Better Get Growing

Though we got a little bit of a late start, it's gardening time around here!  We could have started a few weeks earlier as the last frost/freeze was smack dab in the middle of March. Had we been psychics, we would have known that was the last of the cold weather and started planting by the third week of March, but we'll take prudence over getting the earliest start.

The vegetable gardens are mostly planted, with just a few items left to go in.  We have radishes, carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, okra, corn, cantaloupes and canary melons, peas, cucumbers, scarlet-runner beans, bush and pole beans, artichokes, and onions.

Neta made markers from scraps of PVC pipe she
found around the farm for each row/variety of veggies.

The zucchini have sprouted.  Just those few plants will
probably be enough to end world hunger.

The radishes are sprouting.  A pinwheel apparently denotes "radish patch".

The scarlet-runner beans will climb this once we throw some wire over it.
We're using available materials we find in the barns.

Courtesy of our spigot in the distance, and 150' of hose, we can
irrigate all gardens when needed.

Two rows of recently irrigated corn.

Neta went a little exotic this year with some jicama and pepino melon garden berries (which aren't actually melons or berries), plus I'm going to put in a patch of horseradish, which I've done before in a large pot when we lived in VA.

We still have tomatoes, tomatilloes, peppers, watermelon and more cantaloupes to add. Pumpkins, too, but we learned last year that they need to be started much later if you want to have them for Halloween (instead of August).

80+ tomatoes, some peppers and a few cukes still left to be planted.

We haven't forgotten about flowers, shrubs and trees to help us add to the beauty of the place.  Last year Neta signed me up for the Arbor Day Foundation which allowed us to get a bunch of free trees.  We got a mix of forsythias, redbuds, dogwoods, red maples, hawthorns, 2 tartan cherries and others. For Valentine's Day I got Neta three different camellias that we've planted around the house so we can see them from our windows.

Camellia in foreground with a redbud and another camellia in the background.

Two cherry trees.  The second one is barely visible in the background.

Neta has been adding gardens and plants in various places around the house. I'd cut down a dying mimosa a couple of months ago and hadn't gotten around to moving the final couple pieces of trunk, but was going to leave part of the trunk standing to put a potted plant on.  The trunk was hollow so Neta decided to plant Black-Eyed Susan vine inside the trunk and use the other pieces as part of a garden, planting nasturtium in the rotting, hollowed out parts and some coleus at the base of the trunk, along with some hosta.  I think it turned out pretty nice.

Now that's how you make something nice from nothing.
It should be very pretty once it all starts to fill in.

This past Saturday, Neta and I spent part of our morning at a local plant nursery.  We came home with a carload of plants and flowers including: butterfly bush, a peach tree, a red buckeye tree, a flowering almond bush, 2 pink lemonade blueberry bushes (the fruits are pink when ripe), 2 thornless blackberries and a Lady Baltimore Hibiscus (we had one in VA), along with some jalapeno plants and assorted annuals.

Part of the haul we brought back that we've still got to plant.

Once again the tiller came in very handy.  We have a spot in the yard beside the house where an old well was filled in with gravel and were a pile of leftover gravel once sat.  As that spot would have always been trouble for the lawnmower Neta decided I should till it up and make it a flower bed.  Once again, we've taken what would have been something troublesome and turned it into something attractive.

Not too pretty yet as it still needs mulch.  It contains the flowering almond, the butterfly bush,
the hibiscus, some mums and a recently purchased iris.

Neta has also been filling her Grandma's concrete planters that were here on the farm and other pots that we had and putting them around the front and back porches.

The herb bench I built for her

The back porch area.

To top it all off, we have been clearing a spot in the woods behind the house. The trees were thinned last year and we want an area back there that will be nice to walk around in and plant some things among the pines.  Mother Nature gave us a head start as we noticed something coming up next to one pine tree.  We wondered what it could be and then it finally started blooming.

Gift gladiolas!

We do have a few trouble spots.  Our "driveway" leading up to the carport still needs to fill in with grass.  We're being patient.  Lulu loves to run around in the wet, dewy fields in the morning and then plop down on the mostly bare, sandy ground, covering herself with sand.  Our floors are like a beach hotel, and that's after wiping her down as best as we can.

Filling in slowly.

Also our blueberries got bit by the last freeze as they were in bloom.  We have one bush that seems to have made it through unscathed, but the rest only have a few berries as they managed to put out a few more blooms after the cold weather.

Not as prolific as past years, but we'll be able to make a dessert or two.

 

This particular bush has almost no berries at all.

That's it for now on the gardening front.  Coming soon...the wildflower meadow!