Looks like a short work week

Seems we're going to have rain all week starting tomorrow, which means no mixing dirt for plants as it's to hard to do when the dirt is mud.  So we've been working our butts off this morning trying to get as much as we can done, thankfully it has been cool out today.

Hey Dogwood season is in full bloom:

I was worried she wouldn't bloom this year as she didn't last year, but see.  She's putting a good show on this year for us.

So today's work started with a tomato in a bucket, which if you haven't heard of them is you grow a tomato in the bottom of a 5 gallon pail hanging from something so the air can flow around it good and no need to stake.

We picked up a "patio" cherry tomato yesterday:

It's very dense in growth and has some flowers on it already, I am hoping it'll be good for snacking tomatoes for Silver and the girls so I can can the garden ones.  So for starters you need a 5 gallon bucket with lid, you flip it over and cut a hole in the bottom:

So you do need to know that if you are doing a started plant that is firmly rooted (like in a peat pot) you make the hole smaller than the diameter of the whole pot.  Just big enough to fit the plant threw.

You do need to be careful when feeding the plant threw the hole to make sure you don't yank too hard on it.  Oh, we are doing this across two sawhorses so we can stand the bucket up for filling without hurting the plant in the process.

The soil you fill the bucket with should be fairly "airy" so it won't turn into a rock over the growing season.  Which would not be good for the plant:

This soil is half topsoil and half sawdust which will also retain water in dry spells here.  Now once Silver filled the bucket past the bottom of the peat pot I dug out some egg shells to crush in and he got some wood ash and sprinkled it over it.

So after that we filled it the rest of the way (eggshells are for calcium to prevent blossom end rot) to the very brim so that if turned over onto it's lid (don't for get to put the lid on) it's not shifted any.  Now if you have a plant that was in a say "six pack" or doing it from seed you'll need to leave it inverted until it is rooted well enough it won't fall out when you turn it over again.  We left our's inverted while we figured out how (as in with what) we were going to hang it.

We're hanging it from the outdoor kitchen and we have no eye bolts nor do we have any strong hanging brackets right now.  However, we do have a bunch of nylon belts with the double metal pieces that is the buckle.  Effectively strapping so we strapped it to one of the 2X4's on the outdoor kitchen.

That location should get enough sunlight for it to grow well.  It is now done aside from it growing, make sure the lid is no longer attached as that is how you water the plant.   I am thinking of sprinkling moss rose seeds over the top of the bucket as they do trail and it should be pretty as well.

..hmm this is turning out to be a long post.  But oh well...

My garden is moving along nicely.  I had a Oh my Gods moment over the weekend as my tomato seedlings started drooping and were getting burnt by their light.  So they went out into their bed.

They did get a bit of a hair cut though as they had gotten leggy and I needed to bury most of the stems, good for more roots so they should grow very well.  though I do see after planting (only half a bed full) why I'd want 25 for my size family.  ..and here I only had twelve to start with.  The bell peppers went into the ground too because for some reason they were bending over, I never experienced that in peppers before so i rushed them out too.


I do wish they were bigger before planting them but It happens.

When we got the cherry tomato I picked up a couple more plants that I wanted as well, first up is an egg plant.  I love eating these but I don't know enough to grow it from seed as yet nor grow more than one plant in case it doesn't do well.  It is a Black Beauty:

This was the largest and best looking plant they had and it had some bad leaves on it that I am hoping will be ok as it grows.  We also picked up a mammoth jalapeno in the hopes we can have stuffed deep fried peppers again.  However last time I grew these they were hotter than normal jalapenos.  It is planted FAR from my bell peppers so no cross pollination in my herb garden.

I felt since we had a red colored tub it'd be perfect for a hot pepper to be planted in.  The last plant we picked up is an herb that I swear I will keep in a pot in the house this winter so I don't need to buy a fourth one.  A new Rosemary plant:

I had heard it was possible to grow them outside and they'd survive winter's here, yeah it didn't last... TWICE.  So we bought another one and it's staying potted and when we get a green house it'll prob spend the winter in there.  So aside from us trying to get the rest of the beds done up and the last two planting tires filled the hard garden work is almost done.  Then we'll move onto the "add to the soil as it grows" time.  Then the "stuff" we'll pile onto the beds this fall.  I have bean plantings in my future and cantaloupe once my last two tires are done.  If my squashes don't come up by May first I will replant them.  I was trying to see how early I could honestly plant since average last frost here is April 15th.

