Another Day In The Garden

I spent another morning working on the herb bed. One more morning, and I should have it all weeded. I'm working in sections because it is backbreaking work and it doesn't have to be done all in one day. This is the section that I finished this morning. I'm almost done. The bushy plant to the right is Sage, that's Lavendar along the back wall, and tomatoes and peppers in the bamboo staked areas.
I was given this barrel feeder a few months ago, and have kept it as a hay manger for the goats. Since they waste so much hay when they are fed this way, I decided to find another use for it. I've turned it into a planter and planted straight necked yellow squash in it. I'll weave the plants along the ladder as they grow. To the right of the planter are some pepper plants I transplanted this morning. They were in pots that were way too small, and I may have stunted them by waiting too long.
This is another experiment. They are tomato plants that are planted upside down. The theory is that by planting them this way there is no need for staking or caging the tomatoes. You can also plant herbs or flowers in the top part of the bucket. Other than 1 grape tomato plant, these are the only hybrid tomatoes that we planted this year. They are called "Heat Wave" and are supposed to be ideal for second plantings. I bought the 2 plants specifically for this project. Once settled in, I will move them to a sunny spot.
Here is another shot of my poor stunted peppers. Between them, the tomatoes and getting the squash planter set up, I mixed up a LOT of potting soil this morning!
The front of the house is looking better now that I am getting some weeding done.

After getting all my barn chores done, I decided to take the camera out and get a few shots of the goats. I interrupted a perfectly good dust bathing when I took this shot. What a group! Our chickens are free ranging again, they spent a couple of months locked up in a pen thanks to our neighbor's dogs. With the price of feed skyrocketting, we decided that adding poultry wire along the back side of our property was less expensive than buying chicken food...not to mention it's just crazy to keep them locked up when they enjoy going and finding their own.
Manny was snoozing up a storm when I went out to visit the boys this morning. Satin is already in rut, so is Tucker. I can not ever recall the bucks coming into rut this early. Maybe someone knows why it would happen and can clue me in?

Of course when the girls saw me talking to them, they stopped browsing and came up to be nosey. This gives you an idea of Manny's size. At 7 months old he is nearly as big as Legacy. Legacy is 3. Manny is going to be as big as his daddy I think...

Here is a picture of Manny's sire. This is Goldthwaite War Chief...

I plan to breed Manny to Callie this fall. I think they will produce some lovely kids...

Once the girls realized there were no snacks involved with my visit to the boys, they headed back out to browse.Well, enough playing with the computer and cooling off. I've got more work to do.

More Mid-Season Herb Garden Work

Today I continued working on the herb bed, weeding, ammending soil, building a bean trellis, and planting...here is how it looked when I finished yesterday after planting sweet potatoes...

And here is how it looked this morning after working...

I added 28 cu feet of compost, dug out the weeds, replaced the border slate, made a path behind the trellis, made the trellis, and planted beans (direct sown) and planted 3 fennel plants. I try to re-use as much as possible, and this 6' chain link gate was just laying behind Bob's workshop. We set a T-post at each end, and wired the gate onto the posts about 18" off the ground.

I planted a row of Kentucky Wonder pole snap beans on each side of the trellis, plus a couple on each end. I envision the whole gate covered in lush folliage with hundreds of bean pods...we'll see!Yay!! I'm nearly halfway done with this herb bed. Look at how much the grass has grown into the border stones. I still have a lot of work to do. This is the back side of the trellis, on the far end you can see the sweet potatoes that I planted yesterday. The hay is the pathway that I use to walk through and tend to the garden. Once the plants are established, I will mulch the beds with hay and feed sacks to prevent weeds and retain moisture.To the left of the path, against the house,I planted fennel plants. You have to look closely to see them, they are just tiny things. The plant in the foreground is Bee Balm.

After getting it done, I noticed that my hibiscus was blooming again...I had to get a shot of the new flower.

And I had another garden visitor this morning. He posed long enough to snap a shot of him...

Sweet Potatoes, Rosemary, and Ginger Oh My!

I got an earlier-than-usual start on things this morning. The heat has made it nearly impossible to work in the gardens more than about 30 minutes at a time in the afternoon (full sun = great garden but also = heatstroke!)

A friend had given us a big sack of sweet potatoes from her garden. I got a bit distracted with other projects and they began to sprout.

I decided not to let the slips go to waste and found a spot for them in the herb bed in the front yard. I call it the herb bed, but it is a flowerbed along the front of the house that contains our Rosemary hedge, a lavendar bush, some sage, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. One end of the bed had been used this spring for our onions and is now vacant (except of course for weeds). Nothing has ever grown very well on that end, except the Rosemary, so I had decided to hand dig and ammend the soil on that end. In order to survive the procedure, I started very early this morning. Grace wanted to "help", so I put one of the goat collars on her (which I was barely able to get over her head) and we headed outside.

