What's growing in the garden

I haven't been out in the garden much, mostly because it's winter and I forgot to do carrots when it rained. We haven't had much rain since. Anyway, I have a garden full of weeds and a few other things.

I was so excited to see these big beautiful strawberries growing. They were tasty and didn't have any rolly pollies eating them!

Here are a few things from the trees. The mango's are so delicious. The kids and I go down the hill on the property we live on and pick about 20 avocados per week. They taste so much better then in the store. Then we have some blood oranges and grapefruit.

Here is the only thing other then those few strawberries really growing well in the garden. We haven't had much rain, but the weather has been super cold which makes tasty lettuce.

So, now I am not buying oranges, grapefruits, avocados, lettuce and eggs when I go grocery shopping. I love it!

DIY Trellis

Mr. C is totally motivated to get our garden going again. He just got to read his Mother Earth magazine this week and was very excited about the trellis made of sticks from the yard and we definitely have plenty of sticks laying around.

Isn't he just so sexy?! I just love it when he's being green. :-) Working on our garden and doing it with little impact. A man after my own heart.

We had our 2 kids + 3 more this week and Mr. C decided to do it that day, he took all 5 kids on a little hike down our very steep hill and collected all the sticks he needed for the trellis.

Here is the finished trellis. This box will hopefully grow snow peas. We will see in about a month.

Don't you just love all the weeds around the outside. That was my brilliant idea to grow alfalfa as a cover crop. That stuff sure was a pain! Oh well, you live, you learn.

Kristen

Garden Update

This summer has not been good to us on the farm. Those lovely planter boxes that we built to keep the gofer out I guess had bad soil and not enough water, so we lost a lot of our plants in the first month. Things are finally starting to grow. There was one box that did well for us this summer, it was the box where I put compost and dirt from the ground in it.

We got and are getting lots and lots of peppers. The only problem is when it gets really hot they get sun scorched. I have a shader up, but it's not enough. The weather has been very mild this week and today I found all those peppers ready to harvest! I was so excited. I also found 1 cucumber ready to harvest as well. I am so excited to finally be finding food! Tonight we actually got to eat peppers, cucumbers and strawberries from our own garden. That's the most in one meal in a long time.

Our chickens are another story! It has been crazy, they started laying eggs under all the mango trees and I had to go on an egg hunt every day. Then they stopped laying eggs and went broody. For a while I could take one egg a day out from under them, they would take turns watching the egg they shared for that day. After almost 2 months, they stopped sitting on the eggs and stopped laying all together. Finally, we are up to 2 eggs a day again for the past 2 days in a row. Maybe it's the weather. It did get pretty hot for a couple weeks.

So, there is our update. I'm going to try to plant a bunch of squash after I get the garden all weeded. They are supposed to be pretty disease resistant in the fall.

Dinner from the Garden

This is one of the reasons I LOVE summer...

All those fresh veggies. They sure look yummy. Too bad they weren't all perfect. The lemon cucumber wasn't quite right and the regular cucumber I let grow too long. I was waiting to see if it was a lemon cucumber and if it was going to change colors. Obviously, it was not!

Isn't this a lovely garlic from the garden?

I was so excited when I saw how big the cloves were. I need to make roasted garlic with one of them.

I put the garlic with some olive oil in this butternut squash that was given to me out of another garden. Mine are not growing yet. I really hope that changes soon because I really love this stuff and because of the hard skin it keeps all winter long. Anyway, I bake it at 375 until it's soft and it is so, so good.

Here is my favorite salad made with all the summer veggies. I have the peppers, red onion, and carrots from the garden then I added some avocado, lettuce, feta cheese and almonds. I tossed it all together and added Trader Joe's Cranberry Walnut Gorgonzola Salad Dressing, my favorite! The only thing missing was the cucumbers.

To go with my salad and butternut squash, I made teriyaki meatballs, bell peppers and onions.

It was a delicious dinner!

Mostly all organic. The meat, avocados, cheese and dressing were not organic, but the rest was.

Did I make you hungry? :-)

Kristen

What's growing and not growing...

We planted our spring garden I think a little over a month ago. So, it should be growing like crazy by now. We had some issues with the watering and our corn flowered way too soon, the squash didn't grow and I lost some of the tomatoes. Now that we got it all straightened out, I think we are finally growing strong. Maybe another month and I can start posting organic recipes. 

Anyway, here is what is growing and not growing...

Some of the onions are looking good, some are kind of small. There is an elephant garlic down there and 2 regular ones. I'm letting them dry out to see how they turned out. I sure hope the elephant garlic turned out. I love roasted garlic.

This is the biggest onion I have EVER seen!

This is the second year for our strawberries. They usually get eaten by the rolly pollies, but then a squirrel found it's way into our garden by a hose that was left draped over the little fence. That darn squirrel ate ALL of our strawberries, even ones that were not ripe. But, once I took the hose away, the squirrel can't get in so we have beautiful strawberries again. Also, for some reason, there are a few less rolly pollies. If you have a good trick to get rid of the rolly pollies PLEASE, please tell me. Organic though.

