I finally got around to mulching my two blueberry bushes.  The one on the left is a
Blueray Blueberry and the one on the right is a Jersey Blue Crop Blueberry. I hope
they do well! 05/24/06

Great day to harvest my rhubarb. To the left is my "before" picture.  To the
right is my "after" picture. I will freeze it and use it in the fall to make
rhubarb and apple sauce. Yummy! 05/25/2006

Three of our tomato plants in containers and     Here's a pot of leeks.  This is an experiment
with cages. They are the Hefty variety that      as I've never grown leeks before. Not quite
is supposed to be good to make sauce.  I ran     sure how they'll do but they looked interesting.
out of dirt so I can't put in the rest until I get      05/26/06                                                           
some more. 05/25/06                                                                     
      

Here are 4 pepper plants and 3 more           This is our container garden so far. I have
tomato plants. That's 6 total tomato.         a lot more to do still but I need more dirt!
         I have some grape tomato to do next.        05/26/06                                                                

Ran out for more dirt. These four pots     
in the front are beans. Starting from left     
                        to right: Tendergreen Bush Beans, Purple                           
                             Pole Beans, Kinghorn Wax Yellow Beans,                               
and Bush Roman Green Beans. 05/26/06       
  

This is a small plot of garlic. I have     This is the future site of my strawberry
four plants. I planted them near the     patch. Many years ago (10?) it had loads of
onions & the raspberries as they are   pretty flowers but it has gone unattended.
supposed to help keep Japanese beetles     for at least 10 years and is now full of weeds
away. 05/29/06                                     and baby trees.   First I weed wacked as
                                                         many of the weeds as I could & then I
                                                      started digging out all the weeds, roots,
                                                                  and junk.  I'm about 1/3 done with the digging
                                                                     but will have to wait for tomorrow for the rest.
                                I'm exhausted. 05/30/06

To the left is a bucket of Jack O     I did a little more work on our soon
Lantern Pumpkin and the two on   to be strawberry patch. I took out
the right are Marketmore Bush    2 more wheelbarrow loads of junk.
Cucumbers. 05/30/06                       05/31/06                                         

Well finally the strawberries are planted.      Adding some Egyptian Walking Onions
I only have 3 plants now but if it works     to the strawberry patch to help keep
well I will add more next year. 06/06/06     nematodes away. I need to get more.
    

Hauling away the last load of junk out of     The final look at our strawberry patch.
the strawberry patch. This was a LOT of work.     Strawberries, Egyptian walking onions &
Thankfully Marty helped with the last bit.      a sunken pot of apple mint. 06/06/06
    

Zucchini & yellow crook neck squash. 06/06/06     This is our Bartlett pear tree.  It seems to
                                                                   have quite a few baby pears! 06/06/06  

06/06/06 Update.  The beans, pumpkins & cucumbers are up. All the tomato plants & peas have
flowers on them.  We are furiously killing tent caterpillars as they eat everything in the garden!

Thanks to my friend, Jane, we now     I put in a larger bunch of Egyptian
have a mound of dirt that is filled     Walking Onions.  I should get a few
with seed potatoes.  No idea if this     onions this year from these. 06/09/06
will work or not! 06/08/06                                                                          

06/09/06 Update.  We are getting way too much rain this year. We have 4-5 days of rain a week.  That isn't helping the plants to grow and some of the seeds I planted (watercress, flowers, Italian Parsley, etc.) aren't coming up because the soil isn't getting warm enough.  The strawberries & blueberries won't produce this year as neither has a flower on it right now.  Will have to go to the U-Pick places instead

Our lima beans! Let's hope that we get a whole bunch! 06/12/06

06/15/06 Update: Looks like everything has come up so far except the lima beans. Hopefully they'll be up soon too. We are having a few nice sunny days so that should help the garden a lot I think.

Jane strikes again LOL and gifts me with a bunch of tomato plants!

8 more tomato plants (thanks Jane!)
I hope they do OK in these bags of dirt.
I read about this technique & I am out
of containers! 06/15/06                    

06/21/06 Update: One of the tomato plants has turned yellow and looks like it's not going to make it. I'm not sure why. The rest look fine.  We have some baby pea pods on our peas too! Everything else seems to be growing well.  A few of the flower seeds I planted may not come up. Not sure yet.

