Category: carrots

Backyard, bees, carrots, chickens, farm, gardening, heirloom, herbs, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, peas, squash, tomatoes

2014 Spring Garden

Olof

This year in my garden I focused more on getting things planted to grow rather than to make it pretty or well organized. My older son helped a lot and because of that I had all kinds of things sprouting all over the place. Here are some photos of what is going on at the moment. 
Cilantro from Botanical Interests was quick to sprout and has been thriving well. 
This was one of those “just stick something in the ground and lets see what it ends up becoming” I don’t know what kind of squash it is but I do know that it is squash. 

Lady Gaga my Polish hen is quite the sight and interesting to watch but all she does is teach my other hens bad habits. I really need to rehome her. She finally started laying this spring but like I said she is more trouble than she is worth. 

 This Zucchini is growing so fast and has plenty of female flowers on it already even thought they are not blooming yet I am looking forward to some amazing zucchini dishes this summer

 I planted some Sweeter Yet Cucumbers this spring and I look forward to eating them. They are not an heirloom but they are REALLY good. And they already have female flowers growing. So excited! Hope to eat plenty of these this summer.

 This basil popped up so quickly. It is one of Botanical Interest’s variety  packs and it is so nice to have all the different types of basil to try.

 A few days after I took this photo these vines wilted due to a vine borer infestation. I was so sad to see them wilt and not being able to do much for them. What do you do to save your plants from the vine borer?

 In the past years I have not done well with peas. I have had poor plants and poor yields but this year was not bad at all. It is getting towards the end of these peas but I have enjoyed they fresh and cooked. Beside the peas I have carrots in all different colors. I love how I am surprised each time I pull one up at what color it is. In the past I have had a problem with my carrots tasting bitter. Is there a trick to making sure that they taste sweet?

Something keeps eating my Okra pants. I love Okra and was looking forward to eating plenty of it since over 10 plants sprouted but due to both chickens making it into the veggie garden and just some sort of bug eating them I am starting to wonder if I will get any. I love the flowers that bloom on these and since this is red okra the seed pods are beautiful too. I haven’t seen what is eating them. Do you know of anything that eats Okra plants like this and if so how do you stop it?

Swiss Chard that seems to be thriving.

 My Bees bouncing back from having lost their queen at some point. I checked the hive 3 weeks ago and there were queen cells and little to no brood. I was worried that I had lost my bees but they are growing in numbers again so I will have to go in and check on them again next weekend.

 I thought after I fenced the chickens off in a smaller part of the yard that this would definitely not happen. I thought that in such a small space they would keep it nice and mowed if not completely void of vegetation but this is what my chicken run looked like a few days ago. I have since chopped down all of the weeds but left the sunflowers for shade. Does this ever happen in your chicken run?

This is what looks to me like a pumpkin vine popped up on its own. Anybody have a different opinion on what this could be?  it is right in front of my grape vine and I struggle with deciding if I should let it be there or not and am worried that it will take all the nutrients away from my growing grapevine. Do you ever have surprise veggies pop up in your garden? I had several tomato plans shoot up this spring. If you do what kind of surprises have you had?

Australorp, Buff Orpington, carrots, Cream Legbar, Creme de la Creme melon, eggs, Fava beans, French Copper Maran, grape vine, hatching, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Icelandic chicken, sweet peppers

Confession- Mini Farm Update

Olof
I have a confession to make. I just put seeds in the ground last week and I can’t remember where I put them or what it was that I planted. I just remember that it put down squash, cucumbers and some TamDew melons. Why you ask? I realized that it was JUNE!!!! and I hadn’t gotten these things in the ground. I had room but it all ended up all over the place because my kids were yelling and it was bed time and and and and…………… I guess I will just see how that goes.

Here are some photos from the ‘Farm’.

Buff the Buff Orpington dust bathing in the heat trying to stay cool

Mathilda the Australorp being careful not to get caught. 

Chipmunck the Cream Legbar and Fluffybum the French Copper Maran were not wanting their photo taken today.

No eggs yet but any day now!

Fava beans, Carrots, and red okra.

