of the sling. You get exactly what you want — my husband surprised me with my new sling about two weeks after our youngest was born.
She delivered it to our home. It’s beautiful! It’s green, well-sewn, with little practical touches like a zipper pocket in the sling’s tail and a sturdy loop to attach a pacifier or toy (I fastened my keys to it!). Another nice thing about the sling is how adjustable and comfortable it is. Erin provides videos on her website showing several methods for using and putting on the sling.
We highly recommend her business! She is wonderful and the sling we have from her is skillfully designed and constructed.
Our two vegetable garden plots are doing well. Our oldest daughter takes care of one. About the only problems we have had are with the egg plants and carrots.
Our butterfly garden is doing very well. We have seen a few butterflies in the area, but not many. None the less the flowers are wonderful to look at. Enjoy the pictures:
We now have vegetables in our garden! We have two beds, each about 6foot by 10foot.
I have been learning about composting and discovered that used coffee grounds are a good mulching material and addendum to soil. The article I got most of my information from Starbucks “Grounds for your Garden” . Starbucks offers free one gallon bags of used coffee and espresso grounds. In Grand Forks, the Starbucks I visited places these out front for people to pick up. I also picked up grounds from my favorite local coffee house, Porpoura Coffee House, Grand Forks, ND. Our soil is clay rich — the coffee grounds cause the soil not to clump as easily, making it more permeable. Grounds are also carbon rich, contain some fixed nitrogen, and sulfur.
We also picked up six dozen (72) earth worms from Cabela’s, East Grand Forks, MN.
Coffee grounds are not as acidic as coffee. Also, earthworms love coffee grounds — and slugs hate them! This is pretty cool.
We decided to mix coffee and soil in a 1:2 ratio in a five gallon pale and then add two dozen worms. Three pales of addendum were made this way, one for each garden bed. For the butterfly garden, we churned up the dirt in between the flowers we planted on Saturday and spread the coffee/dirt/worms over the bed. For the vegetable garden we dug several trenches and filled these with the coffee/dirt/worm mix.
The vegetable garden, so far, has a row of carrots; two rows of alternating kohlrabi, eggplant and pepper; three small size tomato plants (Sweet Million, Japanese Golden Pair, Grape); and a row of mixed peas and beans. We also sprinkled basil, parsley and cilantro seeds between the plants. The idea here is to have the small herb plants displace potential weeds. These herbs also deter insects. We alternated the kohlrabi, eggplant and pepper in order to increase the diversity of these rows. Here is a good list of plant families: Canadian Country Woman. Well, we will see if any of this works by the end of the summer 
Here are the latest pictures:
On Friday night we ordered dirt from Jet’s Black Dirt and Road Gravel (John Lutheran Jr., Owner/Operator). He delivered three yards the next morning — he is prompt and reliable. Before ordering from Jet’s Black Dirt, I shopped around for dirt delivery and spoke with three other businesses. Jet’s Black Dirt was the best deal in town. I highly recommend him.
We built another butterfly garden box, tilled around the base of the previous box and filled each up with dirt. We also tilled around the front of the house. We lined the tilled ground with Suncast Lawn Edging (USA made, recycled plastic). You can get a similar Suncast product here: Suncast Composite Edging
Here is a list of the Butterfly Garden plants we planted today. Latin name is followed by common names:
Rudbeckia fulgida, (Black-eyed Susan, Brilliant Coneflower, Eastern Coneflower, or Orange Coneflower) Anethum graveolens, Dill Bandana Pink Lantana Asclepias speciosa, (Showy Milkweed) Asclepias incarnata, (Swamp Milkweed, Rose Milkweed, Swamp Silkweed, and White Indian Hemp) Echinacea purpurea, (Eastern Purple Coneflower) Heliotropium arborescens, (Marine Heliotrope, Garden Heliotrope) Verbena bonariensis, (Purpletop Vervain, Tall Verbena, Clustertop Vervain, or Pretty Verbena) Not sure, verbena x hybrida? (Label says: Quartz Merlot Mix) Aster x dumosus, (Woods Blue, Hardy Aster) Tropaeolum majus (Garden Nasturtium, Indian Cress or Monks Cress) side note: Nasturtium literally “nose-twister” or “nose-tweaker”.
Tomorrow we plant the vegetables! The dirt has all been used up. And now pictures of the butterfly garden:
Last night we went to our favorite garden store, All Seasons Garden Center, Grand Forks, ND. We went through the list of butterfly garden plants. With the help of the All Seasons staff we managed to find most of the plants on our list. We also picked up a few vegetable plants.
We stayed until closing (8pm) and then discovered that we managed to lock our keys in the van!
Fortunately for us, our AAA membership was up-to-date. Also, Scott, one of the All Seasons staff let us indoors (a cold wind began blowing). He was very kind and helped the 45 minutes pass more quickly while we waited for Mike from Mike’s locksmith. Mike arrived and had some trouble unlocking the door until I mentioned to him that I may have gotten the year of the vehicle wrong. This did make a difference and he brought out another tool. Moments later we were on our way home!
We have been living up here for about 12 years. The only reason to tolerate the weather is to be around good people.
My oldest son and I have built the central planter box for the side yard butterfly garden. The idea is to have a three tier system after we till the ground around the base of the box.
Speaking of tilling, we are very happy with our new Troy-Bilt 26cc 4-Cycle Gas Powered Cultivator
Butterfly garden lower box.
Upper and low planter box for butterfly garden.
Troy-Built 4-cycle tiller (review coming soon).
