Playing in the Hay, Country Garden Update

A couple of weeks ago, Company and I finally got his big garden planted.

whew….

We still need to build an asparagus and rhubarb bed to plant our little dormant plants. I know, I know, we are late getting around to building a bed and getting them in the ground, but…..oh well….

We do this garden thing to have fun doing something we both like to do together. If we get a bumper crop of something…of course that has not happen yet… but we plan on sharing. If we don’t, we will just try again.

Anywho. back to a couple of weeks ago. After church, we went to the lawn and garden big box store, and loaded down our cart with the essential garden seeds, onion and potato sets and some tomato plants. We really do not know what the essential garden seeds are, but we bought a selection that impressed everyone at the store and we pretended to act like we know a thing or two about gardening. If we really knew anything, we would have had the garden planted way back in May. (another…oh well)

I organized all the seed packets on the table. Some of the items like, peas, lettuce, beets ect…I will wait and plant in late August for a fall garden.  All the ones, I thought would be ok to plant now, went into a “plant now pile.”

We also bought four different kinds of seed potatoes to plant. I have not planted potatoes since way back when Oldest Daughter was a baby. There is something fun about taking a potato fork and digging up potatoes that are hidden under the ground, that appeals to me.

Not that I know much, but I do know that I had to cut the potatoes in pieces with “eyes” on them to plant. (I also read the directions to make sure I was doing this right)

It took me awhile to cut up all those potatoes. : ) It was better than being outside and tilling up the garden, one more time, like Company was doing.

I made sure to take my time cutting up the potatoes in the cool, air conditioned house.

It never pays to try to get out of some garden work….cause…I forgot my garden tennis shoes, and decided I would go barefoot to plant the garden. The first thing I did was to step in goose poop.

See that big green pile of goose poop? That is the pile I stepped in. It was cold too! Good thing I have not gone in to the salon for my summer pedicure yet.

After much ado about nothing, we finally got the rows made and started planting. Here are the potato pieces on the ground ready to be covered up.

Oldest Grandgirl wanted us to plant her some pumpkins for Halloween. So, we made sure we planted her some.

As luck would have it, after we planted our little seeds, there was about three downpours of rain on the little garden. Some of the seeds got washed to who knows where, but some of the seeds were able to hang on and come to life. Here is a picture of something we planted. It is some vining plant, like squash, cucumber, or zucchini.

Today, after I got off of work, I drove to Company’s house to work in the country garden. Company tilled up the ground between the rows of plants and we sprinkled hay (it is really straw) down to help keep the ground moist if it rains. We only got about a third of the garden tilled up between the rows, because the tiller got a flat tire, making it hard to steer and it  (Company) tilled over some of my plants.

It was time to call it quits for the night and get something to eat.

After getting all the pieces of straw out of our clothes, and hair and my shoes.

Yes! I wore shoes. No more goose poop between my toes.

We headed to the big city to get some restaurant food.

On a side note, the onions we planted in the fall and “over wintered” are growing. I think we should have fertilized them and watered them better. But, I am able to start pulling some up to use.

We did get a few strawberries this year. But, with all large scale strawberries gardens that were planted in the fall, this winter was hard on them. The plants that lived through that tough winter look great, but alas are not blooming.

I am sure next year will be our year of strawberries galore.

Amateur farmers have to stay positive!

How is your garden going?

Becky

“The Project, Part Two”

You eyes are not deceiving  you, we put a long groove in each of our future rows of strawberries.

Have we lost our minds?

At this point in the project, I thought maybe we had : ).

If  you read my last post, you know that the big project was starting a strawberry patch with a plastic mulch system. This works by, making a 2 foot wide mound of dirt and as long as you want to make your row. You cover the row with plastic, cause the plastic keeps the dirt warm and then you cut holes in the plastic and plant your strawberry plugs. When I did my research it did not sound too bad…..that is yet to be seen haha…

The one thing you have to think about is, that if you put plastic over the rows, you have to water the strawberry plugs somehow.

