Beyond the Bake with Fanny

 Welcome back to the garden. How is your garden growing? Join me as we visit the other half of Right Side Bed 4 and the delicious abundance of pole beans. As I noted in my previous post  July in the Garden: Right Side Bed 4 — Cucumbers, Beans, and the Cattle Panel Trellis, I over planted cucumbers and beans to ensure I had good germination. The beans did not disappoint! The beans planted here are called Rattlesnake and Purple pole beans. I knew what purple beans looked like but, Rattlesnake was a variety I had not heard of, so I was intrigued. What were rattlesnake beans going to look like and did they taste like regular green beans? If I remember correctly, I planted one of each variety of bean in three separate holes and had 100 percent germination. Like the cucumbers, I did not thin the plants because I wanted maximum harvest. At the time of planting, I was thinking about square foot gardening. Square foot gardening is a method to maximize planting and harvest in small spa...

Welcome back to my garden adventures. I hope you're growing and thriving right alongside me. For this post I am skipping over Right Side Beds 2 and 3 to jump into the fun chaos of Right Side Bed 4. As I noted in the post Garden Notes: What's Growing On , I started my cucumbers in ground and protected them from spring pests (mainly slugs) and cooler temperatures with milk containers with the bottom cut off. If you have struggled with pests eating your seedlings before they get a chance to grow or cooler temps like I experienced this year, I highly recommend adapting a version of this protection. After three attempts last year getting cucumbers to grow bigger than the first set of leaves before being eaten, I decide to try covering them. Instead of rushing to the store to spend additional money, I looked to items I had on hand to see what I could do to protect the plants and enable them to grow and thrive. The milk cartons were perfect. With the bottom cut off, I was able to plac...

Welcome back to the garden. I'm in growing zone 5b for southern Wisconsin, which hopefully helps you on your own gardening journey. As you might remember from my June notes (Garden notes: what's growing on), I included a picture of my garden layout; I'm sharing it again below for reference.  Let's jump into some July updates and see what's improved and where I am still having issues. Since I spend a fair amount of time in the garden, I was able to take notes based on the mental picture I have of the layout and what is planted where. On the Right Side Bed 1 I planted two 'Early Girl' variety tomatoes. They are finally starting to take off. We have had a decent amount of rain this year which has both helped and hindered the garden. Too little water means I have to go out and water everything; too much water and I worry about root rot or blight from wet leaves. The tomato plant that is on the most southwest corner of the garden space is the most prolific in ter...

  Welcome to my garden where I cultivate the herbs and vegetables that become the delicious items I sell at the market. Pictured is my full garden set up this year. I added 5 raised beds to my set up and questioning my life choices on some of these additions due to added cost and time of buying soil or making a custom blend.  This post is a combination of observations and thoughts behind what is working and what isn't. To keep my notes precise and to track how factors like sun exposure, wind, and drainage affect each plant, I've organized my garden space, and my observations, by compass direction and specific bed numbers. When you're looking at the garden from the north (facing south) in the layout picture below, the sun rises on the left (East) and sets on the right (West). This system allows me to pinpoint what's thriving where, and what might be struggling due to specific conditions. The new raised beds added this year are highlighted below (circled and with an arrow...

When I first started my business, I wanted my focus to be on baked goods. Specifically, I wanted to focus on sweet treats - cookies, brownies, simple cakes (because I loathed decorating). Delusions of grandeur - the first event I ever did I baked so much! The event was widely known and extremely popular. However... little did I know, the event attendance had been experiencing a decline in visitors. I was left holding a lot of product unsold and feeling defeated. Sales were that bad. I spent so much time on ingredients, packaging, and baking and suffered a major financial loss due to the low support of a newbie. Determined to salvage something from the venture, I showed up at another event the very next day in the hopes of gaining a little more off of this venture. While I didn't generate the income I was expecting from this second event, I realized something. It was then I realized a crucial business lesson: I couldn't just wait for opportunities to come to me; I had to activel...