Category: food (Page 14 of 35)

Garden 1

After mulching over the raised beds in Garden 1 over the Winter, and using the mini-greenhouses to start seedlings in good soil, and after some progress of growth after transplanting, sadly many of the plants just haven’t made it.

I’m thinking a couple of things:

1. I should have planted only one plant per greenhouse and then let them grow much bigger before transplanting.
2. Planting in newly-laid mulch is probably not the best place to plant — it probably needs to sit at least a year to compress down and help prepare the soil beneath. I thought having the plants in good garden bed soil when transplanted would be enough, but I’m thinking probably not.

But, we always pray for God’s guidance and help and direction to learn. And, there are still some things growing, mostly in the mulch laid down some time before the last section, which sort of helps support point #2 above:

Here are a couple of cabbages getting by:

And one of the beets:

And the peas are doing the best. It’s nice to have some fresh for a nightly salad!

Finally, I was able to almost finish laying that thick first layer over where the raised beds used to be:

Garden 2

I mentioned in our last garden update that I was re-mulching Garden 2. While doing so, and chopping the weeds, we have found turnips along the way that have grown from seeds I planted or scattered several years ago. Here’s a whopper we came across!

And so, I figured it might be a good idea to just throw down a bunch of turnip seeds with the hopes they just come up over the years:

And after about four and a half mulch loads, I was able to finish re-mulching Garden 2, and then I scattered about a pound of the seeds all over. It will be interesting to see what happens over the years, if the Lord wills!

Other than what’s already planted, I’m thinking this year is going to be more of a building year, mostly doing prep work, laying mulch, etc.

We are always thankful to the Lord for any bit of provision He grants, and for the opportunity to continue to learn how to go about these agrarian ways, and we pray for His guidance and direction, in all things, both temporal and spiritual.

— David

The Lord has graciously granted our garden to continue through most of the Fall. But, our first freeze came recently, so we took some final pictures…

We kept the beans going through the Summer, even though we had to water with pond water, but they never really did much after the beans we got in the Spring. But, the okra just kept going and going!

The tomatoes have kept going too, although about the only thing actually fruiting are the cherry tomatoes:

And here’s more okra:

With the first freeze on the way, about the only thing we could cover were the tomatoes, which we did, with double blankets in some places:

And here they are after the freeze. The double blankets worked really well! The rest of the garden plants basically were killed in the freeze.

That was about the last of trying to maintain it, with freezes coming and going, and we have had several light freeze nights, which have pretty much finished off the tomatoes. And so, this is the final garden haul from this year from just a few days ago!

We are very thankful to God for the garden provisions He granted this 2015! Lots of okra, which Sue lacto-fermented for long-term storage! Again, we are very grateful!

— David