Spring 2016 Update

written by Yvonne

Things are finally coming up. Seems like it takes twice as long as the package says for seeds to sprout, but for the most part, everything eventually does come up.

Me taking a picture of Tom taking a picture of the garden.

The first blackberry flower of the season. This photo makes the flower look huge, but it's actually quite small. I didn't even see it but on closer inspection, Tom saw it and snagged a shot.

The strawberries have been flowering for many weeks now but the flowers are hard to spot. We didn't tend these at all during the winter and they came through just fine. This is the main strawberry patch. There are two others in large pots.

When you pull back all that green, there are many of small flowers; some have started to drop their leaves and are forming the berries.

Very successful cabbage. Still probably need to thin these out because once they get big, I don't know if there will be enough space for all of them to mature.

Collards doing GREAT.

This is Swill Chard which was planted several weeks after the collards.

The lettuce has come on full force. It's actually bigger than this now and we've even begun eating from it. Adding arugula to our lunch salad is such a treat!

(Ants view of the lettuce.)

The peas haven't taken off like I'd hoped, but this one is coming along OK.

To the left is a patch of carrots and the larger plant on the right is beans.

Kale.

Spinach is WAY disappointing. I planted two full packs of seeds in the area and this is all that's come up.

This is oregano that came back after winter. I'll be drying some more soon because we just ran out.

This is thyme that also came back after the winter. I planted parsley and cilantro a few weeks ago but no signs of it yet. Most herbs don't want to come out until it's consistently super hot weather. We've been having a beautiful cool spring so I'm not giving up on these seeds just yet.

An overview of the Spring garden after a good rain.

Yep... Still Green

written by Yvonne

Honey and Olive wanted to make sure everyone knows how much they help in all of our gardening endeavors.  They did a good job of making sure these bales of straw didn't blow away.

And yes, you guessed it. We are still (happily) eating spinach and lettuce!  Baskets full!

And there is still plenty more growing!  Actually, after harvesting a good amount of the spinach pictured here, we started pulling up the plants because they've begun to bolt.

This is the other end of the lettuce/spinach bed. Tom tilled it and planted (from left to right) snap peas, Provider bush beans, Maxibell bush beans.  In the background you can see new rows of spinach coming up in bed #3.

The collards, Swiss chard and kale are just about ready to eat.  Next weekend I'll likely make something with the Swiss chard. Upon further inspection, Tom determined that the large plant in the right foreground is a couple of turnips, not collards.  Still good eatin' either way.

Only a few of the peas have come up so far (center).

This volunteer cucumber showed up out of nowhere. It's a little early for cucumbers but if it wants to come up now, fine by us.

Still plucking off the strawberry flowers and it seems to be working because the plants are really growing nicely.

We are a behind in starting summer seeds. We should have started melons, squash, peppers and tomatoes a few weeks ago, but there are only so many hours in a weekend.  Tom filled up the pots I made with dirt and tomorrow I'll get some squash, melons, and pumpkin seed started.

Tom also tilled the garden annex area. Ya know, I think we just like having this as potential so we get it ready every year and think we're going to find just the right thing to make it work. Yes, a few squashes materialized last year, but for the most part, it's been a dud. Well NO MORE! Boy do we have plans for it now!  You may recall we purchased rosemary and two kinds of mint plants in early Spring. This is where they are going to reside and we have high hopes they will 'take' since both are aggressive and hearty. We've managed to keep the plants alive through some really cold weather. Now that the bed is ready, they'll get planted tomorrow.  THEN, we're going to take chicken wire previously used for compost bins and hang it on the outside of the carport.  We'll secure it down at the bottom of this of brick wall with stakes.  Then we'll transplant some jasmine at the back of this bed and let it grow up the chicken wire.  We'll have a nice beautiful natural wall blocking off the ugly carport. It'll make for a much nicer view from the back patio.  We did the same thing several years ago on one end of the front porch and it's worked great.

Whew!  It's finally done! And what a job it was. It took two weekends, many hours, 3 broken tools, and MANY loads of brush wheeled to the front yard for pick up.  But the back fence line has now been completely cleared out. We cleared a third of it together two weekends ago then Tom finished the last 2/3 by himself.

Here's what it looked like before....

and here it is after!

Before...

after!

This is before mostly shows the overgrown compost bins. Nonetheless, here is before...

and after!  Doesn't even look like the same yard, does it? Now that it's a nice open, accessible space Tom was able to get to the trees to hang some bee boxes. (Read more about that later this week at www.tsbeeshoney.com.)  Our neighbors told us numerous times over the weekend how great it looked. Guess it was worse than we thought.

Another Super-Duper Spring Day

written by Yvonne

Although we both would have rather been sitting on the front porch reading and/or napping, there was much Spring gardening and yard work to do. Luckily the weather was beyond beautiful which made it much easier to haul our butts outside to get some work done; high was 54 with not a cloud in the sky.

Tom has been out of town for a while so this was his first opportunity to get back to the strawberries. There were 12 plants left over from the first planting so he bought some dirt, filled up several pots, and planted the remaining strawberries.

The first round of plants have already started to flower.

