Lets talk about 2018

2018… It was a year. That is about all I can say. After the 2 years previous, it is nice to say 2018 was just a year. This is going to be a bit rambly… kind of a stream of consciousness, and I may or may not add in photos, but here it goes…

I just kind of let go of writing here in the Summer. I minimised anything that was causing me any kind of stress. I just needed less things that I needed to do. I couldn’t write what I wanted to write in the way I wanted to write it and it was stressing me out. So I let it go for a bit.

My garden grew really well, and I harvested and dried TONS of herbs that I have been loving using in the kitchen this winter.

My tomatoes grew wonderful… but in September, I should have harvested them all when we had a heavy frost in the forecast. I didn’t, I just covered the plants and lost much of my harvest. Obviously, I had tomatoes one by one throughout the summer, but I was really hoping the weather would hold off and I could harvest and process the tomatoes all at once.

The last post here was about lettuce and greens. They didn’t make it. I let them dry out and just didn’t take good care of them.

My herbs were definitely the star of the show. Every few days, I could harvest some of the herbs and put them in the dehydrator.

Raspberries were also very prolific, although none of them made it into the house. I did get to eat a few of my strawberries, but as usual, the slugs and squirrels beat me to most of them.

My clematis that I planted as a teeny tiny stick a few years ago, bloomed like crazy, but didn’t produce a ton of foliage. Fingers crossed it makes it through this winter, and I can baby it a bit more in the spring in hopes of a really great growing season for it.

I learned a new way to try and combat the delphinium caterpillars that I’ve been plagued with the last few years. And it doesn’t involve squishing individual caterpillars… I’ll share that in the spring when I’m doing it.

We planted a bunch of fruit trees and bushes at my parents house. So fingers crossed I will have a bunch of fruit this summer and the coming years.

I got really into learning to propagate plants. So I want to share some of that this year.

Right around Halloween, I took some seeds from an organic orchard-run Gala Apple. Cold stratified on wet paper towel in a plastic bag in the fridge…And they germinated… So around Christmas, I potted them up into red solo cups. And they sprouted on January 5th. Which would’ve been my grandma’s 91st Birthday. It will be interesting to see what becomes of them, the little bit I’ve googled about Apple genetics has been fascinating.

I have a few other kinds of potential future trees in my fridge right now.

So 2019 will be… maybe just another plain year, maybe it will be awesome.