Category: garden (Page 3 of 8)

Garden 1

After mulching over the raised beds in Garden 1 over the Winter, and using the mini-greenhouses to start seedlings in good soil, and after some progress of growth after transplanting, sadly many of the plants just haven’t made it.

I’m thinking a couple of things:

1. I should have planted only one plant per greenhouse and then let them grow much bigger before transplanting.
2. Planting in newly-laid mulch is probably not the best place to plant — it probably needs to sit at least a year to compress down and help prepare the soil beneath. I thought having the plants in good garden bed soil when transplanted would be enough, but I’m thinking probably not.

But, we always pray for God’s guidance and help and direction to learn. And, there are still some things growing, mostly in the mulch laid down some time before the last section, which sort of helps support point #2 above:

Here are a couple of cabbages getting by:

And one of the beets:

And the peas are doing the best. It’s nice to have some fresh for a nightly salad!

Finally, I was able to almost finish laying that thick first layer over where the raised beds used to be:

Garden 2

I mentioned in our last garden update that I was re-mulching Garden 2. While doing so, and chopping the weeds, we have found turnips along the way that have grown from seeds I planted or scattered several years ago. Here’s a whopper we came across!

And so, I figured it might be a good idea to just throw down a bunch of turnip seeds with the hopes they just come up over the years:

And after about four and a half mulch loads, I was able to finish re-mulching Garden 2, and then I scattered about a pound of the seeds all over. It will be interesting to see what happens over the years, if the Lord wills!

Other than what’s already planted, I’m thinking this year is going to be more of a building year, mostly doing prep work, laying mulch, etc.

We are always thankful to the Lord for any bit of provision He grants, and for the opportunity to continue to learn how to go about these agrarian ways, and we pray for His guidance and direction, in all things, both temporal and spiritual.

— David

The Lord has graciously granted our garden to continue through most of the Fall. But, our first freeze came recently, so we took some final pictures…

We kept the beans going through the Summer, even though we had to water with pond water, but they never really did much after the beans we got in the Spring. But, the okra just kept going and going!

The tomatoes have kept going too, although about the only thing actually fruiting are the cherry tomatoes:

And here’s more okra:

With the first freeze on the way, about the only thing we could cover were the tomatoes, which we did, with double blankets in some places:

And here they are after the freeze. The double blankets worked really well! The rest of the garden plants basically were killed in the freeze.

That was about the last of trying to maintain it, with freezes coming and going, and we have had several light freeze nights, which have pretty much finished off the tomatoes. And so, this is the final garden haul from this year from just a few days ago!

We are very thankful to God for the garden provisions He granted this 2015! Lots of okra, which Sue lacto-fermented for long-term storage! Again, we are very grateful!

— David

The Lord has graciously granted our 2015 Spring garden to continue. The mulch bed gardening allows us to set hoses from the cistern and only have to move them every 10 minutes, which keeps from having to constantly monitor the watering for 2 or more hours.

Here is how everything looked a couple of weeks ago, end of July…

Okra:

Beans, butternut squash and zucchini:

Here are carrots growing out of the hugelkultur bed. If you look closely, you can see the remnants of one of the bed’s “tenants”:

More okra:

And our one pumpkin plant, and the okra again:

The pumpkin plant really took off, up the fence, which actually had a pumpkin hanging on it:

And up the tree:

And here are the tomato plants:

As for the produce, turnips planted a couple of years ago continue to show up!

And here is butternut squash down in the root cellar we’ve been granted:

And a couple of good-sized pumpkins!

Here are the few carrots we got from the hugelkultur bed, along with some okra and zucchini. The carrots were something of an experiment as I did nothing to improve the bed ahead of time, and it was just nice to see a few come out. The Lord has also granted several, but not a lot, of zucchini, and the okra keep coming in almost daily. We’ve been able to tuck quite a bit away by lacto-fermenting the vegetables in jars:

And here are some tomatoes. We have pretty much just been eating these as we go:

And here is where things are now, after about 5-6 weeks of straight upper-90 to 100-degree weather with no rains.

This is Garden 2. The okra is still going, nearly 6 foot tall; some of the green beans are still there; the butternut squash are still producing; and only 1 zucchini plant remains:

And this is Garden 1. The okra here is even taller, and the pumpkin plant is basically done. Sadly, a couple of the pumpkins didn’t make it:

And the tomatoes. I had to dust them with an insect dust because it appeared blister beetles were making their way over there, and they do damage very quickly:

Finally, because it appears that only soil that’s covered will work well without requiring hoards of water, I decided to start mulching the rest of Garden 1, over the raised bed area, hopefully in time to plant a Winter garden!

This week is about the last week we can do full watering because the cistern is getting to a point we want to make sure we have enough for ourselves and the animals; so if it doesn’t rain, watering is going to have to be reduced.

We do have rain percentages this weekend though. But God knows best, and we are very grateful for the provisions He has granted from the garden this year thus far!

— David

In our first garden post of the year, we showed the weeding, planting and beginnings of 2015’s Spring garden. Well, it’s early Summer now, and here is how things are progressing, by God’s graces…

First, here are some green beans and zucchini from about a month ago:

And here is where things are as of the end of June…

This is Garden II, with the green beans on the right, and butternut squash and zucchini on the left:

This is a closer view of the butternut squash, some of which you can see:

And here are three okra plants, two on the left, and one behind on the right:

And here are some random turnips growing from seeds planted in previous years!

Over in Garden I, that zucchini planted last year, which sprouted this year, has done just fine!

And here are the tomatoes:

With some growing!

Several more okra plants:

A few carrots in the hugelkultur bed:

And this monster growing is one pumpkin plant, we believe:

With a little pumpkin!

We are grateful to the Lord for His providence in the food and the rains to keep things growing!

— David