6 New Babies And Breaking Carrot News

First breaking carrot news. We skipped school today and stayed home to work in the garden. Since my back is not doing well I was doing light things around the garden. When I spotted this. What is this you ask? Little baby carrots.

Ethan accidentally grow a carrot in his bed last year, and he never picked it, it grow to be really big. Then we read up on how to bring them to seed. Well needless the say the carrot finally seeded, and we have little babies everywhere.

So today became the day to pull the carrot.

After a bunch of pulling it was out.

And yes it's really tall.

Next up, I got 6 new babies. I ordered these from http://www.mountainvalleygrowers.com/ the only place on the web I could find that sells caraway thyme, but you have to order in sets of 6. So I ordered 6 different things.

Creeping Marjoram

Apple Mint

Pink Lemonade Thyme

Italian Oregano Thyme

Orange Blossom Thyme

Caraway Thyme

I also have some Kentucky Mint. I planted garlic today. We now have two beds of garlic. YEAH. We are really close to having all the new beds in. So it's getting exciting around here. The green house is full of green. Things sprouting everywhere. I picked baby raspberries today and started to fill the new raspberry bed out front.

Get Your Kleenex

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the life of our beloved apple tree. Sadly our tree passed on today. It lived to the ripe old age of 8 1/2 years old. It was loved, it was cherished, it was family. It feed us, It shaded us, It was our joy.

Sometime during the night, it died of apple failure. We did everything we could when it was found this morning, but it was too late. All we could do was save the apples.

Now we are debating rather to replace, or expand out the beds and put the new apple trees in the back?

Apple Pie Filling anyone? I have a few hundred pounds of apples all over my living room floor. 

Herb Markers

I'm showing off my new herb markers...They are soooooo Cool...

I got 14 of them and I just ordered some for the boys, how cool will they be with names in cement, for the bed they planted.

Basil...LOTS OF BASIL

This is what 73 gallon sized basil plants look like. Um, yeah you heard me right, 73 gallon sized basil plants. My husband got all 73 basil plants for a .25 total. The store was just going to toss them. As they all needed lots of tender loving care and probably would not sell.

This is what happens when you dont' let your parents sleep in. You unload 73 gallon sized basil plants.

This is what you make with 73 gallon sized basil plants. As I gave them tender loving care, I got enough from half of the basil plants to make this much pesto.

So this is what 68 gallon sized basil plants look like planted into the ground. One plant went to the mail lady, one went to the neighbor, two are going to mom in law, and one is in the hospital, so un-sure right now if it will make it.

This is bed 1.

This is bed two.

This is the pizza we ate tonight with the new pesto. This is Carol's recipe and should be all over the web so I won't post it here.

Easy Peazy Pesto
by Marcie Dingerson

3 cups firmly packed fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup diaya white cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Put in a food processor and combine. Put into a glass jar and put into the freezer or fridge. It's seriously that simple.

Question?

Any Basil experts out there? I think the top one is basil. The bottom one no idea? I think it's an actual weed.

Ideas?

Because the basil I planted today looks totally different, but I can't remember what type of basil I planted last year...

Don't Laugh!

So here's the deal, my hubby makes compost. He puts nearly anything into compost bin. And he fills our garden beds and buckets with this compost that he makes. So he is filling a few of the beds with this compost, and a few weeks have gone by and I go out, and pick a bed, and weed it. Well I went out yesterday and dumbfounded, that mixed in with all my zucchinis, I have these little tiny tomatoes. Well how did that happen?

I also noticed in the green house, one or two tomato's mixed in with this flat or that flat and thought it was odd, but OK. I had let it go thinking it was an odd season?

And then hubby realized what happened. When he pulled the tomatoes from last year, he put them in the compost. OOPS. Your joking me right? NOPE. Where when I pulled the tomatoes, I feed them to the goats. So I have tomatoes everywhere at this point. We figure if we get anything we will try and can enough tomato products to last two years and skip tomatoes next year. We are also watching the goats, just in case they start pooping out tomatoes as well.

One of the many babies running around.

We also have a new rule. NO TOMATO'S IN THE COMPOST PILE!

Updated Garden Photos

Been out working hard in the Garden. Crazy times around here as things need to be planted, and get into the ground and the weather is working against us this year again. So we just had a patch of sunny weather and I planted and weeded like crazy. So time to share some updated photos.

First here is Bridget, she was making sure my camera was working.

Front yard apple tree, it's gone crazy this year.

This is our newest addition to the garden. Another apple tree, this one will be red apples.

So one of our strawberry patches. Sadly these still need a good weeding.

One of my tomato beds. These beds are over 30 feet long just to let ya know. I'm planting again over 100 tomato plants.

This bed is green beans and carrots.

Our newest bed, this will be Raspberries, we currently have Raspberries but they are not in a good spot and not doing really well, so now that the bed is in, they will be moved.

Yeah, lovely right? My last set of beds to weed out and get ready to go. We let this go to grass last year as we just ran out of time last summer. So after I clean these out and add more dirt these will also be tomato beds.