Creme de la Creme melon

Tomatoes

Tomato flowers

Grape plant

Sweet pepper plant

Bees buzzing in and out. Have to add the second hive body tomorrow! Exciting!

one of my veggie beds. Look at all of the collard greens and brocoli and Kale.

Just finished fencing the porch off from chickens so that we can use it and bleaching and scrubbing the deck. 

Icelandic chicken eggs in the incubator! I’m excited and hope I have learned my lesson.

The bees are busy, my garden is really doing well with what I have planted and the chickens are doing great and I hope to see the big girls start laying soon.

I got Icelandic chicken eggs from an Icelandic girl in Washington state. I hope that they are thriving in there and that I get at least one hen.

The back porch has been fenced off and cleaned so that the family can use it again. It had gotten really gross after the chickens realized that there was cat food on the deck. They love that stuff even though they have plenty of organic chicken feed and free range of the backyard.

I will take some photos of the bees when I open up the hive tomorrow and show you how much work they have done. There was so much honey in there and my queen was laying and there was brood! I’m so excited about how well things are going. If only I could keep up with mowing the backyard too. It’s a mess. I need some sheep or a horse borrowed for a day or two to eat all of this grass.

What is going on in your backyard?

Australorp, Backyard, boots, Buff Orpington, carrots, chicken, eggs, fava, garden, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, planting, sustainability

Mini Farm Coming Along

Olof
OK, so I was going to take a before pic but honestly I was too ashamed at the state of my garden and horrified that my neighbors back door opened up to it and has had to look at it. It’s the only place where we do not have privacy fencing since there was already a fence there. But so far, I cleaned out the beds, used my Garden Weasel to turn the soil, added 6 cubic feet of peat moss and some organic fertilizer then turned the soil some more to mix it all up and then watered thoroughly.

I know it’s a mess! Wish me luck!

 I planted some Fava Windsor Broad Beans a couple of weeks ago and waiting for them to pop up and this weekend I´m planting some Organic Carrot Seeds Carnival Blend, some beets, some peas, lettuce and other cold hardy plants.

A couple of years ago I put down some weed cloth and put mulch over it. This looked great and was an awesome idea until my cats and the neighborhood cats thought that this would be the ideal place to poop. Yeah, eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww. I kept stepping in it. I got to the point where I didn’t want to go into my garden area. That, plus the heat and the bugs just caused me to quit all together. My garden became a mess and my harvest was lost since I wasn’t keeping up with it. Now I have vines and weeds growing through the cloth. What do farmers do then (this is an Icelandic saying when there is a problem)? I´m going to clean out as much as I can put down even more mulch and then put down pavers for stepping on. This means that I need to go to my city’s free mulch site and pick up LOTS of mulch.

Mathilda the s/he bird
Owl, Buff and Mathilda getting lost in the weeds.

OK so the chickens are growing FAST! I know one of my Easter Eggers is a rooster so his name is Dinner. I live in the city so keeping a rooster is not being very neighborly. I’m still waiting to see if Mathilda is really a girl. I go back and fourth on if she is a he or a she so right now she is a s/he. LOL. I have just started letting them free range in the backyard. They are funny to watch and much easier to keep then I thought. Don’t know why I didn’t do this a LONG time ago. If you are on the fence on this one just jump in! If this is not the hobby for you then you can sell them and people will for sure buy laying hens and your coop.
Just make sure to read books on keeping chickens so you know the basics and have a library to reference to if you start having any problems and check with your local ordinands to see if you can legally keep chickens in your city. The entertainment value alone is worth keeping these birds. I could sit around and watch them all day. In June they should start laying if what I am reading about them starting around 18-22 weeks of age. I can’t wait! I’m still waiting on my Icelandics (lay white to pink eggs) and on a Maran (lays chocolate brown eggs) and Cream Legbar (lays blue eggs). It will be so much fun keeping these fun colors in my frig and giving them to the neighbors and friends.
Waiting for my boots to arrive from Amazon. Have to have proper attire for taking care of my mini farm.

What are you doing this spring? Trying anything new? New plants, animals, hobbies?