As for that tomato bucket please note the buckets are HEAVY with all that soil in them so be careful hanging them when you do.  I think I pulled some odd muscles when I lifted it, man did that hurt!  We got it in place though and it's not budging until late fall.  I do know that Silver had a couple of those before I moved in with him in NY, they sat on his porch all summer long and produced so many that no one could finish them all and they were throwing some out.  I'm hoping it does as just a good of a job.

How you aren't in bad storms or flooding right now.

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

After the Rains

We survived all the storms moving through the area.. though I am wondering if we shouldn't call Noah in with his boat... grins

Well I know I haven't posted in a while... using the Internet is just so irritating to me right now. Not in a “I don't know how to use it” way. More like.. I don't see the point to being online unless I have good reason. It's weird.. but it's me.

I am going to keep my blog going I just seem to need a bit more motivation to do it right now.

Bit of news, kids will be going on their trip next week sometime on Saturday unless my grandmother winds up ill. My mother is spending this week caring for her then she'll pick the kids up on her way back home. We're picking them up and getting her washer and dryer as well. One long week no kids though! That is going to be sooo nice.

Garden...

Well... I saved all those Tiger's Eye beans to grow as no one sells them right now. They all sprouted... then... our “tame” buck and his buddies came by and mowed 80% of therm down. Sighs I guess I'll be growing them just for seed this year again.

My grape is finally grasping onto our grip trellis, I'm going to have to work out how to prune it with how our trellis is. I'm hoping the cucumbers will get big enough to start up the trellis this week. Two of the three types of gourds have sprouted, and my sunflowers are spotty. I have all my squash plants growing, and my cabbage family plants as well as my onions are HUGE this year. The cabbages themselves have not started heading yet, but they are twice the size they were last year at this time. The onion stems are about ½ an inch... those are growing in the buckets from last years tomatoes. Speaking of tomatoes... My three little tomato plants are turning into trees out there. They also have tons of flowers on them.

We have been harvesting kale and lettuce every other day, while the kids are gone I should be able to daily. The herbs are doing very well this year as well.. also the one eggplant we have seems to be growing. Our strawberries are looking good, we have not picked any yet as Silver keeps saying they aren't ripe yet. Shrugs I am use to store bought ones which are sold under ripe. The elderberry.. TREES are taking over, they should flower this year and if so there will be tons of them.

I got to try an interesting jelly at the farmer's market yesterday it's white zinfindel. Yes you heard me.. as in the wine. It is soo yummy! Goes really well with banana bread too!

That's it for now.

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

Happy Monday!

 So here I am with what now seems to be a once a week update of sorts.

I started my plants yesterday I filled 2 trays so far, and I'm thinking of in a month or so starting cukes and squashes to see if they grow better from starts. I discovered that I did not use up all the sugar cane seeds I got from Listia so I put six into the tray to see if I can get them from starting in the house. I'm using a “all weather” birding journal to keep tabs on this year's plants and with what I planted yesterday I have nearly filled all the lined pages.

Silver has pointed out that I probably should wet the starting mix before I put it into the “cells” so I don't have to water under them to avoid losing my seeds. ...hindsight... I defiantly think I'll be doing that next time.

I am hoping for 100% on my plants, but who really knows right? I have it set for 12 of each of the two types of tomatoes that I want to grow. I did 6 sweet peppers 2 of each of the ones I have and 6 hot peppers 3 of two of the multitude I have of those. I have some onions planted as well as cabbage, mini Bak Choi, edible chrysanthemums, nastrums, Kale, and a variety of herbs. I am hoping this time I get the lemon grass to grow good.

We have gone and found out how much a track hoe (wow it really is a “track hoe” ) would cost from a Saturday to Monday. It would be $350, and that's considering that Sunday is given as a freebie. Just need a nice weekend and the money and we can get the digging we need done. Oh, that price includes the trailer to bring it home.

