A Wonderful Holiday Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend! The weather was beautiful and we spent a lot of quality family time working on the garden, harvesting greens and putting in my son's carrot bed. It's 2x2 and almost 18 inches deep, to hold the seeds of a record setting length carrot a nice person from the Square Foot Gardening forum sent to my son. He's so excited about growing them and having his own bed! I planted radishes in the bed as well, since Carrots Love Tomatoes recommended doing so.

I also took a road trip and met another forum member, and she sent me home with lots of plants! I took her some borage to plant with her tomatoes, and she sent me home with english thyme, sage, a Poona Kheera cucumber, a Zucchino Rampicante squash, five Country Gentleman Sweet Corn plants, two mystery peppers (she's not sure if they're the sweet variety or the hot one!) and two more tomatoes! I planted them in the newly harvested greens box and I look forward to enjoying her generous gifts. It was great to meet someone else who has caught the SFG bug!

She also recommended a great little place called DeBaggio's Herb Farm. I could have spent hours exploring that place! I can get a bit OCD about acquiring herb varieties so I came home with banana mint (I'm still searching for ginger mint!), anise hyssop, and a horseradish plant for my husband. We tried to plant a root of horseradish but it didn't grow, unlike his beloved rhubarb, which he mentions whenever we walk by its little green leaves.

My husband recently gifted me with a new book called Your Backyard Herb Garden that's chock full of great information about herbs, including how to grow them, how to propagate them, and how to use them. I love browsing through its beautiful pages, even if I fear that it will lead to my deck becoming overrun with herbs! The herb farm had quite a few of the herbs I'm missing, so a return visit is likely. I'm hoping to put in a wheel herb garden, but that's not a project for this year.

I snapped some pictures of the gardens, the deck, and the tires I use as planters, which I'll post as soon as I find the card reader. I swear I need to put a homing device on that little gadget!

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend.

Pictures from July 8, 2008

I finally managed to get some pictures of my plants uploaded!



Here's the biggest grouping of plants. From left to right, orange tomatoes, sweet potatoes, yellow squash, and wax beans.



This is the same grouping from the back side. From left to right there are sweet potatoes, wax beans, dianthus, yellow squash, lobelia, banana peppers (which I don't think are going to produce anything), and orange tomatoes. I put the tomatoes and banana peppers in very late after buying them on sale, so I'll be surprised if they produce, but you never know!



These three watermelon plants were almost demolished by bunnies, so I planted three marigold plants and they seemed to do the trick. I don't think we'll get any watermelon because it's so late in the year for it to bounce back, but I like it all the same.




This is one of the blossoms on the watermelon vine.




I planted two zucchini plants in this tire and we've gotten a couple of decent-sized zucchinis from it (one is pictured below).

I also planted some cherry tomatoes in a planter on the deck, as well as some bell peppers that didn't flourish at all. They made tiny oddly-shaped peppers that never developed and fell off.



That's about it for vegetables and the tire gardening... my next post will be pictures of the butterfly garden that I add to a little every year. I put it over the graves of the animals that we've lost: two miniature horses, L'il Bit of Sass and Denny, my 31 year old saddlebred gelding I had for 23 years, Petite Jean's Fantasy, my son's cat Kailey and my husband's Great Pyrenees, Buddy.

How it all began...

In the spring of this year I was walking through the little nursery in town with my seven-year-old son and he stated that we live on a farm, so we should become gardeners. I smiled and said that was a great idea, since we've lived on our farm for almost 5 years and haven't grown any of our own food to date. I've planted flowers, but hadn't ventured into anything edible. The truth is, I grew up in a subdivision and the thought of gardening intimidates me because my only memories are of a huge tomato patch in the back yard that my Dad made us weed... and the night the June bugs came up at dusk and got in my hair *cringe* It's very much possible that I only had to weed once, but growing up in suburbia, I was totally out of touch with the food chain. Food came from the grocery store, right?

As I grew up and realized the implications of the chemicals we ingested, the artificial flavors and colorings, the impact of factory farming, I not only became a vegetarian but I also started trying to support local, organic farming. I live in a very small rural town so the farmer's market is pretty small, but every year I do what I can to support its growth and I thoroughly enjoy the delicious vegetables and baked goods!

So, I decided to start this blog to track my venture into gardening. Yesterday I took some pictures of my strange little tire plantings (a tire place cuts the sides out of old tires and you can take them for free, so I grabbed a few the year we moved in and only now put them to use). Sadly I don't have the cable that's needed to get the pictures off the camera, but I'll try to do so this weekend and post them.

Anyone who lives nearby or is in the same area, please say hi; I would love to talk to other gardeners!