beets Archives | Diana's Designs Austin

Shopping for veggies for the spring garden…

A quick trip to The Natural Gardener today yielded a treasure trove of goodies for the spring garden.

I went in search of three little things: potatoes, sulfur and seed starter mix.

But I came home with so much more, including:

a few magazines,
a decorative hanging bell with a cord of glistening glass beads,
a fairy garden turtle on a leaf for my daughter, who recently asked if she could have a turtle,
seeds,
strawberries,
beets,
lettuce,
cauliflower,
spinach,
chard,
daikon radishes,
all blue and red pontiac potatoes,
sulfur,
and my friend Amy Stewart’s book, Wicked Plants.

I got it all into the car and then realized I had forgotten the seed starter mix. It’s funny how a trip to the nursery can turn your world upside down and make you forget things. I ran back in and grabbed a bag.

Now it’s time to get busy planting!

Ho – Ho – Hornworm Alert!

So here I was, into hour 3 of weeding the nasty mess of a vegetable garden awaiting me when I returned home from Disney World. I was pulling grass out of the paths and tying up tomatoes and cleaning off dead leaves and then…

I saw what looked like a weird, spotted tiny green tomato.

But it wasn’t a tomato — it was the HEAD of a tomato hornworm.

Aaaarrrghhhhh.

Nasty little fellow, isn’t he?

See the beautiful tomato plant he came from? It’s the one back against the wall — my first tomato grown from seed in the greenhouse, so I am quite fond of him.

And, since it was 100 degrees (no, that wasn’t a typo), and I didn’t see any more of them, I finished my weeding and waited until 8 p.m. to go out with a fresh batch of BT to try to save my beautiful crop of tomatoes.

After I found the hornworm, I found a little treasure while I was ripping out the bolted lettuce — a beet! A big ‘ol honkin’ beet. With beautiful leaves and perfectly shaped – it was so pretty – I wish I’d taken a picture of it when I picked it.

Instead you get a picture of it roasted and dusted with Kosher salt in the bowl! It was very yummy. I don’t remember planting beets … I did think I pulled one up several weeks ago, thinking it was lettuce … who knows! But it was so good, that when the weather cools down, I may actually plant some and try to remember they are there!

So, I think there is about another hour or work to be done in the veggie garden and then tomorrow I’ll move on to weeding the rock path tomorrow. It’s garden clean-up week next week. Kallie is in VBS for 1/2 day all week and I am committed to gardening for that time to get all caught up. (Ha!)

But then again, are we ever really “caught up” in the garden? Have YOU ever been caught up in your garden?

beets

Shopping for veggies for the spring garden…

Ho – Ho – Hornworm Alert!

Escape in the garden