Resurrection; bringing the dead back to life May 30, 2011

Resurrection; bringing the dead back to life

May 30, 2011 at 6:56 pm

Well folks as you can see I haven’t been too active here for a long time. I’m hoping to change all that now. At the moment the garden is quite dead but I am working on bringing it back to life. Just got side tracked down a byway on life’s hiway.
So here is what a section of the back yard looked like before:




And then after I did 15 minutes of work. Yes in just 15 minutes I picked up a bag of trash and pulled quite a big pile of weeds.




I’m going to try and work at least 15 minutes in the garden every day. I’m missing having my hands in the dirt.

It’s a Jungle Out There September 6, 2009

It’s a Jungle Out There

September 6, 2009 at 3:48 pm

Well, here’s a few pics from around the yard to catch up since I missed so much of August.
Heavenly Blue morning glories cover an arch by the front gate.
The small sunflowers are still blooming. They attract a lot of butterflies and bees of all kinds.
One of the surviving Heritage raspberries has put on a few fruits.
The Moon & Stars watermelon is going strong, tho no fruit yet.
Elephant Ears & Canna lily
The Jicama are going strong, just hope they are making nice big roots!
Can’t hardly walk beside the house for all the plants out there.
Delicata squash almost ready to pick.
The eggplants in pots on the patio are doing very well.
A couple of Rio Grande pepper plants loaded with fruit.
The back garden. The two empy beds in the middle are for carrots and parsnips.
Kentucky Wonder green beans cover a 5′ wire cage. So far it’s been so hot they haven’t set any beans, but I found one yesterday so we should have lots of them soon.
Apache Purple pod beans cover part of the greenhouse. They are just beginning to bloom.
Cucumbers & beans. I don’t think we’ll get many more cukes tho, they are severly infested with aphids. I think I should probably just pull them out.
Four o’clocks bloom by the front gate.
16 baby artichoke plants in their pots. Just not sure where I’m going to plant them!
The 11′ Lima beans, which still have yeilded no beans.

Leave a Comment

Tally HO!

September 5, 2009 at 4:05 pm (corn, cucumber, food, freedom, gardening, grow your own food, self sufficiency) · Edit

All right, I’ve gotten a bit behind posting here, just soooo much going on in Aug! The grand kids went back to school and so did their mom, so we have children 7 days a week now. But the numbers are in for August; 100 eggs and 79.5 pounds of produce.
Heavenly Blue morning glories cover part of the greenhouse. You can just see one of the Kabocha squash in the leaves at the lower left.
Here  you can see that corner of the greenhouse on the right, then the baby corn, the row of paste tomatoes and on the left some cucumbers and an apple tree still in it’s pot.
Yesterday and again today it is raining. Actually when I took this pic through the front door it was also hailing. We got .4″ of rain yesterday and it is very dark and rainy again today. We were going to go to the lizard walk at the arboretum today, but don’t think that is going to happen. This rain looks like it might hang out all day. It is 9 AM and it is as dark outside as if the sun were nearly down! And I’m loving it and so it the garden.

BUSY WEEKEND May 28, 2009

BUSY WEEKEND

May 28, 2009 at 1:12 pm

I was working on this posting yesterday but it seems to have disappeared. Ah well, the wonders of the computer age.
Here is the area where the chickens have been for a few months now. Finally moved them.
Here you can see the new beds beginning to take shape along with the paths.
Three little farmer girls thresh the wheat,
The younger two pooped out pretty quick, but Miracle persevered.
Here Miracle and Harmony winnow the wheat in front of a small fan. The nice breeze we had earlier of course died as soon as we were ready for this part.

Things are Growing On May 23, 2009

Things are Growing On

May 23, 2009 at 3:08 pm

The heat wave has been broken by unusually cool and cloudy weather and even some rain. The garden is loving it.
Miracle’s sunflower has really grown the last 2 weeks. Compare this pic with the one from May 11th
One of my little plant nurseries. These are different kinds of beans & corn sprouting in 2″ soil blocks. I have to keep them covered with a row cover to keep the birds from eating them. The 3 yr old wants to know why I put the plants to bed & cover them with a blanket.
Looking through the arch. The poppies are almost done along the fence and will be replaced by mixed sunflowers.
The hairy vetch [purple flowers] is almost as tall as the dwarf peach tree.
The buckwheat is growing fast, it is even beginning to flower.
The tub, in the back, Kabocha squash, in front a canna and some daylillies sprouting.
Green tomatoes!
A Trombocino squash starts to take off. It’s growing in a 19 gallon tub.
Potted potatoes are blooming.
More seedlings, top row some herb cuttings and some sorrel. On the bottom shelf are the basil plants that have overwintered in the house.
Basella or Malabar spinach seedlings.
New Zealand spinach seedlings.
Popping sorghum seedlings in the kitchen window. I had to put them in  the house to keep the birds from pulling them up, but now there is a mouse munching on them!
Also in the kitchen window, sweet potatoe cuttings rooting in a jar, lima beans sprouting in pots. The green in the background are the tomatoe plants out on the patio.

