The View from Here...

The Energizer Bunny Garden

This morning, I put up another gallon size bag of breaded okra and summer squash (mostly okra), fresh from the garden. I sliced up a zucchini for stir frying and sealed it up with the food saver...then it went into the freezer. I'm also drying a tray of cherry tomatoes...which have just, finally, taken off.

The chickens are not missing out, either...I left several cukes on the vine to fatten up and have been throwing them in with the chickens each day. Aside from red, ripe tomatoes and soft bananas, the cukes are their favorite treat.

I've also made two batches of chicken stock recently and frozen it in ice cube trays. Here are the instructions I've been using for chickens stock, except that I use my crockpot. The stock makes a fantastic, healing soup and adds tremendous flavor to canned veggies.

A few more photos...

Cucumbers gone WILD!

Cucumbers gone WILD!! LOL!

The garden is looking great! In this photo you can see cucumbers, okra, blackeyed peas, and some wildflowers that bring in the bees like crazy. Homestead Man will be tilling this into a much, much, much bigger garden later today!

NOTE: I meant to say that Homestead Man would be tilling AROUND this garden today to enlarge it. We certainly won't be tilling up this area! I think we've at least doubled our garden space this afternoon!!! Fall garden, here we come!

Pot-A-to, Pot-ah-to...

We dug up our potatoes this morning because the tops were absolutely eaten ALIVE with potato bugs. Here's what the tops looked like:


Compare that with the photo I posted earlier this month:


If anyone has some organic solutions for potato bugs, I'm listening!

Anywho...here's the harvest this morning plus the remaining onions:


Anyone out there freezing potatoes? I'd love to hear your tips!

Garden update:

The potatoes are popping up all over the place. I can't wait to see some blooms so we can dig up our first new potatoes of the season. They are amazing straight out of the garden!

Just beside the potatoes (because the often go together when cooking) are the onions and they look great as well. I noticed one onion top laying on its side this weekend and quickly dug up the offending cutworm and fed him to the chickens. Boy, that felt gooooood! (My little mean streak must've come out there for a minute.../blush/) The little bugger had eaten the whole onion bulb, too!

The lettuces needed thinning, so I pulled up some of the seedlings to make way for the largest plants.

No sign of the beets...very sad...not sure if I need to replant or wait them out.

There are several broccoli plants coming up, but something is nibbling on the leaves...more on that later.

The carrots actually look pretty good! Their true leaves are beginning to emerge. I've never had much luck with carrots for some strange reason, but I'm determined to keep trying because we eat so many of them around here.

The garlic and walking onions have really taken off in the last week. This is my first year to grow these two, so it's fun to see how they progress. In addition, I've been taking a few cuttings of their tops for cooking...YUMMY!

The peas are lovely. The bright green color is just beautiful and they are steadily growing. I do think that I've never gotten them in the ground early enough before and I'm hoping for a big harvest this year to reward my bravery...looking frost right in the eye!!! (DUM...dum...DUUUUM!!!!!!!!)

Radishes will be ready to eat in about a week.

The strawberries are blooming and I bought five more strawberry plants to try to get them started as groundcover in another bed.

In the past week, I've planted cabbage, thyme, more radishes, and more potatoes. The potatoes were from a bag I'd bought at the store and they sprouted...no need in wasting them. They got a late start, but we'll still get a bit of a harvest out of them, I'm sure.

In addition, the blueberry bushes are showing their first leaves! I hope to buy two more blueberry bushes this year at Atwoods to add to the three we've already got planted. I believe I *may* have discovered the trick to growing blueberries in Oklahoma...although they say full sun, I planted these in the afternoon shade. This is the first time my blueberries have thrived...although July will be the true test.

Spring days...in January?

In the winter, I sometimes find myself pacing around in the house...like those poor animals at the zoo...just needing to get outdoors. This past weekend gave us an opportunity to enjoy an out of season spring day and boy, did we take advantage of it! It was over 70 degrees outside!

I spent hours lavishly watering every tree, shrub, and perennial...checking each over for signs of life and new growth. I'm happy to report that they all the trees look great with lots of plump little buds that make me ache for spring. This will be the second year for many of the fruit trees, so it will be exciting to see if they produce for us. I also checked on the blackberries and the blueberries...all is well on that front.

The strawberries had me very excited. I have to say these are one of the most attractive ground cover plants I've ever seen. Most of the leaves are still green and some are touched with red. Now that most of the other plants in the front flower garden have withered away, I can see that the strawberries spread more than I'd thought at my last garden inspection. I'm thinking of starting these in all the beds as groundcover in the spring.

Finally, I wandered out to the bed that holds my garlic and my Egyptian walking onions. I'm not sure about these. It was my first time to try garlic, and I'm thinking I may have planted too early, but time will tell. I do hope the onions pull through the winter as they came from extended family that lives in North Carolina and they've grown in family beds for generations. If they don't make it, I just might have to spend another week at the Davis cabin up on Grandfather Mountain...wouldn't that be a shame! ;-)

The two girlies enjoyed the great outdoors this weekend as well. They'd played alone for more than an hour when they came running up to me with a cup full of seeds they'd gathered! The morning glories that had grown up over their slide/swingset was chock full of lovely little black seeds. Looks like we'll have a bit more of these little beauties climbing around the homestead next summer! Those are my girls!!!

Here chick...chick...chick!

The gardens are just about ready for winter. I have to do my yearly leaf gathering run through town soon to pick up fall leaves people have raked and left outside for the trash. Those go over my beds for winter (beautiful leaf blankies) and into the compost pile to make some awesome spring compost. I'm also considering making my own leaf mold. I've read that if you add just a bit of water to leaves in a black trash bag and leave them sealed until spring...you'll open them up to find leaf mold. Another garden additive that would benefit my terrible clay soil...all for free! I also love that I'm keeping these leaves out of the landfills...what a waste!

Aside from knitting, I'm doing research this winter. I hope to add a small flock of chickens (4-6 lovely ladies) to the OAH in the spring. While I love the "Easter Egg" layers, I need chickens that will give the most eggs dependably. I also love the speckled eggs, but can't seem to find which chickens lay those. Anyone have suggestions?

Here's what I've got so far:
Rhode Island Reds McMurray Hatchery claims that these are the best layers.
Dominiques A friend who has these says they are supposed to lay dependably through the winter...though the website doesn't say anything about that. This is her first year with her chickens, so I'll look forward to hearing if this holds true.
White Rocks These are classified as "heavy chickens." I wasn't really looking to go with larger breeds; however, they are supposed to lay through the winter.

I'm also looking for the perfect coop or chicken tractor. I'd like to have it built in early spring...maybe April or so.