I would like to say that our garden is all in and growing nicely, but that’s not the truth. It’s about half done… we still have a bit more work to get it all nice and going good. We had such awful weather up until about three weeks ago, that everything is a bit off track. And yesterday evening, the temps got down to 40 degrees, so I’m not too worried or upset about being a bit later than I like.
Ideally, I like to have my garden all in place by the first of June. So, it’s really the 14th… two weeks won’t make or break our growing season around here. It’s rarely cold by the middle, even end of October, so June to September is 120 days… if you add October, you get another 30 days! That’s plenty of time to get good results from a garden around here. Heck, most stuff we plant is more like 70-90 days, so we’ll be in a perfect window! And there is always all the good farmer’s markets around to get our fix a bit early!
Well, we really scored… a local nursery was having a end of season sale and all their 4 and 6 packs of veggie starts were on sale for $1 each! Lovely! So Jess and I rushed over and got 2 and half flats of tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and some herbs… all for $20. What a deal! Very excited about that for sure…
We got two packs of flowers to dress up our little pots on the porch! We’re a little too tight in the budget to spend much on pretties this year… we hope to just get our garden really going good to help save a ton of money for food for us and for the animals! But you need a little color and pretty in your life!
We have this pumpkin or squash volunteer growing off the back of our screen porch! I’m very surprised that the hoofies haven’t eaten it up. I might have to transplant it… to safety in the garden!
Maggie took it upon herself to trim up the pine trees in the dog yard! She asked and we said SURE! It looks fantastic… hard to tell, but the two trees in the middle were all scraggly and long, blocking a lot of sunshine and our view to the back part of the dog yard. Now it’s all open up and we love it!
She put all the trimmings in the garden, where we are going to make a few huglekulture garden beds! If you don’t know what these are… google them. Very fascinating! We want to give it a try…
All my lovely boxes are doing great. Most are planted with seeds now… and some have actual veggie starts in them. We did have a goat attack and that set us back a week. Darn Buttercup and Rana figured out how to get into the garden with this boss ninja moves. I swear, goats will be the death of me.
I love fresh tomatoes and my girls hate them. But they don’t mind tomatoes in sauce or like mixed in meatloaf or something like that. So I suppose that one or two plants would be enough for me. But I just can’t resist all the awesome varieties and the local shop had some great heirloom varieties too! I got a neat pineapple variety, Amish paste, Black Krim, 100 Sweet and ah… oh some Roma… They really do well in my cold frames, nice and packed in a bit thick. I like to try and keep them trimming back a bit, and contained. Always does well for me. Can’t wait for some of those little sweet cherry tomatoes! My favorite gardening snack…
Almost all my herbs died off over the hard winter! I should have brought them in, since most were in pots, but by the time the snow started, I couldn’t find them under the 83 inches of record snowfall. Oh well. So I got four to get back going… dill, rosemary, sage and oregano. I do want to get a bit more, but that is what she had that I wanted. I’ll get them properly potted in a day or so.
Comfy is the name of the game. And I’ve found that just plain cotton homemade skirts are super comfy! So I’m channeling Granny from Beverly Hillbillies of late… mismatched plaids and my farm boots! Haha… hey, it’s rural, no one ever sees me but the critters and the girls. And they aren’t exactly fashion divas either! Hey, if it works, sounds good to me!
The bunny girls get a little taste of dill! The plant was very leggy so I whacked it back and we’ll get it all going again. Love me some homegrown dill for our pickles!!! Yes! Can’t wait!
So far, so good… I’m going to be laying down a bit more carpeting between the beds and trying to decide if I replace the straw bales for the front three beds, or if I go and get boards and make them more permanent. And we’ve got about 8 more bed to fill up with spent bedding from the barns and plant away. Mostly zucchini, squash, pumpkins and potatoes. Oh yes and a strawberry bed! I know it’s a bit late to get berries, but they will do good next year and I need me a strawberry patch SOOON!!!! Going to be trying out that vinegar and epson salt weed killer on the weedy stuff around my boxes… see how that works. I’ll let you know if I think it works out.
Just so happy to have my garden up and running… shouldn’t be too long before we start getting a few little things, even if it’s just radish and peas! I love them both! And so do the varmints!
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