Garden Preaitors

Hello everyone,
With the fadt that I spend 5 days away from the Homestead, working in the garden and trying to keep the Garden Predators away from the beds is a challenge! And the main culprit's are of the four legged and winged type.
Deer are eating the sweet potatoes plants and the Crows are into the melons!

As you can see from the two photos, they do not wait until the melons are ripe before they break them open and eat the insides.

The particular melons are a few of the volunteer plants I transplanted from the worm beds and are doing quit well. And today I built a hoop frame work over the rest of the bed and covered it with bird netting.

This is one of the cantaloupe's that looked pretty good, but......

As you can see they got to it too! I weighted in at 1 and 3/4 lbs and was not ready for harvest. But did they care.......H--- NO! So now I will run the ruined fruit the food processor and turn it into a Worm Smoothiee and add it to the Worn beds tomrrow.

And the Bean Bettles have been hard at work turnung the leaves of the bean plants into lace. But at least they do not bother the gree beans and I was able to harvest 1 1/2 lbs today.

Here are todays harvest

Purple top Turnups and greens. About 1 1/2 lbs total.

Beets and greens. About 12 oz. I love thies roosted with the turnups and new potatoes. A little oilive oil and 350 degree oven for about 45 mins. YUM!!

Summer squash is comming on strong. Got about 6 lbs here. And the plants have lots of flowers and small fruits ear marked for fried squash and onions.

And 13 lbs of cucumbers! Some of thies have gone over to the smoothie catagory. But I see pickles and salids in my future!

Tomorrow I will be working in the garden , weeding and cutting grass. Also I need to get a hoop frame set up over the Moon and Stars water melons befor the crows see them! I found several melons starting and thies I planted from seed (a little late) and they look real good too.

The tomatoes and potatoes are not looking so good and this years harvest does not look very promencing.

I'll have photoes of the Moon and Stars melon bed tomorrow. Come see the hoop frame I will make and how I use 1/2" PVC (makes a very good building material and is pretty cheep too!). This one I will cover with chicken wire and I will be able to remove it when I have too get into the bed to weed and harvset

So I will talk to you tomorrow.

TOM

Wordless Wensday

Sad Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday and it was a very nice day. Had the day off the OHJ and was able to work in the garden all day. Terri made me a birthday dinner and her and Mark gave me a new PC and Printer. So I was ready to get some pictures today and make a couple posts to let you see how the garden is growing.
But I got up this morning and found that BOO-BOO my 15 year old cat had pasted sometime late last night. And because she had not been sick and I did not take her to the Vet, I dig her a grave out on the back 40.
I had just cut that area last week (first time in two years) and there were several maple and pine trees that I left growing out there. I pick a spot near one of the bigger maples for her last resting place.
Boo was my sister-in-laws cat and she picked her up as a stray back in 1996 and when we moved back to tidewater in 98, her and Boo moved in with us. Lisa pasted away in 2003 and I kind of inherited Boo then. So I lived with her for 13 years. She was a once person kind of cat and up until Lisa's passing she was the only one Boo would have any ting to do with. But afterwords, Boo became mine and she would come to me only if she wanted attention or food.
So I have lost another of my kids to the Rainbow Bridge this year. Bella in January and now Boo!
I know that death is part of life, More so on a farm/homestead, But that does not make it any easier!
Next post will be better, I hope!
Tom

I WON!!!!.....And first harvest.

Its been a while sense I have had the chance to get back to the Blog and I took a look at the last post (18 may) and there were two comments. Carolyn over at krazoacres.blogspot.com made a comment and gave me the news that I had won her book contest! "Hen and the art of chicken maintenance" Thanks Carolyn! I do not have the chickens yet (Darn OTH JOB has me gone 5 days at a time....no time to tend to the chickens!), But I read up on them as much as I can and I spend a lot of time on other Blog's to see what I can learn. Carolyn's Blog is really great and very informative. As with all the other Blogging friends I have, she has great pictures.
And we have started to harvest from the garden! Cherry tomato's and Patty Pan squash so far. We had to pull the Kale we had planted as it had blotted and was trying to go to seed. Not many leaves from over 20 plants. But it has been HOT and we never did have a spring! It went from winter to summer in a little over a week and the cool weather crops did not do very well. But the heat loving crops are going gang busters. We got potato's (Yukon gold and Superior), Yellow squash,Watermelon and Cantaloupe planted just last week. So the garden is finally in and we will not do any more planting until we put in the fall crops in August.
Oh and the dog that was in my last post, we found her a new home. Four dog's are a little bit much and the family we gave her to has two young kids. So she is happy and so are they!
I will be back at the homestead next Monday and will try and get a post done then with pictures.
Every one take care and I will talk to you later.
Tom

Two in one day

This is about two weeks later  then the last post. Squash and Kale.

