Little Susie Homemaker

Tag: berries

  • Garden – May 2025

    Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest! We were on vacation the month of April. With not being home, I wasn’t sure if I’d get much of a garden in this year. I decided to give it a shot and plant a variety of seeds before we left.

    On March 31st, I planted beets, peas, kale, spinach, cabbage and mesclun lettuce. I hoped that the month of April would get enough rain that it would go ahead without me.

    Thankfully, it seems to have worked! We got home on April 30th and I had at least a bit of everything I planted.

    I planted golden beets and bulls blood beets. Both are growing. Now a couple of weeks after getting home, everything is a bit bigger than the pictures show. I’m looking forward to harvesting these!!!

    The peas are coming up well. I strung up some trellising using big tomato cages, a shepherd’s hook plant stand and some cotton twine. I’ve had peas grow 6+ ft tall in the past. Last year, they were barely 3 ft tall without anything to grow up. I have ‘high’ hopes for these peas!

    We have asparagus coming up which makes me really happy. My husband transplanted these crowns a couple years ago so I’ve let them go and haven’t harvested. So far, there isn’t enough to harvest yet, but I’m hoping it keeps coming up and there’s more as it continues to warm up.

    Spinach is starting to pop up and grow bigger. I’m hoping quite a bit more of this starts soon. But, I need to plant a second (and third) round of this seed.

    In other parts of the yard, we have quite a few berries that are blossoming beautifully.

    The blueberry plants are blossoming so well! I’m excited to see how much we harvest this year. Several of our plants are in their 3rd year, so they are coming into their full production!

    Huckleberry Blossoms
    Honey Berry Blossoms

    The huckleberries are also in full blossom. They are so tiny, its almost hard to harvest, but they’re so good, its worth the effort.

    The honey berry plants are also in full blossom. These plants will be the first that we can harvest as they are earlier than the other berries. We should be able to harvest these by mid-June or earlier.

    We cut down 2 of our 3 apple trees last fall. We replaced them with new columnar apple trees. These don’t take up nearly the amount of space, don’t block the sunlight for the surrounding plants, but they produce well. Hopefully we’ll get a few apples from these new trees this year, but I anticipate great results in the next few years.

    One of the things I commented to my husband when we got home from our vacation is that the neighborhood was in full bloom. The colors at this time of year are beautiful!

    I have started seeds in trays for tomatoes, herbs, and cucumbers. Hopefully those will be ready to be planted by the end of the month or early next month.

    Gardening 2025!!!

  • Garden Update – December 2024

    Not much to add here but wanted to wrap up the year with the final post about the garden.

    The Oca and Mashua tubers were harvested in early December. We had a light frost earlier, but it didn’t kill off the leaves above ground until about three frosts in.

    My husband took care of it as he’s the one who planted them. He really likes having unique things growing in the backyard. Hence the variety of berries we have! I did help him a bit, but the digging was all him!

    He had ordered 3 different colors of the Oca tubers. We assumed the white with red creases is a mix of the other two.

    These little guys can be eaten raw and are supposed to taste like water chestnuts. My husband said that’s true (I didn’t try it!).

    We got a bit over 3/4 of a pound of the Ocas. There are several that he’s keeping in the fridge to use as seed for next year.

    The Mashua tubers did really well. We ended up with a bit over 3 1/4 lbs of these. (The above picture was obviously taken prior to washing. The weight was taken AFTER the dirt was removed)

    He cooked a few of these up like potatoes and they turned out pretty well. We have enough left for a couple more meals to have a side of tubers.

    The rest of the garden is a sleep for the winter aside from 4 beets that I haven’t pulled yet. Now that it’s too cold for snails and slugs, they’re doing great! LOL

    I put 6+ inches of compost over all the growing areas and then covered with a few inches of leaves. I’m also throwing our used coffee grounds into the growing areas to help add more to the soil over winter.

    The one crop I haven’t addressed in a post, but did harvest was the sweet potato. I’ll just say it was beyond disappointing. Not one was bigger than my thumb and all total the harvest was less than 1/2 lb.

    All total; the backyard produced 133.87 lbs of food. Not too shabby but thank goodness for perennials!