As everyone is gearing up for the holiday weekend, I thought I would reflect on my gardening independence and how the whole homestead moby farm is doing!

Overall, the joint is hoping… Almost to the 2 pounds of produce mark… a little shy, but hey, it’s only the first of July! How cool is that… it’s already producing food!

Radish flowers are down right pretty. Little whites and pinks and such… very cute.

My second planting of radish are coming up in the new beds! How cool. I really took the time to plant them out and carefully spaced them. We broadcast the teeny seeds for the first batch and then didn’t really thin them very well, so it’s kind of a cluttered mess. I’m going to see if taking the time to carefully plant yields a better crop.

Potato flowers are so pretty! Love the purple petals and the bright yellow insides. I want Jessy to take some shots with her fancy camera, they are just that pretty.

Of course, the potatoes are really doing well. They really seem to like those grow bags. I really want to dig one up and see what they are doing, but I know it’s way too early, even for new potatoes! It’s only been 6 weeks. Maybe at the end of July I will pull one plant and see, just dig down a little bit and see what we can discover! By the nice leafy top growth, they seem to be pretty happy.

Guess the unhappy herb!!!!

Ah, yeah… the one on the left? Cilantro. It just went crazy, flowered and was spent. I’m thinking I’m going to just whack it back and see what happens.

Or just pull it and plant something else.

Chives and Oregano are doing very nice.

And look!!! Lots and lots of baby beans! Some are almost full sized,just not too plump yet. I’ll bet another week or two and I’ll be having some yummy green beans steamed with a little butter and garlic, oh baby….

Oh the fuzzy teeny tiny little baby cukes are SO adorable! I can’t wait to see how they mature and all. They are finally starting to climb up my crib support for them… the little tendrils are slowly fingering out and testing it. So cool to watch day to day.

Green peppers are doing fine! Not a lot of them, but a few are huge… most are still fairly small and getting there. I planted 4 new ones in the new beds, I’m hoping that will help my yield a little bit.

Man, this one pepper is really going to town. It’s a variety that is not hot, and I want to say Marconi or something like that. I’ll have to consult all my tags and such…. It’s really going to town though!

The mini pumpkins and gourds are doing really well out in the corn field. And so are the big pumpkins on the other side of the moby. They are flowering like crazy, but I haven’t seen any little babies yet. I hope they are not all male flowers only!

The sunflowers are definately taking over the place! The ones we planted as well as the rouge ones from the feeder! We’re letting the rouge ones grow this year, mostly because they fell in the berry patch bed and it’s just doing it’s growing this year…

This one that the birds planted is about to flower! How cool! I can’t wait to see it’s color and shape and all. I believe it’s one of the all black seed plants, so I’m real curious to see how these flowers look. We planted the mammoth ones, and they really should get another 4 or 5 feet tall. The second planting of flowers is doing well too, but they are only about a foot tall, out in the corn field.

Speaking of corn!!! The second planting is coming out great, lots of sprouts. I guess soaking the kernals really boosted my sprouting ratio. I hope I get enough to take so that I can have some fresh sweet corn!

Only 10 plants came up of the over 60 we planted the first go around. I’m not sure if something ate them, or it was just too dry, I don’t know. And they haven’t sprouted since, so I just don’t know.

I do know that officially my corn was elbow high in July.

Not tooooo far behind the “knee high in July” judging mark, but hey, this is Toledo… not Kansas.

My second crop is only finger high in July!

But then, July is not over yet… I’m sure it will be knee high by the end of July!!! I hope!

You can see why the birds planted all the sunflowers…. the berry patch is right near Maggie’s super duper bird station! Next year I plan to pull all the rougue ones but a few here and there. The funny thing is that I’m finding rougue wheat all over near the feeders too! The birds were eating my overly sowed wheat field and then dropping the seeds hither and yon! It’s kind of funny to see beautiful little greel wheat heads here and there through the gardens.

A couple raspberries are putting out berries… not many, but that’s okay. It’s pretty cool to see them trying. They are shaded nicely by some of the sunflowers and I think that is giving them a good headstart this year. (We’ve had a few real scourchers and the raspberries didn’t even wilt like a lot of stuff did!)

Beautiful teeny little strawberries! They are ripening up and providing little sweet treats for me! Not very many, but that’s okay…. they are SO worth the wait. Next year, oh my gosh, it will be wonderful.

A couple handfuls will be about it I think this year, but oh the flavor of them!

They normally do not make it inside… but I thought some beautiful sun ripened berries on my morning cereal would be dreamy….

And it was….

One thing I noticed right away was that they were deep lucious red all the way through. And sweet but with just a teeny bit of tartness… just perfect.

I was cutting up a couple quarts of grocery store berries to sugar a bit and freeze and they looked good and tasted okay, but they are like white in the inside. Big and nice red color on the outside, but white and tasteless on the inside. I would rather have my teeny little sweets than those big fleshy nothing berries anyday!

And doesn’t the repurposed little yard sale table look nice with a new top on it, spray painted and giving the grill a little lift in life? We used it today and sure beat grilling on the ground! And what’s nice is that it’s tucked behind my big potted plant so it’s kind of hidden from the outside world a bit.

I haven’t had any troubles with things wandering off… but other people say it happens here and there. Being at the back of the park helps and also, we’re here most of the time and have a big black old dog (whom of course, is a big baby and hiding under my desk, panting and drooling because of the fire crackers and fireworks that folks are setting off this weekend…..hahahaha)

Still, it’s nice that it’s tucked back and slightly hidden from the world. Besides, I really don’t want to see GRILL when I walk up to my little moby, I want to see the flowers and gardens and all that.

Well… that’s the roundup at the Moby… First week of July! We’ve come a long way from the beginnings in very early May…

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