Lots of fun things for us to see recently.
Somehow there’s nothing funnier than cows which are outside of our gate and fences. The next-door cattle rancher has drastically reduced the number of cattle they have and they do try to keep them home but they are sneaky guys and as soon as they see the rancher and his kids coming on their four-wheelers they all scatter into the trees and pretend they are squirrels. We find this continuing rodeo very funny because they cannot get into our yard as of yet.
So that’s a very fun thing to see.
Progress is slow because I hurt my shoulder somehow and knitting more than a couple of rows a day really hurts. So this may be a year long project. Hopefully a chiropractor I’m going to see in a couple of weeks is useful.
Still fun to see some progress.
They were delicious. We have more to be picked today and I will put them raw into a pasta salad. I have lettuce from the garden to add to the salad, but so far nothing else is big enough.
So fun to see this for breakfast. I think I’ll do that again tomorrow morning, actually.
Finally, we have finished building the garden. All the infrastructure is in place except for drip irrigation which we are thinking about but haven’t gone so far as figuring out how to install it. The bark mulch took forever to put down but it is done and it helps enormously to limit the amount of weeds. We still have weeds to contend with but only 1% of what used to be there instead of basically solid weeds. Yay!
This side of the garden has two rows of raspberry plants which are finally starting to grow a bit but not really tall enough to see them unless you know what you’re looking for. A few of them have even set fruit and Dan ate a raspberry yesterday. Progress! The peach tree is taller than I am, and the apricot tree is also putting on some new growth. Herbs are going well in their little bed between the trees.
This is looking due west. The new growth on the peach tree closest to me when I took the picture is the lighter colored leaves. It’s grown almost two feet so far.
It is so fun watching these plants grow. Right now it looks kind of funny to see little plants spaced so far apart but we tried to make sure they have enough room to grow to full size without crowding each other. Hopefully we left enough room.
These are pictures of the first row of raised beds.
We’ve been able to eat a few strawberries but nothing like what we are anticipating in a couple of years. They taste delicious and the Robins love them a bit too much; we’ll have to use floating row covers next year.
See the bird house on the garden fence? We had a pair of Tree Swallows raise two batches of babies in it. Yay! Next year we’ll put up some more nest boxes in a couple of other places because there’s nothing so cool as baby birds.
We planted two varieties – a russet which is a late harvest variety, and a yellow potato which is a mid-season harvest.
We need to pick some more peas and I can thin the onions and use them in various ways. When they are completely grown I’ll chop them finely and freeze them for instant additions to anything I want to cook over the winter.
The middle row has these things planted.
The lettuce varieties are sweet and tender at this point. I’ll plant some more seeds in a couple of weeks for late season harvesting. The swiss chard needs to be thinned so it will grow better.
In between the carrots and beets is room for second planting of lettuce
I’ll freeze and pickle beans that we don’t eat fresh. The plants have a ton of blossoms and are already growing tiny thin beans.
We’ll definitely have an abundance of zucchini; there are lots of blossoms on the plant and some are already starting to grow.
That’s all the second row.
The last row of raised beds has these plants.
There are a couple of tiny cucumbers starting to grow. When these plants get big they get carried away. Can’t wait!
There are a few baby tomatoes growing and it once they start producing we’ll have luscious tomatoes to eat the rest of the summer and fall. I’ll make some tomato sauce and can it with the roma tomatoes once they get going.
There are some small jalapeno peppers growing, and a couple of anaheim have also set fruit. The bell pepper plants are proving to be disappointing so far.
Next year we will have our own plants we start from seeds and that will work a lot better.
So lots of fun things to look at now in the garden, and weeds are under control. They aren’t gone but it’s feasible to keep them under control at this point.