Raised Beds and Coffee

This week I started the Master Gardeners Certified Home Horticulture program through and I’m very excited!

I decided not to do a fall garden this year so I’ll be spending my “gardening time” on this course until it wraps up around mid-December, just in time for the 2024 garden season. Excited to expand and learn more!

I’m currently mentally planning out my goals and ideas for the 2024 spring garden and what I want to do differently, get rid of or bring in. The dye garden will be a main focus for me in the new year, as well as a cut flower garden since they bring me the most joy.

Tomatoes harvested over the weekend 🍅

Zinnia blooms, a mini harvest from the garden and an egg from Sunshine.

*gasp* A new post up on the garden blog! I'm sharing what is working well right now in the garden and what isn't doing too great.

July 2023: What’s Working and What Isn’t The summer is in full swing and July has been warm, but not horrible in my opinion. The temps have been in the high 90’s, just grazing triple digits (except for this weekend) but since I& #821…

I’m so happy to see fruit setting in this dwarf Clown Tomato! I was given two seeds by so I only germinated one seed and crossed my fingers it would germinate. It’s doing beautifully!

The plan is to save seed from all the tomatoes this year, I have about two plants of each variety so I can mix the genetics up a tad and select from the best plants.

Also, my my yarrow is getting ready to bloom and Sunshine is excited about it too lol!

Some little garden update pics!

The first tomato spotting in the garden! The Tiny Tim’s are loaded in blooms, hoping to see fruit on those next.

Mars day blooms and fruits. Today is ’s birthday so we’re currently headed near Greer for the morning!

The last of the dwarf tomatoes are in! Thanks , they all germinated for me and look great so far!

I’ve been pulling out bolting greens but this Italienischer is still growing good!

The garden is doing great so far this season! More planting this weekend and then it’s done… until we add several honey berries this summer.

Tomatoes getting some sun this morning, it’s time to harden them off so I can plant some at the end of the month. The rest will be up for sale!

I still have a small tray of dwarf heirloom varieties that will all be headed to the garden as well, those won’t be up for sale since I plan to grow them for seed.

A little early May garden update on the blog!
https://raisedbedsandcoffee.wordpress.com/2023/05/09/a-little-may-update/

A little May Update! I meant to do a garden update much sooner but life has a way of changing that sometimes. Most of the garden is in, woot! I typically don’t plant until the end of May but I’ve been keepi…

Native plants getting some sun and gardening off before our big sale on Saturday for our Native Plant Society’s annual native plant sale ()!

If your local be sure to stop by the on Saturday, May 13th starting 10am till 1pm and pick up a plant or two… or ten!

Hi everyone. I (Anita) am working on a project looking at historic fruit trees planted before 1930’s in northeastern Arizona to determine the varieties and look at how they survived in drought times. If anyone knows of, or has access to old living trees of any fruit variety that I can visit, document and possibly take some leaves for varietal dna testing, can you please let me know? I am also looking at grape vines.

Picture is a dormant 153 year old apple tree with porcupine damage in Springerville

Sundays are for exploring, a fun 3.5 mile hike this morning. Beautiful weather, amazing native plants and so many birds.

Sunday plans… let’s go on a hike!

Add chives and a few more things to the beds today, had a ladybug helper (3rd spotted this spring)!

Some pics from the trail this morning, so happy to see things start to bloom. This is by far my favorite time of year!

Kicking off the growing season and everything is looking pretty good so far (knock on wood). Seeds that struggled to germinate last year are sprouting for me this year, I’m hoping that means the soil amending helped!

Our last frost isn’t until mid-May and we sometimes tend to get a freeze in June so I’m ready with tarps just in case… but I was too impatient this year to wait lol!

Just took a peek at our cherry trees and our Rainier is loaded this year, yay! Sadly our other cherry tree (different variety) is 3/4 dead so we’ll be pulling it out here soon and replacing it with a second Rainier.

The hens finally get their salad bar… they’ve been waiting almost 3 years, oops!

This morning I potted up close to 50 tomatoes (some for us, the rest for swap/sale) and started a very small batch of micros for the garden! Thanks for the seeds!!

After the trail we took a peek at the creek, beautiful out today!

Spent yesterday with a friend at the and , it was such a great day! Perfect timing and so many blooms.

Weekend project for our four spoiled hens - foraging salad bar!

New post on the blog talking about what I'm doing to amend our raised bed soil, and more seed starting!

https://raisedbedsandcoffee.wordpress.com/2023/04/04/beds-are-ready/

Beds are ready Over the weekend I got the raised beds prepped and amended to help fix our nitrogen and phosphorus deficiency. We needed an organic fertilizer that was high in both so we opted for Bio-Fish 7-7-2 b…

I've been busy working on a new garden blog to help keep track of this years growing season! This is mainly for my own records but thought others in the area may enjoy it as well. This will be our 3rd year gardening here in the White Mountains and thought I would finally start documenting it.

Here's what I've started indoors so far: https://raisedbedsandcoffee.wordpress.com/2023/03/29/seed-starting/

Seed starting and other things! First post, woo hoo! Ok, before I dive into what I’ve started recently by seed and some of my garden plans this year, I thought I would share a little bit about myself and the garden… I…

Finally getting my gardening plans together for this spring/summer grow season!

This month will be focused on soil testing, amending and building some grazing boxes for the hens.

These beds need a lot of TLC before the spring planting. Had a soil test done by and have my homework laid out for me!

This week I’m working on garden cleanup and clearing out weeds in the bigger ground beds to start prepping for lavender starts in the spring and putting in some permanent beds with strawberries and asparagus.

These beds here are 4x8 (2 foot high) and we have four, along with a 4x4 (same height).

Bob made bread today and the house once again smells amazing!