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Keeping busy with the TPC gardens lately

These past month has been very busy for us here in the TPC gardens, especially since we have so much time at home these days.  We had let the weeds take over in the front garden box and we were running behind on starting some seeds this year so we made it a priority to get some work done.  There were areas to clear, boxes to build, and the birds had started nesting nearby.

One of our natural bug killers in the TPC garden
One of our natural bug killers in the TPC garden

In the front garden box, the borage and amaranth were growing quite well along with the flowers we had saved from prior years.  Unfortunately, all the other seeds failed to sprout and we were pretty disappointed.  We had been diligently weeding and keeping an eye out for any signs of growth after planting but had no luck.  We honestly left it alone for awhile after realizing that and the weeds went absolutely nuts while we discussed what to do next.  So there was quite a bit of weeding we had to do around the borage and amaranth to clean it all up.  After we found some echinacea seedlings, we grabbed basils and sweet peppers from the back garden and happily planted those where the seeds failed.  Now the front garden is still mostly herbs and edibles, happily growing and producing, but not quite how we envisioned it earlier in the year.  Kind of like most of our lives right now, appropriately.

We made a lot of progress in the back gardens but there is still so much to do.  It’s just that time of year.  We got the tomatoes, peas, and peppers all in the ground. Then we fenced and covered them in to protect from wildlife and neighborhood cats; the plants seem quite happy now.  We are going to try a different method of staking and caging them this year; I’ll go into more details with that once we finish and I have more pictures to help explain it.  The fruit trees all seem to be working hard but we have lost pretty much all of the plums and every single one of our nectarines.  Blackberries are popping out left and right while peanuts are going nuts in their containers.  We also got our seedlings into larger pots over the weekend in addition to starting more seeds of cilantro, beans, peas, cukes, melons, sage, watermelons. We also started almost a dozen trees.  Not sure what will actually survive or not but we will keep pictures and share as the year goes on.  All in all, we counted roughly 75 plants that got repotted, planted, or started over one weekend alone.  Whew.

You can see here that when we start seeds at this point in the year, they stay together in the shade of our oak tree to avoid the increasing heat here in Houston.  Don’t worry, these babies are all labeled so we can keep track of what is and isn’t sprouting.   We learned the hard way that we have to label our seeds! If they grow, we’ll start separating them when they reach four to six inches tall.  They stay outside for their entire time so transplanting them later isn’t really a big deal.  We all enjoy playing in the dirt around here (good thing we make soap!!) so they’ll probably get moved into the ground around that four to six inch size.  Guess we better get to finishing those planter boxes over the next two weeks.

Hope you enjoy the pictures of our little micro farm.  It’s not perfect, is always a work in progress, but shows that even a little yard can bring something yummy into the kitchen with a little bit of work.  We will gladly keep updating you on how everything is growing and going over the course of this year.  Dorothy has been documenting our garden for a few years now so we are considering showing more of how we do this since people have been asking.  What would you like to see more of on the blog?  Drop us a line in the comments below or feel free to email her directly with your thoughts.  We’ve been growing some of our ingredients for so long that we sometimes forget how many people are new to us and aren’t aware of the TPC garden.  Make sure you subscribe to get alerts when we post again.  You can also find our Facebook page here; make sure to like and follow it for updates too.

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Looking up today

It’s been a busy day around here!  Are your holidays getting busy too? Seems we may be winning the battle with the shopping cart here on the website.  It’s loading almost everything now and seems stable but please let me know if you have any problems at all!   Maybe I might have this thing figured out?  When I have needed to run away from the computer screaming, I’ve been clearing the soap racks and cutting a few pounds of soap that  we finished cooking up last week.  I’m uploading pictures tonight of the new projects we played with so I can finish those posts I promised too.  Cross your fingers that my run of computer bad luck might be over!

The beer soap is once again sold out of on hand stock.  It is back to preorder only status for now but is listed here on the site to make it more convenient for you.  We have more molds on order so we will be mixing up the next batch very soon- and it’ll be  a much larger batch!  We go through this soap so fast I’m starting to think I’m going to have to look at buying the beer by the keg.  Anybody know if that’s even shippable?  And can you picture the look on the delivery man’s face?  I’m sure he’s really going to believe me that it’s for soap!  His eyes might roll out of his head.

I had a question presented to me asking if we might have a berry scent in the works.  Yes, there is a raspberry scent being tested but it isn’t quite ready to bring out yet.  It will most likely be available around the end of January, if it continues as well as it looks.  I’ll update you more about that later in the year or early January.

I must run back to the kitchen now and finish playing with the new green colorant.  At least the mess I made in there today is easy to clean!  I will return this week with a promised post and will be working in the background all week.  Drop me a line if you see something I missed.

 

Happy Washing!

Dorothy