More update

Forgot a few things

Green onions...plant in pots

Parsnips, only a handful grew to be a decent size, skip next year.

Next year need to grow green beans and corn! Sunflowers and winter squash!

End of July garden update!

I planted 9 plants of sweet tomatoes in half the bed...plus 2 pepper plants, it has taken over the entire bed, next year we will need to spread the 9 plants over a full 4x8 ft section.

Decided to clean out a few garden beds today. We planted the rainbow carrot mix, the white ones were the only great ones. I want to try a different variety this fall and be very careful about planting the seeds.

Cukes are not doing well. Drying up and dying at the beginning, ends looking ok. Want to try off the ground next year plus more than just pickling cukes.

Tomatoes are thriving. One seems to have blight, need to spray something organic and note the variety. Favorites...Juliets are amazing, same with the sweet 100s and super sweet 100s. The lemon boys and indego roses are very nice too, we will need to repeat all of those next year. Roma is decent too and one of the big tomatoes, need to check variety. Large Tomato cages next year for all but the sweet 100s. Will work better than rebar, that or short rebar.

Peppers finally getting bigger. Not really any favorite varieties. Jalapeno seems to be doing ok.

Need to plant more zucchini plants. Only gotten one so far.this year. Research how to grow better.

Time to go see what we can get going in the ground now!

Green tomatoes!

Lots of green tomatoes starting to make their appearance, on everything but the one Roma on the end (which doesn't look a thing like the other Roma), YAY!

Picked our first pepper today. A banana pepper, on the smaller side, but still ready to eat! We have a cowhorn getting bigger too!

Something is in the cabbages, guessing slug. Going to try eggshells and coffee grounds. It is still growing nicely! Getting big too, biggest one is larger than a softball! Looking forward to some Kraut!

Peas peas peas!

The sugar snap peas are doing really well! Another bowl full today!

Harvest YTD:
Kale: 3.1 oz
Radishes: 9.4 oz
Salad greens: 1# 1.3 oz
Sugar snap peas: 8.2 oz

Harvest update

Picked some kale and sugar snap peas today! We will have them for dinner, yum!

All of our tomatoes seem to have transplanted well, same with the peppers. Half of the zucchini/cuke bed was under water with the rain so I think we need to add some top soil to it and see if that helps, its lower than the ground around it so I think it piles there. Hopefully the plants will grow ok until then.

Harvest YTD:

Kale: 3.1 oz

Radishes: 9.4 oz
Salad greens: 1# 1.3 oz
Sugar snap peas: 4.5 oz

Sugar snap peas, harvest update

Got a handful of sugar snap peas today! Yay!

YTD harvest:

Radishes: 9.4 oz
Salad Greens: 1# .3 oz
Sugar Snap Peas: 1 oz

Garden pics! Peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and cukes planted!

First pic is the tomatoes. Phil planted them last night for us! We stake our tomatoes, which still needs done. We have 2 super sweet 100 plants (loved them last year), 2 romas (I plan on caging them since they are determinate), one indego rose cherry tomato...they are purple on top and red on bottom, one lemon boy (Charlotte chose this one!), one Juliet (roma/cherry tomato mix), a better boy, a big boy. 

We planted 6 pepper plants, hot banana, gypsy, cubanelle, mild jalapeno, sweet banana, and cowhorn. We took out spinach, of the 15 "holes" we planted, we only had 4 plants and they werent't thriving, and put peppers in. The cowhorn was an "oops" buy but we decided to plant it, its supposed to be spicy! 

I am always amazed at how much growth can happen. The bed with the sugar snaps was planted entirely by seed. Everything came up and is doing well! 

In the last bed, we planted one zucchini: black beauty, and 2 pickling cucumbers...boston pickling. Both transplants from Home Depot. In the middle, I planted some Bush Green Bean plants! They should be done before squash and cukes are ripe! 

What are we doing next? Well its been a slow year getting started since we have to dig the beds since this is our first year here. We cant use a tiller because its too rocky. We are also manually removing all of the grass from the top. In future years we want to remove grass between plots (maybe put rocks in) as well as fence it. We would love to plant more cucumbers, green beans, black beans, corn, yellow squash, sweet potatoes (their own bed) and watermelon this year. We hope to make more beds soon! 

Sugar snap peas!

Our very first one was ripe today! I treated myself to it...and it was delicious. :)

Bought tomato, cucumber, pepper, and zucchini plants!

