Step 2 Gardening in Spring

SO another nice day here in the southern Ozarks, and I finished doing my spring prep on one and a half of my beds (the short ones).  I also did some planting in them too.

This bed was done with the hay from the goat pen like the pea bed was and also the composted saw dust.   Fun thing about that composted saw dust though is we've been mixing in chicken manure and wood ash into it for a few weeks and it's made it a bit more "airy".  The foreground half of that bed is planted with onions (yellow) and the back half is lettuce (red romaine).

The bed is the furthest "back" one we have, and the plan is when the lettuce is done I will be putting my zucchini in there.  I planted the onions close together so they could give us some small green onions.

This is the other portion of the bed:

This is my spinach that I [planted.  I had forgotten I had gotten spinach seeds!  I was a nice suprise when I found them getting my lettuce seeds out.  I am hoping they grow well.  Everything from the stick to the right is spinach.

Also one more thing:

This is going to be my herb garden as where I stood to take this pic is where our outdoor kitchen will be built.  I am planning on having Silver "box" the buckets so that they look better.  This way the herbs don't escape or take over my whole herb garden (love mints don't you?).

That's it for now.. we're getting ready to have a cook out in this nice weather!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

March is almost halfway over!

Well it is...
 I have managed to do a tiny amount of work outside today, starting with some clean up from wind blown trash. After that me and Silver went across the road for a bucket of pond water and were pleasantly surprised to see a frog swimming in the neighbor's pond already. Considering we have at least one more near freezing night coming up it was very nice to see.
 We did get the water for our pond so as to add the microbes and the diatoms that appear locally from a healthy pond. I haven't dug up cat tail roots as yet though. It might not happen till sometime next week. I haven't even seen shoots coming up yet in that pond.
   I then went to start moving the mountain of mud/clay from around the pond. Big problem with this is. Both our wheel barrows are minus a wheel, and on the one we cannot remove the old one so we can't replace it. The other .. well we can't seem to find a replacement for it.
   So I am moving them by the 5 gallon bucketful. So the second issue is where to put the stuff. Well I do kinda have one place that does need some dirt. That would be where we put the ash from the trash burning, if I cover it with the dirt I can put grass over it and it'll slowly decompose. As it's in a dedicated place it won't interfere with anything else we are doing. I have mentioned this before also.. trash has to be gotten rid of some how.. I'd rather have to deal with my trash that can't be composted rather than send it off to a miles high landfill. I am tech composting this “stuff” but it takes a bit more to do and I have no plans on using the leavings after the fact.
 After I got worn out from the dirt moving I decided to attempt to do some out door plantings. I have planted some short carrots and some kale in the box that I picked up for free. It now has “black gold” in it, the soil is perfect; which is why I planted the carrots in it. At the end of the season this year I will have to find a good home for the dirt in it.
  Now I also planted in two of the cut out used tires I set up last year. The soil in these while better than just the ground is here still needs a tad bit of work so I went over to the old compost site and dug out what I could of the left overs that were usable. There is a bit of paper and sticks still in it, but it's going down.    
     I took that which filled a 5 gallon bucket about ½ way, and what was left of the starting mix and some wet ashes and added that to the soil in the tires. I did notice when I was mixing it in that there are more worms in those tires than I thought there would be. So the tire closest to the door got some of what was left of my Red Fire Lettuce. It is a red leaf lettuce that we do enjoy. I only planted that in there as I am going to attempt to grow the bushel gourds in that tire this year as I have still to get them to grow for me at all. Since the luffas liked the soil so much it may be possible that the bushels will too. The second tire got mini Pak Choy and edible Chrysanthemum. Done half on one side half on the other. I am really hoping they both do well there.

 I do have some “bad” news.. I'm not getting my apple trees and it's my own fault. I didn't notice on the receipt (especially since according to our transactions in our account it already went through) that payment won't be billed till they send it. So I had to cancel them, my only issue there is the person on the other end of the line got very pissy once they found out I was canceling the order. Shrugs Go figure, guess they don't like dealing with people who always have money. If I had noticed that on the receipt the money would have been there.
   Well need to go for now as I have dishes.. then I have to go bathe this mud off me as the girls have a concert tonight.    
  
 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Today's Harvest

I have a few harvested items to show everyone today:
  First up is what we had for breakfast.  About a pound of Lambs Quarters, 3 squash flowers, some kale, and an onion.  This was all washed and I chopped up the onion, kale and squash flowers.  Had one of the kids run out and get me some fresh basil which got chopped too.

 I start with some sunflower oil (gods I LOVE this stuff) and I browned the onion then the rest goes into the pan and I stir fry them a couple minutes till they are fully wilted and a little dark.  I use a blueberry pomegranate dressing I found about 1/2 a cup while the pan is still on and I let it steam in the dressing for about a minute.  It made about 2 small servings of some wonderful greens.

