Garden Update-July

This is mostly just pictures of the garden. I think they are pretty self explanatory if you have been following the garden.

Got our first tomatoes. Delish!

First harvest of greenbeans. First fruits went out and the rest went into the freezer. I have more that I'm canning today.

He is so cute. You can't hold him with one hand anymore!

This was just to show how tall the corn is. She is 5'3". That is my Destini in the picture. Not by her own free will of course.

Yummy!

Are you ready to go out and pick dinner?? I am!

My Garden Now

Time for a garden update. I have 3 other posts in the works but decided I liked this one best!

I fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to get around or even get up to the garden for a while so I was so excited when I hobbled up there the other day and saw how things have grown! (including weeds-lol)

This is a beet that I think may be ready to pick. I've never grown them before, so I'm guessing.


This is the potatoes that are begining to die back a little. It's about time to go get some of them too!



Green Beans and poke salad. You can't really see it here but the green beans are blooming so it won't be long until we are canning!!

My Pride and Joy. . . Our squash and zucchini. I planted them way too close. I have never had a squash plant get this big!! You can't really tell in the picture but they are up to my waist and full of veggies!

Another long shot of the garden where you can see most of it!

And of course, our first harvested vegetables! First fruits went out and many were sliced and frozen for future use! Aren't they gorgeous. I had forgotten what a difference there is in the taste of home grown vegetables. I do every year!

My Magnolia tree finally bloomed this year. It was planted by my grandfather when I was a child. I have been told that when a person who plants a tree dies, the trees etc. won't bloom for 2 years. It has been 2 summers since he passed so I guess it was time. I had told my uncle that if it didn't bloom this year it was probably going to be outta here! lol

This bloom hasn't opened yet. I just thought it was so beautiful!

Last but not least, the bucket brigade! Those upside down tomato plants. Luckily I have some in the ground too. They got blight and are very sad looking, even though they have fruit on them. I have been trying to keep the stems cut off that have it but I think the blight is winning. We will have to try again next year!

Be Blessed!

More Garden Pictures

Time for new pictures from the garden. I took these about a week ago. Yep, it took me that long to get around to putting them here. Life has been busy!

Here are the strawberries! The chipmonks LOVE them!!! Taz has had 1!!
Zucchini and yellow squash. They are doing awesome! I was having an upclose look today and some have bud on them!!

Corn, and weeds! you can see a few zucchini on the top right. The corn is growing at different rates. Strange really. One might be 18 inches tall and the one beside it is like 6 inches tall.

This is my weed/dirt garden. There are a few onion sets at the bottom that are kind of doing something. Not really, the ones between the potatoes are about to bloom! Didn't pray over this one because it did so well last year. Just kind of added it flippantly to the prayer for the big garden. Big mistake!!! God has already shown me who to help with food from my garden. I'm so excited!

The bucket brigade. Tomatoes hanging from the frame my hubby made. They are growing like crazy! I am so impressed. Maybe next year we can try some other things besides tomatoes!

My Potatoes! They were planted in a 9 inch deep "gully". The dirt is stacked about 18 inches high on the plant. I stopped adding dirt when they bloomed. they are so pretty!

Beets for the hubby. I saw them today and they are huge!

Our garden has been so much fun this year. Our large garden is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course it is also growing poke salad. I could have an entire garden of the stuff if I wanted! In some places the weeds are out of control but now that the rainy season is almost over, I will be able to get to them. The kids have really enjoyed it too. Taz gets excited about helping in the garden. We still loose plants to his cause but of course it's worth it. He is learning so much!

Garden today

We have had nothing but rain and storms for days so as you can see, their is debri in the garden. Some of the green beans were washed up and we had to cover several of them back up. At the very end you can just barely see the potato mounds.

This is our baby corn! This is the first time we have seen it poking out of the ground. Ain't it cute!

This is one of our strawberry plants. I think we may have a few this year. Ignore the weeds please. They grow thanks to the rain too.

This is our baby squash. We have about 4 rows of squash. Love 'em!

Here are our potatoes. Wow have they grown! I ran out of dirt to cover them today! Looks like we may have a few potatoes this year.

baby beets! Hubby loves them.

I also took some pictures of the iris' and the cherry tree today too! BEAUTIFUL!

Farmers

The kids just love taking these pictures! ok not so much...this first one took a couple of takes because he looked more like he was gritting his teeth than smiling. These 3 love being in the garden with me. It was dusk when we quit working this day! No I didn't work them like slaves all day.

She helps with anything in the yard. She wanted to use the chainsaw one day when helping her dad! NOT HAPPENING!!

There were about 8 seeds in that hole! The picture below shows what he was planting. A little hard to see but it's corn. He was a bit tired of the camera too! lol

It has rained very consistently the last few days so we have been able to plant and not water because the sky was opening up and drenching everything. I have had to cover the potato plants twice in the last 3 or 4 days. I can't wait to have yummy potatoes to eat!

You won't find any pictures of Destini in the garden with us. She isn't the gardening type. She will be more of a city dweller when she is grown and leaves home.

Be blessed

The Garden

Lots of outdoor work going on around here. My husband cut down some trees yesterday that I have wanted gone for 2 years! YIPPIE! Me and the children have been working on the gardens getting them ready to plant and putting in seeds and plants. We also planted some bushes recently. So lots of changes to the yard! I love spring!

This is the garden before the tiller got to it. What you see in the dirt is coffee grounds and egg shells. It helps kind of fertilize the soil a bit. We have mostly red clay here so the soil needs lots of help. We also bought a trailer full of mushroom compost this year to add to the clay. We doubled the garden size this year too. I'm trying to gradually get up to having enough vegetables to put up (freeze and can) so we can eat that more from our garden then from the store for the year. We aren't there yet. There are six of us and we tend to give a fair amount away. It's really hard to know what a tenth is when the plants keep proucing vegetables to be able to use that to be a blessing. I just give where I see a need.

Here is my little Taz helping by putting the coffee grounds in the dirt. This was supposed to be for flowers but my husband expanded it out from the house so it will also house some vegetables this year. Where Taz is standing has peppers and onions planted now. The area that is blocked off with the plastic pretend rocks has tomatoes in it now. The onions help keep rabbits out. We also planted marigolds and alissym to help with pest control. I have been looking up companion planting to make the garden better as far as producing and reducing pests. We are trying to be as organic as possible but its a learning process.

One of our little potatoe plants! Isn't it cute! The picture doesn't do it justice! We added some dirt to it so that only the leaves are poking out now.

We are going to make some markers for our garden this week. Actually the kids are going to make them. They just don't know it yet. I got the idea from Teaching Good Things. Here is the link http://teachinggoodthings.com/blog/plant-markers/ I like this idea better than the one I was going to use.

Be blessed!