Garden Progress

So far so good! On Tuesday I had from the time I woke up until about noon to go outside and play in the dirt. After sweating my hiney off for an hour-ish, the Big Guy came out to help!  : )

He pounded the 8ft 1x2's into the ground for me so I could hang the netting for the pole beans. We fixed the netting across the open area to use as a gate of sorts to keep the dogs out of the garden and so we can take it down entirely when we need to get things to the very back (like the branches that fall so we can take them back to the burn pile).

We added lots of compost to one of the middle beds for the tomatoes. After I turned it a bit using a pitchfork, I grabbed the flat of Cherokee Purple tomatoes and started digging. The Big Guy seen me and came to help me with that too!  : )  We ended up planting 64 of them in that bed (bed #5), 2 per hole. There's also enough room on each side in that bed (they are planted in 5 rows down the middle of the bed) to plant a scattering of leaf lettuces, mustard greens or swiss chard. Yum!

After the tomatoes were done, I figured, why not, and planted the beans. : )  Since the netting is down the center of the bed, I planted on both sides. Into the ground went 10 HUGE Di Spagna Climbing Snap Beans; a bunch of Scarlet Runner Beans and a whole lot of Louisiana Purple Podded Pole Beans. 

Today, I was playing out in the rain. Managed to get 30 Dwarf Sugar Gery Snow Peas & 255 Laxton Progress Peas planted before it was raining too bad. 

Once the rain stops, I'll get out there and take some photos so you can follow all my *hard* work. : ) LOL!

Was also thinking of having another page on here to document what's been planted and keep track of everything that is harvested as well. I think it's an easy way for me to keep track of how much I can grow in my small space.

LOTS of Garden Work...

If you could take a moment and spare 2 clicks to vote for me for the Good Mood Blogger job opening, that would be Great!

Oh the garden woes I have... For those of you who don't know, Florida gardening is completely bass ackwards from the rest of the world. We have to be careful with what we plant during the summer time because there are many varieties of veggies out there that cannot stand our extreme combination of high heat and high humidity. While the plants themselves may live, IF they flower in the heat, the humidity causes the pollen to be sticky and therefore the few flowers that are there, very rarely produce fruit. With that said, our main growing season is coming upon us down here very quickly!

More quickly than I care to admit...

I have managed to get some seeds started. I trayed up an entire flat (11 spaces across by 23 rows = 253 potential seedlings per tray) of Cherokee Purple Tomatoes about 3 weeks ago. They are looking good!

Good enough to plant in the garden!!! 

The problem? My garden... Let's see, to try to put this in perspective before I show you, I haven't weeded the garden area in, ummmm, let's say 3, maybe 4, MONTHS!?!

This is not a sight for the faint of heart. Or lover of all things organized and orderly. 

PST ~ There IS a reason why I have pretty silvery frames around the pictures. To hopefully distract you from the photos themselves...

YIKES!!! 

Buried in the spent plants, weeds and dead tall grasses, on the left side of the photo, in front of the green poles, there are 5 baby fruit bushes. Hmmm. I wonder which ones I planted there?... Oh, and there are about 75 strawberry plants lining that inside edge of the bricks all the way to the left to the fence line. Yup, you guessed it! They're buried under all the spend plants also. *sigh*

That tall patch of green at the bottom left of the base of the palm tree, that's my patch of Asparagus that was planted in March of this year. So, come March, we will be having our first micro harvest of fresh asparagus. YUM!

Those green posts that you may be able to see on the left side of the photo, those held up my deer fencing that I used to keep the stupid, I mean dumb, big dog out. Well, I guess she finally figured out that she can just PLOW right through it, rip it to shreds, and pull the poles out of the ground by dragging it along with her as she strolls around! UGGGG!!!

You can see one of the Bee Hives sitting back there, ready for a new bee family come spring. :)
We already have a hive, if you look at the photo below closely, you can kinda see it behind the tree and next to the pot on the left side of the photo.

All of the basil was in that first bed right in the center on the right as well as that far bed lining the fence. If you look closely, you can see the browned dried stalks that are loaded with dried seed pods ready for me to gather up and replant. There were multiple varieties of Basil: Lime, Lemon, Thai, Sweet, Lettuce Leaf, Tiny Leaf and a couple of others... DANG! It's no fun getting old and forgetful!

Thank goodness I have everything written down with a diagram of which plants were where.

Now, if I could only find it...

The bed on the right against the wall of our shop storage room, well, that started out as a compost pile. Then I got a package in the mail with sweet potato starts that I completely forgotten I ordered... So ~ guess what's in that "bed"? Yup! Sweet potatoes.
They did wonderfully! Well, the vines did anyhooo. They sure were tasty. :) Yes, you can eat the leaves of a Sweet Potato vine. They are quite good! Specially tossed into a hot frying pan with a touch of olive oil and a couple heads of crushed/chopped garlic for a moment, just long enough to wilt. Then served up with a pat of butter. YUM!
Oh yea, the sweet potatoes themselves. Well, I haven't harvested them yet. I've been waiting, letting them grow bigger and fatter in the ground until we get a frost threat. ROFL!!! Hmmm, it maybe a couple of months before I can tell you how the sweet potatoes themselves are. I planted 12 starts and I'm really curious to know how well they performed.

For those of you who are wondering, the beds are a LOT deeper than they appear. They were dug down about a foot and half from the ground level. At first the beds were level with the ground. They become built up over time and I added the wood and bricks to keep the soil contained. It appears that I'm probably going to have to add another layer of wood or bricks soon. Maybe not this season, but before the next for sure.

I'm hoping to have time tomorrow to get out there (IF it's not like today was in reaching around 93*!!!) and finish pulling the spent plants in the middle bed that's in front of the asparagus bed, as well as the bed along the far back fence line so that I can add some more compost and the Cherokee Purple Tomato seedlings...

