Hard working Morning

This morning we spent after breakfast of course, working on the garden. Which I have been putting off due to the heat, which in my opinion has be ridiculous. I started with finishing the digging out of our squash/pumpkin bed; which btw.. has a little more than that. I had my son putting up some strings on my bean bed for my white rice beans to grow up.

After about 20 minutes of using our pic ax on the garden bed (sooo much better soil this year goat manure ROCKS!), I stopped to plant the bean bed.

Pardon the brightness for some reason the camera is acting up... Anywho, what I did here was leave a space in the middle for my tiger's eye beans once I find where they disappeared too. For the rest I planted each type for three poles a piece. WE have Kentucky Wonder (old homestead), Missouri Wonder, Chinese Red Noodle, Taiwanese Black seeded, and my White Rice bean. For now I have our soaker hose running through it, but we are thinking of moving it over to the "other" bed and getting a second one for the beans.

This little thing is a tomato believe it or not, as I transplanted 3 pots worth of them this morning as well this one I think is the Bonnie Best. The other 2 pots where Amish Paste Tomatoes. The interesting thing here is I put these in the spot I had the Zucchini last year and the soil there was better than the bean bed (this year) has! So I have big hopes for these three sets of plants! WE have plans for canning tomato sauce that are completely home "grown". I do still have to find places for the others once they look big enough, also for the pepper plants that are finally growing halfway decently. I -promise- to get my plants started earlier next year (watch I'll forget and in March remember suddenly).

...and here is the big project from today. This bed has: cucumbers, bitter melon, regular melons, summer squash, and pumpkins. One of the pumpkins is the Lady Godiva's for eating seeds, the kids wanted to eat pumpkin seeds so we are giving them a try. I am using the lousy tomato cages we had last year to grow lemon and Dragon's egg cucumbers on and the Bitter melon as well. I do wondered about the bitter melon though as I noticed the seeds were huge! Anyone out there grown them before that can tell me something about them? We are growing them for the fact that Silver is a diabetic and it is suppose to help with blood sugar levels.

I had planted some Tigger melon's over by our dogs as I have a cow panel to support one of the "wild" roses that I wanted to save. So I planted my smaller melons and a couple of cucumbers there next to the cow panel in the hopes of having them grow up it. Still waiting on them to sprout and start growing, however the Bleeding Hearts I planted there have started flowering already I am planning to get a picture of them soon. One of the Dahlia's have started growing and something else I planted there that I can't recall it's name; but I am sure it will look nice.

Potato Update:

My potatoes are doing amazing I'm going to take a picture maybe tomorrow with a tape measure if I can find it. I have run out of the straw we bought as this morning they were sooo tall I had one of my girls go out and cover them again. I hope they will be OK until I can get some more around the first. So the potatoes in straw do work well so far when it's time to "dig out" the finished product we will see what we get.

I have been surprised that with all the heat the cilantro has not bolted yet, as it's still to small to cut any yet too. The chives are moving along very slowly, and the Dill seems to like it's small pot. My other herbs are seeming to grow but I still am unsure as to which ones came up. I'll figure it out eventually.

Silver was going to work on the chicken coop this morning but because of the temperatures this morning/now his hands got cold and he couldn't hold the hammer any more. As I am writing this the outside temperature is 49 degrees and that was at 2:12 pm. So have had a definite difference in temperatures in the last few days.

Well that's it for now and the next 2 days we are going to be spending shopping for groceries that I'll be glad when I don't have to buy anymore. We are going to show our newest neighbors the way to the discount grocer Monday as they are not open on Sundays.

Be Well and Blessed Be...