Well, the rain has stopped the boys from working a little, but now that it’s looking like it’s going to be a nice couple of days, they’re back on schedule.

Unfortunately for them and the garden, we are going out of town this weekend. I can’t wait! We all talked about going on a vacation a few months ago, and what better time than a 3 day weekend. We decided to go to St. Louis because there are so many things to do that are free and it’s close enough to drive and not spend a ton in gas.

I will make sure to post pictures when we get back…..I plan on taking a ton!  

Contrary to popular belief the sun didn’t leave and move to Columbia.  Mr. Sun just went on vacation to Zimbabwe for a week.  He came home again on Friday.  And Saturday.  And even Sunday.  With all of the rain we received, we enjoyed the day Saturday and didn’t work.  We decided to spend the day in Bloomington and visit the Farmer’s Market.  The ground was finally somewhat dry enough Sunday to plant some more.  We planted tomato’s, peppers, and strawberries.Most of our tomato’s were the heirloom variety like German Green, Black Krim, White Queen, and Peach.  A majority of the peppers are bells.  Green, yellow, orange, red, and white bell peppers.  A few jalapeno plants, some pimento, and even a couple paprika plants.  Add in the butt load of strawberry plants that found a home in the soil.  We had a pretty full day seeing that we had to mow foot tall grass in order to find a place to plant and use the clippings to mulch out onions, garlic, cabbages, broccoli, and such.  Maybe with some more sunlight things might start to perk up at City Farm.

May isn’t even halfway over and we have had eight inches of rain by some accounts.  Starting to grow restless we built some tomato cages.  The cages are built out of metal fence.  The fence was traded to CFP for some future tomato’s.  They are about 18 inches across and four feet tall.  They have nice big squares where one can reach in and retrieve a tomato.  We made a total 22 tomato cages and if the rain ever lets up we might put them over the tomato’s we planted a week ago.
 

Niki and I told the boys when they first started scheming this garden that the garden is their baby.  We will be sitting on the front porch playing with Quinn if they want to stop and have a break.  If they need help… too bad. (more…)

Sorry for lack of updates…*huff huff huff, wipes sweat from brow*…busy

Rain has put us behind schedule; I need to quit work so I can get caught up.

We’re late on the peppers, half the tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, berries, beans, herbs, and corn (did I forget any?).  That’s not to mention the regular/preventative maintenace that needs to be done (weed pulling, trimming, etc).  I’m not even looking at big projects yet: finish rain barrels, build compost barrels, build trellis for peas/beans/cucmbers/gords/etc, buy or build tomato cages, build cage for gooseberry bush, build something (?) for berries.

But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

No rest for us

I have.  Pretty much nonstop for 3 days now.  It is not very assuring.  We probably won’t be planting on Saturday.  Instead we might have the wet-dry vac outside trying to salvage anything that hasn’t drowned.  This past Sunday we went to a couple of greenhouses to stock up on some more plant life.  We purchased what seemed like a few thousand tomato’s, jalapenos, bell peppers, some watermelon, zucchini, and summer squash.  Also for fun we invested in the long term crops of a concord grapevine, a blueberry and a raspberry plant.  Possibly for some wine, but probably not this year. (more…)

Pop quiz, hotshot! What would you do with an overabundance of produce when it comes time to harvest? We’ve been thinking and planning about this for a while. Since, for some unknown reason plants rot if you don’t eat them, I’ve been doing research into the best and tastiest ways of preserving the wonderful bounty-to-be. Note: My idea of tasty might be different than yours. (more…)

I’m not into gardening… at all.  First of all in order to garden you have to go outside.  I don’t have a problem with being outside in theory.  In theory, outside is all warm and bright and sunny, who wouldn’t want to go out and garden?  But in reality, outside is all hot and humid and dirty.  And there are bugs; I don’t do bugs.  So you can imagine how much I’ve gotten into this whole gardening thing.  Not much.  Plus, I don’t even really like vegetables all that much, so I haven’t been all that motivated. (more…)