Here is a picture of the newest member of the clan. She is a stray our neighbor  found the other day and we took her in.

Green beans and Beets

Tomato's and more Squash.

Bib lettuce

Marigold

And Sookie trying her hand at gardening

Ellie showing her the finner points taking a dust bath

A volunteer Potato in the compost that I will have to transplant...

And some melons and more squash that have to be moved soon.

Here is another volunteer in the compost. Any body know what it is?

Sookie says "it's Miller Time"

And I have to agree with her!

Wordless Wednesday

Add caption

The free wood that is used to make the box for each raised bed

Rosemary and a few Tomato's planted

Volunteer squash

More squash

One of two pear trees on the place. No fruit this year.

Leaves ready to go into the worm beds.

No trees on my place, so I pick them up bagged at curb side.

Use this to shred them before wetting them down....And

Placed in the bed with the worms.

This is the bed that I set up last year and it looked like the one above back then. But its ready to be harvested and sorted.

A volunteer squash that made it into a pot.

Four additional beds ready for planting

No Pictures, But lots of news!

Sorry it has been awhile, but major computer problems have kept me from making any post as of late. Got a virus and it killed my system and it took an act of God to get rid of it! And its still not right, and I can't seem to be able to down load any of the pictures I have taken of the spring planting.
But I can sure write about it here!
We started seeds in the house under lights in late February and early March. And as the weather started to warm up, I started to construct the boxes we would use for raised beds. All the wood I used was free for the taking and I built 7 boxes (4' X 8' X 10"). And we put together our own growing medium to fill each one.
The mix consists of 2 parts shifted fill dirt, 1 part composted cow manure, one part top soil and 1/2 part worm casts (This is potent stuff!). After mixing this all by hand, it is loaded into the boxes until the level reaches the top. And then we plant!
I did not keep very good records this year, But I know we have 5 kinds of tomato's, 3 kinds of peppers, Green beans, Beets, Kohlrabi, Turnips, Kale, Broccoli and 3 kinds of Squash.
The Squash is the funny part of this years garden! Back around Christmas I fead two rotten Pumpkin's to the worms I had in the house and they went through it like crazy! But they left the seeds alone and as the temps started to go up, the seed germinated right in the worm bed! We ended up with over 50 starter plants and have transplanted then throughout the garden area. Some in the raised beds and some in the area around the beds.
And speaking of  worms! They did realy well through the winter. I kept them suplied with food material ( Kitchen scraps, Horse manure and cut grass) and bedding material (sherdded leaves, newprint, cardboard and cut grass). This past week I built them a second box and sorted out as meny of the worms (there is no way I got all of them out of the casts!) as I could and harvested eight 5 - gallon buckets of casts out of half of the first bed. The way I did this is two weeks before I wanted too harvest, I placed two buckets of composted hourse manure in one end of the bed. This being the only food sourse, the worms migrated to that end of the box. And last week I started shifting the material I shoveled out of the bed. I put it all through a home made 1/4" shifting box I made and picked out the worms I could see and placed them in the new bed. They seem to be settling in quite well.
But back to the garden. Tomatoes and squash have flowers and some fruit starting to show and thoes seeds we dirctly planted are starting to push up thrugh the soil.
Monday I will be putting together another box. It will be somewhat bigger then the others. At 8' X 8' X 10" and will be use to plant Watermellon and Cantilope.
I have been doing a lot of reading about Hoop House's and how you can use them to extened the growing season for fall crops. I think that will be my next project to tackle.
Oh, and I have two whole Red Pears growing on the pear tree this year! We got a heavy frost right after the trees went into bloom and one of the trees blooms were killed and the other has only been able to produce the two. O'well, the trials of a Homesteader!
Talk to you later.
Tom