Category: Around the Kisner Homestead

Enough rain already!! We certainly have not had to water the garden for several weeks. Unfortunately, the plants also need sunshine! Bert has been keeping an eye on the plants and the focus has been more on fungicides and slugs. Today, the sun actually came out for a few minutes, so I put my old sneakers and slogged out to take some pictures. The grass is so tall my ankles were soaked in minutes!

I’ve pulled the first round of radishes and replanted. The first batch were yummy, but a few were a little spicy. The second planting is doing well.

I cut the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce a few days ago and we’re enjoying it in salads. The other lettuce is ready to eat. When I replant, I’ll stagger the plantings so it isn’t all ready at once!

The onions are crazy. We’re pulling them as we need them.

The small tomatoes…called Raindrops…are doing very well. They will be great in salads!

On my way up the hill to the other garden, I stopped to check out the pumpkins Bert planted by the wood pile. The fence seems to keep the rabbits away.

Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender stems are filling out.

The tomatoes are making flowers so there’s hope tomatoes will follow!

We can finally see the carrot tops! I was sure they had drowned!

Yay! We have bean plants!

Bert had to buy more zucchini seeds, but finally we have plants.

My beloved Echinacea have spread to fill up the space! Lots of potential flowers…and one daring to open all alone…for now!

I was outside for about 20 minutes…and then it rained AGAIN! And then the sun came out about an hour later…for a few minutes and it rained again. Geez!

If you have any comments or questions about our garden, please just email me. Every day I get about 100 spam comments in foreign languages. I don’t want to miss anything from a REAL person and I’d love to hear from you so use my email! maryjkisner@gmail.com

With more than 6 inches of rain over the last month, the garden is having a hard time getting started! We finally have a few days with some warm sunshine, so I expect everything will go crazy. Here are a few pictures to show you how things are doing today!

The dogwood trees in the front yard are finally in bloom and the blossoms are turning from an off yellow/white to a brighter white.

On the patio, I’ve pulled the first batch of radishes and replanted with new seed.

The lettuces…Little Gem and Black Seeded Simpson…are ready to be thinned (and eaten!). Yum!

Bert has been thinning the onions and eating them! Here’s how big they are now:

The cherry tomato plants are doing well, with blossoms showing their color!

Up in the garden on the hill, the established plants like lavender and echinacea are doing well.

However, the seeds for carrots, beans and zucchini are barely coming up…just too much rain. I’ve had to add some bean seeds to the rows because the birds were picking them out of the ground as they tried to sprout.

So far, one tiny zucchini plant has made it out of the ground! Somehow, the weeds are doing very well!

One final group of seeds/plants I had not included before…Bert started pumpkin seeds a month or two ago and decided to plant them right beside the wood pile…no fence at all. I hope they get big quick so the rabbits don’t see it as their own salad bar!

Hopefully, with the sun finally coming out, the garden will do well. Enjoy!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

The garden is all planted. Yay! I’ll try to show you the pictures in the same general order each time so you can compare from one post to the next.

First, the planters on the patio are arranged like this:

Radishes:

Two kinds of lettuce:

…and the onions:

You can see the fenced garden beds just off the patio and garden on the hill from here. Here’s a close-up of the garden on the hill:

OK…back to the fenced beds just off the patio. The asparagus crowns we transplanted in the far bed are growing…we won’t cut them until next year, but it will probably do best in another year.

In the front bed, we planted our small tomatoes, called Raindrops. If they are as prolific as our cherry tomatoes last year, the neighbors may find bags of tomatoes on their front porches! We’re leaving the right bay of this bed empty for now. We might plant some flowers just for color!

The garden up on the hill looks good so far. My job this morning was to plant the last three sections with carrots, beans and zucchini.

The lavender is turning green. The rainwater tank is almost full and the rain barrels will top it off this weekend.

Bert planted the tomatoes yesterday! Proof…Bert does most of the heavy lifting in the garden.

The 6 plants on the right are the SuperSauce tomatoes from Burpee. The 6 plants on the left are called “Bodacious” and they are big and meaty!

The next section is planted with carrots. We have found the YaYa variety does well for us. Nothing to see yet!

The next section has green and yellow beans…yellow on the right.

And in the last section, 4 hills of zucchini. I know, we must be nuts to plant so much but last year we put a few plants in the beds where the asparagus is now. They just didn’t do well…and I spent all that energy last year anticipating a bumper crop so I was ready with many recipes to try. This year I’m really ready!

And, finally, my beloved Echinacea bed! I hope the bees are happy this year! I can hardly wait for the color!

