Happy New Year!

Hope all of you have had a lovely holiday!

I've sort of taken a break from the garden due to the festivities, but not much has changed out in my garden since I last wrote. My plants look much the same as they did, with the exception of being microscopically bigger. The only thing which has grown much is my wild garlic:

I put a bunch of wild garlic bulblets there a couple of years ago, and every year, even though I think I've gotten it all up, it comes back again. I'm seriously thinking of planting this around the pond as an ornamental grass. It dies back in the summer but is green all winter, which I find interesting, especially since there's not much color out there right now. :)

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Here's the plot design that I finally settled on for my Food4Wealth review:

The thick lines are existing fences. The thin lines just inside are existing plots going along the fences.

I'm planning to put a dwarf fruit tree in the center square for starters, and go from there.

The biggest problem I'm having with this system is that it requires a lot of materials that I have trouble finding. But once I do, I should be able to get this up and running fairly quickly.

December blooms

It's about 30F (-2C) right now and sunny out. Here's what's blooming today:

My pansies are looking rather sad, and my outdoor roses just have buds on them, so for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, I took some pictures of some indoor flowers --

I just got this rose bush yesterday, and this morning it apparently wanted to say hello :)

My potted lemon bush has two lemons which are ripening nicely, but it also has some flowers on it as well.

And then I went outside again and found that something was indeed blooming after all!

My neighbors will be so happy ;)

Roaming around the garden

For once it's sunny (and above freezing) this morning, so I went out with my camera.

The weather has been quite cold, dipping down into the high 20's F (around -3C) every night this week. It's interesting to see what likes what areas of my garden. My onions and garlic are quite happy in the backyard, yet none are growing in the front. The kale and cabbages in the back are all but dead, but the ones in the front are having a party:

The holes in the cabbage leaves are from cabbage moths earlier in the year; if you notice, the new leaves in the center haven't been touched.

My sage continues on its quest for front yard domination, and my rosemary bush is doing fine as well. The "Hill Hardy" rosemary bushes I planted for my porch hedge seem to be unfazed by the cold. I'm having trouble getting good photos of the hedge, so I'll give you a picture another time.

On the other side of the sage is this parsley, which seems to think it's spring! It's putting out new leaves in the center and isn't showing any signs of distress, even though it's in the shade, which should be a cold spot out here.

Over in the sun is my lavender plant, which really likes it out here in front. When I brushed off some leaves to take the photo, the leaves released the most amazing lavender aroma ... I wish I could send it to you. If you at all like lavender, it's a wonderful plant for your edible garden (or for any other garden, for that matter).

Out here under the "crazy tree" is a strawberry plant who is also taking advantage of the lack of competition freezing weather to stake out new territory. ;)

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If I feel up to it later on today I might go out and stake out my Food4Wealth plots. If not, it'll happen sometime this weekend, as it's not supposed to freeze for the next few days, so the hoses should be thawed enough to do some watering. Right now, there's still frost on the ground out back so it will have to be in the afternoon. Pictures to come soon!

Also, there are still spots open in the Food4Wealth plant-along group. If you're interested, send an email to ediblelandscapedesign@yahoo.com. Everyone who has contacted me should have gotten an email from me about it -- if you didn't, let me know.

The plant-along will start on February 1st, so there's still time to get your copy and read it before we start.

Have you roamed around your yard lately? What's growing out there?

I got an idea this morning ....

It's quite cloudy here, and it's supposed to rain/sleet/snow this afternoon depending on what weather channel you listen to. (ETA: it just started pouring ...) It seems like one of those days where's it's better just to stay inside, so that's what I'm doing today.

Last week I mentioned the experimental garden I'm planning for the backyard using the new program I got called Food4Wealth. Well, I had a lying-in-bed-on-Saturday-morning brainstorm about it that I thought you might like.

The instructions for this planting method specify a particular size plot, square or round with rows, sort of like a farm ... but that seemed pretty boring ... so of course I'm doing something different with my garden. :)

I think I will put a potager in the corner of the fenced-in portion of my back yard. It will have lots of greens, some edible flowers, herbs, and a dwarf fruit tree in there somehwhere. Here are a couple of ideas I've had for the design:




The heavy lines at the left and top are my existing fences, the lines directly inside of those mark out planters I already have there. Hope that's not too confusing.

Which design do you like better? I go back and forth, but I'm kind of partial to the one on the right at the moment.

But the idea I had this morning is about something else.

I've decided to set up a study group or "plant-along" for those of you interested in trying out the Food4Wealth system along with me, which will start on February 1st. That will give you time to read the material and think of where you'd like your garden. Since some of you will be going into spring and others of you headed into fall, this will be a perfect time to get a new garden set up.

