The Old Guy's Garden Record

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Sunday, December 1, 2024

We recived around an inch of snow overnight. Our weather outlook for the next week or so is with freezing temperatures every morning. But it will be mostly sunny which may allow some outdoor work.

Breakfast this morning was soup and bread.

FTC Required Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Park Seed, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. We're also a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative.

Monday, December 2, 2024

This morning's low temperature here was 15°F. We got a little more snow today. Of course, what we got is nothing like the Great Lakes area and the East Coast are experiencing.

I've had several tomatoes ripening in a tray on our dining room table. We used the last two good ones this evening for a supper of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches with a side of our own sweet corn.

I'll admit that the tray ripened tomatoes weren't as delicious as ones that were vine ripened. But fresh homegrown tomatoes for sandwiches on December 2 is a first for us.

Our print copy of the Fedco Seeds 2025 catalog arrived in today's mail. I've just glanced inside it, checking green bean varieties and prices.

With our seed inventory pretty well done and catalogs arriving, it's about time for me to start putting together seed orders for next season.

Wednesday, December 4, 2024 - Buying Guides

I'll get this one out of the way up front. If you are holiday shopping for a gardening friend, let me suggest taking a look at our The Old Guy's Shopping Guide for Gifts for Gardeners and our Shopping Guide for Gardeners. Both contain lots of things gardeners would like.

Now that my advertisement is out of the way, let's move on to December gardening chores.

With winter having set in, we're into the season of preparing for our next garden. While there's still a good bit of garden cleanup remaining to be done, building orders from reputable seed vendors is also a task for this month. That involves using seed catalogs (print, digital, and online) to find the items we need.

So far, we're a little light on print seed catalogs received in the mail. Fedco, the Seed Savers Exchange, Twilley Seeds, and High Mowing Organic Seeds are the only good ones I have to look through. But seed vendors have gotten their web sites updated and put up digital seed catalogs.

PDF Seed Catalogs Available

Botannical Interests, Burpee, Fedco, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Johnny's Selected Seeds, the Seed Savers Exchange, the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Territorial Seeds, Turtle Tree Seed Initiative, Twilley Seeds, and West Coast Seeds all have PDF versions of their seed catalogs online and available for download.

Thursday, December 5, 2024 - Best Garden Photos of 2024

Without ever going outside, and instead of working outside in the cold and wind, I got one of our gardening end-of-the-year jobs done today. I put up our annual Best Garden Photos of the year page. I wondered about renaming the page to something like 'My favorite garden photos," as many of the shots aren't all that great. But doing so reminded me that we've had some nice harvests in what has been a droughty year in our garden plots.

The best shot of the year turned out to be of our eighty foot row of zinnias in our East Garden plot. A close second was a shot of a BLT on December 2 showing "fresh" bright red tomatoes.

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

With winter weather having set in, there's not much garden cleanup getting done. But I got slightly into the holiday season by bringing our tiny Christmas tree downstairs. While we have a full sized artificial tree and decorations for it, with the kids gone and seven indoor cats, a regular tree would get a lot of abuse.

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Annie made some Broccoli and Cheese Stuffed Breaded Chicken Breasts for supper last night. They were really good, but not the star of the meal.

While the chicken breasts baked, Annie wondered about what to have with them. I remembered that I'd brought in and thawed some frozen asparagus a day or two ago. Generally, frozen asparagus is disappointing when compared to fresh. But not this time.

I usually prepare asparagus with a little olive oil in a pan, some chicken broth, seasoned salt, and garlic powder. This time around I added a couple of slices of butter. I'm not sure if it was the butter, better asparagus, or just our appetites, but it was incredible asparagus. It was definitely better than fresh store bought!

We're still in a cold snap that discourages any outdoor work. Besides, both Annie and I have been fighting persistent head colds for almost a week.

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

I've got to start getting our splashshot for the top of this page taken earlier in the day. I didn't get around to it until almost three o'clock today and was rewarded with lots of lens flare from the low sun.

I started building flower and vegetable seed orders a week ago, but was frustrated by vendors' lack of print seed catalogs and online availability of some varieties I wanted. I finally got it together over the weekend and put together several orders. I did, however, fire off a couple of hot messages on Friday to Burpee and Johnny's Selected Seeds about the lateness of their seed catalogs. At the start of business yesterday, I got a polite email from Burpee promising to mail out a catalog that day. That saved their order. From Johnny's: Crickets!

I'm also a bit unhappy with Johnny's as the pelletized carrot seed I bought from them in 2023 had terrible germination both this spring and fall. Between the poor carrot seed germination and their failure to respond to my message, that got them moved from the "Trusted Suppliers" classification on our Recommended Seed Suppliers page to "Others to Consider."

Here's what I've ordered so far:

I probably will file orders with Burpee and Twilley Seeds in the next few days after paging through their print catalogs.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

I got out a bit earlier today and grabbed our near daily splashshot with no lens flare. Of course, it was cloudy, which helped.

No more seed catalogs came in today's mail, but we did receive a lovely gift basket from our youngest daughter. Thanks, Julia!

From email notifications, it appears that all four of the seed orders I placed yesterday have shipped already. That's not unusual for this time of year, as it's before the seed houses experience a big rush in the new year.

When building our order for Fedco Seeds, I ran across something really unusual. The page for Packers Lima Beans had no price listed. It offered an empty price box with instructions to "Name Your Price!"