We'll see... :)

Thank goodness it's over!

This past week has been an absolute nightmare! While I did not end up putting in as many hours at work as I had planned, I ended up with a stomach bug. It's kinda hard to work when you're expected to be on the phone to take calls and you in the bathroom every 15-30mins... Not fun! I'm feeling much better this afternoon though. :) Yesterday I think I was awake for a total of 5, maybe 6 hours!

Time for me to get caught up on everything. My school work, while not ahead, at least I'm caught up at the moment, which is a very good thing.

My daughters prom is coming up soon. Or maybe it's homecoming. lol! I've been feeling so bad, I'm not 100% on which it is. This is what I do know, there's a big dance coming up in the middle of October. And in my sick stupor, we did manage to get to Joann's craft store while they were having their $0.99 pattern sale for all Butterick patterns. SWEET! She picked out a pattern, but there's going to be alterations made to it. We're making the white one. But not in white. The colors haven't been picked out yet. In my sick stupor, I believe she said something about a blue polka dot?!? That's exactly why we didn't get material that day.

1) she wants a BIG waist bow in front added, like this one from TROPHY Clothing out of Denver

2) she wants it just above the knee length 

3) she wants the skirt gathered and attached at random spots like this "Modern Gallica" skirt from Anthropologie

So, while I have a pattern to go by, I kinda don't. lol

Onto the garden/farm. I have not had a chance to do jack-squat! Hubby did manage to pick up a really nice ride on lawn tractor for $100. It does need a bit of work though. I went to get him for dinner the day we bought it, he looked so cute covered from head to toe in grease! He had it standing up on end working on the underside of it. I'm lucky I caught me one that actually knows how to work on things and make them to work when he's done! LOL!

I did, however, manage to start a full tray of Cherokee Purple organic heirloom tomato seeds. A full tray. That's 231 tomato seeds. Sometime this evening or tomorrow, I've got to get a full tray of Creole tomato seeds planted up as well. I'm not sure what else... I'm actually kinda debating the Creole's. I'm thinking I may go with a different variety simple because the Creole's do excellent in this horrid Florida heat and humidity that I may want to save them to start in Spring time. I don't know...

Oh, I forgot to mention, the volunteer tomatillo plant that was doing so well in the large planter out front, it kicked the bucket after almost a week with not a drop of rain... Yup, you guess it, I forgot to water it at all... Oh well. I've got to get out there and pick all those little fruits off and see if there's any in those paper husks. I'll let you know what I find.

What have you all been up to?

Property...

We went back out to the formerly rental property yesterday. I cannot believe how high the grass and weeds are already!?! YIKES! I'm wondering if goats will be able to keep the grass down or if I should be thinking sheep instead... On the positive side of thinking, the soil should not need too much, if any thing, added to it, to get it up to par for veggie growing. And no, I'm not talking about garbage like miracle grow or any other non-organic garbage like that. I was thinking that we were going to have to have truck loads of compost and stuff dumped to make the soil good for growing.

I was highly disturbed though by what we found when we were out there... The old tenants were out there again!!! Now, keep in mind, they moved out about 3 months ago!!! We have a big burn pile on the back of the property. I guess they decided that they could just add to it! On top of that, there's a shed on the property, we stuck all the stuff that they left in the mobile out there and locked it up when they left. They unscrewed the hinge to get around the lock and took SOME of their stuff... I know that it wasn't someone looking for stuff to steal, because they left some expensive stuff out there and took some stuff that I was going to toss into a dumpster soon.

We really need to finish the fence and get a dog... Hmmm, maybe I'll look into one of those invisible fences so I don't have to worry about the dog going over the fence when we're not there.

On another note, after thinking about the laying chickens I'll have out there, I'm considering how to change half of the shed into a coop with a little flap door leading outside into a run/pen for them. For the meat chickens I really like the chicken tractors that Jessie's hubby from Rurally Screwed made for theirs.

I have got to get some tomato seeds started if we're going to have a tomato patch out there. Yes, you read that right, a tomato patch. lol

Time for me to say bye for now. I'm working for 10hrs today, plus I have a ton of school work that needs to get finished up so I can turn it in on time. I hope you all have a great day! Remember, SMILE!  : )

Endless Possibilities...

Now comes the task of planning out all that space! While it is going to be a difficult task, it is one that I am looking forward to. Time spent pouring over my extensive seed collection to figure out what I have to plant. More time spent pouring over all the seed catalogs that get mailed to my home. And lots and lots of graph paper for the planning of the layout of the land and where I want everything to go.

These things I am definitely going to have: a couple of chicken tractors for meat chickens, a chicken coop for egg laying chickens, some ducks or guinea to free range on the entire property to help with the bug population, 8 or 10 bee hives, and a couple of goats will wrap up the animals. Although I'm still considering meat rabbits...

In regards to the garden, I'm pondering how much space to give to specialty garlic varieties. After I get the spacing figured out, I can decide how many different varieties to plant. Also, I wonder how much space I would need for an asparagus patch that is big enough to keep us in asparagus for dinner at least one night a week...

Hopefully, I'll figure out a very inexpensive way to get a shallow 8-10" pond in the ground somewhere. I would like to grow water chestnuts to sell fresh to specialty markets. Not to mention, enough to can for myself. I sure do enjoy spinach dip! Yum!

Of course I wouldn't forget the "typical" stuff like heirloom tomatoes, specialty hot peppers and hard to find fruits. All organic, all local.

On a side note, I'm also considering starting a nursery on part of the property to sell edible plants directly to consumers. We'll see about that though. That idea still needs a lot of thought and planning if it is going to become a reality.