07/07/06 Update:  All of the rain we're having here in the northeast isn't helping the garden at all.  The peas didn't do well. I only got a handful of them.  We have lost two tomato plants.  The strawberries did not produce this year although this was their first year so that's understandable.  Right now, the rest of the veggies seem to be doing well.  We are getting raspberries from our bushes and they taste so nice and tart in smoothies.  Can't seem to find the wild blackberries we had last year in the woods but I'll keep searching for thtem.

07/12/06 Update:  We are starting to get more sun thankfully. We have a few green tomatoes. The raspberries are still producing.  We have blossoms on our beans.  A friend gave us a dozen or so cloves of garlic that Marty strung & we hung in the pantry to dry.  We were also given 8 lbs of cucumbers which I made into chunk sweet pickles this morning (6 quarts). Off to a good start!

Need to take more pictures but my battery died :(

7/14/06 Update: Picked more raspberries and froze them. There are still quite a few unripe berries to pick.  Picked the sweet basil today as well.  Washed it and picked over the damaged leaves. I need to hang it to dry.  Also time to pick the cinnamon basil and lemon basil. Will try to get to that today as well but it's in the 90s and too much heat makes me light headed.

7/9 Update:  Our raspberries are still producing. I have bags and bags in the freezer! That will be great this fall!  We have a lot of green tomatoes on our plants.  Our pumpkin and cucumber plants have flowers. I hope some turn into veggies.  I harvested the cinnamon basil & the lemon basil and have it hanging in the pantry to dry along with the garlic & some red scallions.  I need to pick & dry the sage as well.

7/23 Update: I have put up 20 bags of blueberries (2 cups) in the freezer as well as made 5 jars of blueberry jam.  I need to use the rest in blueberry pie filling. I made some sweet pickle relish and still need to do some bread & butter pickles. I have white scallions I need to hang to dry as well. Still getting raspberries to be frozen!

08/10 Update:  Our garden is a bit disappointing this year.  We had a very wet spring which didn't help the plants get off on their best start.  Luckily we have been given a lot of excess produce so I've managed to put up pickles and relish and beans.  Our raspberries have been doing great this year and the pears look to be quite good as well. Marty has finished the wood shed and we have ordered the supplies for the chicken coop.  There is no hardship without some blessing.

8/22 Update:  Well what I thought was coming up as zucchini & yellow crookneck squash turned out to be sunflowers.  All I can figure is the birds helped with that one. Luckily friends have given us plenty of their excess squash so we are not lacking.  We do seem to be doing well with pears although we have some weird kind of worm thing on our pear tree.  I did spray several times so I'm not sure what else to try. I'll have to do some research on that before next year.  Luckily most of the fruit doesn't seem to be bothered by the worm.   Seems like we'll have a fair number of peppers but I'm not really sure about our brussel sprouts as it it looks like they have a green worm (cabbage worm?) on them. I think I need to spray with salt water for that. I'll have to check.

09/13/06: I put up 5 jars of tomato salsa today.  We used a few of our tomatoes but most were given to us as our tomatoes didn't do as well as I'd hoped and most are still green. We really need more sun! The onions, peppers & garlic were ours.

09/16/06: I went potato picking this morning and picked a bushel of potatoes. Combined with what we have planted here this should get us through the winter.  I need to build a wooden potato bin for the basement. Hopefully tomorrow if the weather is nice.

Marty & I picked almost a bushel of Bartlett bears from our tree this morning.  I canned up 5 jars (one didn't seal) of canned pears. I still have a bunch left and I want to do some pear jam and possibly pear sauce or pear preserves. I need to get more jars first.

09/20/06:  Marty built a potato pin to store the potatoes we picked. We have a bit more than a bushel all together. That should take us through the winter just fine. Let's hope the mice stay out of them!

