My garden in July 2013

The garden is doing very well. All of my lettuce came in strong and my spinach has already bolted. I am going to pull it out and plant new seeds today.

My tomato plants are huge!! I may have planted them too close together in an effort to maximize the space I have. I hope they get enough air flow between and under them. So far they seem good and healthy with lots of little green tomatoes starting to grow.

My corn is getting taller already in the raised garden by July than they every got by fall last year. So this is definitely a better location for them.

My potatoes came up good and are blossoming. I hilled them some the other day.


I have been enjoying the thinning out process of my beets these past weeks. Love the beet tops steamed for lunch! They are getting bigger and healthier than last year as well. I hilled them a little bit as well.

My apple tree is doing ok but less apples than I had hoped. With the harsh cut back we did to it, I am pleased with having any though. The tree is healthy too.

The Cherry tree had some cherries too. They were bright red but very bitter still. I was leaving them on for a bit to see if they sweeten up. Then they disappeared! :S I'm pretty sure it was the squirrels though because when I went out to check them, there was a squirrel staring at me and standing on the fence right behind the tree... :S Any suggestions?

My herb garden needs to be weeded but i am unsure what the herbs look like as they grow up so other than the obvious ones, I am unsure what to weed. I am not too worried about the garden though as it is kind of an experiment this year. I plan to leave them to go to seed and see what comes up next year.

My Elephant ear from last year. It did well last year and then one night last fall it was too cold for it so it froze and died back. I kept it in the house and it grew back during the winter. Then when I moved it outside this spring, it was really windy one day and it wilted and those leaves slowly fell off and now it is coming back thicker!

The other two pots are avocado seeds I started in the house in a clear glass folded in wet paper towel. We will see if they do anything.

2013 Garden Plans!

Yay! I LOVE SPRING!!! This year I will have to divide my time between my garden and training my horse though. "I think i can, I think I can, I think I can"

So I added some peat moss and more garden dirt to all the gardens. Here are my before anything grows pictures with the added peat moss/dirt.

Raised Garden that we built last summer/fall with the dirt and peat moss filling it up

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My Garlic Chives and Green Onions that I left last fall and coming strong!

More Green Onions and My arc of Parsley are doing well!

My awesome cousin, who is also an arborist, came and trimmed up all our trees. They are looking good!

My Lilac Tree in the corner looks so clean and our Cherry Tree! :D

The Cherry Tree has LOTS of blossoms so it should have LOTS of Cherries! 

Here is my apple tree that was over grown by the other ornamental apple tree it had been grafted on to originally. Here it is cleaned up and cut back so only the fruiting apples will grown this year. It was pretty drastic though so hopefully we still get some apples.

He cleaned up all the dead wood that was at the top of our poplars. Looks much healthier.

Our Mountain Ash (I think...) trimmed up high so hopefully wont droop so low this year.

I have decided to add these to the front of the house.

All Shade varieties since it is pretty shady in front! I have never had lily of the valley or astilbes before. Hope they grow well!

Here is a before picture of the front... pretty unsightly!

I planted all herbs in this west garden this year. I did random scatter in clumps style instead of any organized rows. Hope they grow!

My unorthodox way of remembering what is where. I didn't want to put little signs. I find they just turn into cluttery  garbage... So pretend the desk is the garden. haha!

I also am planting strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. I do plan on doing a plum tree and maybe raspberries next year... I hope I can handle all the bees... :S

I will add a picture of them planted too.

BTW my clematis are coming up and I am excited to see how beautiful they get this summer! Yippee!


Oh and here is a picture of my horse. Just cuz I am excited about him. His name is "My Inner Ninja" and yes, he does come with a theme song. Lol. We call him Ninja for short. :D Hes a 3 year old Arabian. Acts like a big sweet puppy, follows me around everywhere. Natural Horesmanship techniques. Doing a mixture of Parelli, Clinton Anderson, Cody McArthur and Scott Downs techniques. (The last two are also a mixture of Parelli and Clinton Anderson techniques along with others). It is going well!

Finished Farm Table

Yay! Its done!! many many hours of sanding and preping and many coatings later...its done!!!

<3

Farm Table

Since this is a blog about my garden, and my vegetables go on the table, I thought I'd put in a blurb about our new farm table we are building. :)

I found this on pintrest and really like it. I wanted a bigger table but wasn't liking the large price tags I saw. We really like the beefy, warm look it gives. So my uncle helped us build it and now I'm refinishing it. I did some sanding on it tonight and ill post another picture once I finish sanding it.

It's around 7' without extensions and a little over 9.5' with.

Beans into the freezer, tomatoes into the salad

Here are some beens, washed, cut and ready for the freezer. Also some yummy tomatoes ready for our salad! I live this season!!

Dinner from the garden

Mmmm... nothing quite like fresh veggies from my own garden!

We had Green beans, green onion, swiss chard and beets sliced up. I layed them all out on a veggie grill basket and painted them with olive oil. Then I simply added salt and pepper and grilled em! Turned out delish! Even my husband enjoyed it! And he doesnt like beans, swiss chard OR beets! Then we also had rice and a salad of swiss chard, cucumber, dill and tomatoes from the garden!

Raised Garden:
I built this raised garden along the East side of my deck in the back yard, along with the help of my hubs and God. Here is what I used:

4 x 6 x 12 pressure treated wood from Home Depot
2 x 6 x 12 pressure treated lumber from Home Depot
Drill
Hamer
17 foot long nails
Screws
1/2" thick rebar

First we drilled holes through the 6" deep wood. Then we drove the rebar down through those holes into the ground to hold the 4x6s in place.

Then we used screws on the inside corners to hold the two pieces together. Next we layered the next level of wood on top and drilled holes to make the nails go in a little easier. After the holes were drilled, we drove the nails through, securing the second level to the bottom level, which is secured to the ground with rebar.

Then we did the same steps to add the third level. We will add the 2x6s on after I get my uncle to help me cut the edges at an angle to fit together and router the edge to be rounded. Ill post pictures again at that time. It will make for nice seating in the back yard as well as a nice seat while I weed the garden. :)

We will also stain it the same color as the deck when we redo the deck stain next summer or later this fall.

Job well done hubbie!

But lets save a little bit of the beer for this slug/snail trap k? haha!

Here is a drawing and cut list if anyone is interested, although your measurements and size of garden may be different that what we have done here.