 Here is something funny, at least to me.  I saw on listia.com the other day someone selling "organic Lambs Quarters" seeds.  I laughed at the idea, seeing as how my Lamb's Quarter is organic as it is growing in my garden... but I defiantly didn't put it there.  It came up on it's own, any place you "disturb" soil you will see Lambs Quarters growing.  If you want to eat them only go for the smallest leaves.  I tend to just take the tops off, and they will branch off; A LOT!  So don't worry about how much of the tops you remove.  It will keep growing.
  My lettuce is still growing, and I harvested a colanderful of them.  This is going to be lunch today, probably with some of our left over snow peas that are in the fridge; and some of the carrots from the farmer's market.

 While out I noticed my beans have tons of flowers on them. I think they are also the reason that the lettuce is still growing good as the beans are shading the lettuce.  I also picked some day lily buds, I think I got four of them; as they seem to go from no where near opening to open in a day.  They are suppose to be good as soup and stew thickeners, and because we don't have the solar dryer as yet I am freezing them.

 I have also noticed that the elderberry flowers have not yet opened, I am sooo waiting for those to open.  It seems all of my tomatoes are doing well in their new homes, and growing like... well.. like Lambs Quarters (most people would say weed).  I'm going to have to come up with supports for them soon I think.  They companion's the dill plants are also taking over, which is good.  Maybe I'll try to make Silver and the girls some pickles using the lemon cucumbers.  Hey, it might work once they produce.     That is one pint of black berries.  Yes, we are officially into the black berry picking season.  I expect we will get quite a few blackberries this year from the season if I got a pint this morning.  I also should be able to make a straight blueberry jam too as we seem to now have tons of wild blueberries now here.  My one plant has one berry on it, while the wild ones are loaded.

   I am going to hold off on making jams until we start getting rose hips from the wild roses.  Just so I can add the extra vitamin C to the batches.  Boy, it should be one heck of a day when I start doing my jams this year.  If my melons all grow and produce I should have quite a few of the cantulope jam too.  You know I was not sure if I'd like it, but I found I love it!  I will post the recipe when I make it.  I'm hoping to get another case of two of peaches again so we can, can some and try out the bourbon peach jam I found.

   I wonder if wintergreen berries would be good in any of it... I will have to find out.

 We got a piece of ply wood for the baker's rack, and now we are in the process of painting the wood then it'll go in the house... somewhere.  We are thinking the shelf under the TV will need to come out for the rack to come in.  Then we will be putting the computer on it for now.  The tomato by the chickens has some tomatoes on it, but they are still green so we'll see when they are done.  I think it might wind up being a paste tomato, but I'm not to sure.

 The kids are going to another "vacation bible school" this week, this one at my son's church.  So all this week we don't have to feed them dinner.  The girls are also going to be in the reading program at the library starting wednsday.  with next monday being a special evening event involving the "Hunger Games", the first prize is a boxed set of the books (hardbound).  Maybe one of the kids will win it.

 Well, I need to get back to my work; I got to plant some free irises a little while ago.

   Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Long Sunday Afternoon

Well at least it seems to be long, the kids' last day of school is tomorrow.  They get out of school at 1pm and they should be home sometime between 2 and 3pm based on how the bus service works around here.  They will be out of school till August 15th.  The girls get to spend this week at vacation bible school for this week as well.  Which means we'll have a break from the girls in the evenings then.

Our new help is arriving by bus in Lebanon on Wed afternoon, and we will be picking him up from the drop spot.  I hope his trip here goes well, he leaves tomorrow afternoon, and  said will be changing buses 3 times.

I picked a nice bunch of lettuce this morning, and we had a lovely salad with the lettuce, carrots, and bacon.  Gotta have some bacon right?  One of my bushel gourds has sprouted in the peat pot and 2 of the luffa gourds have.  I really hope they both do well, Tink has also offered to send along some long necked gourd starts; which I will love.  Course I am going to have to find places for everything to dry out, I'm sure we'll figure something out.

I managed to get the weed whacker out to the garden spot yesterday, as Silver fixed one of the old extension cords so we could use it again.  So at least I don't have to walk through tall grass to get in to the garden.

Tomorrow is house cleaning day due to our new resident arriving.  I am also planning on cleaning the pantry as we go shopping on Tuesday, and I want to make sure we have room in it.  Now that we're going to have double the coffee drinkers in the house I am going to be getting 2 cans of it.  We're also going to be picking up my son's learner's permit while we are out Tuesday.  So everyone locally watch the roads in case you see our van barreling down the road at you.

That's it for now,

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...