The weather has been cooperative so we made a huge amount of progress in the garden this week! Everything has been growing like crazy and most of the fruits are blooming which makes me very excited! My gigantic hydrangeas are almost all the way leafed out and there are the beginnings of blossoms on them and I can’t wait for them to be in full bloom.  This weekend I tried to go to the plant sale to buy a ground cherry for our daughter but our son fell asleep while I was trying to find parking so I ended up just heading home and moving a bunch of plants out of our vegetable garden. Hopefully our mother-in-law will pull through and get us one from her friend because we tried finding them at Home Depot where we saw them last weekend and they were out.  Maybe our daughter won’t notice if we don’t have them this year since we have so much else going on in the garden.

I spent some time moving smaller plants around in the front bed.  I moved two succulents closer to the street in preparation for the fence going in and transplanted two flowers from the vegetable bed.  I still have a couple of plants to move in this bed to make room for the fence but I don’t know where to put them yet.  I might dig up some of the grass along the gravel strip and put them there but I haven’t decided.

I couldn’t really get a good before picture of the vegetable bed and show all of the plants since the one is gigantic, but I removed another butterfly bush (gave it to my mom) and shuffled the large bush and two white butterfly bushes down to the south side hill where friends dug up other plants last week.  The move will be temporary since I will be eventually redoing the side yard but I don’t know exactly what to do with them yet so they will be there for at least a year, probably closer to two or three before they are moved again.

We also started to put our pest control fence in around the vegetable bed. We bought it at Home Depot and buried it a little bit around the edges just in case.

My husband tackled the big bush. It was pretty deep in there and had a huge root ball.  I moved it to a dubious spot since the soil on the hill seems to be very shallow, much shallower than where we took the bush from.  We have several of these bushes and they are pretty but they need to be trimmed back every month or so otherwise they take up way too much space.  I just don’t have that sort of time with little kids right now so I am trying to pass them along to other people.

It got dark before I could take a really good after picture but basically there is a gigantic hole where the bush was removed that we will be filling in at some point in the next week or so.  I am going to plant a bean house in that corner for the kids to play in while I garden.  They will love it!

While I was out and about in the garden I took some pictures of what our plants are doing. All of the fruit trees, bushes and plants are blooming and our outdoor seed starts are doing well. Now that the vegetable bed is cleared out I am going to try to get everything into the ground this week and keep it protected from pests. Phew.

I am particularly pleased with our lettuce starts and strawberry tower.  Most of the strawberry plants are growing and blooming and they will be fun for the kids to pick when they are ripe.

Our one potted tomato is doing well and has grown quite a bit.  I need to get the other two into pots this week and plant our remaining hardened off seed starts.  I still don’t know where to put the Hula berries but I need to decide this week.

Here are some of the flowers coming up along our walkway and my daughter’s fairy garden.  Some of her flowers are past their prime but her hens and chicks are starting to spread out a bit.  This pot is her responsibility and she loves to water it and take care of it.  I may show her how to pinch back the dead flowers this week but I have to do it when our son is occupied so he doesn’t run over there on his own and “help”.

The remaining strawberries I planted on the slope are very healthy and growing super fast.

Our chocolate mint plant is spreading like a weed.  We thought we had killed it last winter but it resprouted this spring and is doing it’s job of soil control on the slope opposite the strawberries.

We had a great time working in the yard this week! Hopefully by next week all of our vegetables will be in the ground and I will be able to get to the badly needed mulching and pruning!

What is going on in your garden this week?

We recently had to switch to a dairy-free lifestyle in an effort to see if our younger kids have a sensitivity that is causing them some serious sinus problems.  I was having a hard time finding granola bars for our kids that were dairy free, mostly nut free and not expensive. We love to cook as much as we can from scratch so I tried to look up recipes.  I could not find any that would work for our family’s particular needs so I decided to try and make them on my own.  Children were consulted and they love peanuts and rice krispies so I used those as our base.

We buy 90% of our groceries from Costco as you can see. I bought the “Crisp Rice” at Winco and if you need to be gluten free this is where you could substitute gluten-free Rice Krispies and make the granola bars gluten-free. We are not super gluten sensitive so I did not worry about it.

