Homestead Happenings, Take 2

This is my farmhand. As you can see he earns his keep around this here place. Puuuusssssh. lol This is my Boy Child. He is the coolest thing on 2 legs. A true gift from God Himself. I don't work him. Here, he is pushing his wagon and the wheels are not corporating. Oh the drama!

See, Happy Camper!

In the green tub is spring onion. I have a yellow tub just like it I will replant onions in in a few weeks. I have a few yellow and green tubs in 3 different sizes to play with in a couple of weeks. I think it will look nice when finished and rearranged.

Last year I knew the world was not right and started reading some prep sites and everyone suggested getting buckets from the grocer to plant in so I did. It worked out great because I had a hard time growing weeds in ground garden last year. Not true, I had a boatload of squash and I grew some wonderful corn. No corn this year. To much room for to little product. But I will do it again. Good stuff that was.

Going straight up... onion in the green tub, a tomato in the 5 gal bucket that I will add more dirt to as it grows taller, a pepper in the little bucket, cucumber seeds in the white bucket on the left and carrots in the big container, my FLOWERING tomato in the corner up there, another pepper and then another tomato next to that. The underbed storage container with the lettuce is next to the tomato but you can't see that. If you can imagine I have a rather small deck. It's getting kind of crowded right now because I have been working on getting things in pots or in the ground and not busying myself with neatness yet.

I also have 2 small bukets of pea seeds and a small bucket of bush bean seeds. I have 2 planters (like with the carrots) of head lettuce that I purchased from the Chinese Embassy (WM) last month. I put 4 plants in each planter and we have harvested from it twice already and we will have a nice salad this weekend also. This lettuce is so good. There is a phrase I thought I'd never write. Really how good can lettuce be? But I'm tellin' ya it rocks. I can't wait to see if the other lettuces I planted take and grow.

I purchased this in a single plant form for Hubby for Father's Day 2 years ago and planted it on the side of house. It was neglected and all over the place this year so I dug up the bulbs, dug a hole in front of the evergreens and plopped them in. Aren't they pretty? I don't know what they are but I have a lot more in a planter on the deck and they are not happy there so I need to get them back on the side of the house this weekend. These will not be living here either. What was I thinking? Get em' in the ground somewhere-anywhere, right now. That's what I was thinking.

Ok, I think that's all. If you have any suggestions or ideas for me please feel to leave a comment. I could use all the help I can get. The biggest problem I have with gardening is patience. I have little. Well, patience and the cost of dirt, pots, seeds/plants, fertilizer and the watering. Oh the watering. You do a lot more watering with container gardening. I'll be busy in a month or so watering the plants spread out among the yard-I mean homestead-I mean farm. Oh pleaze...a garden is a lot of work. It's good exercise as well. I get sore in places I didn't even know I had muscles but I'm not complaining becasue I could a good toning and it's sooooo worth it. I'll deny that statement if you ask me in July.

I have some pics from last years garden I may put up here. It will help get me through the long hot days if I can post results from harvests past. It'll be cool to see the whole thing come along through the years.

Homestead Happenings

Ok, so here are some pics of my garden. We have rocky clay soil and it will be a number of years before it is wonderful dirt but I'm not letting that stop me. I know I could do raised beds but I'm really not sure how big I want the finished beds to be, so, no biggie. It will be fun to see it evolve (OR NOT) over the summer. Please keep in mind I really don't have a clue what in the world I'm doing. If you have a thought or 2 you can share, please do. I will post more when I get a chance. My LG dishwasher (which has never worked right) started leaking and the repairman is here for the second time this week fixing it. The Boy Child was down for his nap until...you know how this goes...child goes down for nap, doorbell rings, phones ring, Boy Child up with little rest and ready to go. I'll be back later with more pictures.
Nasty looking ey? We tilled this up this year and I was going to let it rest this year but...I couldn't. I've been putting compost stuff in there and it was just yelling for some life so I plopped in some squash and cucumber seeds. At the bootom ar the nastrsomething flower that is supposedly good for the land. I planted them here and there throughout the gardens. The little plant(s) in the center of the photo are squash that I started indoors. Can you make out the black dirt where I planted squash seeds this week? Oh come on-try again. Seeee. That stuff that looks like weeds and whatnot is actually compost material (grass clipping and kitchen scraps and some newspaper) that has not broken down completely yet. It doesn't look this bad in person. Stop by if your neighborhood and see for yourself.

Can you see that? Look harder. It's my tomato plant FLOWERING!

I think these are peas. I was so anxious to get stuff in the ground I didn't write down what a lot of it was. Hey-Don't judge me! lol I put a tomato cage in there for them to grow up. I know a lot of people have special contraptions for beans and peas but honestly, I find gardening to be very expensive and time consuming so I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

A blueberry bush that has been flowering a lot, in the middle. All of the breey plants are new this year. I hope to harvest from them next year? I felt I had to get the plants on either side in the ground a week or so ago so I plopped them here. I THINK they are eggplant.

Those 2 little black spots are blackberry bushes. They have grown about a quarter inch in a month. I don't think that's good but I'll let them go and see what happens next year. I put them next to the shed because I read they will grow huge. I think they will be happy here if they live.

Strawberry plant I got this year. I hope to find a spot in the ground for it sometime soon.

Carrots I started indoors in this pot around St. Patricks Day. Pittiful, they are just pittiful. They are short carrots so they should grow but the I expect the tops to stand straight up and be pretty. Are they suppose to stand up or droop like a drunkin fool?

I put my pepper plants in terra cotta pots this year. Well, I didn't grow them last year because we are not big pepper people but the little ones that I babysit (10 & 8) LOVE peppers so I have about 5 growing. This pot has 2 plants but the others are 1 per pot. It feels like murder to pull such a pretty plant up and I'm gonna run out of room to put them all.

I purchased this pot last year for 5 bucks at the Chinese Embasy (WalMart). I'm pretty sure it is $9.99 this year. Glad I was able to get 5, they have been nice for container gardening. Anyway this is one piece of a store bought & washed & sprouted potato. I put about an inch of potting soil in the bottom, then the little sprout and covered it good with more dirt and have been adding potting soil like crazy, sometimes daily. This thing is lovin' life.

Here is the watermellon plant that survived. Originally I planted 3.

This is an under the bed storage container that I have planted 3 kinds of lettuce in.