Primrose Means Spring is Getting Closer

I went to AJ Rahn to purchase fertilizer for the Meyer Lemon. It requires a higher nitrogen fertilizer and I knew Rahn would have it. Rahn is a greenhouse that has been around for over 100 years and is still family run and has employees who can actually answer questions properly. The big box stores just can't do that for gardeners. Plus AJ Rahn has lots of pets--birds in cages, cats, dogs and chickens. Now how fun is that in the Winter. Here is the thing about Rahn's--they actually produce the majority of the plants they sell. My poinsettia is still red and growing from the holidays. In the Spring ,you better show up early because the place is packed and you have at least 4 huge greenhouses  to wander through. One is filled with just geraniums, including the older types you can't find in many places.

Here is the other thing about Rahn, I can never leave without a plant. They had a large table of primroses and I left with a cute yellow one. This means Spring is around the corner.

Meyer Lemon Tree

Finally potted the Meyer Lemon Tree and so far so good. I have it in a southern window and for now that is the most sunlight it will get until I take it outside in mid May. I can barely wait until there are blossoms on it and then lemons.

For now I will ponder what I will do with those lemons to come. Ideas are welcome.

More seeds and the book

Baking With Julia has arrived. All I need is to purchase fresh yeast to make the bread.

Also I have trouble passing by seed displays without purchasing something. Well I purchased cosmos and candytuft seeds.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Baking With Julia

To be able to be a member of the Tuesdays With Dorie: Baking With Julia baking brigade one must have the Baking With Julia cookbook. I went to Amazon and ordered a used one through one of Amazon's affiliate bookstores. It is taking forever to get here.I actually ordered it around the 16th and it has made a bazillion stops according to the tracking record. However, it is getting closer. It is now at the US Post Office in Northern Kentucky. Hope it gets here within a day or two. Otherwise it would be quicker for me to hop in the car and just pick the thing up. I know patience is a virtue. But I want to start baking.

I have also changed my my mind on what I am going to bake. For February, we could bake either white bread or the chocolate tart. When I read the recipe a friend had for the chocolate tart, it had more butter in it than dairy farms of Wisconsin and a lot of eggs, plus a chocolate filling and chocolate crust. It was a tad over the top for me. Although I normally am not a fan of plain white bread, everyone has raved about this recipe and it makes great French toast. White bread it will be.

Meyer Lemon Tree

My meyer lemon tree arrived this afternoon.  It is raining ice pellets so I will have to wait until tomorrow to transplant it into a pot. It has a wonderful scent, but it does not appear as if it has any tiny lemons on it yet.

I purchased it from Four Winds  and it arrived in great shape..

Seeds Arrive

My first box of seeds just arrived from Johnny's.

Included in the delivery were:
Plato Zucchini
Hercules Carrots
Bennarys Zinnia
Encore Lettuce
Nancy Butterhead Lettuce
Big Smile Sunflower
Fresh Pick Snap Beans, Bush
Carson Snap Bean Yellow Mix

Stay tuned for more deliveries in the future.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Baking With Julia

I was listening to an NPR podcast the other evening and it was about Tuesdays With Dorie. Here is a brief summary about the program from NPR:

     New Year's resolutions have notoriously short lifetimes, but for a blogger in Pittsburgh named Laurie        Woodward, a promise to herself became an Internet sensation.

     Woodward was inspired to bake one recipe each week from Dorie Greenspan's popular cookbook Baking From My Home To Yours. And she found plenty of company — more than 100 bakers decided to take up the challenge with her. Every week, they made a recipe and posted their cooking stories to the online community Tuesdays with Dorie.

     After four years and more than 370 recipes baked and dissected, Tuesdays with Dorie's first chapter ended in December 2011 — when the online group polished off every one of the recipes from Baking From My Home To Yours.


    Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan joins NPR's Neal Conan to talk about baking and the online community she inspired.

Well I became so inspired from the podcast that I am now a member of the Tuesdays With Dorie: Baking With Julie. Currently 201 members have been accepted.

Two recipes from the Baking with Julie cookbook will be posted per month and members will be required to bake at least one. Stay tuned for pictures and postings of my creations. I am thinking of making the chocolate tarts for February. I am not really into white bread which is the other recipe. Hopefully I will be able to use some of the items from the vegetable garden in the recipes that are chosen in the future..

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Cedar Beds

Thought you would like to see the cedar beds we added in the Fall of 2011. This is a picture from the  Farmstead website in Cape Cod where we ordered the beds that are displayed in the photo. We purchased the 4 by 8 foot beds.

Ordering Seeds for 2012

I just placed my seed order with Johnny's Seed Company and Park. Of course this is just the beginning, because it is almost impossible to stop with an initial order. I now have 3 raised beds. The last two my husband and I put together and filled after we received them from The Farmstead in Cape Code.

They were a breeze for us to put together and look wonderful. The only real effort of course was filling them. But that only took a couple of hours.

I am hoping for a bumper crop of tomatoes like I have had in the past.