We have 3 artichoke plants, one was amazing grew so fast and then it started to do terrible. The plant was turning black and the artichokes were misshapen. Today I discovered it was aphids! I kept thinking that, but didn't see any. Well, it's the green kind on a green plant, of-course I didn't see any! I sprayed Neam oil today and every day I'm just going to blast them off with the hose. That should work.

At least the plant that wasn't doing so good is doing much better now and I have this beauty...

Here are the peppers. Much better so far then last year. I still need some shade. I'm thinking another basil plant.

Since my other corn planted with my squash and beans didn't do so well, Mr. C planted a bunch more off on their own. Now I get to "watch my corn pop up in rows." Ha, ha! I just had to say that. Yes, I am a country fan much to the disappointment of my husband.

Here is a very sad tomato plant. Who needs tomatoes anyway...

Ok, I suppose I can use them for cooking. This one is doing much better with more water.

And, that is how my garden is growing. It's on it's way to getting better. This is what I have been working on instead of sewing. I weeded SO much this morning and got covered in aphids. I can't stand those little things.

Kristen

Artichokes

I love food fresh from the garden. The other day we had this...

It ended up here a couple nights later...

Then it found it's way here...

And here...

And finally became this...

It's amazing how much better fresh from the garden food tastes. These artichokes had so much flavor. L's plate was completely empty after dinner, she kept saying, "Mommy, I want more artichoke, I need more food." I love hearing that when it comes to fresh organic veggies.

It was originally little C's idea to plant the artichokes, he has been waiting and waiting till we can eat them. Needless to say he was very excited.

Here is a little tip for those organic gardeners out there that are also having trouble with earwigs. When you cut the artichoke off, tap it upside down first, then look inside the petals (or what ever you call them) for any earwigs hiding, knock those out, then soak it in a bowl of water before you refrigerate. This so far has keep me from finding earwigs roaming around my refrigerator or finding a surprise little extra protein in our meal.

Earwigs and rolly polly's (woodlice) are the worst! I can not figure out how to get rid of them yet. If you have any tips for me, I'd love to hear it.

Kristen

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is one holiday I love. It's my excuse to make all the decisions about what I want to do on that day and I don't have to feel guilty about asking my husband to do all the cleaning. Mr. C knows I love flowers and gardening so he decided after breakfast that we would go to Armstrong to pick a couple potted flowers.

I let little C be in charge of pictures this morning. Here are the daisy's I got. I want these to grow huge and wild. We have so much dirt, I just need some pretty wild color.

Here is a little 6 pack of something that is supposed to get pretty big.

Here is Mr. C posing for a picture while planting some more beans and corn. Those salva were planted last spring and they were tiny. The pink flowers kept getting eaten by the rabbits until I started planting onions all around the flowers. The onions work wonders! I also use some stinky stuff called "Rabbit Scram." That works pretty good, but it stinks. The onions are much better and I get nice organic onions out of it.

Here are some flowers we planted as seeds in egg cartons a couple weeks ago.

I'm transfering them to these so they can get bigger before I plant them with the big bunch of flowers outside.

At church last night C and L made me a card with flowers in them. One is zinas and the other is daisy's. I love how wild daisy's grow. I'm so excited for those.

C is making sure that L doesn't water his side... It's always a battle.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms in blogland. I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful day doing what you want.

Kristen

The Garden is Planted

I am SO excited! I have been waiting and waiting for the huge plant sale at the arboretum. Finally, this weekend it was here.

Here is what my planter boxes have looked like since we got a huge truck full of soil that we had to shovel into the boxes.

At least I have some other stuff growing in the garden all year.

We just planted this a few months ago. I actually planted 3, but this is the only one that really took off. The other two are small.

Lots of onions and some garlic.

I got to the arboretum by about 10:30 and it was already a good 85 degrees. That's ok, I just wanted all my organic veggie plants. Once we got in I went straight to the organic booth.

All in all, I ended up with 48 plants for about $56. I know it doesn't look like 51 plants, but some of those like the pole beans have 4 or 5 in one container. They are pretty easy to split.

Here is my first planter box, remember the peppers? Well, I got one more and added some basil and garlic to the box. The garlic didn't transplant well so it doesn't look so pretty. I also added one more pepper. A yellow one.

You can click on that picture to see the 5 bush beans in one little container. :-) That is so exciting.

In this box, I have 12 corn, 8 pole beans and 4 cucumbers.

Here I have, 1 crimson watermelon, 5 bush beans, 1 muskmelon, 1 zuccini, 2 butternut squash, 1 squash with a hard green outer shell and the rest I don't know because Mr. C planted them and didn't keep the tags. So, it will be a surprise. But there are 16 plants in all. So fun! I will have to show pictures in a month so you can see the growth. I just learned that the butternut and other squashes with the hard outer skin will keep all winter long. I hope I get a ton.

Here are 5 tomatoes, 3 celery (transplanted), 2 peanut plants and 1 egg plant. I am totally excited about the peanut plants. They will be very fun!

Last, I have these 2 cucumbers that Mr. C is trying. It's a new self watering space saver thing. So far, so good.

Can't wait to see it grow and eat it up!

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