09/23/06: My parents blessed us with a ton of grapes! I helped them put up grape jam & then came home & made more grape jam with what we were given. 9 jars! We still have grapes left so I need to figure out what else to do with them. The box shows what's left AFTER our 9 jars of grape jam!

9/24/06: Well I used the leftover grapes to make grape juice. I only got one quart of juice out of all the grapes above. Wow it really takes a lot of grapes to make juice!

9/29/06: My parents gave us 12 more pounds of Concord grapes from their vines. I'm going to turn these into juice too. I'm hoping to get at least 4 quarts but I am not sure.

09/30/06: We used the last of the tomatoes from our garden & from what was given to us to make spaghetti sauce. We added in some of our garlic, onions & peppers & it tastes good! I only got 3 meals worth of out of it but every bit helps.

10/01/06: I went and got a bushel of apples with Jane today! I found a recipe for Apple Maple Jam that sounds good & of course applesauce is always yummy so I need to start dealing with that.  

10/02/06: Autumn is really coming to Vermont now. The leaves are falling off the trees and we had a light frost a few days ago. I've heard this will be a snowy winter but we'll see what happens. There's so much more I want to get done.

10/05/06: I weeded the herb garden for the final time this season & harvested some sage & lemon balm.  The rest of the herbs are too small this year to harvest.  I also dug up our potatoes & onions. These were quite small. Someone suggested I need to add wood ash to the dirt next time so I'll see if that works next year.

10/20/06: It's been a miserable, cold & wet day today with thunder this afternoon so I decided today was a great day to put up applesauce. I put up 6 pints of unsweetened applesauce that I added ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon too. Yummy!

10/28/06: We were given about 30 pounds of onions! We already have about 20 pounds put up for the winter in nylons to keep dry so I really need to be creative with these to find a way to store them and how to use them up. What a blessing!

10/28/06: I put up some spiced apple rings today. The kids really loved those so I think I will make some more of them. I have about half a bushel of apples left to use up.

11/10/06: Year end update - This year was a learning year in many ways for us.  We planted 3 blueberry bushes, a strawberry plant, garlic, onions, and potatoes in the ground.  We planted a number of veggies in buckets and most did not do as well as expected. I've decided we really need to have someone rototil the garden for us to have an "in ground" garden next year.  I think that my friend Jane will be able to help us with that so I am hoping for next year to be a better gardening year.

We managed to put up lots of raspberries, rhubarb and pears from our plants.  We also put up green beans and tiny potatoes and tiny onions LOL.  We were given tons of potatoes & onions from friends as well as pumpkins, peppers and zucchini.  I went to a pick your own place and got potatoes, blueberries and apples to put away for this coming year.

In the spring we really want to put in an English Walnut and a few plum trees.  That will about take care of our fruit needs I think. I need to get some seed catalogs and start planning the spring garden.  We do have a tentative cold frame sitting out there that I want to figure out what to do with before spring so I can start a few things from seed. I know I want to try Jacob's Cattle Beans which are a dried bean type of bean that I've heard are very good.  Other than that we'll stick with the "regular" stuff I think. I want to try Brussell Sprouts again this year. I only got 2 meals worth out of our buckets but I think they'll do better in the ground.  I also have someone who is supposed to be sending me a horseradish root to plant.

02/27/07:  Well the seed catalogs are coming in daily now and it is so hard to sit here and look at the foot of now on the ground now.  I've decided to use the square food gardening method this year.  I have our main garden planned out.  We'll have herbs, veggies & flowers in that one. It's so hard to choose what to plant.  We'll do a few smaller gardens as well.  I haven't decided what type yet.  Probably another herb garden and maybe a butterfly garden.  I really want to offer cut flowers & plants at our farm stand this spring so I'm trying to decide what will be best for cutting & drying.  Plus I want to have some just for color and fun :).  I bought our growing lights today and the seed flats.  I think I have most of our seeds now but I have two more orders to place before I'll have them all.  It's so hard to choose what to grow! I may have to do a fourth flower garden to fit it all in LOL.

03/03/07: Marty installed our grow lights today.  I have started 12 onion seeds, 12 Cherokee garlic seeds, 2 mixed Marguerite Double carnation seeds and 4 parsley seeds.  They each have a 12 week starting time so they will hopefully be ready to plant the end of May when our last frost date arrives.  Now the hard part is to wait two more weeks to plant more.

