I took a chance and got a very early start with planting this year. There was a lot of covering and uncovering but worth it because I just do not do well with the heat and I wanted to get the planting and heavy work done before it became too hot.
Just today we reached 90 degrees and it is spring so we may be in for a very hot summer.
We put in several cattle panel trellises this spring. To me the trellis is land since we are short on that. If we cannot spread out we can try growing up.
This is cantaloupe that I am training to grow up.
A basil has planted itself in a begonia.
Baby cucumber.
Our first zucchini and it was very good.
The over crowded herb, pepper, cilantro tank.
The beans reached the top of the 8 foot panel and now nowhere to go but down.
The sugar pie pumpkins are on their way up the trellis. They do not want to go up the trellis but I am tying them as they grow. Blackeyed Susans are happily decorating the pumpkins.
This is an onion bloom. I had a couple of onions to sprout in the pantry and I planted them so I could have onion blooms around the garden.
I am keeping a frost cover over the celery and kale to keep the sun off and shaded and it is really helping it so I may cover some other things as it gets hotter. I do have some shade cloth but this seems to be working well.
Something loves the zucchini as we do but this is not a good thing.
The yellow squash will be on the dinner plate before we know it.
And so the cucumbers.
But we have a big problem, there are no bees in the garden. We have been hand pollinating all these baby vegetables that you have seen. The zucchini, the yellow squash, the cucumbers etc.
The cucumber trellis is an arbor shape and they are making their way up to the arch and then they will go over and back down the other side.
The tomatoes are over six feet tall now and I have had to prune them quite a bit because I plant things so close together for lack of space.
Our first tomato, I may have watered a little too much since it is splitting just a bit but it will do no harm since I caught this.
I have flowers and onions tucked away all over the garden and basil are planting themselves wherever they want to be it seems.
This on the other half of the double trellis is butternut squash. I am also tying it up as it grows and this is a 8 foot tall double trellis, each trellis is 6 feet wide. I will post pictures as all of this grows so we can see how the food forest grows.
When the lemons were blooming earlier on we had many bees and then they went away as the vegetables had not started blooming yet.
I am very worried because today I saw one bee and it was lethargic. Something is very wrong, we do not use any pesticides in our garden and try and keep everything as organic as we can.
This is a female zucchini at the end of my finger and a male to the right side of my finger. This will be the same with the yellow squash. The female will have a baby vegetable under the bloom and the male will have a stem and bloom.
As the vegetables grow I have to keep spreading the pots out further to give them space. I have been watering at daylight and currently we are experiencing a drought.
I have pulled out the canned food and checked everything and rotated so that can be in order before I start canning the things we harvest.
I am also trying to build up the canned chicken, turkey and beef and keep a set amount on the shelf that we can keep well rotated.
It is important to do inventory on what we have stored and write down the dates. I do this with home canned and store bought food. If we keep too much and we do not eat fresh and out of our pantry then we may waste food. I have wasted food before and I feel disappointed with myself so I always try to improve. We all make mistakes and all we can do is correct our mistakes and go on.
We just try to do better, it is not the end of the world to make a mistake. It is not the end of the world to have a cluttered or dusty house, we just de-clutter and get out our dusting rags and correct the situation.
Some of us cannot have a garden for lack of space, physical limitations or some people just don't want to garden and that is okay but having stored food whether it be home canned or store bought is important to have food available without having to make frequent trips to the grocery store and also to have in case of an emergency or financial set back. As we read in our diaries these families knew the importance of having a stocked pantry and worked very hard to make sure they had food in the home for their family or for themselves if they lived alone.
Most any day I can be found out in the yard trying to find places to put my potted flowers and vegetables or up at the clothesline. Yesterday I had two chipmunks run past my feet. Since we moved the clothesline in our wildlife area that we keep reserved just for the wildlife I startle them when I go up hauling the wet laundry so I came up with a sound that I make from the time I go out the backdoor to warn them I am heading that way. I make a mock chickadee sound, I say, " It's just me, me, me, me, me, It's just me, me , me, me, me. They are actually starting to understand that I am warning them and they leave the feeders and go up to the trees instead of startling and frantically flapping up out of the way.
Each day is an adventure. Grandma Donna
