Garden Pictures!

Also, I finally got around to taking pictures of my garden this evening after we got done watering. You can also see our chicken’s coop in a few of them… So, here they are!

The chicken’s coop and a caddy corner view of most of the garden – you can just see the tomatoes way up on the end.

My peas (sugar snap on the left, oregon giant snow peas on the left), calabrase broccoli, then de cicco broccoli, brussel sprouts and a bed with beans (planted ~ 3/27/09 give or take a day) –

4 beds of various kinds of peppers – with a watermelon and cucumbers on the far, far left.

I have pumpkins & butternut squash planted in the bed on the far left (butternut on the end farthest away, then my watermelon plant in the next bed (not sure what else is going in there, probably an acorn squash), then tow zucchini & cucumber plants, then other cucumbers I planted, and tomatillos in the bed on the farthest right.

Two views of my tomato patch (66 tomato plants, two watermelon – one in the middle, one on the far left corner, and marigolds planted around).

And one final view of the main garden, from the other end (chicken coop in the background once more – the bed right before it has potatoes):

Advertisement

Building “Duckingham Palace”

So, today we finally got started building “Duckingham Palace” more or less off of the description & picture from Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. After much debate and numerous drawings, we finally started. This shows my dad with the inital framing and figuring out the doorway. We built two houses – one for us and our 8 ducks, and one for our neighbors and his 5.

Here you can see the inital framing is done, along with the floor & hardware cloth nailed down.

Here you can see we have both frames done, and are starting to frame out the doors & add hardware cloth on the front. Kevin & Bob

Now we have two sides and the roof on!

Here you can see both sides, the roof, door and hardware cloth all installed – just one more side to go!!

My dad’s cutting the last of the boards needed to side the palace!

Kevin’s adding the last door.

Andros standing on the ramp, while dad puts the finishing touches on one of the palace’s.

A rear-view of one of the houses, with wheels (though, they aren’t attatched – the axle is actually just a little bit short – so we’ll have to get a new one). Dad, Kevin & Bob.

A sideview of a duckhouse – all but finished!! Dad, Kevin & Andros and Bob.

Bob, Dad, Kevin & Andros & I behind one of the duckhouses at the very end of the day! I think they turned out beautifully!!

Just for the sake of cuteness and reference, 14 Indian Runner Ducklings, at about 5 days old (orderd from Murray McMurray Hatchery, they arrived on thursday the 28th of May, 2009)

And just cause’ its cute – Andros in a duckhouse!!

Another year, another garden!

Well, its been nearly a year since I posted on here, but I think I’m going to give this another try. We’ll see how it goes and if I’m able to keep it up or not.

Quite a lot has gone on since my last post, mostly involving lots of canning (I ended up doing 98 quarts & 18 pints of diced tomatoes; 3 quarts & 8 pints of green beans; 26 pints of pickled jalapenos, 4 half-pints of jalapeno jelly & 31 pints of pickled banana peppers; 34 quarts & 17 pints of apple sauce, 17 pints of apple butter, & 22 half gallons of  apple cider, 14 quarts of grape juice) freezing (12 bags of green beans, 3 bags of red & 4 bags of green bell peppers, 12 bags of blackberries, 20 bags of blueberries, 3 bags of peaches & 12 bags of strawberries – all in quart size ziplock bags). Over the winter I made some of the berries into jam & used some of the juice for jelly, both for us and to give away at christmas (cause’ like, who doesn’t like homemade jam/jelly/applebutter/blueberry butter?!?!).

Oh, and I got pregnant again 😀 So, I’m due on August 11, 2009 with another baby boy. Andros has gotten very big and active and is just a little ball of energy from the moment he wakes up in the morning till he goes to sleep at night (though he thankfully does still take a 1-2 hour nap around 2ish!!). As a result of the new baby, we’ve transitioned him into his own ‘big boy bed’ in my old room (and we got a nice new queen size bed for us:).

And then, of course theres this years garden. We started a whole bunch of tomatoes, peppers & broccoli this year, and they’ve (mostly) all done really well. My broccoli has been in the ground for probably ~1.5 months now, and its just starting to have little broccoli heads – here in another week or two I expect to have broccoli coming out of my ears – we started 48 broccoli plants, had 46 come up, and all but 3 or 4 have survived being put out. I think the ones that died once they were outside did so because of either a lack of water (its been VERY dry here lately), or due to critters digging tunnels/holes underneath them and through their roots. Around the same time I put the broccoli in I also put in a bed of snow & sugar snap peas, both of which are now 2-3′ tall and looking very good. And about a week later we put potatoes in too – which got frosted a bit but look like they’ll survive thanks to mostly having been under the straw still 😀

On a seperate note, our grapes got frosted last weekend, along with some other stuff that has *never* been frosted before – my yuccas, bleeding heart & trumpeter vine, along with the potatoes. Thankfully, I didn’t have anything else in, but its just pretty surprising. We were away, but the neighbor who owns the greenhouse I go to said it got down to 28!! On the 16/17th of MAY! How crazy is that?!? Thankfully though, I think everything will survive, though how many grapes we’re going to get this year I don’t know 😦

Just over the past couple days I’ve gotten most everything else in. Namely all my peppers (76 total – 6 Purria Chili, 6 Ancho/Pablano Chilis, 6 Corno di Toro Sweet Peppers, 6 Rio Grand Hot, 6 Ring O’ Fire Cayannes, 5 Pimientos, 12 Hungarian Hot Wax, 12 Jalapenos, 3 Habaneros, 8 California Bell Peppers & 6 Sweet Red Beautys…), tomatoes (66 total – 6 Amis Paste, 6 Peacevine, 8 Stupice, 8 Santiam, 7 Bavacchi, 8 Dr Wyech’s, 4 Arkansas Travellers, 4 Poland, 8 Peron Sprayless & 7 other heirloom types from a friend…). I do have space for another 4+ tomatoes and a few more that I could plant but just never got transplanted into peat pots. Oh, and I did 7 tomatillos down by my peppers. I also put in 3 Sugar Baby Watermelon’s, 2 zucchini & 6 Straight 8 Cucumbers today – I want to get another dozen or so cucumbers to fill in the rest of that bed with and hopefully have a bumper crop to pickle a bunch 😀

So… basicly my garden is in for the year! I do want/need to plant a couple beds of beans, some more squash (pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash & spaghetti squash), cucumbers & possibly another melon or two of some sort, but BASICLY, the bulk of my garden is in – now its just keep it up!! 😀 And this year, we’re prepared to combat the powdery mildew & other blights we had last year, we hope. I plan on spraying my tomatoes for the first time here in a little bit or tommorrow at the absolute latest!! I’ll try and post pictures of everything in the next few days:D