Harvest Monday

June 15, 2015

My daughter wrote her first garden update last week. She may be writing more – I’m a little too frazzled to get my stuff together. Most of what we harvested this week was not photographed. However, we are harvesting…

• blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries (a handful each week right now)
• new potatoes
• small beets
• small carrots
• spinach
• baby lettuce
• peas
• celery

carrots & celery…and the 4yo 🙂 Root vegetable hash w/carrots, beets, and potatoes I think it’s officially blueberry season 🙂

We are also seeing baby cucumbers and baby zucchini!

With all of that, all I can say is PLANT MORE! PLANT MORE! PLANT MORE! I thought I was planting more than enough this year. I planned it by writing down what we eat in a year and then doubling it, to make sure we have enough to share. I think if I had quadrupled it, I would have been more on target. Ah well, there’s always next year.

This week, we weeded the cabbage patch, around a blueberry bush, and around the sweet potato patch. I planted all of my home-grown sweet potato slips (orange) and I received all of my purple sweet potato slips (3 varieties) from Sand Hill Preservation this week.

The kids are getting tired of weeding every day but the good news with a BTE garden is, once you weed and then cover with mulch, there is no need to weed again until next spring. Not too shabby. Of course, as I’ve said before, the main places we are weeding are those that were covered in fresh horse manure. We officially finished all of those places this week. They included all of our raised beds, the broccoli bed, the tomato/squash bed, and the cabbage patch.

From now on, weeding should go by quickly. Good thing too because I won’t have my helpers next week — they’re going to be at my parents’ church’s VBS. They are SO excited. I have mixed feelings as next week I won’t have any help harvesting blueberries! AAAAAH!

Chickens

Since we moved the chicken runs away from the oak tree, we are on chicken watch. So far so good. However, now that the weather is getting hot (consistent 90s), the grass is slowing down and we have to figure out a way to feed the chickens without paying for more feed!

We are also on chicken watch for our latest broody. The kids are going to be gone when she hatches out the latest biddies (of course). Lots going on!

What’s going on in your garden? Check out what others are up to at Daphne’s Dandelions 🙂

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Date of Last Frost!!!

April 21, 2014

Ugh. This week gave me a nice anxiety attack. Weather has been looking up for the past few weeks…our last frost date is TODAY after all. This past week the blueberries were blooming, tomatoes in the greenhouses were sprouting, even some potatoes were sprouting!…and then…FREEZING temperatures two nights this week 😦 I was in such a foul mood those two days, just upset about the inevitable.

The freeze burned the potato plants 😦 They seem to be coming back, slowly…

The freezing temperatures killed three tomato sprouts. 😦 One is still holding on though…

(Weed in the middle…Just below the weed is the tomato sprout that survived.)

We won’t really know what kind of effect the weather had on the blueberry bushes until later in the season when they size up (or not).

While it was still nice, I planted some more kale, lettuce, carrots, beets, and spinach at the beginning of this week. I anxiously waited out the cold weather in the middle of the week. And I sighed with relief at the end of the week as the temperatures steadied.

The plan was to mow once the weather was looking up, if I could get the lawn mower started, but towards the end of the week, the baby moved…or my body just gave up…it became impossible to walk, as bones were cracking (feeling like they were breaking) and I could not walk. I put myself on bed rest and prayed everything would settle soon. After all, I have 3-5 more weeks to go.

Now that the weather is looking up again, my TO DO list is getting LONG. Kneeling actually feels wonderful so I am still really looking forward to all that needs to be done — transplanting from the garden, planting warmer weather crops, and harvesting some things soon!

Check out what everyone else is harvesting over at Daphne’s Dandelions 🙂

Harvest Monday

June 10, 2013

Because I covered the potato plants w/more mulch instead of just trusting the process, most of the potato plants died. So, today I took the opportunity to go ahead and dig around to see what was left. This is what I harvested. This is from about half of the plants. I am going to make MANY LARGE notes to myself to show quite a bit more patience next year!

I also harvested A LOT of beautiful lettuce, as it is getting hot and I don’t want it to bolt.

The kale is looking pitiful. I got this harvested and I am going to plant some more this week but I think all hope may be lost for getting more kale until the fall.

I harvested some more peas as well – enough for each child to have a small pod or half of a large one.

I am linking up to Daphne’s Dandelions this week for Harvest Monday.

We had two days of rain this weekend and ended up with just shy of 5″ altogether. The corn and some of the tomato plants needed to be propped up a little but other than that, the garden was unfazed. The mulch just soaked it up!

The rain did affect another part of our lives, however. After finding no where to get out of the rain, the poor, soaked dog was itching to go out and play. As soon as the sun came out after two days, she decided her playmates would be…the chickens. Which resulted in our first chicken loss…and subsequently, dog loss.

My mother-in-law came and took the dog. I was very glad to be rid of her. I was overwhelmed with having a dog, frankly. However, when my MIL found someone to take the dog, my husband wanted to take her back. He figures we’re just going to have to start over again with another dog – might as well just keep the one we have. If she kills another one, she is definitely out, but he wants to give her another try.

Previous to this incident, she got into the chicken tunnel quite a bit but never messed with the chickens – she just wanted to play with their new toy. When they would free range she never bothered them at all once we trained her not to. I was never worried about her around the chickens. And I think her killing one was fully because she was going stir crazy. However, now I’m very nervous that she will do it again.

We are going to build her a ‘run’/kennel where she will have plenty of room to roam. The plan is to put her in it when we are inside the house and let her out whenever we’re out and about so we can make sure she will not mess with the chickens.

What do you think? Do you think giving her another shot is foolish? I DO NOT want to lose another chicken, for sure. But she has a great temperament and obeys pretty well for being so young – so I hear where my husband is coming from. Anyone kept a dog after it killed a chicken? What are your experiences?