Tomatoes, Peppers, Blackberries and Wildflowers

Gardening was in full swing this past weekend.  It was up to me to get the remaining areas of the garden and wildflower meadow tilled up one more time so Neta could work her magic.  She had close to 60 tomato plants, 30 pepper plants, a couple of eggplants and some marigolds to get in the ground.

Potentially there is a boatload of salsa and other delights in that wagon.

On top of that she had a five pound bag of wildflower seeds, a couple of smaller 1/4 pound bags of other wildflower seeds, a 5 gallon bucket of sunflower seeds from last year's dead-heading and a whole bunch of zinnia seeds also from dead-heading last year.

Looks like a lot...but once you start spreading them...

Let the games begin!

Saturday morning I made a second tilling pass on the wildflower meadow.  The wind was at my back and the soil tilled up dry and fluffy, almost like powder.  When I finished I looked like a real farmer as I was covered in dust and sweat.  I needed a good hosing down, but settled for hosing down the tractor instead.

After lunch, I made a final pass on the parts of the garden that weren't planted yet.  In the meantime Neta was working on the flower garden she'd begun the weekend before (from the last blog post), putting down cardboard to suppress the weeds and grass and mulching with the tons of shredded pecan we have left from the tree we had taken down.

Before

After

We spent the rest of the day getting grass cut and doing other stuff around the place in preparation for a full Sunday of planting.  Oh yeah...and chasing geese.  That's right...they're back!  We're guessing it's a pair from last year raising 3 new goslings.

The goslings are tucked up next to the adult on the right.

Goslings are next to the goose on the left.

They are undeterred and don't seem to feel unwelcome, no matter how many times we run them off to ensure they stay out of the garden.  We've tried to convince them that the big pond is much nicer, but they seem to prefer the little pond, no matter how many times they've been herded away.  But enough about geese.  Let's get back to gardening!

Sunday was planting day!  Let me begin by mentioning that the bulk (at least 50.1%) of the dirty work was done by Neta, while I had the easy job of using the tractor to do my bidding.  Neta planted all those tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, marigolds and other flowers (Borage) to help with pest control.  She did it all by hand, down in the dirt in the hot sun.  She put cages around them all, mulched the tomatoes and added a labeled stake to each cage.  I gathered pine straw (in the shady woods) to mulch the tomatoes and used the post-hole digger to put up an old gate and plant a couple of blackberry vines (that part was in the sun).

Each tomato caged, mulched and lovingly labeled.

Beans to the right (planted a couple of weeks ago) and peppers to the left.

The eggplants.

While Neta was planting the garden, I was putting up an old gate for the blackberries.  We have a lot of old gates and pieces of fence around the farm in the big barn and goat barn so we figured we could use them as accent pieces and let plants grow in front of or climb on them.  Despite the plethora of blackberries that grow wild...everywhere...on the farm, we bought a couple of thornless varieties for this particular gate.

Digging holes for the posts to hold up the blackberry "gate".

The finished product.

Once Neta and I were done with all of that, it was time to spread some love over the wildflower meadow.  I carried the ten gallon bucket of seeds out to the field (it was the least I could do after Neta worked so hard in the garden) and she and I spread the seeds by hand after the handheld spreader wasn't quite up to the task.

Field of Dreams

It really is a "Field of Dreams", though not of the baseball type, despite its diamond-like appearance.  I tilled up a large "V" in the field, probably about 100' - 150' in both directions.  Our 10 pounds of seeds probably only lasted about 30' in each direction, so we'll (hopefully) have a lovely wildflower meadow "corner".  We'll see.

As for progress in the rest of the garden, we have some hits and misses.  Neta used seeds from our inventory and some are older, but we thought we'd try them anyway.  We didn't have a single eggplant sprout which is why we bought live plants.  There isn't a carrot in sight and our okra and sunflowers have been spotty.  So far, no pepinos and we've also had a couple varieties of peppers that didn't make an appearance.  Despite all of that, we still have plenty of sprouts and plants.  Here's a sampling of what we have growing:

A row of zucchini

A few sunflowers.  We'll need to plant more.

One of our okra plants.

Radishes.  The pinwheel is a volunteer.  Damn weeds!

Planted last year, our artichoke is beginning to form.

A row of cucumbers.

All we are saying...is give peas a chance.

A sprinkling of zinnias at the front of the garden.

That's it for now.  We'll keep you posted as we have progress or if any surprises pop up.