Kitchen Help

"When I'm older, and you're still alive and picking strawberries from the garden, I'll come over and nip em and smash em for you."

-Binny

Monday Garden Club

Oh boy!  What another full, yet FUN weekend!  The girls and I helped with a rummage sale all day Friday where the girls set up a lemonade stand.  All was going great until an older Grandpa type found 35 cents at the bottom of his plastic lemonade cup AFTER he finished his 50 cent glass of lemonade.  It was determined that Mae accidentally gave him the change cup instead of a clean cup.  Oops!

Saturday was another busy day, meeting some friends out for Breakfast On The Farm then later was the Wisconsin wedding celebration for the cousin who was married last month in South Carolina.  I once again photographed the whole event but since I've been so busy, none of the photos are up on my photo blog yet, but soon!

And yesterday, we had some friends over for lunch who were visiting all the way from Virginia.  In fact, our guests were the Out In Them Sticks family, Monday Garden Club regulars, including the newest member with the yummiest little toes.

And of course more photos to process, but instead of editing, I did find a little time last night to get out int he garden and pull weeds.  The Gardener roto-tilled between all of the rows, then the girls and I pulled weeds around the plants in the vine section of the garden.

Some of the plants were difficult to find inside the carpet of weeds, but once identified, we were able to clear the weeds away to expose the plants.  All the rain we had last week has turned the garden into a growing machine.

This week we have been picking strawberries and radishes from our garden, and the arugula is ready as well.  The Pick Your Own strawberry farm down the road from our house is now open too.  This morning, Binny and I went and picked 2 ice cream pails full of strawberries which will become jam later today if I get time.

Anybody else gardening this week? If so, grab the Monday Garden Club button on my sidebar, paste it to your blog entry and link up below with Mr. Linky.

Wardrobe Wednesday

Monday Garden Club

Grandma Dee moved into a beautiful apartment a week ago last Saturday, and since the Summer is already filling up for us, the girls and I decided to make the 6 hour drive out this past weekend to check out her new place and get our fill of hugs. 

My cousin and his wife stopped by with their beautiful baby girl, and of course I had to take a photo of the girls with their great-grandmother.

While we were in Minnesota, it didn't snow like the last 3 times I visited the state, but it did rain most of Saturday afternoon.  Binny and I decided to brave the drippy weather and go with my mom to check out her community garden plot nearby.

 

 The fun thing about a community garden is that you can see all different styles of gardening in one big area.  Some people plant veggies, some plant flowers, some do both! 

Some mulch, some don't. 

Some arrange their gardens in north-south rows and some go east-west (I garden in north-south rows so the sun is even all day long when it moves from east to west, but that's just me...) and some don't do rows at all, just a mish-mash of green stuff in the dirt.

And then there are some gardeners who go all the way.  My mom was telling me about this garden below and all I could do was think about how much time and money this all must have cost.  This garden belongs to a young couple who are gardening for the first time and started everything from seed including all of the flowers around the outside of their fenced in double wide garden.

Complete with a door and a lock to keep the riff-raff out.

 

They have weed mat down around all the plants and a drip irrigation system as well.   The next time someone tells me my garden is too big and too much work, I will refer them to this post.  I guess it just proves that gardening is a fun activity that can range from this extensive set-up at a community garden, or a few potted tomato plants on your back patio.

And as for my garden, it was waiting for us with ripe strawberries when he arrived home yesterday.

Anybody else gardening this week? If so, grab the Monday Garden Club button on my sidebar, paste it to your blog entry and link up below with Mr. Linky.

Wardrobe Wednesday: Mae's New Glasses

Monday Garden Club

So much going on in the garden this week, and outside the garden as well.  The cornfield in the background  has started to grow and pretty soon it will look like our property is completely surrounded by the corn.  Of all the field crops farmers plant around here, we love having corn neighbors for the summer.  I'm still shocked that such a giant plant can grow from one tiny seed.  Same with sunflowers that plant themselves all over the garden from last year's leftovers and grow like mad into a 10 foot tall stalk by the end of summer with big blooms and enough seeds to make all the neighborhood birds happy. So far, no ten foot tall plants here, just seedlings.

Seedlings and weeds.  Last week, Sheila asked about the weeds that had started to sprout up in the garden around the emerging plants.

"I see in your pics you have sprouts of what looks like grass in the cracks of the dirt. Tell me... do you just let this go? What do you do? This is my issue and I assumed I had to be grass free. But since you're the expert... do I have to get rid of every blade?"

I'd like to say otherwise, but yes, my garden does grow weeds as well, if not better than it grows veggies.  I wish there were a weed free way to garden, but short of making 20 or so raised beds and hauling in clean, weed free soil, we live with them.  The Gardener made the first pass with the rototiller last week (that's why our rows are so wide, to fit the tiller down without ripping out any plants) hence the squares of green in the vine garden where the zucchinis and other vines are growing along with the weeds, including grass.  Once the plants get a little bigger and more hardy, I will start pulling weeds by hand right around the plants.  We also plan to lay down giant sheets of cardboard topped with straw around all of the vine plants to keep the weeds under control in the most out of control area of the garden.  Last year, the vine garden became so weedy that we could hardly find the cantaloupes and winter squash. 

Onions

Broccoli

Bush Beans

Kohlrabi

Pole Beans and Sunflowers



Pear Tomato



Silvery Tomato- an early, determinate variety

Rhubarb

Strawberries

Raspberries

Above are the raspberries still in the big garden and below are the recently moved raspberry plants. 

Some are doing better than others, obviously, but in gardening, casualties happen.  Good thing more plants pop up out of the ground each spring.

We needed the ATV trailer for other uses, so the water tank had to find a new ride.  And of course, since we filled the water wagon, there has been more than enough rain to water everything.  Go figure.

Peaches!

And some nasty looking leaf curl on the peach tree.  I'll see my father-in-law today (a peach growing pro) and ask him what to do about it.

Apples!

Mulberries!

And finally, some flowers, all of which I started from tiny seeds in my basement last year. 

Lupines

Apricot Beauty Foxglove

Anybody else gardening this week? If so, grab the Monday Garden Club button on my sidebar, paste it to your blog entry and link up below with Mr. Linky.