My Garden, In My Mind

This time of year is busy for gardeners.  How can this be, you ask.  Well, planning takes a long time.  So does daydreaming about perfect rows of weedless green lushness pronounced with prolific produce!  What a mouthful that was.

Seed catalogues start arriving in my mailbox  in December.  Oh what torture it is to know  you have to wait for 4 months or so before you can really get into the soil and dig in. On the other side of the hoe is knowing you have that amount of time to plan, think, organize, and dream. Dream about how your garden will look, what you will grow, how much you will put up, and how to go about making it all come to fruition.  I  LOVE thumbing through the seed catalogues and looking at all the  pictures :).   They really get a person going with all the verdant views of plant variety.  I get about 8 of them and have ordered from all of them at some time or another.

This year I am going to do something way out there that I have never done.  I am going to have a booth at my local towns’ farmer’s market. I am really excited about it.  I plan to sell the produce from my garden and herbal products that I make.

Farmers’ Market (Photo credit: NatalieMaynor)

Tomatoes, of course, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuces of all kinds, onions, green beans, beets, radishes, zucchini, and squash cover the vegetables.  Comfrey/Calendula ointment, Chickweed/Plantain ointment, lip balm, relaxing herbal tea blend, peppermint tea blend, immune tea blend,  and homemade soap  are some of the herbal products I will offer.

I have already started some seeds in seed starting trays filled with seed starting soil.  It  is exciting to  see little tiny sprouts emerge through the soil!  I will start more this month and some next month.  I am also starting some important herbs to add to my herb garden.

If any of ya have done this before, please share what works and doesn’t, or anything you think I need to know!!  Let the growing begin!

Love life and breathe deep,

Angela

Gardening . . . Before The Drought

Here is a view from the house looking southwest.  The hay was just bailed.

This is the field behind the house.  It was planted with soybeans this spring.  You can still see the corn stalks from last year, it’s called no-till when the crop residue is left to keep the soil in place.

Here is our garden in the spring.  You can see the green beans.  Two raised beds were planted later for a succession crop.

Here is one of the many flower pots around the house.

Onions!! We planted red ones and yellow ones.

Here is the garden looking north.  The corn is growing nice as are the green beans.  In the foreground are cucumbers, sage, spinach, kale, and eggplant.

Kitty Kitty and another flower-pot.

We really enjoyed these green beans.  And did ya notice all the healthy blooms?

Who puts a garden in without tomatoes? Nobody I know!!!  Here is how we did ours this year.  We used hog panels to support and contain the vines.

Wendell is putting in the posts that supported the panels.

Here is the result, as we looked at the job well done we noticed that the corn would eventually shade the tomatoes!!  But it was too late, however as it turned out the shade saved those tomatoes from burning up in the hot afternoon sun during the drought.

My first attempt at brussel sprouts, they did quite well despite the severe heat we had.

My daughter loved these flowers, so we bought them.  They are so pretty.

Well not long after these pics were taken it turned hot, then hotter, then super HOT, and I mean HOT, like 100+ degree days for days.  I watered, but it’s  just not the same as the rain from heaven.  We got alot of tomatoes and cucumbers, some herbs, and the spring crops did fine, but I lost most of the green beans. The melons didn’t do so well, just a few cantaloupe.

But there is always next year and I am already thinking and preparing in my mind what veges and fruits I want and how many tomatoes I’ll have.

Hope you had a good garden season.

Love life & breathe deep,

Angela