We didn't get the package of insulation that I wanted to try to make the papercrete to try out, so we'll have to make an extra trip before we can buy supplies just to try it out. As I'd rather buy in large quantities only once and have it all delivered. We did discover that we are paying about ½ price when we buy the rebar in 20ft lengths, it's just a matter of getting it home after the fact. Which again would be best to include in a delivery option.

We did find out during the last rain storm that the area the house is going does get water during storms, but we are planning to build a bit off the ground; so we should be ok there.

Well I'm up again baking bread at this early hour and I need to return to it. Have a good day everyone!

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

Pictures to Post!

I have a few "around" the home pictures to post today a couple are from the garden. That is one of my vine peach seeds sprouting in the tire planter. Now I am hoping they all sprout and take over as so far I've had no luck with melons.. or winter squash for that matter, my pumpkins (the only one that sprouted) seems to be dieing.

 I am considering planting where one of the luffa gourds died some kind of melon maybe Oran's Melon or a Swan Lake.  I'll have to think on it, as I don't believe that they will cross with the vine peach.  However, I don't know; I am willing to try my luck though.

 As I said we got rain last night, now the sun is out and it's hot again. 70 inside the house and I don't want to know the temp outside. I was afraid that if I wanted any more Lambs Quarters I'd have to water them soon, so the rain is defiantly a blessing; my day lilies almost needed watering too.  Which they are getting flower buds now, I'm going to pick all the buds this year once they are a bit bigger and save them for soup and stew thickener.  I'd pick the flowers this year, but as far as I know they don't freeze well as flowers, and I'm not sure we'll get the solar dryer built in time for them.  Who knows though, my thought is if I get all the buds though; it'll give the plants time to really get a "foothold".

   This is the first of the tomato pots that I planted (tomato/dill), it has lots of new growth.  On both the tomatoes and the dill, I am wondering if we'll have to come up with support in the next week for them.  Considering how fast they are growing, the earlier ones I planted in the garden (tomatoes) are all getting tall too.

 Now... IF I did this right, and I am hoping  fingers crossed that I did.  I have Cherokee Orange fleshed Purple Smudge in the "pots" and my Amish Paste tomatoes are out by the garden.  Knowing my luck the trays got swapped and they are reversed.

 My plan next year is when I do the tomatoes and dill, I am going to add some basil into it as well.  Plant it dill in the center, then tomato, basil, tomato, basil around the outside of the "pot".  I am thinking of using fresh pots next year and grow some carrots in these next year.  As by then all of the chicken manure should be composted down by then.  Leaving a nice loose soil (I hope).  

   Now this... while I am "cultivating it" is not something I planted.  However I have been pruning it and training it:

  This, of course is one of the wild roses we have.  It is the one I have been training through a fence we stapled..yes stapled, to two trees.  It is in  flower finally and it is buzzing with happy insects.  I am hoping for some nice hips from this one this year, and if I get them they will be added to jams.

  I am glad this year they are pink as the white one in the foundation that we had the first year.  Seems the pollen spread and last year almost all the roses were white.  At least I am guessing it was due to transfer of pollen, because hey.. it makes  sense right?  One year one white rose... next year tons of white roses.

 This is not the only wild rose around here either.  We have tons throughout the woods here and there is a pretty good sized one across the street next to the pond.  I have noticed that these "wild" roses  have a much stronger scent than ones that you find a the every day garden.  It might just be me though.

 Now this picture is going up just for CUTENESS factor:

  This little guy is going to Queen Sized Tink  for her nephew, and I have four of his sister available if anybody near me wants a Chocolate Lab.  The parents both chase birds (chickens included), so with a little work the pups would make great hunters.

   Our Paris (the momma dog), had a litter of six pups. Only one male, only one black.  The rest are Chocolates and are all female.  My son has claim on the one with white patches on her.  So the remaining four also have zero white on them.

   They are also a month old now.. and AAAAAWWWWW ain't he cute?  ..and def doesn't want to pose for a picture!
 
 Well we'll be having chicken and 'taters for dinner tonight on the grill, to keep our heat inside down.

 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Working Weekend

Well, it's been a fairly quite week; but this weekend is rushing by so far. I have my son out clearing our potato patch, and of course being a 15 yr old he's taking forever to do it. I and my youngest did some “chicken salad bar” weeding, stuffed a 5 gallon bucket full of clover,grasses, and what ever else was trying to choke our Rhubarb.

