Walk through the garden 6/30/20

It’s the last day of the month, so I wanted to share what’s going well and what’s a work in progress!

View from the bottom (and newly added green bean teepee)

The onions are some of my best

Only a couple pretty tomatoes, so far.

The beans are flowering!

Cucamelons are enjoying the cattle panel

Delicata squash coming along!

A bumblebee kicked back enjoying the squash bloom

The San Marzano tomatoes are growing the best. The cucumbers are growing well, so far this year! I will totally admit that I am not a great cucumber grower! The flea beetles are being terrible pests this year.

What’s growing great in your neck of the woods? Are you dealing with some pests? Keep celebrating the positives and know that every year something will be a challenge. And, keep blooming! 🌼

Wednesday walk through the garden 7/10

The hot weather paired with the rain showers have made the garden pop! We have been harvesting lots of zucchini and a couple dragon tongue beans.

Here’s how things are growing:

Grow pumpkin vines, grow!

Corn!!!!

Dragon tongue beans

Beautiful tomato

Tomato jungle!

Baby jalapeño

Tons of tomatillos!

Ground cherries!

Yellow zinnia

I spent a little bit this morning teaching littles about beekeepers and pollinators. They lived the monarch caterpillar that I brought and I left them with a butterfly weed to plant.

Keep blooming friends! 🌸💚

What’s blooming around here?!

It officially feels like summer here! With all of these hot days, the flowers are starting to bloom everywhere. And, the pollinators are happy!!

Bumble on bee balm

Swamp milkweed bloom

Borage bloom

Purple and white coneflowers

Marigold

Purple cosmos!

Zucchini bloom

Dragon tongue beans bloom

Before (top) After weeding (bottom)

I have been doing a ton of work getting rid of those pesky weeds in the garden. I used a lot of cardboard and tons on mulch on top. Hopefully that suppresses them for a while!

What’s blooming in your garden?! 🌱❤️

Wednesday walk through the garden 6/26

I have been working every evening at pulling weeds and mulching the whole garden. It is starting to look more beautiful by the day!

Tomatoes everywhere!

We also have quite the dill forest! I’m hoping to lure in some swallowtail butterflies!

Dill!

And now for the other beauties in the garden:

Dragon tongue beans!

Zucchini!

Dickinson pumpkin

Purple tomatillo!

Potatoes ready for harvest!

Over 80 heads of garlic harvested!

It was nice finally being able to get out in the garden and work! Hoping to get the garden stand set up this weekend!

What are you harvesting?!

Weekend walk through the garden! 7/21

Hello all!! Gardening has been on the back burner because I have spent 30 hours at the fairgrounds volunteering towards my Master Gardener hours! I’m pretty much finished with my hours for this year!

I’ve talked so much about plants, bees and composting this week! 

Lucky for me, the plants have been enjoying the hot weather and rain today! Here are a few of the great things growing in the big garden:

One of the cantaloupe 

There are so many dancing gourds

A pie pumpkin!

The tomato jungle, corn and luffa on the fence 

A scarlet runner bean 

My first ground cherry! And it was delicious! 

Pole beans poling! 

Spaghetti squash 

Volunteer pumpkin plant 

Apple melon! 

And the haul from the garden today! I even found a few blackberries growing by the sheds!

Nice haul today! 

What is growing well in your garden? My zucchini plants are starting to fizzle out a bit and I’m going to start my seeds for the fall garden this week! Keep blooming! 🌱❤️

 

Wednesday walk through the garden 7/11/18

I know, I know, it’s Thursday! But, all of the pictures were taken yesterday as I walked through the big garden searching for the fruits of my labor! Things are slowly growing, and I’m hopeful that I’m going to have some pretty great harvests in the future!

Homestead tomatoes

Tiny Tennessee dancing gourd

Purple pole beans

Glass gem corn

Pie pumpkin

Tiny cantaloupe 

Purple bell peppers

Oxheart tomatoes ❤️

Roma tomatoes

My first cucumber! 

Genovese tomatoes

Scarlet runner beans

And then there is my nice little harvest from earlier in the week:

Zucchini for every meal!😆

Everything is still pretty healthy in the garden! I’ve been fighting off Japanese beetles, a few squash bugs and Mexican bean beetles. That’s the tough part with organic gardening… finding ways to get rid of the pests that are going after your crops. At least the chickens are enjoying all of the beetles that I’m pulling off of the plants!

So, anyone harvesting yummy things this week?! Keep blooming friends! 🌱💚

Wednesday walk through the garden! 6/13/18

It has been raining here almost every single day! The garden could really use some sunlight and warmer weather! But, the plants are still growing!

