Last summer, my little granddaughter came out to visit. I taught her about the edible flowers in my garden. One afternoon was spent gathering and chopping up edible flowers to be eaten in a fairy salad. Fairies don't eat lettuce, so we could only eat mainly flowers. Calendula and Borage with a rose petal or two. Maybe a few mint leaves thrown in. I tell you, they weren't bad. And we all lived happily ever after.

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It was a beautiful day today - and not raining - so I emptied my compost bin from the back yard into the garden beds in the side yard and did a little cleanup. These are my keyhole gardens where I put my compostable scraps into the "baskets" in the middle. I just have to build up the soil around them and then they are ready for planting spring crops. Despite the beds not being very built up yet, and the baskets only about a year old, I can see that they are composting down and that there are more worms in the beds. My sad little cabbage didn't do well though. Not enough nutrients, probably. I'll be better about it next time.

I just have a bottomless 5 gallon bucket for a compost bin in the garlic bed. I'll build a composting basket after the garlic is harvested. The bucket works pretty good. I keep it covered to keep the possums and rodents out. I suppose they can get into the baskets, but so far no problems. I think the feral cats keep the vermin at bay.

 This is what happens when you run out of Sluggo. The snails and slugs go crazy on your plants. So grateful for the rain, but the little slimesters went nuts! Some of the plants were on the small side, but I got quite a bit of harvest from them!

This is the Rosemary plant that almost died after I transplanted it. It loves living next to that compost basket!

Recap from an annoying gardening summer:
Last summer's vegetable garden was not a huge success - again - but it was much better than the summer before. Partly this was due to unforseen circumstance. I had made plans to build up the beds and co-garden with a neighbor, but then she had to bail. I had planted some things that she preferred - things like golden beets and tomatillos. Im not crazy about either of those, but of course those were the vegetables that did best. (of course). I have a freezer full of tomatillos and I guess I had better make some verde sauce with them or something.  I also planted fewer of the things I love - like pole beans and eggplants. Oh well. Lesson learned.

I outwitted the cucumber beetles with moderate success by making a raised bed behind my house and growing my winter squashes in there. I got some good Spaghetti and Hubbard squash by training them to grow up my fence. I tried some Cherokee Trail Of Tears Beans which did ok, but there were not really enough of them to do anything but munch on. Not bad though! I saved seeds and will grow more this year. My Kentucky Wonder pole beans did great and I got some good seed from those as well!.

There was more water available this last summer, so my  tomatoes were better and no two legged pests stole anything out of the garden proper, although Bambi found it and ate my Valerian flowers. I did get a decent harvest of Valerian though, and it has been keeping me suitably sedated though the beginning of this new political regime. Not sure what to do about Bambi though as  the two legged pests stole the chain link fence that used to keep the deer out. I am afraid of so many things this year. Did the humans really need to steal my fence as well as my country? I digress............

A few of the heirlooms got buggy and I was always fighting those off with neem oil and soap. I even found a tomato caterpillar for the first time and made a mad dash to drown him. Never saw another one after that. I never gor those beds raised much, but I did continue with the keyhole garden idea and I love, love, love it!

Plans for the new year - and hoping to actualize them this time............

Raise my beds to cover up the compost bins in the middle. (right now, they are exposed)

Plant some things from starts and not from seed. Things like onions. I dont have great luck with onions from seed. They start fine and then they fail. Maybe I will have a chance with bigger starts.

Make more raised beds in the back yard now that I know where the sun hits best back there (there used to be a huge shade tree).

Maybe only plant one tomatillo plant. I think that will do me just fine. Two at best.

I took all those flower petals and orange peels that Ive been drying and hoarding and made myself a big batch of fabulous potpourri! I'm feeling crafty these days, so now I'm ready to fill all those little sachet bags that Ive been cranking out! Just about everything came out of my garden or was something that Ive had on hand. If I don't put those orange peels in the compost bin, I dry them for this very thing!