flowers

Early summer garden

July 1, 2022Jen PowellLeave a comment

The garden is going well so far this year. Here are some pictures from the last week or two:

My foxglove have been spreading. And I have several white ones too. They are in front (as seen here) and along the moon garden portion of the old chicken shed.
Here is my greens bed – kale, Asian greens, chard, and collards. There is some spinach that is starting to bolt, and I’m growing some salsify as well.
My honeyberries are producing more. I need to put some kind of tarp down underneath. The berries are supposed to be ready when they just fall off the bushes (or you can shake them off). They are still a bit tart yet.
My strawberries are doing well. The mint is overtaking some of the bed, so later this summer I will be pulling everything out and replanting just the best strawberry plants.
My poppies all re-seeded, I can see them coming up everywhere. This bed will be full of them soon.
Here are even more poppies.
Here is half of my main garden. Things are growing well. I had a couple of zucchini plants not take, but I put like 12 in, so a few missing won’t matter so much.
Here is the other half of the main garden. I put sticks up around this bed to keep the deer from jumping in this year. A way to inexpensively make my fence taller.
We didn’t put the greenhouse fabric up this year, but I am still using it for planting. I put onions in, and some tomatoes. There are tons of ground cherries coming back from last year, and some wildflowers (daisies) and wild herbs (the giant Mullein on the left).
I did combined-beds (companion planting) this year. This bed is onions and Chinese cabbage. I have several beds with 2 things interplanted, to help save space, but also the plants benefit each other. There are also marigolds in this bed.
My nettles and Valerian came back in full force. We picked some nettles and froze them for eating when they were small. (They get too bitter once they get large). The Valerian flowers will smell really nice once they fully bloom.

The garden is doing well. We’ve had a weird June. Some colder temps here and there. I’ve had to re-seed several things a few times, and some of those just didn’t take after all that. I had to re-seed gourds, zucchini, cucumbers, and broccoli. My beans have done horribly (I planted them too deep maybe? or soaked them too long when the package said to soak overnight). I have 8 bean plants out of 2 packets I planted. But most things are growing well. Here are some updated pics:

Here are some Valerian and Daisies that are growing at the front of our old chicken coop.

Some pics of our pathways in our Cottage Garden. My husband has been placing stones to outline all the pathways and it looks really nice. So far, we have not had a return of whatever animal was messing my stones up last year.

Here is a fairy door my husband put in, against the chicken coop/cottage building. The flower bed in front of it is supposed to be full of poppies. They are slowly appearing (I seeded it with tons but it’s not as full as it should have been).

Here are pics of Canterbury Bells that I planted LAST YEAR but never came up. (Or I didn’t realize they came up last year, they didn’t flower); along with some white Black-Eyed Susan vine (growing in our Moon garden).

Here are some Dead Man’s Fingers mushrooms. I found some of these last year in this same spot, and there are more growing in the garden nearby. They are weird looking but pretty cool. I read online that there must be wood fragments under the soil because their mycelium feed on wood.

Some yellow Bearded Iris that I put in last year, and my Mongolian Giant sunflowers. They are only 2 feet tall right now but should get 12-14 feet tall by end of the summer. I also have some little zinnia plants that I bought from the store and put in, because the Brussels’ Sprouts that I planted here originally never came up. ( I have more seeds starting in the house for those now – I planted them direct the first time).

As you can see, the garden is coming along well. I just wish I didn’t have to re-seed things.

A Nice Day in April…

April 19, 2019Jen Powell1 Comment

Today was a beautiful day. We had temps in at least the 50s, and it was sunny. The snow is melting, and I planted a new bed full of perennial vegetables. Here are some pictures from this nice spring day:

snow yard 1 — Here you can see our yard is on it’s way to being snow-free. It’s taking awhile. This picture is taken from outside of our dog fence, near the garage. On the left you can kind of see my garden, which is still half covered. The garlic bed started to peak out of the snow today, and that was the deepest part of the snow in the actual garden.

snow yard 2 — Here is the house with some snow around it – we have a metal roof so the snow falls around the house and those snowbanks always take longer to melt.

chicken path — Here is our chicken-coop path currently. It’s a low, muddy mess. Luckily we have muck boots to wear when we go to the chicken coop. The ducks love this area – they dabble their bills in the puddles when they pass though. (When the snow is all melted and the ground dries out, the “path” actually disappears, but it’s been a pathway for the last several months).

Here is a new bed I’m creating near the garage for some perennial flowers and vegetables – I originally planned for just sunchokes and crosnes in this area but I think I will put some milkweeds and gogi berries as well since there is enough room. This is a good spot in case the sunchokes go a little invasive, as I’ve heard they can. This area is out of the way, just grassy, and it could use some nice flowers – sunchokes are supposed to have yellow flowers and be nice and tall. I set this up last weekend, and I thought I would have a week or so for the plastic to kill the grass, but I did not; the sunchokes and crosnes arrived sooner than I thought they would.

Here are the sunchokes – they arrived the other day. I got two kinds, a red (on the left) and white fuseau, on the right. I got three tubers of each kind.

crosnes — Here are Crosnes (aka Chinese Artichokes). These are pretty small but they are supposed to be delicious, and a very easy to grow perennial. I read that you should cut the plants before they flower in order to get tubers of decent size though, so I plan on doing that. I ordered 6 tubers – I think I actually received 8 but some were very small.

planted bed — Here is the sunchoke and crosnes portion of the bed planted. I left the rest of the bed with the plastic on it so it can continue to cook in the sun for awhile. I laid fencing over the bed to keep chickens out – it’s very sandy and they would love to make this into a dust bath area. I will fence it soon and then will be able to take this cover off.

I went wandering the woods and yard a bit today – I found some moss that had greened up already – here is a bug’s eye view of the moss.

white crocus — We have crocuses blooming! Here are some white flowers.

