Gardening

This is our garden, we havent had great soil here. It is black and rich, but too thick. Years of putting the goat manure/straw on there, and a load of sand helped immensely. To further help it, Frank bought a book on lasagna gardening from the bookstore his first wkend home and we made some beds. We also bought some plants, not all of my seeds were successful. These are the lettuce plants, we have had 3 hot days here so far, but mostly very cool and the lettuce is doing well.

We also had quite a bit of old alfalfa, straw and brome hay that was no good and we used it to break up and line our rows. This gives us mud free walking paths as well as keeps the weeds down. All of these things are good for the soil and will make it looser and nicer as it breaks down.


See our bales lined up?I love the way the peat moss looks. Frank used the tractor bucket to get bucket loads of old manure. The new manure is fine for the garden because goat manure is green, means it can be used immediately. However, the older stuff is nicely composted into loose black earth and we have a large pile of it, that wasnt situated near the garden. Why? Because we didnt originally know where our garden would be our first fall/winter here. So we laid out newspapers thick and overlapping, wet them, laid manure/loose sandy soil/peat moss/composte and created garden beds.

It looks a little haphazard in some areas, but there is almost no weeding! It looks neat and organized for the most part and is growing better than our other years.

The old hay bales (this is part of the reason they didnt get used) had some horrible burrs in them, they stick in your hands and have barbs so when you pull them out, they leave something behind that hurts and irritates for days, so we were smart and wore garden gloves.

Frank hauled all of these bales from the barn, he is better lifter than I am... He is strong! I have to drag/roll the bales and he just picks them up, and loads them. It is very nice to watch!

Since he left we have made more beds, and the in between areas made hills and moved around the flakes of hay to accommodate. I have many vegetables planted and a lot of things have come up. We had a lot of volunteer squash and zucchini as well, we tried to transplant a few which are doing okay but the ones I left alone are 3x as large. I just fenced them in with squares of hay so we wont trod on them. The sprinkler actually reaches the whole garden, I repositioned it several times after walking the perimeter until I found perfect placement. I dont have to move it at all, I just turn on the spigot and set a cell phone timer.

We pick up newspaper in our plastic recycle bins, we recycle everything possible and have a nice center right in town. We take our recycle in and fill up a couple of bins with newspapers. In the summer they are for gardening, in the winter its fire starter. oh, and the kids get them for the comics and they read them, then we use them. Its a way to get free homeschool reading materials. Check our your local recycle center they may support your reading habit also!

Nathalie doesnt enjoy heat like me, but got her daddy's green thumb. I get her out early/late and she is a huge help. Tad will help me with anything, but we all know the plants will do better if she plants them-either the seeds or plants/transplants, and she takes very good care of them. She enjoys working in soil and is able to garden without us successfully now.

I just think this picture is pretty nice looking on the right half, it really doesnt need much more comment than that.

We have continued laying down hay flakes around the perimeter because its unerving to move the perimeter. If I mow around hay flakes, I feel less like I may kill a plant. The mower shoots out green matter which is helpful in composte, but not great when shot at tender bean plants!

Random fuzzy picture of mama. Oh and my mama bought the shirt I am wearing I DIDNT filch it off of her I promise!

Just another photo by Tad. He and Nathalie took turns with the camera. I dont care if there are photos of me, but at the end of the day I want both of them in the photos for posting. We try to have them take turns, Nathalie would rather take photos but she also wants to be in them... Plus if she has the camera much, we have A LOT of close ups of things like, a bug, a blade of grass, a ducks beak, a chicken foot. Etc...

This is a very poor shot of me after gardening, why it is in this set of photos I have no idea but I am not editing the html now so there you have it.


Our green thumb girl. She has enjoyed the garden more this year than ever before, it is much more user friendly. She likes to run, hop, skip and jump down our hay paths.

She has her own row of sunflowers and has many carrots and beans up already. She is even pleased by "her" onions though they are not her favorite foods. I have more updated photos of the garden now, will post those later.