I transplanted the eggplants last week, while I do see some new growth on them it seems something likes eggplant leaves. I have seen on my wintergreen the suggestion of new flower buds, and plenty of new leaf growth. I discovered a small possible melon plant growing in my onions the last time I was picking Lambs Quarter. I am hoping it grows well as I had accidentally pulled it up I had to quickly put it in the ground.

One of the volunteer squashes, has been growing amazingly and seems to have possible flower buds showing up now. One of the cold hardy bananas seems to have survived transplant and all my day lilies are growing fine as well.

I transplanted a couple of my paste tomatoes that OMG needed it. They were starting to reach out at me, so I cleared out where I had some planted 2 years ago and planted 4 of my pots and added a small amount of fresh chicken manure.. well relatively fresh I had to dig it out. I think I'll have bean flowers soon, and I should be getting some more lettuce tomorrow.

We are also prepping for a young man who is coming out next week to help us out around here. He's an old friend of mine and Silver’s and he's going to be at first staying in a tent till either our house gets built or we break down and get a secondary building.

Well that's it for now.

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

Weekend Wrap-up

 So over the weekend we did some planting, and removal in the garden. I went out and made the executive decision and removed my pea plants. Yes, they had a grand total of 4 flowers on them; however I did not think I could really leave them there when I really felt I needed to get the squashes planted.

All of my beans have sprouted, and about half of them are already on their second leaves; some have what look like the start of their flower stalks. I should be able to harvest more lettuce tomorrow, and I hope it's not bitter. I had picked some a few days back and it had a few bitter pieces in it.

I have planted 4 “hills” of summer squash, two of them are Lemon squash; and 2 are Dark Star. Dark Star is a zucchini type, these are one year old seeds so I hope they do well being they are planted in what was the bean bed last year. I have planted (well my son did) our pumpkins, Lady Godiva; as I want edible seeds and the flesh. That type is suppose to provide both and with the benefit of the hulless seeds. I have also transplanted my eggplants between where we planted the pumpkins, this is my first year of planting eggplants. I am hoping they do well as we do eat eggplants when we can get them.

I still need to go out and clear the unwanted plants from my potato bed, looks outside yep still raining. So I am hoping to do that tomorrow, along with pulling up more red clover for the chickens; and possibly getting out to the berry plants and trimming back the briar again. I had my girls get it a couple weeks ago and it's growing back pretty fast right now. We got some of the “grass” in front of the house cut this morning till we discovered the string in the weed wacker is stuck.

I am starting on a book that I am planning on writing a review on once I am done with it, I found it at the free store we stopped at on Sat. I found a couple of cooking and gardening books this time around, which is good for me. We re-arraigned our furniture/appliances in the house and got our open space back and moved our deep freezer to where we can get at it easier.

My tomato plants are finally taking off, and I hope to get the materials I need for the pots I am going to put them in. I am going to fill these large (bottom broken) tubs half way with straw then a mix of compost/manure/topsoil and plant the seedlings in that. That mix worked well for the tomatoes last year so I am going to repeat it.

That's it for now folks,

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

1st Big Planting Day!

Well we have had a nice day today getting a nice bit of plantings done, also we are dealing with a minor animal issue. Now we had a couple of Polish crested roosters that we left to free range once we discovered they were roosters as, one... they are scrawny. Also they are very cute looking, now just recently we received two more roosters from a woman who needed to get rid of them. So we set them lose with the other two.

Well that worked for a bit, but this morning we discovered a small problem. They are eating our seed potatoes, well the ones we had already planted anyway. We have decided they need to be dinner guests. We have managed at this point to catch the two newer ones, the Polishes seem to be a tad harder to locate. Yes I said locate, we had an issue catching them in day light hours so we waited for “roosting time”. WE have not been able to find yet where the Polishes are sleeping tonight.

OK, not onto my plantings for today; we planted the 2^nd half of our potato plot (11lbs worth). I have planted 6 yard stick long rows of yellow onions and 1 of red. Planted some Swiss chard Fordhook Giant. Hot Peppers; two types... Lemon Drop, Craig's Giant (Jalapeno) in two peat pots each. 12 peat pots each of Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge, & Amish Paste; tomatoes. I also planted 3 peat pots with Purple Beauty sweet pepper. Then plant wise I put in four Pacman broccoli, and 6 of my cabbage plants that I started myself.