03/05/07:  Today I planted 6 verbenas & 3 pansies.  The verbenas are under the grow lights. The pansies are in the fridge for 24 hours. Not sure why but that is what the directions said.  These both have 12 week starting times so now is the time to start them.  I'm hoping all these seeds turn into nice plants.  This is our first year for trying to start plants from seeds.

3/11/07:  We have only a few onions & garlic seeds that have sprouted so next week if we don't have a full tray sprouting, I will add in more seeds & try to get those going. I need to get at least 6 of each.  Still nothing on the parsley, verbena, pansy or carnation seeds but they have longer germination times. The 17th I can add in a few more seeds as that will be 10 weeks before our last frost date.

03/13/07:  I put in a few more onion seeds to see if they will germinate.  We have one pansy up and one carnation and possibly the start of one verbena.  Today I put in 3 Johnny jump ups and a pot of sensitive plants.  Some of the plants I'll be using around the yard myself but I hope to be able to sell some of the flowers that are supposed to be good for cutting and drying.  I'd also like to sell a few flats of herbs or I'll repot them into pots and sell them that way instead.

03/17/07: Well we got another foot of snow so I guess that spring is a ways off still.  Today is 10 weeks before the last frost date.  I planted Lisbon white bunching onions, statice (2 varieties), dwarf delphinium, rudbeckia green eyes, lavender and cherry tomatoes.  I hope they do well.

03/22/07: The ground is still covered with a foot of snow but temps this week are supposed to get close to 50!  I am hopeful that spring will arrive here soon.  I started some foxgloves in my seed flats and hope to start a few more things today depending on time.  Jane shared a bunch of her seeds with me so I have some neat new things to try. Thanks Jane!

03/23/07: One of my narcissus bulbs I am forcing inside is finally blooming! I cannot have spring outside yet but I can have it inside.  I will plant all my bulbs I'm forcing outside around one of our lilacs once the snow melts & I can rototill it up & mulch it.

04/27/07:  I dug out the old rose bush garden and planted the horseradish root in there.  I want to put in some flowers of some sort in another month or so when danger of frost is gone. I hope to dig up the horseradish root this fall & grind some of it to sell.

04/28/07: The main garden is tilled & raked and I hope to begin planting tomorrow. It will contain a variety of veggies & beneficial herbs & flowers as we are trying to do companion planting this year.

04/30/07: Well we had a bit of rain so I haven't started planting yet.  I have the boards laid down to mark out the plots & the fence posts in the ground. I have put up about 2 1/2 sides worth of wire fence around the garden as well.  It will maybe keep out an animal that isn't too determined to get in there LOL but at least it will give the plants something to vine up when they grow.  Right now we have huge black rain clouds but hopefully I can put in the early spring crops today if the rain holds off until after I eat lunch.

04/30/07 PM: The rain held off so I did my planting.  I put in Laxton's Progress Peas, Buttercrunch Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce, Sparkler Radishes, French Breakfast Radishes, and Grand Rapids Lettuce.  I also put in some sweet pea flowers and some gladiolas.  Hopefully I'll sell the gladiolas for cut flowers this summer.  Can't plant anything else until our last frost date of 5/25.

05/04/07: Our seedlings are doing fairly well.  I didn't have as many come up as I was hoping but I planted extras so that should be OK.  I had no luck again this year with parsley for some reason but the basil is doing great.

05/08/07: Well it's been a hectic few days of sunshine & warm weather.  I found some fiddlehead ferns and transplanted them in the back of our property in the woods.  I was given some wild ginger that I planted around our lilac tree & mulched well along with some lilies that I've been transplanted all around the yard.  The back of the woodshed has a nice row of lilies now but I don't know what color they are. I cleared out around our rhubarb plants and added a third that was given to us. The persimmon tree & plum trees arrived today via UPS so I need to plant them tomorrow.