So, that’s our garden this year. Each year we modify the choices of seeds, depending on how well it worked out the year before. Some things that we use only a little, like garlic…we buy from the local farmer’s markets. Other produce that I need a whole lot all at one time…I buy from the local Amish market because they usually have a lot at one time…like cucumbers when I make relish.

For the first time I tried to take a selfie up in the garden. My phone case with a cover makes it hard to handle with one hand. However, here’s proof that I actually planted some seeds in the garden today, although I’ll credit Bert with doing all the heavy lifting! Enjoy!

It seems awfully early in the spring to be talking about planting the garden. We’ve had hard frosts and even snow in May so we’re careful to protect the tender plants for a few more weeks. However, the grass is very green and Bert has had to cut it twice already! After the forsythia blooms, the next color I notice is the blooms on the Redbud trees. They are such a pretty pink but they don’t last long…just trying to get a decent picture is hard. But they do make me smile!

Here’s a close up of the flowers:

The Japanese Dogwood trees in the front yard are budding out. I’m looking forward to when this whole row of trees is in bloom!

Of course, the huge batch of onions in planters by the patio are doing well. They look crowded, but we’ll eat them as we thin them.

We saw our first hummingbird so we quickly bought our favorite begonia plants. The red flowers match the feeders and help attract the birds.

Kathy and Ben came to visit last weekend and brought us a bunch of asparagus roots from their property. The roots had spears that looked ready to eat…but we’ll leave them alone this year and give the roots time to get established. Since they are pretty vigorous roots, we may be able to get a meal or two out of them next year.

Bert set up the rain barrels last week and they are now full! It takes about 1/4″ of rain on the roof of the shop to fill the barrels. See the set up at https://marykisner.com/setting-up-the-rain-barrels/

Here is the big barrel up by the garden. If we plan it right, we can use rainwater all summer to water the garden. You can read about how Bert pumps the water from the rain barrels up to the large tank at https://marykisner.com/pumping-the-rain-barrels/

Our tomato plants are doing well under grow lights in the shop. Each day that isn’t too windy Bert sets the plants outside to harden them up. If it’s hot and sunny, he puts them in the shade by the shop so they don’t get sunburned.

Amazingly, Bert has been babying a tiny oak tree that sprouted from an acorn from the tree in our yard. That tree was also sprouted from an acorn that came from the Kisner hunting camp, so he’s pretty protective of the plant!

Up in the garden, I finally see the new growth in the row of lavender plants. I should have a nice crop of lavender to dry this year.

Here’s a close up of the new growth:

And of course, the Echinacea bed is going to town with new growth. The flowers really make me smile and make the bees happy!

So, that’s what’s happening on the first of May, 2025. Next week I hope to plant lettuce and radishes in the raised planters on the patio. In the meantime, we’ll be careful to protect the tomato plants…in the past, due to a late freeze in May, we’ve had to totally replace all the tomato plants because we planted too early. Live and learn! Mother Nature has an agenda of her own!

I hereby declare that our garden season has begun for 2025! I’d like to give you an overview of the upcoming season…sort of a baseline…so as the season goes on you’ll see progress. We are always hopeful at the beginning of the season!

So far, the planters by the patio are filled with 100+ onion plants. They seem to have weathered the below freezing temperatures just fine. We’ll thin them as we eat them so we’ll see how they do over the summer.

The planters along the side of the patio will have lettuce and radishes but it’s still a little early to start them.

Bert started the tomato plants in the shop under grow lights about two weeks ago. Today they are big enough to take pictures of them. We have three kinds: Bodacious…a large regular tomato; Super Sauce…a large Roma style; and Rain Drops…a large cherry-type tomato. They will soon be thinned and transplanted to larger pots. It’s probably 6 weeks before they’ll go in the ground.

Bodacious

Super Sauce

Rain Drop

In the planters off the patio, we’re hoping to plant asparagus and the Rain Drop tomatoes. Not sure if we’ll fill in with flowers.

As I walked up the hill to the fenced garden, I noticed the forsythia around the property still looks beautiful.

Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender (in the foreground) still looks silver green. So far nothing is happening there. We’ll have room for tomatoes, carrots, green and yellow beans and zucchini. We grow what we’ll eat and I’ll can, freeze or dehydrate the extra. I fill in with produce from the local farmer’s markets.

At the other end of the garden is our section of Echinacea…my favorite! It looks like nothing is happening, but when you look closely, tiny green shoots are starting!

As soon as overnight temperatures are above freezing, Bert will set up the rain barrels. So, watch for future updates as the season progresses. Enjoy!