The green bean teepee was weeded well and I even put down a nice layer of newspaper on the inside, under the mulch. The scarlet runner beans are looking great!

On the other side of the garden, I have the regular poling green beans growing! They seem to be taking off as well!

The glass gem corn is about ankle high and I’m really excited to see what the corn will look like! I’m hoping to be able to use it for decor in the fall and then grind it up for extra chicken feed this winter!

I love the beautiful yellow blooms coming on to the tomatoes. At least they seem to be enjoying this weather!

This year I’m trying the Florida weave on my Roma tomatoes. So far it seems to be working out!

In the pollinator garden, it’s still mostly mulch! Something has decided to eat a majority of the milkweed, but at least this black eyed Susan seems happy!

The last exciting news is that my paw paw tree is growing some leaves! I have 2 that are doing well in the house and I’ll wait to see how the ones I started outdoors are doing! (They are growing in a wooded area!)

It’s slow growing around here, but tomorrow is my last day of school! I’m looking forward to playing in the garden, swimming with my boy, trying out new adventures and going on our trip this summer! Keep blooming friends! 🌱💚

Wednesday walk through the garden 6/6/18

If I had one word to describe what has been going on in the garden, it would be weeding! I have been mulching to help suppress the weeds and pulling as many as I can.

Yesterday I was even able to start putting supports for the tomatoes in the garden. I hope that I don’t have to use any tomato cages. Those things are just the worst!

The zucchini are slow growing, but they don’t look terrible. I am hoping to get some of the 3 varieties that I planted this year!

The dragon tongue beans are doing great! I got them in a seed exchange on instagram, and I’m loving that they can be used as a regular green bean or as a dried bean. And, they are supposed to taste great!

A nice follower of my Facebook page gave me 7 bales of very weathered straw that she used as wind breaks in her yard. They definitely will help out with the weeds. And, they will turn into more soil food.

I planted the rest of the onion sets that I had leftover from the raised bed. Surprisingly, even though I though they weren’t good anymore, they all came up!

Strawberries, that planted themselves, gave us a handful of strawberries!

The green bean teepee is finally growing!

One of the raised beds has lots of onions and garlic happily growing!

The cucumelons are starting to trellis nicely up the cattle Panel trellis!

Everything is slowly growing, except for the apple melons in the big garden. I believe that there are flea beetles that are loving their leaves. So, I’ll just be happy with what is growing well, and try to save the plants that still have a chance. Keep blooming! 🌱💚

Green bean teepee diy!

During the 2017 growing season, I decided to build my first green bean teepee. I had envisioned my boy enjoying sitting in or hanging out in the teepee.

I saw a couple diys, but they never posted whether or not they grew well! So, here’s how I built it (And the results):

First, I had to source some bamboo to make the beast out of! Lucky for me, my husband works with a guy that has it invasively growing in his yard. So, he told us to come get it anytime we want! (Cost free!)

Bamboo! They were about 7 feet long! 

Next, you need to really shove those bamboo poles into the ground! Like, about 6-8 inches in the ground. I just pushed mine in the ground and used my body weight to force them to stay put!

They aren’t going anywhere! 

Then, I continued on with pushing the rest of them in the ground. It was 100% constructed by just me! I used 6 poles placed about 18 inches apart.

I really looked like a pole vaulter shoving these in the ground! 

Up next, I used paracord to tie the tops together. I just kept tieing them together and knotting them!

I had to use a stool to reach the top! 

I continued using the paracord to tie knots on each post to give the pole beans something to grow on. I spaced them about a foot apart from row to row. You could do it a lot closer, but I was running low on paracord!

Green paracord for the beans to grow up!

And here is my finished project! The next step was to plant the bean plants all around it!

Fully constructed! 

I planted the pole bean seeds really close together because something kept eating the seedlings!

At first only 1 side really took off! 

Once I put bird netting around the seedlings, the other plants really started taking off! They did make it to the top!

Beans enjoying the teepee! 

You can see the progression in the photos below!

Our teepee looking great! 

So, even though I had to fight off pests, I would consider it a success! I harvested a lot of beans! But, will I do things differently next year? Yes!!!! Here’s what I’ll change:

🌱Don’t make it so tall! I couldn’t harvest those ones on the top! Be sure you can get them!

🌱start off with netting to protect the seedlings from the beginning! (We have a lot of rabbits and birds here!)

🌱 place the paracord closer together around the teepee! Then you won’t have them having a hard time growing up it!

We really got a lot of beans from this single teepee! I’d recommend this for anyone, and I enjoyed getting in the shady interior to pick beans! If you give it a try, or have before, let me know how it went for you! Keep blooming folks! 🌱💚