Down on the Farm part 2

WE HAVE GROWTH!

Well, it's been 4 weeks now since Mountain Man and I planted our vegetable garden
Things are a sproutin'! So I guess we did something right.

Here are the tomato plants.
We lost a couple of them.
Not sure if it was due to just a poor plant or the enormous amount of rain
we got right after planting. Seriously, I was afraid all of the seeds would have washed away, that's how much rain we got.

BUT, it was all worth it because we have blossoms!
This is the first tomato blossom I spotted.
There are a couple on another plant too so I know we'll at least
have SOME tomatoes if not 24 plants worth of them.

Next to the tomato plants, we have zucchini squash.
These were the first to break ground and I had to pull out one or two plants from each mound to make room for the more healthier plants. This was done according to package instructions.
I hated to pull out those plants (it's called thinning) because there was nothing wrong with them. I actually contemplated transplanting them to another section,
but decided I was being silly and didn't do it.

This is a close up of one zucchini squash plant.
I'm waiting for the squash blossom. I heard they are beautiful and the zucchini will grow right from it. I've never seen this so I'm excited to witness it.

This, although very similar to the zucchini, is the pumpkin plant.
It's also a squash but the large leaves appear pointed at the end... like a heart.
I love pumpkins so I was disappointed that not all of the seeds germinated into seedlings.
I think we dug six or seven holes but only four sprouted pumpkin plants.

And here is the corn.
Although we bought the seeds from our garden center instead of using
the packaged ones from the supermarket, we did use the directions from the package.
It said to plant in 4 short rows of 4-5 plants each.
I also read online that corn should be planted in blocks to help with pollination.
But we couldn't stop with just a small 4 row block of corn!
We love Silver Queen Corn so our block is 7 rows of 7 plants.
Hopefully they'll be our Lucky 7!

And last but not least is the Yukon Gold Potatoes.
I was getting worried about these guys because they were kinda late sprouting up.
I also wasn't sure how to plant them since my seed potatoes' eyes
had already sprouted long stems and I wasn't sure if they were roots
or the stem of the potato plant.
Did they go into the ground sprout up or sprout down?
Well, all I can tell you is that most were planted sprout down
except for the last one... which was the first to come up.
So my advice is to plant sprout up!

Actually, that isn't the last vegetable we planted.
We also planted carrots but so far these have not come up so I have no pictures to show you.
I thought I saw sprouts but the garden has been overrun
with weeds since all the rain we've gotten.
3 solid weeks of rain right after planting all our seeds!
But this past week has been beautiful sunshine with periods of thunderstorms.
I guess God is taking care of watering my garden for me!

I'll try to remember to take pictures as the weeks go on so you can see how successful (fingers are crossed) we've been with this garden.

In addition to the vegetable garden, we've also decided to spruce up around the pond in our backyard. The brick walkway was pulled up and redone.

Isn't it pretty?
We still have to mix the cement and sand to brush in between the cracks.
I wanted a wider gap in between the bricks this time
so we had some bricks left over when we were done putting them back.

We also bought a bunch of pretty flowers to plant around the pond.

This gorgeous purple flower is called Marine.
It smells like licorice!
I was standing on the outside of the fence (taking the pictures of the vegetable garden for this blog) when the breeze carried this delicious aroma to me!
Oh I can't wait until this is in the ground and I can smell it from my pool!

With the Marine, we'll plant these Impatients.
They are mixed colors of pink, purple, white and coral.

Next year I'm taking the advice of a dear friend and planting the seeds that will drop from my abundant amount of 4 O'Clocks, that are in the front of the house, along the fence in my backyard. They will look great there and will compliment these flowers around the pond.

I got these beautiful red New Guinea Imapatients for the flower boxes on my deck.
I thought they would attract hummingbirds since I just bought
a hummingbird feeder to hang there.

So far, these flowers are not planted yet. I'll update this blog when they are to show you the finished landscaping. It's hard work but it's so exciting. I can't wait to see it all done!

HAPPY GARDENING!

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Down on the Farm

After what seems like a loooong winter and raining spring, Mountain Man and I decided we wanted to plant a really big garden. We have the room and the desire. Not sure our bodies are in tune with our minds though. This is back-breaking work folks!

First we had to cut the grass where we wanted to place the garden. This was kinda a no-brainer as this is the only large plot of ground we have that gets plenty of sun.

Here is Mountain Man tilling the area. Since we do not own a tiller (YET) we had to rent one. Lukily, the local stores around here do not charge a deposit
and they are pretty reasonable. However, they might not charge a deposit because
the equipment isn't exactly what you'd call NEW!

Finally, after renting two, yes TWO tillers, we were able to get the ground ready for our plants. We didn't mix in any organic soil or anything. We have been told that the land that our house, and all of our neighbor's houses are on was once a farm so we figured we'd just leave it as is and go with it.

We put our tomato plants in the ground. These were started from seed indoors and we probably should have gotten them in the ground much sooner because they were pretty long by the time we actually did get them planted. But the weather didn't cooperate so that's why they are so droopy. We planted 24 tomato plants! What were we thinking? If all goes well, we'll have tomatoes coming out our ears!

At the last minute I decided I wanted to try growing potatoes too. This is a "Seed Potato". You shouldn't plant the potatoes you buy in the supermarket because most likely they've been treated with a growth retardant (so the eyes don't grow these long sprouts shown above).
We weren't sure where to buy seed potatoes but as we pulled into a local garden center, the sign right in front of us said "See Potatoes, 5 lb bag $13.00"
Sold!
This is a Yukon Gold Potato. Man, I sure hope these come up!

Next we planted Corn. Yeah, I know, we're adventurous. lol
This is Silver Queen corn seed. We bought it at our local garden center, the same place we bought the seed potatoes. We had bought a package of Silver Queen Hybrid corn from the supermarket but we decided to go with the corn from the garden center. They had lots and lots of seeds for sale! All Kinds of Seeds! It made me want to plant a lot more things but we figured we'd better just stick to what we'd planned in case we totally suck at growing veggies! :)

We also planted Zucchini, Pumpkins and Carrots.
Hopefully, they'll all come up and produce lots of good food to eat and can this summer!