The only cost will be the cost of the program itself, which right now is $34. You can get the Food4Wealth program by clicking here. If you're interested in doing the plant-along, send me an email at ediblelandscapedesign@yahoo.com

A quiet day

I hope all of you who have been celebrating holidays this week have had a peaceful and meaningful holiday time. Here in the US we had our day of Thanksgiving on Thursday, and it was so nice to be able to gather onion, garlic, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme from my garden to go in the turkey stuffing. I make rice stuffing with herbs, fried giblets, and wild rice, passed down from my mother, and it was delicious. :D

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It's raining outside, so not much will be going on in the garden today, except covering the tender plants since there's a frost coming tonight.

The banana plants and fig tree seem to have survived their freezing ordeal -- the weather here has gone from cold to warm to cold, and I'm not sure that they know what to do. The fig dropped all the crispy leaves and has a lovely growing bud tip as if it were spring, and I don't want that to be damaged, as it's only about a foot tall right now. One of the bananas is trying to grow new leaves!

Plants are tenacious, that's for sure.

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Since I don't have much to show you today I thought I might update you on my thoughts on the Food4Wealth program that I've been going through. It occurred to me that last time I talked about it, I didn't actually mention much about it.

I have been looking for something to offer to beginning food gardeners, because about a third of the people who come over to the Edible Landscape Design site have no knowledge of gardening at all (which is a bit daunting, since it isn't a beginner site), and I don't really want to set up a beginning gardening course right now. Maybe in the future, but not now.

So when I saw Food4Wealth was the best selling gardening ebook on Clickbank (which is a place that helps you sell ebooks), it intrigued me enough to take a look.

(Full disclosure: I did get a free copy for review. Which is actually a good thing, because firms that do that believe in their product and aren't trying to scam their customers. I was very happy with the communications I had with the company.)

Now, I don't care for the name, as it seems a bit hyped, as is his presentation. And on the outset, $34 for a book seems a bit steep. But I like what I've seen so far of the actual information very much. The methods are entirely organic, and the book gives solid advice.

The thing is that you're not just getting a pdf book. Included are 14 videos to show you what to do, a set of audiobooks, and a set of checklists to help you through. I was impressed with the amount of information you get for the money.

And while for me as someone who's been gardening forever, the video presentations seem over-solicitous, for someone who's never gardened before and might be just a tad afraid of ruining things (if not outright panicked at the thought of doing something wrong and killing their plants), it's probably just right.

The thing that interests me the most is his assertion that you can grow using his method all year round without using any sort of protection for your plants. His accent is Australian, so I'm presuming that this is where he's from.

From what I've read so far, his methods will indeed work quite well in Australia (which has much milder weather than most of the US -- their coldest zone is about 7b), as well as in areas of the world which have similar conditions. If that means you, go ahead and get it -- I definitely recommend it ... but whether it will work here is what I want to see for myself.

So I've devised a garden plan for my backyard (which is where I do all my experimenting!) ... it will be both ornamental and use the Food4Wealth method, and we shall see what happens. :)

Blooming in November

It's a blustery day outside, but I ran across the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day and even though I'm a day late on this, I thought, "what a great idea". Of course, then I had to go take some photos.

This last photo is of the saffron crocuses I planted just a month and a half ago. I never thought they would be up and blooming already!

Go over to the May Dreams Garden blog to see even more flowers. :)

A few odds and ends ....

A lot has been going on lately, so I'll pile it all up here (sort of like the leaves, which seem to never stop coming ...)

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I got all of the kale, cabbage, and strawberries planted. Some of them ended up in the backyard, which is fine.

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A freeze happened early in the week that caught me by surprise, so both of my banana plants are pretty sad looking. I think they're both still alive, but we'll see. My fig tree in the back is pretty crispy as well, but I'm sure it'll be fine, as the stem is still green. I need to get them mulched before the next freeze comes by, though.

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If you're a subscriber to my newsletter, you know that I've had this running poll going on for several months now. The most surprising thing about the poll is that about a third of my subscribers are total rank beginners and know nothing about either gardening or landscaping.

Since that's not really who I intended to target with the site, I have been thinking for a while about writing something to help them out. While doing research into the subject, I ran across an e-book titled "Food4Wealth" that interested me enough to look into it as a possible thing to offer those of you who really don't know a thing about gardening.

So I got the information and have been working through it (there's a lot here!). I'll be writing some of my thoughts about it over the next few months. Since this is both a process of gardening that's new to me and something that involves living things, it's not as easy as just writing a review on a book. I really need to try his suggestions out before I can make a determination one way or the other as to whether this is something I want to recommend.

More on that later.