Phil made another bed today and we bought some plants from Home Depot today. Can't wait to get them planted, will post pictures once it's done! Will also post a garden pic soon, it's rainy and yucky out now!

First harvest, seedlings update, spinach fail

Seedlings failed! It was entirely our fault though. They were nice and healthy, but we didn't have a chance to make garden plots so they got too big for their little seed starter thing and died. Only changes for next year...start peppers earlier, they are very slow!

Harvested radishes today. Took longer than expected.

Harvested some salad greens today. Spinach did badly. Only 3 plants came up from seeds, they were very small and slow growing, and starting to bolt. I started them in the ground. I pulled them up and added the few leaves they had to the salad greens. Need to try to start seeds indoors next time and transplant.

Kale is doing nicely, pulled a few leaves from the plants for baby kale in the salad greens.

Salad greens are all doing well. I thinned mesculin mix today too!

Also thinned carrots, a bit late, no real carrots but leaves are doing nicely.

YTD harvest:

Radishes: 9.4 oz
Salad Greens: 1# .3 oz

Seedlings and mid 20s weather

Thinned the seedlings today. The cat had gotten into them so the tomatoes are sporadic, even though everything came up!

2 nights ago we had a hard frost, temps in the mid 20s. Phil made a contraption to keep everything warm. Hoping that was the end of the cold this terrible winter!

Things are starting to sprout outside!

Radishes are sprouting! We planted them last Saturday, also some other greens are starting to come up from both beds but it is very sporadic. Not seeing any of the root vegetables yet, or sugar snap peas hopefully soon!

Jiffy 72 starting to sprout

The Jiffy 72 I planted full of seeds on Sunday night is starting to sprout. Everything but the peppers and super sweet 100 tomatoes!

Nothing outside has sprouted. Cabbages seem to have fared well with the past two nights of just below freezing temperatures. Wondering if I should start some seeds indoors of lettuce, spinach and peas.

Jiffy 72 seed starter FILLED!

I planted the 72 seed starter with peat pellets tonight. Below is a picture of what seeds were started and where.

We are trying peppers again. I am also going to see if tomatoes will start in this seed starter.

Plants started: sweet bliss hybrid watermelon, jalapeno early pepper, sweet banana pepper, grand bell mixed colors pepper (only 3 because the kids got into the seeds), black beauty zucchini, spaghetti squash, pickle barrel hybrid cucumbers, poinsett 76 cucumbers, Roma tomatoes, big boy hybrid tomatoes, yellow pear cherry tomato, supersweet 100 hybrid cherry tomato

Day 2 spring planting

Planted the second bed today (which Phil also dug up), we mixed some mushroom compost in and some some peat moss and vermiculite.

Planted: 2 half rows of sugar snap peas. Under the trellis, we planted 3 half rows of mesclun mix, 1 half row of Parris Island Cos (Romaine) lettuce-5 plants. and 1 half row dwarf blue curled, vate's strain kale-4 plants.

On the other side we planted 4 half rows of rainbow carrots (Kaleidoscope mix), 2 half rows of all American parsnips, 2 half rows Detroit Dark Red, Morse's strain beets (looking forward to some pickled beets), and 2 rows evergreen bunching green onions.

First plantings of 2014 and peppers

Peppers have failed miserably, two came up. one has since shriveled and died. I am not sure what happened, but we will be buying transplants!

First garden plot done today. Lined it with some of the rocks we found.

Planted Cabbage transplants (pack if 9), 6 dwarf blue curled, vate's strain kale (seeds from last year), 10  big ruffle hybrid spinach, and 16 Bloomsdale long lasting spinach, plus 11 cherry belle radishes from last years seeds. 

First seeds planted today!

Farmers Almanac said it is time to plant pepper seeds, so we did today.

Pepper Varieties:
Grand Bell, mixed colors, 13 plants
Early Jalapeno Peppers, 8 plants
Sweet Banana Peppers, 9 plants

We planted some for a couple friends, and a few extras just to be safe. We put 2 or 3 seeds per pot. And used the pots pictured. We filled them with organic seed starter that was thoroughly wet. I have not covered with plastic wrap yet.

Welcome!

Welcome to our Blog! We live in Acworth, Georgia! This blog features our homestead. We are just starting with gardening. Looking forward to keeping tracking dates, posting pictures, and reporting our successes and failures!