Thank you all for the puppy love! I have had so many questions about our new family member, little Emmeline.
Emmy is our 9 week old Shichon (Bichon/Shih tzu cross). She is super teeny, doesn’t even register on our digital scale, eep. She is feisty and very smart, so now that she had settled in and feels at home (we have had her 8 days now), it is time to start working on a little bit of training with sits, high fives, shake a paws… They do say that a few minutes of training is like a good walk for tiring them out.
She has settled in nicely and is such a big change from the English Mastiffs that we are used to having.
How grows your garden? How goes your planting? I am still in the midst of sowing seeds. The planters are all planted up, tomatoes are in, peppers and eggplants are in the greenhouse… now is just to get cucumber and zucchini seeds in the ground, plus some flower seeds for the beneficial insects. I still have quite a bit of seed sowing to do yet….
Here are this week’s fun gardening how to’s : )
How to plant and grow pumpkins. All sizes, all shapes, all kinds. Great article.
Grow a blooming wildlife border. This is the same thing as what I call a pollinator strip garden. They both appeal to bees, butterflies, birds, and other critters. As does this… Create a bee garden
How to make a French Tuteur. This would look amazing with sweet peas, clematis, or climbing roses.
The impact of AI on garden centers, and us. I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of seeing the fake AI generated landscapes, pots, plants. Ugh! Make it stop. I am forever deleting and blocking these pages, but they seem to pop up more and more daily.
Homey Bits of Inspo & DIY’s
How many glasses of wine are in a bottle of wine?
Well, this is just about the cutest little gate I have ever seen. Not sure that it will keep anything in or out, but a bit of wire screening would help with that….
How to oil outdoor furniture. I gotta get this done! Boiled linseed oil is what she uses. We use a teak oil.
* As an Amazon affiliate, if you buy any of the items through one of these links, I make a teeny tiny bit of money to support my blog. It does not cost you a penny more than it would if you went to the item on your own, without my link. Thankful for your support : )
Recipes
Zucchini grilled cheese sandwich! Yum! Cannot wait till it is zuke season!
Balsamic glazed caprese salad. I love salad sandwiches!
Southern grape salad with pecans. This looks so good! I cannot wait to try this. Is like a dessert salad.
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Bars plus the strawberry rhubarb pie filling that you fill them with.
Pickled Sandwich Slaw. Easy peasy!
Classic Rhubarb Crisp. I love a good crisp!
Cranberry Clementine Eton-Mess. an Eton Mess is kind of a cross between trifle and pavlova—makes the perfect sweet-tart-creamy-crunchy ending to a festive meal. Both the meringues and the saucy fruit can be made days ahead, so all you need to do is whip your cream and assemble your mess—either in individual bowls or glasses or on a platter, family-style—when you’re ready for it.
How to make a sourdough starter. This is the ‘recipe’ I used for my first starter. It was such a good starter but I lost it when we went on holidays. My fault. I just had a wax wrap on it, rather than an actual screw on lid. The second recipe I followed never gave me a good starter. It never rose well, bordered on sour all the time. I am sure someone smarter than I could have saved it…. however, I just turfed it and will start another one very soon. As soon as the garden is planted up.
Rhubarb juice. Huh.
One of my rhubarbs lovely rhubarbs with a seed stalk : )
And to finish… (From James Reichert) – As we progress into spring, some of your rhubarb plants will send up seed stalks. You don’t have to cut those seed stalk off. It won’t adversely affect the plant, or the size / quality of your crop of rhubarb. It’s the plants natural way of reproducing. It is very easy to grow new rhubarb plants from seed. Just let the plant do its thing. In mid-summer, the seeds will start to change color from light green to brown. When this happens, place an old panty hose, or mesh bag over the seed head, and secure it with some string or a zip tie. The seeds have a bad habit of falling off the stem as they ripen. The panty hoses will hold them in place, while still allowing the seeds to mature and dry. In the late fall or early spring, plant the seeds just barley under the soil surface, and in late spring you’ll get new plants. Just don’t harvest the stalks the first year. You can also start the seeds outdoors in pots, and give them away, or transplant them in mid-summer.
Everyone sees this seed head popping up and panics. OMG what do I do… Collect the seeds and make more free plants. You can never have too many rhubarb plants. Free plants are my favorite type of plants. Also, rhubarb seeds store very well. So you don’t have to plant the seeds right away. Place the dried seeds in a paper bag and store them in a cool dry place, out of any sunlight. Like a closet of somewhere in the basement. I’ve planted 10-year-old rhubarb seeds before and they still sprouted just fine.
Another overlooked advantage of growing your rhubarb from seeds is diversification. When you get you plant as a cutting from another plant, it’s a clone of the original plant. It will grow, and taste, exactly like the original plant. By growing from seeds, you’re getting a cross from at least two, often more other rhubarb plants. You’ll get different sizes stalks, different colors, heights, thicknesses and most importantly, different flavor profiles. Then if you have one (or more) plant that you really like, you can always do divisions of that plant as it gets big.
Rhubarb seeds also make a unique Christmas gift for your gardening friends. They can plant the seeds in a pot in the dead of winter, water it well and set it outside in the cold. Come spring they’ll have baby plants. So let the plant do its thing and make some seeds, you’ll both benefit.
The Marigold Potager - A Zone 3 Prairie Garden 
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