Before I could start on the bed, I had to do a serious pruning of the Rosemary hedge. It has grown so much this year, and I haven't pruned it at all. I trimmed a 32qt Rubbermaid tote worth of rosemary just off the front of the hedge!
Next I did a lot of digging and weeding. The spot that I've chosen for the sweet potatoes is about 6X4 feet. Once weeded, I mixed 1 part topsoil with 2 parts compost and dug it into the bed. I mulched an area between the sweet potato bed and the rosemary using feed sacks and hay. This creates a path to the middle of the bed (soon to be planted with green beans), and allows me to work on the sweet potato area from all 4 sides.
I cut the sprouted area off of each sweet potato and saved the rest for canning. I'm not sure that keeping the chunk of tuber is needed for them to grow, but I figured it couldn't hurt.
I planted about half of these in that spot, and gave the other half to a friend. I planted the spot pretty intensively, about 30 slips in about 24 square feet. I will add a trellis if they all grow well. I've got the rest of the sweet spuds in the fridge waiting to be canned. I should be able to get these done in the next few days.
In the midst of removing the potatoes from the sack, and cutting off the slips....I slipped and knocked a few off. I placed all of them in a jar with some water and will see if they root.
Here's a shot of the other end of that flower bed. As you can tell, it needs a LOT of work. Not today though, it's almost milking time and Grace is bored.

After finishing barn chores, I came in to cool off and started web surfing for a minute while I cooled off. I stumbled across this website that gave me an idea for drying all that rosemary. I made the flower drying rack on that site for drying the rosemary. I rinsed the rosemary, tied it in bundles, and hung it on the rack by S hooks I fashioned from bailing wire. The rack holds about half of the rosemary that I cut this morning; I sent the rest to a friend. It is hanging in the dining room and it smells SO good.

Speaking of sprouting...I bought a nice piece of ginger root a while back, and it had started to sprout. I have found varying opinions on how to root it, so I cut it into 3 pieces, planted one in a pot of soil and suspended the other two over water. This will be an interesting project, and with the amount of ginger we use, it will be nice to have some that we've grown ourselves.

Here is a pic of the potted one...

Please Don't Call Us Self-Sufficient!

I know that many folks that are "off the grid" or try to live off of what they produce on their land use the term a lot. Many homesteaders seek this as a goal. However, the more I try to live from what we produce, the more I realize just how much we rely on God's grace and blessings.

A few years ago there was a popular phrase...FROG...Fully Rely On God. This is what we do every day. It is not self reliance nor is it self sufficiency; it is the faith to do things with our tiny piece of land that most folks take for granted.

The Good Lord helped us find this place, it was at the right time and the right place. Without His hand of blessing over us we could not do what we do, much less survive. We are simply doing our best to be good stewards over this piece of ground that God has allowed us to own.

Reducing the grocery & feed bills

I've spent a bit of time in the garden this week. It was in serious need of weeding, and I still have some more planting to do (more beans and sweet potatoes). I am also experimenting with some grains. I'm planning to till an area strictly for the purpose of growing grains for feed; mainly alfalfa, wheat, millet, oats, amaranth, and barley. I'm hoping to be able to supplement our chickens, ducks, rabbits, and goats with our own home grown grains and greens. Our chickens have been free ranging for about 3 weeks now, with the layers getting no store-bought grains or pellets. They find their own food and we give them grass clippings, kitchen scraps, and goat milk. Our meat flock is supplemented with about a pound of scratch grains a day.

Since we began gardening, we have tried to do it without any synthetic pest control or fertilizers. It does make the garden more challenging, but it also has many rewards. This year we released lady bugs, and hatched 2 praying mantis egg cases. I use manure tea for fertilizer, and we use a combination of feed sacks and hay as mulch. As a result we have a number of garden guests ranging from frogs, toads, birds, and snakes. Yesterday morning I was busy working when I spotted a little garter snake. He was the smallest one I've ever seen in the wild, he couldn't have been over a week or so old.

See him peeking out from under the rock? Look at the very tip of the blade of grass. He was hiding under the tarp that covers the load of topsoil (leftover from when we did some septic tank work). Check out his teeny size compared to the oak leaf.Here's a little pictoral tour of what we have growing so far. Keep in mind we're only halfway through our growing season here. I have a single Anahiem pepper plant, and it is just starting to develop fruit. It is in a pot on the front porch.

We have several bell pepper plants, greens, reds, and yellows. I try to grow as many bell peppers as possible during the warm months and then freeze or dry them for using year round.

In 2006, I started experimenting with growing pineapples. I still have the very first pineapple plant I started back then, and it is growing well. I am hoping it will bear fruit in the next year or so. I have also successfully rooted 2 others, although they are only about 6 months and a year old; and have 1 other starting to root. Growing pineapples takes a long time, they need to be at least 2 1/2 before they will set fruit.

We are also growing melons this year, both cantaloupe and watermelons. We picked our first cantaloupe yesterday...I can't wait to taste it! Here is a picture of it before we picked it. That's a pumpkin vine growing over it; our pumpkins and cantaloupes are growing into each other.

Here are some other pictures of the melons that are growing in the garden. Pay no attention to the weeds growing amongst them...I try to ignore them.

Here are a few more random pictures I took yesterday morning. This is the first year for planting this spot, and we are really happy with the results so far. God is really blessing us this year!

Our potatoes are starting to sprout through the mulch again.