I had my three year old dump all of the ingredients into a bowl and stir. It was a little sticky so I helped her a bit.

Next I pressed the granola bars into the pan using a regular spoon and put them into the oven for 20 min at 350 degrees.  Your oven temperature may be different or you may want them chewier so check them after 15 minutes.

After baking I melted some chocolate chips and spread them on the top. Be careful if you use something with a handle since it could get very hot in the microwave.

I let the whole thing set a bit and my kids ate them pretty much over night so I would say they are a hit!  Next time I might try adding some raisins and cinnamon or even dried apples and see how they turn out.

Happy cooking!

Easy Dairy-free Peanut Butter Granola Bars

April 29, 2017

Servings: 12

Prep: 10 min

Cook: 20 min

Total: 30 min

Difficulty: Easy

Print This

Dairy/Gluten-free granola bars for the kids

By: Oscoey

Ingredients

• 2 cups Rice Cereal
• 3/4 cup Peanuts
• 1/4 cup Honey
• 1/2 cup Peanut Butter
• 1 cup chocolate chips (dairy-free)

Directions

• Step 1 Spray an 8×8 baking dish with cooking spray.
• Step 2 Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Step 3 Put Rice Krispies, peanuts, honey and peanut butter into a bowl and stir.
• Step 4 Press your mixture into the baking dish and even out.
• Step 5 Bake granola bars for 15-20 min until they are firm.
• Step 6 Allow to cool for a couple of hours.
• Step 7 Microwave 1 cup chocolate chips in a microwave safe dish for 60 seconds. Stir and microwave them for an additional 30 seconds if they are not melty.
• Step 8 Spread your chocolate chips over the granola bars and enjoy!

To say the north side of my house was a hot mess is an understatement.  The previous owners planted a bunch of bushes and some ivy along the property line and I honestly barely did any gardening back there last year so the weeds were out of control.  I spent the entire gardening season trying to cut back the tremendous growth on all of my bushes in the front and south side yards.  I am talking about chopping off 2-3 feet of growth in the spring and late summer on the same plants. It was crazy.  Plus some sort of weed fairy blessed our yard with many, many weeds in all of the areas that were completely bare when we moved in so I spent many many hours hoeing and hand pulling weeds.  My son was a baby last year and he hated the sun his first summer so my weeding time was pretty limited to begin with.  Thankfully he has gotten over it and now loves to be outdoors.

I am still having a hard time getting over to the north side to garden because there is no fence over there and the ravine is just too close for comfort with little kids that like to run off and hide.  I finally got around to cutting back the gigantic sword fern that is on our rock wall at the corner of the house and I found some not so fun things going on with our retaining wall.

Sword ferns need to be cut back in Late March/Early April although some of the reading I have been doing has said you don’t need to cut them back every year but they look much nicer without the dead ferns hanging around. Some resources say not to cut them back at all or just to cut the old dead fronds out but since I didn’t cut anything off of them last year they were getting a little out of control so I cut them back all the way this year.  It would be pretty difficult to cut just the dead fronds out after new growth occurs so it is best to do it during that magic moment right before the new growth pops up. Sword ferns are native to the Pacific Northwest so I am not doing any other care to them besides the occasional watering in the summer. The little curly brown things are the new growth on this fern in the picture below. The new growth looks kind of like caterpillars.

I finally got all of the fern cut back and I realized that several of the concrete blocks along the house are askew.  The soil is pretty moist and I am pretty sure our gutter issues this past winter have caused the blocks to shift a bit.  The base of the fern is actually growing over the side of a block that is completely not in the right position and the weight of the fern is causing it to shift further.

Some of the blocks along the wall are very crooked and slope downward with no soil behind them.

I was pretty upset to see this since we are supposed to be installing a fence along the top of this wall and now we have to wait until we get a landscaper out to see if we can put a better retaining wall in and fix some of the hillside issues.  The soil near the downspout is pretty loose and if they put fence posts in I am afraid the posts will shift in the next storm.

For now I am continuing to clean up the weeds and hopefully this weekend I can work on the ivy covering the pathway.  We are looking for a landscaper to help with the wall and putting our fence on hold until we figure it out.

What kind of surprises have you found while gardening?

Sword Fern Care Resources:

San Francisco Gate

Gardening Know How

NW Plants