March 2013 Things are still slow.

Things are still growing slow. The Snap peas and Fava beans are starting to show some new growth. The trees are all beautiful and Our Blueberries are putting out blooms. See if you can see two bees on the brushes. I am the only one posting this year so I will try to do a good job. We have plants ready to put out and the weather seems to be getting warmer. Maybe this week-end we can put them in the ground. I am so looking forward to lots of fresh veggies. Yum.
The Herb garden is looking good after it was cleaned up. Wonderful Herbs for our cooking.

Things have been slow, lots of rain and cold.

We have not done much since last post. The weather has been very wet and cold.  Things are showing a few signs of coming up where we planted. We do have seeding ready to go into the ground and thought we would work some today but it is why to cold down to 28 tonight. We planted more indoor seeding last Saturday, tomato's, peppers, egg plant and such. I so am wanting Spring.  Here are a few pictures of the first seeding we planted. Good Gardening to all.

Garden for 2013

This is our new garden for 2013. The Farmer had surgery and this is the third day after and he is telling us what to do. He wanted so bad to get out and work but we would not let him.  We have changed things a little. Made some walk ways so I could get to the veggies better and so we can run a drip system. That should make it easier to water. We planted snap peas, beets, spinach, fava beans and lettuce. We have seeding up and will plant more today. I will try to do better about posting this year.

Todays Harvest.

We are getting lots of good stuff from the garden. Way more then we can eat so we share with friends and coworkers. We are not weighting the veggies this year. It takes a lots of time and we have done it for several years. It was dry but this week we have had rain which is good. Here are some of the things we harvested.

Back in the Garden

These are some recent produce from the garden.  This year I have not been weighing everything I bring in but I have some new types of crops to show off. Plus I am working at Grace.

These long beans are a type of pole bean from Southeast Asia.  the are used in stir fry dishes a lot and are a lot of fun.

I have a bunch of new types of tomatoes but the usually ones like the yellow pear and cherry tomatoes. Soon some of the new varieties like the black cherry are just coming on.

I made this roast of vegetables yesterday.  It had purple potatoes, turnips, carrots, ,magda squash, long beans, tomatoes pear and cherry, with thyme and marjoram, all from the grarden

I have some of my best carrot crops. I have lots of beans today much more than I can pick, eat or use.
The Grace Garden is going well with nice large eggplants, tomatoes.

Todays Harvest.

This is the harvest for today
. Been getting lots of blueberries, green beans and the lettuce is still good. Some peppers are starting to come in. There is lots of figs.
A few tomato's the cherry kind are getting ripe. The last few days have been cooler and it seems to have slowed down things a little.

Strawberry Hills

 
The Farmer is coming in from the Strawberry Patch.today. This farm has a small patch. With limited space the Farmer fits things in where he can. The harvest this year has been only fair. The patch is old and needs to be taken up and replanted.  You can take and divide the plants and make new patches so you don't have to through them away.

When there are berries they are delicious. These are usually small secondary berries the are incredibly flavorful and not like the large strawberry in the store that looks wonderful but which is often white on the inside and insipid in taste.
 
If you are not use to strawberry in nature you may be surprised to see stubby little plants lying on the ground. We lose a lot the crops to slugs and probably chipmunks that can easily nibble on the fruit. The name strawberry comes from the idea of putting straw down around the hills so that the fruit would rest on straw and be lifted up off the ground away from the slugs. I would say this is only partly successful.

Farmers will plant large fields with mounds, plastic and lots of sprays to grow those fruit you see in the store. These are one of the most contaminated foods when it comes to pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_strawberry
Learn more about strawberry here.

 
Thought the farm would show off 8 foot tall sugar snap pea plants and
 
new potatoes which will be featured on a future post.
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