Wait...WHAT?!

Wowie! June is gone and it's now July 12th?! My last post was on June 8th?!

To be honest, the garden has been somewhat disappointing. I've been busy being a chicken, goose & duck mom - which means the garden falls behinds just a little while we get the chickens raised up.

A sampling of what is growing in the boxes.

The Garden Boxes - These have been doing really well! I rotated where I plant certain things and all is happy. At the beginning of the season I had two boxes readily available (after some weeding) to plant. One box has my greens and the other peas and carrots. One box is still full of the cover crop that went in last fall - crimson clover and the other box contains leeks. The leeks, once they were rescued from all of the weeds, are doing well. They are on the small side, but will be easy to use in whatever recipe calls for leeks.

The rest of the garden and all it's glory has been hit and miss. I know what needs to happen...compost and/or cover crop to amend the soil. If I did a soil test that would be helpful...hmmm...maybe I need to get on that.

Potatoes (Yukon, Red Norland, Fingerling and purple) - This year's experiment includes growing the potatoes in laundry baskets. It took a few weeks, but they all sprouted! We'll see how that experiment turns out. Right now, I'm not terribly impressed so this might just be the only time we use the laundry baskets for this purpose. As I only put one layer of seed potato pieces in each basken we had TONS of potatoes pieces to plant in other parts of the garden. So yeah, let's just say that we might have a pretty good harvest of potatoes this year and we won't be running out as quickly as we did last year. There probably will be enough to share with friends, family, neighbors...passer's by on the road...anyone who dares to make eye contact!

Green Beans (Bush) - Even with the poor soil the beans were doing good until a critter got to them. Every single one of the bean plants was topped off. I'm guessing it was a deer, each plant was missing its true leaves. Fortunately, there are still buds that will sprout and there will BE plants, they will just happen later. DANG! My plan is to plant another row of beans and try this succession planting idea that I have read about in different books and magazines and on the interwebs. It's experiment time!

Green Beans (Pole) - Tom decided to plant some beans in the front yard that has been transformed into a garden. I want to say that the pole bean seeds were old seeds and that they were past their prime. There were only 4 or 5 seeds that germinated. He has his own critter problem in the front - bunnies. They nibble on everything! Again

Tomato Plants - Fifteen plants were transplanted and one was topped by a critter. Not bad for the tomatoes. It has been awhile since I had non Cherry Tomato plants in the "free range" garden so this is almost like an experiment. So far half of the plants are doing pretty good, but the others are still sad looking. In an effort to help them along I added some mushroom compost to the anemic looking plants and half of those are not looking nearly as sad. We'll see how it goes. Tomatoes may go into a low tunnel or hoop house next year.

Flowers - I am extremely disappointed with the flower seed situation. I decided to do Cosmos, Bachelor Buttons and Sunflowers. Some of the cosmos germinated a couple of the bachelor buttons and NO sunflowers. How is it possible that the flowers are doing so poorly - I better do a soil test.

I know that I need to amend the soil and I am hoping that we might be able to get some compost to apply to the beds that are sucky and use those for my fall garden. Maybe we are just trying too many different things. If that is the case our little hobby farm might just be the Bean, Tomato, Potato, Egg farm. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but I do like to try new things and hope that this problem will be corrected before the next planting.

Back to the books!

Once the poultry routine is not as extensive we have settled into a reasonable routine life will be more than just working on the hobby farm. Although, there will ALWAYS be something to work on.

This life is a good life and we'll keep at it for as long as possible!

Now, back to that garden, but first...look at this guy!