That is where drip lines come into play.

We installed a drip line that was 60 feet long and bury them a little below ground so we could water the strawberries.

The drip lines come in 50 foot lengths, so we had to add several feet on to each line. You use this barb looking plastic inserts that connect the two lines.

One end of the drip line is connected to a water hose and the other end is tied off using this doodad. Forgot the name of it, but it bends the drip line prevented the water from going out that end.

On the other end that connects to the water hose, you have to connect each drip line to this faucet set up. This one has enough hooks up for four drip lines. We also put these faucet connects on the end of the drip line to connect it to the faucet set up. Then you just connect your water hose from your hose and turn it on to water the strawberries. Cool uh? : )

Here is a picture of all the installed drip lines before we buried them in. After we buried the drip lines, we started on the plastic.

Now we unrolled the plastic and cut it to length. Then we unfolded it and cut  it into the width we needed.

Here is what two of the rows looked like. You take landscape hooks and hook the plastic into the ground so it does not blow off. This is as far as we got one night. When I came the next day, I brought oldest grand girl to help plant the strawberries. It was then I realized we did not put our fertilizer on top of the dirt rows before we put the plastic down. So, before we could go any further, we had to take the plastic up on one side and sprinkle the fertilizer down and then re-stake the plastic. ugh!!!

Here is what the rows looked like after we covered each row with plastic.

Step two is done with our strawberry project.

Tomorrow, I will tell you how we managed to get all those strawberry plugs planted. Let’s just say, we had to cut 250 round little holes in the plastic to be able to plant to the plugs in the ground.

Oh my…what have I got ourselves into….

That is the question of the day : ).

Becky

 

Urban Community Garden

Everyone loves a field trip! Including me. Yesterday, I just had the urge to explore something new.

I had read a little story in our local paper about a community urban garden. It is a garden that provides education and resources for families to create a edible garden in thier backyard. As a teacher, this really interested me.

 A couple of days later, I just happen to accidentally drive by it. Whoohoo, what is the chances of that. I knew, when I had more time I had to go back and explore.

Sunday afternoon was a perfect afternoon for my field trip. My granddaughters are my little explorers……my car is the Santa Maria.  I was able to take one of my granddaughters. I picked her up, she got buckled up and we sailed away to find this garden of urban.

I was very interested in seeing the chickens. Don’t know why. I am just a little “cuckoo” sometimes.

The first thing we found was land. Ok…we parked next to the curb. But, we were delighted to find the fence surrounding the garden decorated with the cutest, cleverest, and adorable string art.

    

We were greeted by Mr. BeeBumble and Mrs. C. Carrot and of course Mr. Heirloom Tomato.

         

We can’t forget to mention, Ms. Lettuce B. Friends and Sister Pie Pumpkin.

What we were really looking for was the chickens.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

I don’t know either.

         

There were two large coops on the urban (farm) garden. One housed white chickens and the other coop housed different colored ones. The different colored ones, followed us up and down the side of the coop.  They wanted to be friends. We were making a connection….wait…I think they wanted to be fed.

The white chickens just kind of sat around, ignoring us.

We really liked the different colored ones.

Next, we visited the home of Bee Bumble.

Bees sting.

We did not stay long.

Next, we took a walk through the garden. The rows are so nice and straight. My granddaughter looks down for a closer view.

         

We found these little guys hiding.

What are these little guys? or girls? Are they beets?

We were able to talk to one of the workers. He was so gracious and answered so many of my questions.

I need to go back and ask some more.

Next time, I need to take all my granddaughters on an expedition for further exploration of the urban garden.

Or maybe a closer look at Bee Bumbles house with out fear of being greeted at the door by a angry door (bee) man.

We may not know a lot nowabout the urban garden . We may not know how it all works. But, we do know one thing.

All gardens and chicken need a little water!

I will share more information about this urban garden as our exploration continues.

It was time to go home. We climbed back on board the santa maria to sail for home via a pit stop at McDonalds.

Happy Gardening!

Becky

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