I've never grown good lima beans, although I've tried several times. One year, a supposedly bush variety runnered all over the place, trying to take over a whole section of our main raised garden bed. Other years, the plants barely bloomed and set pods. So, I'm hopeful and a little excited to try an old, but new-to-us variety of lima beans.

Another pleasant surprise in the ordering process is that Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds still offers seed without a shipping charge added. When you only need a couple of items from a vendor as I did, that's a real plus. Shipping on our other orders ran six to nine dollars!

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. So our days will get slightly longer each day until the summer solstice (June 20).

Seed orders from True Leaf Market and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds came in yesterday. I was impressed that both outfits got orders placed online on Tuesday into my hands so quickly. A seed catalog from the Turtle Tree Seed Initiative also arrived, although I’ve already placed an order with them.

I was disappointed with the True Leaf order, as I thought I'd ordered five ounces of Contender green bean seed. The packet sent contained only around a dozen seeds. When checking their site, I found that I hadn't picked up a decimal point that indicated the seed amount was point five ounces! While it was my error, I felt cheated.

I prepared another seed order over the weekend. This one was to a longtime seed supplier, Twilley Seeds.

Twilley doesn't do online sales. So I followed my old regimen of marking things I might want with a stroke of a magic marker by the catalog listing and turning down the catalog page corner. After letting the catalog sit overnight, I went back and recorded most of the items marked on Twilley's order form. The order will go out in tomorrow's mail, right in the thick of the Post Office's Christmas rush.

Vienna bread

I spent a good bit of yesterday afternoon making a loaf of Vienna bread. I again pretty much followed a Cook with Kushi recipe.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024 - Merry Christmas

And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.

Luke 2:10-11 (ASV)

The image above is a "scene from a life size nativity at the Luxembourg Christmas market." It was taken in 2006 by graphic artist Debbie Schiel who lives in Far North Queensland, Australia, and shared on the royalty-free stock.xchng site.

Best wishes from Annie and I to you for a joyous and fulfilling holiday season.

Friday, December 27, 2024

Our copy of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange print catalog came in early this week. I fussed with SESE a couple of years ago with the lateness of their catalog to no avail. But they carry a couple of seed varieties I really like: Abundant Bloomsdale spinach and Crimson Sweet Virginia Select watermelon. Since neither variety has to be started early, I went ahead and ordered some of both, as our saved and commercial seed was getting a bit old and suspect on germination.

A single packet of seeds arrived in today's mail. It was a packet of Contender green bean seed from Seeds 'n Such to make up for the .5 oz packet of that variety from True Leaf Market. Seeds 'n Such isn't adding a shipping charge for their seed!

The Burpee and Johnny's Selected Seeds print catalogs promised to go out on the sixteenth still haven't arrived in the mail! It's a busy time for the Post Office, but I suspect the catalogs didn't get mailed promptly. That will cost those two vendors our seed orders this year, as we have most of the seed we'll need next year ordered and much of it already received.

Ribeye Roast

I picked up a nearly four pound ribeye roast a week or so ago at our local Save-A-Lot. It cooked a lot faster than I expected.

After a delicious Christmas meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy, I cut a few slices of the roast off for sandwiches. The rest of the roast got re-frozen for use in some beef and noodles at a future family gathering.

The end cuts we had for Christmas dinner were fairly tender, something Save-A-Lot's beef isn't known for. The beef for noodles will get boiled for a long, long time to tenderize it.

Rain

We had a summer of drought and now are experiencing near daily rains. That will help the water table and our poor deep well. But it also makes outdoor work a no-go.

Gloxinias

The gloxinias I seeded in August were ready to be moved to four and a half inch pots this week. They were beginning to crowd each other in their fourpacks.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 - New Year's Eve

Yesterday seemed to be seed catalog day. Four arrived in the mail. Print catalogs from Johnny's Selected Seeds, R. H. Shumway, Territorial Seeds, and John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds arrived.

The Johnny's catalog will get a cover to cover inspection. It's been a favored supplier for carrot and other seed over the years. Our two year debacle with their pelletized seed made me seek another outlet for carrot seed this time around. And at this point I have filed orders already for most of the seed I'll need next year.

I find the Shumway catalog always a visual treat for its woodcut illustrations. Shumway supplied our start of Reid's Yellow Dent open pollinated field corn seed during my farming years in the 1980's. They also supplied seed for our start of the supersweet Eclipse pea and a hog pasture mix we used to fatten feeder pigs in the field. Since they got bought out by Jung Seeds, their offerings have changed a bit.

When our garlic begins to lose its vigor, I get new garlic sets from the Territorial Seed Company. Their garlic has always been excellent. I don't order a lot of seed from them as their shipping rates are pretty high.

I haven't ordered much from Scheepers over the years, but enjoy looking at their seed catalog.

The remainder of that large ribeye roast got turned into beef and noodles. I'd boiled beef chunks for hours on Friday to tenderize them. I prepared to make two batches of beef and noodles, one with our favorite noodles from the Oakland Noodle Company and another with gluten free noodles. Sadly, the planned family gathering blew up in a sibling dispute. So the beef and noodles got made, separated, and part frozen and the rest left for us to snack on.

Looking ahead into 2025, our weather will shift from rainy, warm days into more typical January weather. While it's still fairly warm out today (45°F), it's rainy and very windy (30+ MPH gusts).

Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening