Rolling Up Our Sleeves

We’ve been really busy lately trying to get the garden functioning. We decided that we really don’t have the money this year to completely convert from the traditional gardening method to the new square foot gardening one. So maybe more next year…

I’ve done so much in the garden the last few days that I can’t even remember ALL that I did nor the order in which I did it, but here is a sum-up:

~ dug up tomatoes that I planted from seed

~re-tilled the weed infested garden so that we can start from square one. (When Eric originally tilled up the garden he thought it was stupid of me to want to rake up the weeds. I did it his way, tried weeding for one week and then decided to tear almost everything out and start over.)

~ re-planted the tomatoes, plus added some from Lowe’s. (rip-off)

~ planted all of the beans, bush and pole. I put the bush beans in sq.ft. garden boxes and the pole beans in my front yard so that the deer will be uncomfortable with the thought of having to go into our front yard to eat them.

~weeded all of the sq. ft. garden boxes.

~thinned out the lettuce box. Lettuce is growing like crazy.

~gave up on the spinach and beets…tore them out. (Radishes too, but that’s because the weather is too warm now for them.)

~planted onions in place of the spinach and eggplant in place of the beets and radishes.

~ put up bamboo poles for my cucumbers and gherkins and planted those. These are in my traditional portion of garden this year.

~put together a box for the melon. We made this one 4 x 8.

Still to do within the next few days:

~ make a bottom for my melon box.

~ plant the melons

~ plant herbs SOMEWHERE….haven’t decided what to do with those yet. Some will go in the traditional garden.

In the next month:

~ harvest the garlic

~ braid it and hang it to dry

~ till the garlic bed

~ plant the pumpkins and winter squash

So this is the busy time of the year. I’m glad that I don’t plan for school until August!

A Little Bit Better.

A little bit better is still a little bit better. Although we are having some issues with soil quality in our Sq. Ft. gardens, we are doing better production-wise than last year. I’m still getting the hang of it. Building my own soil is completely new to me.

I was checking out the garden today and discovered that the swiss chard I planted in the garden last fall is up and looks NICE! This was unexpected because I thought that we had tilled it up! I love swiss chard stir fried and eaten with buckwheat noodles or brown rice. Mmmm.

I had some luck with the tomatoes that I planted, but I only had two of my Amish Paste tomatoes come up. I was disappointed about that, because I love paste tomatoes for canning. I also have basil and cilantro coming up. We have a few marigolds also. My peppers are slooooow-growing. So because I didn’t get all of the tomato plants that I wanted to, I caved and bought some at Lowe’s. Pepper plants too. I hate doing that because they are severely over-priced. Next year I’m going to plant the tomatoes and peppers in the ground mid-April. It seemed to work okay.

I thinned out the lettuce today. It’s growing great. I planted a couple of varieties that have purple veined in the leaves. It’s so pretty! Imagine eating a pretty salad. I also harvested the rest of the sugar snap peas. Next year the plan is to plant MANY more and by a higher stake. That way I’ll get a bigger harvest. I really only had enough for two meals. So much for freezing them this year… The radishes are done. They were a little weird this year, but still tasted good. The shape was different than it was supposed to be, but oh well.

Tomorrow I’ll be planting beans, melons and cukes from seed. Also the plants I bought at Lowe’s will be going in. In the garden that isn’t sq. ft. gardening, I am having a heck of a time with the weeds. My plan is to remove the baby tomato plants and till up the ground and rake. Then I’m going to put the plants back in. Hopefully this works…

Learning All the Time

The thing with gardening is that one learns something new all the time. So far this year I have learned that I NEED TO LEARN how to harden seedlings. I also have discovered that I don’t like the soil mix that I used for my square foot gardening. I believe it was because I used the cheapest products available. The mix is too dry and there is too much wood in it. Sometimes it is good to pinch pennies and sometimes it isn’t. This was a case of “isn’t”.

I also tried to use paper bags to keep out the weeds. It didn’t work. The grass here is so aggressive that it just pushed the bags out of the way. So in essence, I’ll be changing up the soil and bottom of the stuff. However, I won’t have to be at square one because we have the boxes, tops and wire for the bottom still.

My carrots seem to like the soil. I’ve never had a productive carrot crop. We’ll see how it looks when the carrots are done though. The beets are doing poorly. I think that I am about to call it quits there. Really everything got a slow start because of the poor soil quality. I have been able to harvest some peas, radishes and lettuce. The lettuce likes the soil after awhile. It just took awhile to bolt. I wish that I knew the reasons behind it beyond the generic “poor soil quality”.

Anyway, this weekend I hope to make a long box for melon which I will plant. I plan to weed either today or tomorrow, depending on weather. I also plan to plant some beans, peppers and tomatoes. The peppers and tomatoes I’ll buy at the Farmer’s Market in Franklin on Saturday.

At any rate, I’ve produced more this year than last year at this time, so I’m happy with that! Hopefully every year, as I gain knowledge, our garden will produce enough for us to eat fresh, put away for the winter and maybe some to sell also.

Weekend Away and First Airplane Trip

I had some gigs in the Kansas City area over the past weekend. Since it has been over 6 years since Eric and I have been able to “get away”, we thought it would be nice to. However, since Sean cannot be separated from me, he had to come along too. But he was a fairly easy tagalong. It was his first airplane ride. The girls were a little bit bummed that he got to ride on an airplane before them.

Slept the whole time!

Eric’s mom flew in to watch the other four while we were gone in KC. Here’s a pic of her with the older two girls.

Lilly, Brenda and Aggie

Eric and I had a good time. Gigs, movies and shopping. (He didn’t particularly enjoy the shopping part, but…)

Vacation

I haven’t posted much lately….haven’t felt like it, so I didn’t!

We went on vacation for 10 days, although it wasn’t a vacation in a technical sense. I had some music gigs and Eric had some out-of-state work and there were a few days in between to have fun, so we made it into a vacation! It was a lot of road time, so I’m hoping that we’ll be able to pull together a “real” vacation in September to the beach and do NOTHING.

There are a lot of pictures, but here are a few highlights, as I don’t want to spend a lot of time posting pics on here. It takes forever….

Cute one of Seaners!

At the Governor's Palace Gardens in Williamsburg, VA

At Virginia Beach, VA

Arden at The King's Arms Tavern in Williamsburg, VA

Aggie and Lilly in the stocks at Williamsburg

Julius Stirgis Pretzel Factory in Lititz, PA

It was fun! I’ll update on the garden soon.

Another pound!

I’ve lost another pound! This one is special because I actually weigh less now than I did when I got pregnant with Sean. BIG SMILES!!!! I haven’t really been super-serious about weight loss either. I’m still better with my portions and I get exercise in a couple of times a week. But I also still like my junk food…

I made a short-term weight loss goal awhile back to be 180 by May 1. Only 5 more pounds to go!!!

Our Garden Thus Far- Spring 2009

Square foot garden

Each box is 4 x 4. We put chicken wire underneath the frame to keep out the moles and gophers. Then we placed paper bags or newspaper on top of the wire to keep out weeds. The box is filled with 1/3 top soil, 1/3 manure and 1/3 hummus combined. In these boxes I have planted beets, radishes, carrots, swiss chard, kale, collards, spinach, 4 different varieties of lettuce and lots of onions. All of them have covers made of wood and chicken wire to keep out rabbits, birds and deer….and Daisy.

Up close with the cover

We made the covers a little bit different than the instructions so that there would be less wasted chicken wire.

If you squint you can see the radishes.

Tiny radishes! The greens and lettuce are coming up too.

Here’s pictures of our garlic bed. They will be ready in late June/early July.

Garlic Bed....I need to pull some grass.

[caption id="attachment_461" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Elephant Garlic"][/caption]

Garlic Row

Afternoon Planting

Yesterday afternoon we planted the trees and bushes that we bought on Saturday.

Blueberry Bush...can you see it?

[caption id="attachment_453" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Arden by the planted apple trees"][/caption]

Aggie and Arden playing by an apple tree hole....fun!

[caption id="attachment_451" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Aggie and Lilly watch Eric dig a hole for the cherry tree"][/caption]

Liam

[caption id="attachment_449" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Aggie\'s Plum Tree"][/caption]

Blooming Things

Apple Blossoms

Our Lilac Bush

Grape Hyacinth

Something???

Different Variety of the Yellow Something

It’s SPRING!!! I’m very glad. Above are pics of blooming things on Laughing Thyme Farm. Lilly keeps calling the hyacinths, “hi-cynthias”!

Big Blob

Have you ever felt like a big blob before? Right now all I feel like doing is sitting down and doing NOTHING! But I need to clean my house, do some laundry, plant some fruit trees and bushes and probably post another blog w/pics about my square foot gardening venture. So, because I don’t want to be a big blog nor do I especially want to LOOK like a big blob, I am going to get up off of my hiney.

I will post pics of the square-foot garden either today or tomorrow. I might actually post a blog on my Laughing Thyme Kitchen site too. You know the “food” blog of mine with NO recipes on it. Yeah….big blob. I also need to get going on making my own bread again. I stopped when I was preggo, because I was so tired. Then my excuse was that I just had a baby. Now I really don’t have one, except that I am being a big blob. Time to be a non-blob.