I picked up yesterday some fish emulsion and gave each transplant a small feeding after planting, I am hoping it will help them; I've never used it before. My soil this year is wonderful compared to last year. The “bed” I have my cabbages, etc... have the remains of last year's soil, overwintered straw blanket, my finished compost, and chicken manure from our coop. Now that chicken manure of course has some straw in it. I was able to gently push the extra onion sets straight down in the soil, that makes me a very happy camper.

Our potato bed is in a new spot this year and is much larger, the plan is; because the straw did a nice job as a “late compost pile after potatoes. We had noticed when we dug out the “finished” compost that the ground under the “pile” was very pretty looking that it might be a nice way to “clear” land for future garden spaces. We will see if this idea works or not.

I am for the first time going to be growing eggplants, and I hope they grow good. I have three very small started plants and I hope they grow bigger before transplant time. I picked a drought resistant variety, I'll list the name later as I have to look it up. The plan for the tomatoes this year is to only grow them in pots in different locations. Three plants per “pot”, and we are going to use straw then a mixed soil over that with some oyster shell mixed into as the soil for them. After the plants are spent I'll remove the plants and move the soil into the garden beds. Then the following year(s) we will just redo the pots.

Well that's it for right about now, the only other thing on the “near” horizion for me is that we have a very good possibility of getting our fruit trees and berry plants this year if every thing goes the way we are planning.

Happy Planting Folks!

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

HOT weather... is there a break?

I think it's a very good question to ask... will we have a break soon in all this "gawd awful" heat? We did get some rain yesterday, it rained about 20 minutes in a downpour and I don't think it did much. Aside from letting in a rather lovely wind with the wet. This morning while out watering my garden I heard thunder, maybe we will get more rain; I do hope so as we need it. However, Kansas needs it more than we do.

I picked a couple of days ago about 6 red noodle beans for us to eat, loved them. I did pick about the same on the Black Seeded, but as they were very "buggy" the chickens got them. I made a stir fry with the red noodle beans and 2 squashes we had left from our last grocery day. A little bit of onion, fresh basil, and some chicken thighs and we had a nice lunch.

I do finally have some tomatoes ripening:

As you can tell this is on our "boxed" tomatoes, this is the Italian variety:

A Grappoli D' Inverno

They haven't gotten as big as I would have hoped but I'm very happy to see some ripening going on. The paste tomatoes are right next to this one and it's covered with green paste tomatoes and I hope they will ripen soon. I might even let Silver eat one before I start freezing them. One more thing about this tomato plant that has ripening on it... it's the one that was half eaten by bugs. So it's amazing that there is ripening tomatoes on it.

Now for those of you who saw my other garden vid:

Yes, there isn't all that much to "see" on this side, but we are still experimenting with the varieties this year. Next year if we still use this plot I will be adding one or two more "beds". I do have some good space still available to dig, and I might start it this fall when we get some decent rains again so the ground will be softer.

Oh, I have a semi cute moment for you as well this is Houdini in the tree he sleeps in:

Isn't he adorable?

We did get some work done on the root cellar yesterday morning, and got 8 wheelbarrows full of dirt out and spread on our walk way. We are going to start piling clay again starting tomorrow. We haven't worked out there this morning with the threat of the rain; we did not want to risk getting the electric cords wet. Back to digging again tomorrow.

Well that's it for now.

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

The Long awaited Update!

I do hope Blogger lets me put in pictures today I tried about 2 days ago and it wouldn't let me. WE had a lovely rain storm last night with lightning and thunder and .. dogs whining... We found out the why on that one this morning. Seems Paris had gotten herself wound up around one of the few roots that we can't get out, by them and so she was drenched. If it weren't for the fact it was a lightning storm I would have run out and unwound her so she could have gotten into her dog house. You know... it's weird seeing a cloundy rainy morning with a tiny bit of sun peeking through...

Oh well here we go with our update starting with your favorite and mine (I hope) Potatoes!