I just got done working in this area, the first bed is a herb bed with 9 different herbs. The middle bed is a mix bed. It's onions, leeks, chard, celery, cucumbers, and carrots around the edges.

This is my herb bed again. I have herb markers being made. Very exciting to have a big ole herb bed this year.

So the last bed is another tomato bed, with more carrots around the edges. Carrots are a big hit here so the more the better.

I would say about 50-60% of what needs to be planted is planted. I still have a ways to go. But the green house is slowly being cleaned out. I can't wait to have it all planted and be able to just watch it all grow. We have a summer project of building more beds to be ready for next year. I'm hoping to add over ten new beds, shhh don't tell hubby it's that many. Oh and we are hoping to add two peach trees, we have two pears and two cherries. But we could use a peach. I will try to update as I go.

What I'm Growing This Year

Come On Sun...The sun is so trying to shine here, but the darn clouds keep moving in and raining. So as I'm sitting here dreaming about getting out and planting. Here is the list of stuff we will be growing this year.

Carrots

Green Beans

Pumpkins

Beets (New) (Well on purpose this year)

Jerusalem Artichokes (New)

Tomatoes

Herbs

Ground Cherries (New)

Cabbage

Garden Huckleberry (New)

Eggplant

Leeks (New)

Zucchini

Sunflowers

Ginger (maybe)

Onions

Potatoes

Parsnips

Celery

Garlic (maybe)

Lettuce

Green Onions

Lavender (New)

Chard (New)
Strawberries
Raspberries
Apples

There are things in the past we have tried to grow, but we were not successful. Things like broccoli, cauliflower, peppers. 

We are also getting a new apple tree, which I'm so excited about, and if all works well, we will be putting in a raspberry patch. But that requires me clearing and moving and cleaning a-area in the backyard where we once had bunnies. As the bunnies are getting older and leaving us we are finding we have more and more room out back. I mean really they are about 7 years old, how much longer must they live? I can not believe we have had those bunnies for about 7 years. Crazy. But we have 3 outside, and one inside. The one inside went blind almost a year ago, and poor thing was on deaths door when we found him. But anywho he is inside and loving it. He gets the run of the house, and he loves it. I'll have more on him one day.

Well anywho not a post about bunnies, but about what we are growing this year.

The boys are super excited, Ethan and Tucker get their own bed this year. Tucker is growing flowers, and Ethan wants nothing but Watermelon. I will have photos, but that depends on if we get a spring or not this  year? I'm sure we will add a few other things to our growing list. Hoping for a really good spring and summer. We could sure use one.

POTATOES!

Huh we can grow potatoes? Who know. They are very tiny as you can see compared to the tiny cherry tomatos. We only dug for a minute we will do a full dig on our next sunny day. I'm so excited, I can't believe we can grow potatoes.

Now to the tomatos, these three cherry tomatos are the only three we have gotten, remember we planted over 200 tomato plants. It's been such a bad year here that they are not doing well at all. All our corn died, some didn't grow higher then a foot.

Tomatoes

So here is what 200 plus tomatoe plants look like.

Could you believe with over 200 tomato plants I am not swimming in tomatoes. In walking through the tomato field today I finally spotted some tiny green tomatoes so there is hope?

WAIT what is that I see?

It's a froggy, looking back at me.

This is me, loving my new camera. Isn't he cute.

Potatoes?

Well the Russets are in. Three bins the bins are about 4 foot by 4 foot. They are planted, hope to get potatoes this year, because last year we sucked at it. But we did plant them late last year.

Pallets were free. SCORE!

We still have whites, reds and sweet potatoes to do.

Call Me Crazy

Well I'm sure many of you do, but here is your proof. I planted 6 flats of tomatoes today and in all honestly I'm not sure 252 plants will be enough. I planted 2 flats of Beef Steaks, 1 flat of Rutgers, 2 flats of Roma's and 1 flat of cherrys. I think I need one more flat of Beef Steaks or something? I should go and do another and just tell hubby I lost track of counting? He is at work he will never know?????

EJ checking out all the fun he could have. This is our hallway right now as I figure out where to put these until the green house is done? The sun is out it is nice today but dang the wind is kicking our butts.

One of my helpers.

End of The Season

So this was taken last month, end of the season crops. Hubby cleaned out the garden and this is everything he found that day. We now have more pumpkin in the freezer then we know what to do with. I don't think we grew that child through?

Got ZUCCHINI?

It's zucchini time. We have just been hit with a heat wave topping out at 104. We do not do heat well here. No one has a/c so we melted. Everyone cranky, HOT, and plan tired. But our veggies love it. We picked 8 zucchinis today we have another 5-10 more coming tomorrow and two we picked earlier. We gave one to the neighbor and some are in the dryer. We are bringing out the big guns tomorrow. Our 7 feet dryer. Where I will shread all of these and dry them.

And I just got the heads up on a Blueberry patch. I'm so there. Keep you posted there!