Here are some purple crocus. We have daffodil leaves emerging too.

Late Summer Photos

August 29, 2018April 29, 2019Jen Powell2 Comments

There has been a lot going on this August, and the garden is still growing well. We have tomatoes but none are ripe yet. We have had an overabundance of cucumbers and starting to have a ton of summer squash. Here are some cool pictures of our farm from this past month:

My onion crop! We got 103 yellow onions. I also planted some red onions late in the season, I am not sure if those will be ready this year or if we’ll have to wait till spring. This is my second time growing onions from sets, and the best harvest I’ve had. Last year the chickens kept dust bathing in the onion patch – this year the onions were not where the chickens could go.

I got a good garlic harvest too – I think there were a couple that didn’t grow though; I planted around 40 cloves from last year’s harvest, which grew into 36 bulbs, and these were mostly pretty large sized. I am saving a couple of bulbs for replanting, and also ordered some more garlic – a couple of Porcelain strains to try. Those have really large cloves – like 4-6 per bulb on average, so that will be exciting. I ordered my bulbs from Filaree farm. (filareefarm.com)

My tomato and squash jungle. I will be cutting the tomatoes back soon to let things ripen up. They don’t get a lot of sun in this spot except in the afternoon, so I think that is holding them back a bit – these were all early (60-65 day) strains, but they are just sitting green currently. Some large tomatoes though!

squash and tomato garden — Here is another view of the squash and tomato bed. You can tell the sunnier part of the garden (toward the cars) since the plants are a bit taller there.

Here you can see the big beefsteak tomatoes sitting on the plant, in the center of this photo.

back sunflowers — Sunflowers at the back of the house.

sunflower 1 — Here is our tallest sunflower, I’m guessing this one is about 10 feet or so – it towers at least 4 feet over my head.

tall sunflower — A better view of the tallest sunflower plant. This is a rogue that grew in the middle of my garden. Sometimes those seem to grow better than the ones I actually planted. Although I have a few very tiny ones that grew from the birds dropping seed in my yard. Those are cute and about a foot tall.

sunflower and bee — A bee hanging out on a sunflower. We have a lot of native bees here – I used to want to get hives for honey, but I’ve been rethinking it the last year or so – I’ve been trying to do more to support the native bee species we have around here.

bees and flowers — Here are three sunflowers, each with a bee. The bees seem to really like to hang out on these. I think they get a “sunflower coma” – like a baby would get a “milk coma” if that makes sense – like their bellies are full and they are tired so they take naps on the flowers.

Here are two bees napping on a coneflower. The bees are cute.

Early Fall Gardening

October 9, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

We’ve been harvesting tomatoes left and right. We’ve gotten a little bit of zucchini. It’s funny how you plan for the year and things just grow how they want, with no regard for your planning. Last year I was overrun with zucchini and yellow squash, so this year I grew one plant of each. They have not done well, so I’ve gotten 2 zucchini and it’s already October. With the amounts of rain we had this year (and it’s not done) the garden has been a little hit or miss for some things. Here are some newer pics of our garden:

087 — Some very tiny cherry tomatoes. These are very tasty, and super prolific. I even had some sprout from last year’s lost broken tomatoes (I call them rogue tomato plants).

089 — Some of our purple tomatoes. I thought these were Black Krim, but as I had others ripen I think these darker ones are actually blue beauty. I remembered Black Krim having a lot of green and these don’t.

091 — The largest pumpkin I’ve grown, shown between my feet. These were supposed to be pie pumpkins. This is more jack-o-lantern size.

082 — A nice sunny sunflower. This grew in my yard (not in the actual garden bed) , in an area that didn’t get mowed this year. The chickens didn’t eat it before it had a chance to grow either, so that was lucky. I think the deer have stayed clear of my yard with all the dog and chicken activity.

085 — The ducks enjoying a nice day in the back yard.

094 — Here is our garden at the end of September.

097 — Another view of the garden, from the porch.

001 — Another large pumpkin. This one was hanging from our fence but I picked it so it could finish ripening on the porch. I like how the leaves look still attached here.

002 — Downey checking out the porch. There are other pumpkins behind him.

012 — A view from inside the garden in early October.

013 — We finally are getting some cauliflower heads! I had given up, but then a few days ago I saw a white head. I tied the leaves up on the plant, like you’re supposed to. A day later I found another of my plants has a head, so I did the same thing. This is my first year growing it.

024 — Here are the rest of the tomatoes. We are supposed to get down into the 30s tonight, so I got spooked and figured I’d rather bring the large ones in. It was a little dark when I picked them, so there may be others out there. These will ripen on the table. There are still a ton of cherry tomatoes outside.

bee — Another Bee on a bright red sunflower.

butterfly 2 — A butterfly on our zinnias. There has been a lot of bee and butterfly activity on all the flowers lately – I think some are getting ready to migrate somewhere, or store up food for winter.

The garden is starting to wind down a bit. We still have a lot of stuff to harvest, but most of it will be ok if we get frost. Carrots and beets are still getting larger, and I have some Kale to pick. We also have peas and beans, but I’m letting those dry on the vines. I’m hoping I get enough peas to make a little bit of pea soup. I usually don’t let them go that long (they are so yummy picked earlier) but I want to give it a try.

Late Summer around the farm

September 4, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

We’ve been up to a lot this last month – it still just keeps raining way too much, so everything tends to be sopping wet. Some veggies are finally starting to produce/ripen. I’m hoping the rains don’t hurt the harvest – I’m worried about tomatoes splitting. Oh, and we’ve also already had frost warnings – some areas near me actually had frost a week or so ago, but we lucked out at the house and didn’t get any frost. Here are some pics from the last few weeks: