Oh my, I haven't posted in ages. Thought I'd come and post and update because it is just way too hot to do much else around here! It's near 100 today, and should break 100 the next 3 days or so. It never gets this hot around here, so we are really not used to it at all. It's also very humid, which just makes it so much worse.
ANYWAY. The garden is booming! We have harvested 5 gallon sized bags of raspberries in the freezer, and eaten our fair share fresh as well. We also have about 3 gallon size bags of blueberries in the freezer. Those are much harder to get in the freezer as my girls wolf them down as soon as they are picked!
Zuccini is coming in like crazy. We've had our first baby potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, beets, turnips, onions and lots of peas, and lettuce although those two are are just about gone now. We should be getting our first beans, cukes and carrots anytime now. Our corn, watermelon, canteloupes, pumpkins and winter squash look to be doing really well. For the first time our apple trees look like we will have a nice harvest and we are excited about that. Next year or maybe even this fall, the kids have requested that we put in some grapes and more plum trees. We have some very old Italian style plums here which are still producing, but they are very small, so I'd like to try and find some type of plum that produces the bigger plums. If you have recommendations, please let me know what has worked for you!
Hope you are all staying cool and sipping some lemonade while you enjoy watching your gardens grow!
Hot Hot HOT!!!!!
We've been busy!
My how time flies! Last week was just gorgeous weather wise, including the entire weekend, and we got a lot accomplished around here. Our older chicks moved into the new coop about a week and a half ago. I'll post some pics on my chicken blog in a bit. I'm also pretty darn sure at least one of our chicks is a rooster, which is fairly disappointing. No one else sees it, but I'm waiting for it to start crowing any day now to prove my point!
Last week I got my first row of potatoes in and TWO rows of strawberries! I had thought the strawberries I ordered from Gurney's would fill one row, so having two rows full, plus two more small containers on the back deck filled with them, just thrilled me to pieces!
My husband also helped me dig lots of holes this weekend around the property to get a bunch of miscellaneous plants in and we also transplanted a few perennials. We got our 6 blueberry bushes in to replace the 6 our puppy managed to chew up. Although when digging them up, 5 of them had the faintest signs of life, so I stuck them in a garden bed to see if any of them pull through.
Then Monday, we were expecting a huge wind/rain storm to come in, so I frantically got all my onions planted which filled another row. BTW, each row is approximately
25'-30' long. Right after finishing planting them, I had a bit of an incident. The wind was starting to pick up, and it managed to catch our big heavy door in the mud room to the garage, and it slammed really good on two of my fingers. It was not a pleasant experience to say the least. I really thought one finger was broken for sure. I went into shock, blacked out, threw up, the whole nine yards. Luckily, it does not seem to be broken now. In fact, it doesn't hurt much now at all. But man did it hurt when it happened!!! Thankfully, I think it's just going to turn lots of different colors as it heals over the next week. I'm very thankful it won't keep me out of the garden!
Since Monday, it's been raining non-stop, so I've been busy playing catch up with things around the inside of the house. I have a few pictures to get posted and will try and get them up tomorrow. Gotta go catch American Idol....go Danny!!!!
Gurney's box of goodies and more!
Look what came in the mail on Friday? 
It includes 5 bags of onion sets, 3 yellow Ebenezer, and one bag each of red onions and white onions.
52 bare root Whopper Strawberry plants
And last, 2 bags each of potato starts, in the Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold and Kennibeck varieties
I had hoped to start getting these planted this weekend, but we were too busy trying to finish the new chicken coop. Check out our progress at my Keeping Backyard Chickens blog. We're almost done!!! I'll have to hope my husband can get the rototiller out tomorrow after work so I can get these in in the next few days.
My seeds I started inside over Easter have been doing well also. Here's a peek at them as well! These include red & green cabbage, broccoli, watermelon, cantaloupe, cukes, zuccini, butternut squash, acorn squash and Burgess Buttercup squash.
I am feeling slightly overwhelmed as all I have to get done in the garden in the next few weeks. I love this time of year, but it sure keeps me busy! Hope you are all checking things off your to do list and making progress on your things to do.
Spring Rains are here....
Now that it is officially spring, I guess I can call them that! Since I posted a few weeks ago about it raining, and it still is. We've been busy with my mom visiting, and trying to refinance the house, so we've been pretty busy and not really able to get outside much. We did score a bunch of free pallets off of Freecycle.org almost 2 weeks ago, and will begin working on the new coop this weekend. DH took spring break off with the girls, and we plan to focus on the coop project while he is off. That's the first full week in April. The chicks are growing so fast, they need to move outside! I also purchased our first incubator this week. No using it until the coop is done though! Right now it will just be used to help the breeding project of the Japanese Bantams if it is needed. But I've been spending a lot of time on BackyardChickens.com and am really really tempted to buy some eggs off of some of the members there. But that's on the back burner for right now.
Garden projects are piling up way too fast! I've set up my lights for starting seeds, but haven't acutally started any yet. I still have winter cleanup to do in several garden beds. I need to get more peas in. Haven't planted any since I posted here last, and none of those are coming up yet. I fear either the birds have got them, or they've rotted, or maybe it's just too cold still. I've got all my seeds purchased, and just waiting for my final order to come in which included potato starts, onion sets and some strawberry plants.
Happy Mother's Day!
WOW! How did two weeks fly by already since I've posted last? Hard to believe!
I hope all you mom's out there are enjoying our special day! I woke up to breakfast in bed and we are heading out soon to buy all our veggie starts we still need for the garden. Looking forward to that.
Let me fill you in on what's been happening in the garden since my last post! Ok, in the back beds, in the one with the broccoli and brussel sprouts, I nixed the 2nd path on the right, and made one super wide row on the right side of the bed. I did almost half with beans, which went in about a week ago, I did about a 3' square plot of lettuce, and did the other half with another batch of peas yesterday. That bed is now completely full and the broccoli plants have the first teeny tiny heads of broccoli in there if you look real closely.
The other bed in back is full now too. The peas are up about 6" or so now. I should have lots of radishes in another 2 wks or so. I sprinkled them in with all the root crops I planted and they are getting big and leafy. The last root crop that went in were my parsnips and they are starting to sprout now. I already have loads of carrots up, rutabagas, beets and turnips as well. I also planted the lettuce (some starts and some by seed) in the middle row of this bed where I had an open spot. They went in about 10 days ago or so. The walla walla sweet onions are doing great, and have about 8-10" of green on them now.
In the front garden, we got one row of potatoes planted about a week ago. I have plans to do 3 rows, but was hoping to find a furrowing attachment for our tiller, but no such luck. So this depends on if my husband will help me dig the other two rows out because it's a lot of work! Yesterday I planted two more bags of onion sets, one yellow and one white. Also got the shallots in and one 6 pack of leeks. I have another 6 pack of leeks, but ran out of room in that row, will have to stick them in somewhere else. I have been wanting to put in all my "left-over" 6 packs (1 cauliflower, 1 red cabbage, 1 broccoli, the leeks) but have been nervous to do so with the rabbits our front. So yesterday I started with the chicken wire at the bottom of the fence, and need to get the rest of that done this week before I put the new starts in that we are picking up today.
It's warm enough out now to pick up the warm weather starts, so on my list I have some more (4-6) determinite tomato plants (I'm doing them all in pots this year), cucumber plants, zuccini, pati pan, yellow summer squash, pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, blue hubbard squash....I think that's it. I started most of these by seed in flats this year, but they didn't do well. I still have seed left and may plant some of those as well and do a few starts of each with a few by direct seed and see which fairs better. I also have another misc row out front I want to put another batch of beans in, but I may stagger them out a bit since I just planted a batch out back. Oh! and the asparagus is starting to poke through out front! Just a few tiny purple stalks peeking up. I hate having to wait a year or two before being able to fully harvest them!
OK, I think that's about it for now! I'll try and post more pic's this week. It's supposed to reach near 80 degrees by the end of the week! :-)