This is about 6 Cups of potatoes out of my own potato plot!We had dug up the half of the plot that had died back and this is what we got. Now remember that, the "front" half of my plot were sprouters and store bought seed potatoes. So they were of unknown variety.

But, as you can see it seems we had a good deal of the "yukon gold" type and a few russets. Now I did plant 2-3 fingerlings that had sprouted, and I did get some fingerlings out of this... but not where I had planted them. Also considering I had planted them just barely into the goat manure they potatoes did grow down into the dirt. Only barely growing in the straw, Silver says next year no burying them at all just lay them out with the straw over them and see.

Doesn't this look pretty? This is the dirt under all the straw, and it is pretty! So if you want to turn clay into good soil? Drop a (until it's "Aged down") 3ft layer of straw where you want your good soil and let it sit a year.. watering it at random.

The straw has started composting down, the lower half of it was black and changing. So it has been "turned" as I put it back in the space after my "treasure hunt". Once the rest of the plot is "dug out" (yeah late august treasure hunt!) I will add my "official" compost pile to it. I will "stir it" well then we will get a tarp and put it over it and let it sit till spring and if it's not ready then, I'll stir it again and recover it.

OK, unfortunalty (sp?) that is all my pictures for now but more updates...

I managed to pick some of the beans all but the long beans which have just started getting flowers. I really like the flavor of the rice beans as a green bean and am glad I planted more of them, and they have come up. Considering they are a "bush" bean I have planted many in a small space. I will get some pics of them when I get more next and hold them in my hand to show the small size. The Tiger's eye were a tad bit on the bitter side, but I was planning if they are good to have them as a dry bean; so I already know they are not that tasty as a green. I thought the one pole bean I got was ok, but after that rice been it was not as sweet tasting. So next time I might try the pole bean(s) first. Oh, while on the bean subject... anyone guess why my beans (not the longs or the rice ones...) are yellowing at the bottom? Phalen mentioned in her blog (correct me if I'm wrong) that her beans weren't making it in the heat.. so could that be it?

I still do not have any squashes growing other than male flowers. The bitter melon plant is still growing though a tad on the slow side to me, no flowers on it as yet and it is starting to put out the "tendrils" that like cucumbers have to hold on to things. I think even the bought pepper isn't going to make it this year, as it's pitiful... speaking of pitiful my grapes are dieing back again, I hope they come back again. My lemon cucumbers have TONS of flowers, I hope they produce soon, the late start ones in my front door pot it growing well they have secondary leaves now.

The replanted cukes have sprouted, those are "Dragon's egg" and (I hope I spell this right) "Humong giant". Now I have put like I did with the lemon cukes a tomato cage over the Dragon's egg ones thinking they might be small enough that it won't rip the plant while climbing. The giant is a Chinese variety and I think it is one of the ones you use in stir fries. We will try it raw like standard cukes and we'll know quickly I bet if it's a cooking one.

Now I have a tomato issue... my tomato plants are covered in tomatoes, all different kinds/shapes. Now the problem is the tomatoes in my box have been covered in bugs, hornworms and aphids... not to mention stink bugs. One of the plants in the box has gotten half eaten. Now aside from being boxed and having "made soil" which is just peat and the local topsoil and a tad bit of ash. The only difference is that when we got a packet of free fertilizer in the mail I thought what the heck and put it on the boxed tomatoes. Could that be causing the bug attractant? Also we have a "new" problem in my box.. I have had to pull and toss about 10 green young tomatoes as they were rotting from the bottom up on the plant...????? what causes that?

I have does some new plantings one as a trial and a few to see if I can get something out of them before it's too cold. I planted some Amaranth, they have sprouted and once they start getting a bit bigger we will try the "greens" (red plants "greens " hahahahahaha), and see if they will produce seed heads if started in the beginning of July. We had gotten some free carrot seeds when we were buying at Baker Creek short variety and I planted them and they have started sprouting. I got some edible Chrysanthymums (sp?) and some Nastrums that I thought were pretty (all varieties are edible right?) the chrys's are sprouting as are the nastrums.