According to Master Gardener Jerry Baker, we are to pinch off all the berries that form between now and mid-summer. This will ensure a Fall crop this year and two harvests each year thereafter.  It's hard to see but in the dead center of this photo you can see a berry starting. Off with it's head!

Spring = greens, greens, and more greens which makes TY happy, happy and more happy!  I harvested four bags of kale and four bags of collards. These were from plants that were overwintered, proving that it does pay to plant things in late Fall/early Winter for an early Spring harvest. We had already planted more kale and collards several weeks ago so hopefully we'll get one more round of greens before the heat of the summer hits.

What does one do with so many greens?

• Friday night was kale pesto pasta.
• Saturday morning we added kale to our breakfast green smoothie.
• Saturday night it was sauteed collards with grit cakes, tomatoes and eggs.
• Tonight there's a BIG kale salad waiting for us with some fish on the side.
• Tomorrow night we'll have sauteed collards with more fish.
• Tuesday night Tom will make grits and greens.
• And any greens left over after all this will make its way into our breakfast smoothies the rest of the week. (I know you wish you were here, Rebecca.)

What?! Another batch of greens? Yes, but this is lettuce and spinach. This was also overwintered. Lunch for the week!

There was a freeze warning last night (temps dropped into the 20s) which is exactly why we left the hoops up on the bed with growing greens.  Tom covered them up for the night and everything survived just fine.

While Tom was busy breaking our lawn mower, I got busy planting the rest of the Spring seeds which included:

• snow peas
• snap peas
• cress
• spinach
• onions (2 varieties)
• beets
• carrots (2 varieties)
• cabbage (round 2)

All four beds are now fully planted for the Spring. Next up, we'll start summer veg in pots and keep them in the greenhouse until the weather gets nice and hot.

A Colorful Late Summer

written by Yvonne

A quick sketch of what to plant in each bed with Fall crops is necessary to keep us on track and to make sure we don't forget anything.  Bed #4 is full of tomatoes right now but will be open in a month or so and we can use that for something else so it's good to have a plan to follow.

After mapping it out, we used stakes to identify what is where, then went about planting all the seeds. This bed is lettuce, kale, spinach and collards. Greens, greens and more greens!

We pulled out the last of the cow and crowder peas. Got 'em all shelled and ready for some fall/winter eatin'.

The berries appear ready to put out another small batch. Cool!  Looks like not nearly as many as in early spring but any amount that comes up is good with us.

These are sunflower seeds I saved from a big sunflower plant several years ago. The seeds certainly germinated but these are about one quarter of the size of the original flower. Still, they are beautiful to look at.

Salsa anyone?  I just love having this kind of variety and colors of tomatoes!

Cleaning Up With New Dirt

written by Yvonne

It's already August which means some of the Spring plantings need to get pulled to make way for Fall crops. Here you can see the cucumbers have been eaten alive and are ready to pull. We got a nice amount of cucumbers from these two plants this summer.

The okra will stay in for now, especially since it hasn't produced anything yet.

Just as in the last two years, we definitely have tomatoes, they are just coming in WAY later than everyone else's. And this year we even started them in pots. Nonetheless, we're getting a nice large batch of 'em.

And a few are even starting to ripen!

And this would be your standard HUGE squash plants...

and the annual squash blossom beauty shot.

As far as the herbs go, the dill is super spindly and not producing enough fronds to use. No parsley ever came up. Basil is finally here and being put to good use. And of course more oregano than even Lidia Bastianich can use.

Three very small, stunted pepper plants are hanging on...

and they do shows signs of producing peppers. If these actually turn into peppers, it may qualify for the world's smallest pepper plant.

Tom has been composting food scraps and yard waste for several years now and we decided it was time to put the compost to use. He cut back lots of vines that had grown all around and into the bins while I cut back low-hanging tree branches to make easier work of scooping out the compost. The green monster you see on the left is a squash plant growing out of one of the bins.

Tom emptied out two compost bins to spread over three of the beds. We've had eight compost bins for a while now but we really only use the front four so Tom dismantled two of and we'll concentrate on using just four from here on out.  Honey helped by running like a crazy dog around the beds.

Next you'll see the stages of what we did to each beds.  Bed #1 before.

Bed #1 with compost.

Tom picked up a load of dirt on Friday so we'd be ready to go Saturday filling the beds with new soil.

Bed #1 with new dirt.

Bed #2 before.

Bed #2 with all cow and crowder peas pulled out and compost added.

Bed #2 with dirt added.

Bed #3 with LOTS of grass, one dwarf okra plant (that's what the variety is actually called) and three dwarf pepper plants (not an actual variety, just a description).

Bed #3 with weeds pulled, compost added and topped with new dirt.

Bed #4 is chock full of tomatoes so....

we just pulled the dead cucumber plants and the Swiss chard. I got a good harvest from the chard then ditched all the bug-eaten leaves and pulled up the plants.

When pulling the cucumber plants, these two baseball-bat sized cucumbers were attached to the ends. Tom wants to cut them up and bury them to see if they'll grow. After shoveling compost and dirt for a good while, we were too tired to do any more so we thought this would do for now.

Dirt is all out of the truck. "Ok dogs, let's go for a ride back to the carport!  Olive/Honey place. Good girl Olive. Honey, Place. Place. Place"

"PLACE. HONEY, PLACE!"