The view from here...

How does your garden grow? Here's a shot of what we've got going so far...hoping to put in green beans & corn very soon!


We got a few new guests out at Willow Run! Three new baby cows! Here's a shot of the girls peeking into the trailer:


The newest residents meet Smokey and Red.


Here's a view of the front pond...so pretty...


Smokey & Red have really settled in and are enjoying the green grass!

Come on, everyone....get in line....

This brings back my days as a teacher! I've decided to be a bit more organized in my garden plot. Hopefully this will help me utilize every inch of my space and make weeding a bit easier. In the past I've been one of those rogue, random seed spreaders...no rows, just...well....ummmmmm, clumps! Yes, that's it, clumps! While I enjoy more natural garden designs, I have come to an understanding that the veggie garden is not the best place for this. Keeping records of the rows will allow me to be more purposeful in my testing of varieties and will encourage more careful seed choices in the future. All of that being said, let me explain the photo. I've been using a string stretched between two stakes to help in laying out semi straight rows. These are my little yellow onion sets all nestled in compost enriched soil. I made sure to follow the Farmer's Almanac lunar calendar recommendations for planting root crops.

I've also found a fantastic "app" for my iPhone that is called iGarden. This app allows a gardener to keep records of the date of planting and counts down the days to harvest for each veggie. It's so nice to see those harvest days grow closer...even when I am away from my garden I can sort of virtually check in with it via iGarden. If you have an iPhone, I highly recommend this app! Have fun!

Finally, I'd like to take a moment to say a hearty "THANK YOU!!" to the inventor of rubber mud boots. Honestly, how did I garden before these beauties came into my life?

Garden news!

Here's the newest gardener at OAH! I highly recommend enlisting the help of a bunny rabbit for your gardening efforts...they make fast work of composting your veggie scraps and offering up some wonderful garden fertilizer in return. This little gem has been named "Snowball," she is a Dwarf Newfoundland (sp?), so she should remain small and will hopefully show well in the County Fair for my girls.

Here are the potatoes, cut and curing the night before planting!

These beds contain spinach, onions, lettuce, and peas! They're still a little rough...this is a garden in progress, people! On the right, you'll see the potato plot...cock full of seed potatoes planted, in part, by this little person:


Take a look at the newly tilled space...this will soon be built into beds like the ones above.

Here's another pick of the bunny...nestled in a bed of lamb's wool. She is just adorable!

Some pics...

Here are the onions!!

And this is the backyard garden bed...the one with the onions, potatoes, beets, carrots, and loose leaf lettuces. Mom informed me that it looked like a graveyard. Ummm....thanks, Mom. The soil is heaped up in order to increase drainage in our heavy clay soil. Also, I needed to be sure the veggies got the most benefit out of the enriched soil we provided, so I heaped it up and left the walkways hard clay beds covered in loose hay. Hopefully it won't look like a graveyard after the freshly dug graves are covered in lush greenery.../sigh/

We also have another, larger bed out west of the privacy fence and two square foot beds you see in the background. I worked today on creating four container gardens in front of the chicken coop...perhaps pics of the decorated coop will come soon!!

Gardening, Building Moats, and Atwoods...

The gardens are really coming along! This weekend, I cleaned out two of the raised beds and planted several varieties of peas (Sugar Snap and Wando) along with spinach. We tilled the newest garden bed in the backyard and were really surprised by the soil. Don't get me wrong, it is still Oklahoma clay, but it is not as bad as the West garden. We didn't pick up any compost because we decided to use partially composted mulch from our mulch pile to mix into the soil and break it up a bit. I also added two wheelbarrows full of compost from our compost pile.

Today, I formed two wide rows in the new garden and planted 138 seed potatoes, 60 Super Sweet Onions, 80 Red Onions, and a handful of Beet seeds. I formed a moat around the whole bed and in between the rows. This will keep any rain that falls on the garden in the garden...a must here in Oklahoma! I covered the center moat/walking space with loose hay. The hay will keep the trail from being muddy and will clearly show my girlies where to walk in the garden.

A note on the frugal nature of gardening...I purchased my seed potatoes, onions, and some other seeds at Atwoods. Seed packages were 8 cents each and I paid around 2 dollars for 140 onion sets. The potatoes were around 8 dollars. An 11 dollar expense will turn into a year's worth of potatoes and onions...and we're not even covering the additional seeds I picked up for 8 cents per packet!

As I was planting, though, I was thinking of what a blessing it is to work with the soil. I'll have to share the story of my paternal grandparents someday...I'm convinced that gardening and homesteading are in my blood.

OAH chores...

Today:

• Cook the last of the blackeyes from the freezer (the smell of these cooking on the stove is so connected to summer for me...isn't it funny how our sense of smell is so anchored in time periods and emotions?)
• Check on applesauce supply...the girls are going through the applesauce I canned this fall at a record pace. I may have to consider making more next fall.
• Crank out some more newspaper pots
• Start two varieties of tomato plants (Cherokee Purple and Genovese...the rest will be started next week)
• Set up an area in the garage for the new plants near the South window

This weekend:

• Till up two veggie beds, one in the backyard and one in the west yard (outside the fence)
• Pick up a load of compost to topdress both beds and the remaining three raised beds
• Check at Starbucks for "Grounds for the Garden" to add with to the beds with the compost (Maybe also enjoy a Frappuccino with my Starbucks gift card from Christmas?)
• Plant peas and spinach
• Prepare to plant onions, potatoes, and beets (Tuesday)

According to the forecast, we're in for a beautiful weekend followed by a few thunderstorms early next week...perfect for prepping the gardens and getting early stuff in the ground.

On a side note, DH is going trout fishing this afternoon, so perhaps we'll have some fresh fish to eat over the weekend as well!

Note to self...

In our quest to garden in this hard Oklahoma clay, we settled on buildng raised beds. I like that we can control the soil and also allow for drainage...and that they are nearly weed free. We used the Square Foot Gardening plan and added verticle supports to each of our three square foot beds. As an experiment, we used metal pipe, driven into the ground for two of the beds and a wooden frame attached to the bed for the third. Honestly, I prefer the aesthetic of the wood; however, the wooden verticle frame ripped the raised bed right off the ground in a bit of wind. To make matters worse, the bed is ruined...ripped to shreds. So...like it or not, this year we'll put in all metal pipe supports driven into the heavy clay. Those have well outlasted the wooden frame and the beds are still intact.

Also, DH wants to dig out a long rectangular bed, removing a minimum of 8 inches of clay and replacing it with compost. He was disappointed with the harvest from the square foot beds and thinks this will yield more produce. We'll try it out and see what happens. I am a bit nervous about the drainage issue, but the best way to test it is to jump right in. We'll edge this bed with rock to try to minimize weed entry.

On the indoor gardening front, my salad bowl is sprouting!!! It's so funny how that little bit of green can be so exciting! It will be great if this can provide us with greens year round. Someday I hope to add a small greenhouse to the OAH so that we can garden right through the winter, but the salad bowl will have to suffice for now.