We have just gotten a replacement drill bit for the root cellar so once the rain stops and our... "pond" dries up it's back to digging. On a side note we have come up with a wonderful solution to all the clay we are digging up. We are going to build a cob-ish oven, and rebuild our "stove" for outdoor cooking that we had last year as well. Right now we have been "tearing" through youtube looking up rocket stove and cob oven vids to see the best way to combine the 2, to make a suitable oven. My biggest issue with cob ovens is it seems you NEED to build a cover for them... I think if it's an outdoor oven it should be weather proof so Silver is working that out.

Well that is all for now.

Be Well, Be Safe and Blessed Be...

Garden and Heritage Days

Yesterday morning I managed to get straw put out on my garden after the chicken coop got a good layer of straw. I'm going to be replanting a good portion of what did not sprout this week maybe even today.


Of course these are the squashes, the pumpkins in here (just past the bottom a bit) are now vining so much that putting the straw down now was a very good thing. Also this is only a 3rd of the plants in this bed past the top is melons and cukes, below the bottom is pumpkins and more squashes.

I am still only getting male flowers on my squashes, I hope they start getting female flowers soon, I want summer squash stir fry! I now have some Amaranth seeds and am considering planting a few here and there in this bed to see if they grow together. If I get some seed off them this year good, if not at least I will know a bit about how they grow before next year. Which is when I want to grow them as a crop standard.

I am wondering if I didn't get much in melons as it was too early when I planted them. I will be replanting melons and hoping they come up, I do have some; but sadly the only one I remember which type I planted did not come up. Those Tigger melons I want so badly to grow didn't


This of course is my bean bed for this year, we are thinking of doing peas in the fall here after the beans die off. The standard pole beans are growing more vigorously that the long beans on the back side. Also you don't see the "rice" beans to the left of the picture. I have my Tiger's Eye bush beans in the center between the two types of the pole beans. They have all grown so well so far and I have little beans growing on all but the long beans so far.

If someone knows why the lower leaves are turning yellow please let me know. I am hoping the straw will help these plants as well. I am going to replant some rice beans now that I know they are a bush type so I will get more than what is produced on 2 plants. It still amazes me that only 2 seeds out of 18 grew, again it might have not been hot enough for them. As it was a different type of bean than I am use too.

I am waiting on those long beans as when we did our squash stir fry last year our one neighbor gave us some of her long beans to try and we had them in it and WOW they were so good. So I do like long beans and I hope we like one or both of these types of them. I'd be willing to grow both of them if we like them as one is a green and one is a red one.


Half of my tomatoes are in the ground and half are in that box in front of my home. These ones interestingly enough has aside from a very small amount of aphids has no "bugs" at all. While the ones in the box have tons of aphids and I've been pulling lots of tomato worms.

My chickens are very happy about the "worms" though, (laughs) my son was worried that the big one we got yesterday would bite him. Also the one we got yesterday my son said that one of our turkey's got and inhaled it.

Sounds about right as I've noticed that turkeys are just eating machines, at least these 2 bronzes we have are. All the tomatoes all have little tomatoes on them, and again I might be wrong on again on the "types". As one plant the three largest tomatoes are starting to get color on the bottoms that are dark. Those might be the purple smudge as they get orange "shoulders".

As my mother had come out for a visit, and she was looking for something to do; and also that Baker Creek had a "Heritage Day" going on we went.


Here is the funny thing, as aside from a couple of seeds all my seeds have come from Baker Creek's store. Which is also the only building in there we have been in, until yesterday. This picture is where they do music and shows during their events.

They were doing a trivia contest, and dang it I missed the answer to the final question. "What plant is eggplant closest relative?" I did know it was a non-edible plant, I guessed Nightshade and got it wrong. So, because no one had guessed it he gave a hint so big I blurted out the answer. My daughter (I had thought she had heard me) tried next and said "pillow weed", which was wrong. The answer is, "cotton" . If she had guessed correctly we would have gone home with a basket of goodies worth $60, which from what I saw included seeds and a T-shirt.


It was the kids' first trip to Baker Creek as we generally go when they are in school so we don't have to keep saying "don't touch". Thankfully there was so much going on they we too busy looking around.

We did try out some Sumac tea at one of the booths and I can happily say that Sumac does not cause allergic reactions in us. YEAH! This means I can harvest our Red Sumac's and make tea or lemon aid. My mother even liked the tea and found it refreshing, so I imagine if I get some dehydrated this year she will want some sent her way.