05/09/07:  I just love this circular garden. I started re-doing it last year and finally finished it.  It has tulips, tansy, Egyptian walking onions, strawberries, magic lilies and apple mint. Ought to be really pretty come summer time. Below is a section for our horseradish plant, gladiolas, peonies and tall garden phlox. Still needs a bit of work done on it.

05/11/07: With my Dad's help, I got the persimmon tree & plum trees planted.  Digging holes is more work than I thought.  The persimmon can take 3 years to produce but there's a possibility that we'll have plums next year.

05/12/07:  Today I finished edging the horseradish patch and the flower garden above it.  I put in some old fashioned bleeding hearts near our garden shed & mulched that section.  I think the sweet peas may be up in the garden. It's hard to tell. I'm afraid to weed for fear I'll pull out the good plants & leave the weeds.

05/20/07: Well we finally had a break in the rain and I made it outside to weed the garden again.  I can see 3 sweet pea plants up.  I found about 6-10 different lettuces coming up.  I don't think any of the buttercrunch lettuce made it. I only found one radish though so I'm not sure what happened there.

05/20/07 PM: Decided to do a bit of gardening in the flower beds.  The beds on the left contain (bottom) horseradish & gladiolas and (top) forget me not, tall garden phlox, creeping geranium, lemon thyme and peonies.  The bed in the picture on the right is a mixture of lamium, lily of the valley and various bulbs.

05/23/07: Today I added two more beds to my brick garden (the two on the left).  The top left section is all Bee Balm (monarda didyama scarlet). I cannot wait until that blooms. I still have more to transplant but will have to put it in somewhere else.  The bottom left section has two peach/bronze football mums, lady's mantle and pink astilbe.

Our farmstand is officially open.  We have lilacs, raspberries, chives, forget me nots, yellow primrose, violets, orange tiger lilies, yellow sedum, lamium and lily of the valley.

05/25/07:  One more section done.  I have hyssop, lamb's ear, yellow sedum and hens n chicks. Just as I was finishing this section, our wheelbarrow broke so I'll need to have it fixed before I can do another section.  A friend gave me a bunch of bricks (thanks, Peg!) and some goose neck loose strife, heliopsis, monarda and Virginia blue bells. Cannot wait to get those planted.

06/11/07:  I am struggling to keep up with the weeding in the gardens.  I still have more plants to get in the ground and lots more weeds to pick.  Most of our seeds are up now and looking good. Something got into our garden and ate the top off my Amish paste tomatoes :(.  I'm figuring a chipmunk or bunny since none of the larger plants were bothered & I found no hoof prints to indicate a deer.

06/23/07:  The left hand picture is a newly weeded rose patch. It has three rose bushes and one apothecary rose.  It has several lilies (not sure of colors) and a prairie blue eyes.  The right hand picture is of four "old fashioned raspberries" which is also called fuzzy button berries.  Not sure of the official name yet but I'm trying to find out.  It has really pretty bright pink flowers and edible berries.

07/12/07:  Looks like our new berries are called wine berries.  It will be interesting to see what they do next year.  I finally got our Doyle's thornless blackberries planted as well.  I'm hoping for a great crop next year.  Our pear tree didn't produce one single pear this year.  I think it was the hard rain right after it blossomed.  Very disappointed there.  The veggie/flower garden is behind schedule.  We've had lots of rain lately and our large maple tree split & landed in the midst of the garden.  Squashed several things and put us behind schedule.

01/14/08:  Our garden was pretty much a failure this year. The tree landing in the midst of it just put a damper on the veggie production.  We got some gorgeous sunflowers and some really pretty flowers that I have no idea what they were since the tags faded. We got a bazillion cherry tomatoes but I ran out of things to do with them so we gave lots to the birds. I don't know if I want to do a garden this year or not. I have no way to rototill it unless I do it by hand and I don't think my back is up to it. I may try a few buckets of tomatoes/peppers and see how that goes.

02/14/08:  Trying to decide what gardening method to try this year and what to grow. I didn't have much luck with the square foot gardening method so I think I will go back to the traditional row garden. I want to try a soaker hose in the rows and some much to keep down weeds. We also need to decide what to do about a rototiller.