but it’s a Dry Heat May 11, 2009

but it’s a Dry Heat

May 11, 2009 at 4:56 am

It has been about 90 in the shade the last few days, so the things that like cool weather are becoming crispy critters but the summer crops are taking off. The Little Marvel peas didn’t make it past the first hot days a couple of weeks ago and The Dwarf Grey Sugar peas were _very_ unhappy. So we fed the Marvel plants to the rabbits and let the sugar peas set as many more pods as they would to save for seed. The Bleushokkers have been very different sorts of peas. They are a purple shelling pea that were traditionally grown in Europe for soup. I had read that they could be eaten pod and all when small and flat. They were tender at that stage, but not sweet like other peas and actually didn’t taste very pea-like.  So I tried them as raw shelled peas. They were actually a little bitter. Today I had some of them cooked, what a surprise. They went from being a bit bitter to sweet and starchy. Very much the sort you might make into soup. So half the row goes for seed saving & half for eating for as long as they’ll last.  The green shellers, Maxi Golt, were ok, but no thrill so I didn’t plan to save seed from them. They hadn’t made any new flowers in a week so I pulled them up and fed them to the rabbits. All the Sugar Snaps are going strong, but I can see the signs of heat stress. The purple snaps, Sweet Magnolia are also still doing well. Again, half the row to eat and half for seed for next year so I can plant a bigger area.
The potted potatoes have also been drooping in the heat, but since they were in pots I was able to move them where they will get a little shade in the afternoon.  So far the tomatoes on the patio seem to be doing well, but the Super Italian paste and the Polish Linquisa have started dropping blossoms.  I found a peice of shade cloth to put over one patch, but really need some more for the rest of them. Tomato pollen dies when it gets to be about 90 degrees so the flower falls off instead of setting fruit. Hopefully a little shade in the middle of the day will help keep them a little cooler.
Different kinds of beans are sprouting up all the squash and melons are doing well. I’m just trying not to think about my next water bill.
Miracle with her sunflower plant in my back garden. The bed on the left is the greenhouse with snap peas. The one directly behind her was planted last fall with carrots, turnips, beets and purple broccoli. The only thing left are the beets which will come out soon so we can plant the baby corn. The trellises in the background aremore peas.

Crazy Weather April 18, 2009

crazy weather

April 18, 2009 at 1:48 pm

What’s up with the weather? I mean one morning it’s 50 degrees & the next morning it’s 32! And I found out the hard way that my patio is about 10 degrees warmer than my garden. Lost some tomatoe plants that were in the ground, but the ones still out on the patio are thriving and full of blossoms.

I dig my dinner april 7, 2009

I dig my dinner

April 7, 2009 at 2:27 pm 

Like I said I’ve joined up with Freedom Gardeners everywhere in the 1 million pound harvest challenge. Here’s a great link for you:

  I can’t seem to make the link work with the picture so go to www.freedomgardens.org for more info. Growing your own food is easy. Plants and seeds _want_ to grow, that is what they are designed to do. You just have to give them the right conditions to let them do their best.  Most veggies like full sun and rich fertile soil.

If your soil isn’t so great you can make it better. Adding manure, compost and organic fertilizers will help bring poor soils into better condition for plants. Properly managed gardens just get better and better every year. So if not everything does well the first year keep on trying. Many factors affect plant growth, soil and air temperature, water and weather are also big factors besides soil fertility. Keep a garden journal where you write down what you planted and where and make note of how it does. If it doesn’t do well try and figure out why. Maybe you planted too early or too late or that spot doesn’t get enough water or that’s where it floods when it rains. All of these can affect plant growth. Then adjust for the next year.

Even experienced gardeners have plants that don’t grow as well as others. Figuring out why and correcting it is part of the learning curve. However, every year there is always something that does really well and yields bumper crops so rarely is there a total failure. Happy growing!

Tally HO! April 3, 2009

Tally HO!

April 3, 2009 at 3:29 am 

I have joined up for Million Pound challenge, that is growing a million pounds of produce collectively, see www.freedomgardens.org for more information. Marche’s tally was 17.859 pounds of veggies, mostly mache, claytonia, kale, chard, chickweed, with a few carrots, beets and peas. Also 126 chicken eggs. whew, that’s a lot of eggs!

Check out these little baby plums, mmm can’t wait for them to get big and juicy!

who says veggies aren’t beautiful?! The pea flowers on the left are Dwarf Grey Sugar peas [like the flat pea pods in Chinese food] and the ones on the right are Blueshokkers, an heirloom blue/purple shelling pea, usually dried and used for soup I understand. This is my first time growing the shellers, so we’ll see!

Under the lights, in 3/4″ soil blocks are eggplant and pepper seedlings. The group of eggplant seedlings in the back look like they have all germinated and are ready to move up into 2″ soil blocks. Soil blocks are pretty cool, you use a little tool to scoop up a peat & compost mix and press it into blocks, complete with indention in the top to take seeds. The 2″ blocks can be made with a hole that just takes the 3/4″ block, so ‘potting on’ is really easy, with no shock to the little plant.

Here are some of those 70 some tomato plants that have been transplanted to larger pots and recycled containers. Yes, there are a couple of old ice chests and some plastic storage boxes that I’ve made into self watering containers as an experiment. Since we only get 12-18 inches of rain a year, and have been in a long term drought, anything to save water is good.