We found a vendor of local goat's milk who also does cheese and ice cream, and I liked the cheese and ice cream. The kids liked the ice cream and tried the fudge she had as well. I think aside from my son my kids would like goat's milk. I'd still have to see if I'd like to drink it as last time I tried to was store bought and I could not get it past my nose. Silver says it should be very different tasting to me considering I did like the ice cream and cheese. We have to woman's card and will be contacting her about her milk products. Now this does not mean I's prefer goat's milk over cow's as I still want butter and I'm a heavy milk/cream drinker/user. So I want my Dexter cows still.

I'd like to say Hi to Juli from Wild Moon Cottage:

http://wildmooncottage.blogspot.com/

I saw her at her booth at Baker Creek and bought some herbs, which I have to say are -very- fresh! Nice to finally have met you in person Juli, I hope we get a chance to see you again!

I am going to continue my pics from Baker Creek tomorrow with the "seed museum", I am hoping to get a chance to head over there on the next heritage day and get more pics. My mom has MS so she couldn't manage the whole place in the heat, but she still liked it. She even liked the seed store even though she only does flowers at her house. She was happy to see they carry flower seeds and I put her down for one of the catalog's for next year.

BE Well, Be Safe and Blessed Be...

Lots of flowers going on here!

Wow! again I am amazed by these tomato plants that have myself started and planted. Like I said I have grown tomatoes before, however I have never started them myself before this year. I counted this morning 28 flowers on one plant!

I think I have identified the paste tomatoes and if I am correct I already have about 5 mini tomatoes on them. Not to mention the abundance of flowers on them. Seems that every tomato plant now has flowers on them and if I am right about which is the purple smudge and they produce as much as they just have in flower I'm defiantly voting for them for next year. We still have to check taste of course *winks*.

My rice beans are still in flower and they are defiantly a bush type (I need to get more pictures dang it!) The Tiger's Eye are flowering as well, no flowers on the pole beans as yet though. The long beans are still behind on the growth compared to my standard pole beans.

My squashes are now covered in blossoms and one I noticed this morning had a double flower! I can't wait for them to start producing! The butter pumpkin is starting to vine out, which I am taking as a good sign. IT is going to be loaded with flowers from what I can tell.

Over in my "flower" bed one of the melons did come up and is getting ready to flower as well.

We've had 2 lazy days due to heat and rain as Silver does not do well in the heat and our root cellar is full of water due to the rain. Yesterday it was so humid I didn't even want to set up a bath.. but I'm not going to HAARP on the weather.

But... don't take my word for it...

Be Well and Blessed Be...

Here is the Tomato Trellis

Yep it's just pretty much a (I think it's called) a cow panel.. could be one of the hog ones though. Any who it was one we had around the humanure pit and because our dogs are tied up a good distance away from it we are figuring that it would be safe to pull it down and repurpose(SP?) it.

All we used on it was 2, 2X2's on either end and we nailed those to the box then we stapled the panel to the 2X2's. So far the tomatoes are doing Ok on it.

Every tomato plant but my 2 "puny" types have flowers on them as of now. I hope the other ones will get them soon as well. My Tiger's Eye beans now have flowers and I think some of my squashes will flower soon. Also I think one of the plants I put in the flower bed by the dogs is getting ready to flower. I think it's a melon.

Well the plan for this morning is to get back to digging the root cellar, right after my bread is done baking. Did you know I love baking bread first thing in the morning? It's such a nice smell first thing in the morning.

This is generally how my day starts off:

I get up start Silver's coffee. I go out get the dog food bowls and feed the dogs, then feed the chickens (and get them water). Then I water my garden plants, which are in 3 different spots. I also fill the dog's water then and use the hose to get rid of their .. errrmmm.. poo. Why don't I just pick it up and dispose of it? Well it does just as much good if I "hose it" down and the "water" goes into the ground, it's what nature would do eventually anyway. So why use a plastic "doggie bag" to clean up their mess? Especially when I can dispose of it in a better way? When I am done with all that I generally get my bread making done, and after this batch is done we are going out to do some root cellar digging. All this before breakfast!

Be Well and Blessed Be...