Harvesting Fall Pears in the food forest

 

Enormous pears from the food forest. These were harvested this week, and these were only just some of the most perfect looking pears. 

This variety, the Keiffer pear, tends to be a very large variety. And these were the biggest pears I've ever seen.

Mid May Veggie Garden

I have to start out with some flower pictures first. Then I'll show you what is growing on in the gardens this week. 

Iris flowers to me, are the sign of May and they always grow around Mother's Day. So I call them Mothets day flowers. Although I bought some cut Lillies for my mom on Mother's day last week.

This past Monday, Ashley and I went down to the creek and had a little fire while we relaxed and enjoyed nature. Here are some wild flowers and such by the creek...

After Monday this week, I mowed, weeded, and sowed seeds around the garden. It was a weedy mess last week, and now that I have weeded, my plants can finally breathe! I applied some of my own compost around the vegetable plants as well.

The garden bed here, I cleaned yesterday. In addition to weeding, I applied my entire compost pile that I have been making for the last 6 months. 

My hope for this garden bed is to plant squash, corn and beans.  

The next garden bed here is full of yarrow and turnip plants flowering so I won't have many weeds to grub out. Yarrow is supposed to put nitrogen back into the soil, so I see this wild perennial as a plus in my garden. I started with a couple of these plants that I pulled from a field, and now it is a fully functioning patch on its own. 

Similarly, the next garden beds are basically my cilantro patches. There is probably 40 or more cilantro plants clustered in these 2 garden beds. I have inter planted spinach, arugula, peppers, lettuce, radish, and much more here. Now, the key is to keeping these beds watered, fertilized with compost, and protected from critters (which are all challenges as a gardener. 

The remaining garden beds have been weeded and I planted carrots and various things around the established patches of strawberries and radishes growing. I was able to pull up some beautiful radishes this week...

The garden beds here still look like a mess but it's really only because it's a bad picture. I have to keep the netting on every single bed to keep my cats out and to keep birds out. My cats want to scratch in the soil to use it for their personal litter box and the birds like to peck the soil to eat the seeds I've sowed. 

As you can see, the netting I lay on the garden beds doesn't lay totally flat as I have mature radish and kale plants flowering. I have many more vegetable seeds to plant here. 

In front of my garden, the blueberry plants are doing great! There's lots of blueberries on all of the bushes but my fear is birds pecking the fruits. I have used netting in the past to protect them but I'm using that same netting now for these garden beds. It is frustrating!

At my other garden, I have to till more so I can plant beans and corn as well. In my other garden, I have potatoes and peas growing. I have planted melons and squash seed but I haven't been up theret this week yet to check on this other garden.

I'll keep you posted!

 

 

Sowing corn, melons, squash in pots & garden

This week, I have tried to beat the rain to sow seeds and till the garden. I am struggling planting anything because of the rainfall and the birds! The birds are eating the seed right from out of the ground within the hour that I sow it. And it's constant! I'll keep sowing the seed, and then the bird will eat them immediately--like the birds are watching me.

I have 50 garden pots that I'm sowing veggie seed. I sowed cantaloupe, yellow squash, and zucchini in the pots. I have done this 3 times and every time, a bird is eating the seeds...so, I'm at a loss except to sow the seeds again and cover them with plastic sheeting and garden canvas.

Even when I covered the pots with plastic sheeting, something got into them...maybe not a bird, but a mole!

The rain is just as limiting because I cannot till the garden to plant beans and corn. But, I tilled some of the garden wet...finally! I was able to till a patch of my big garden. Then I hoed rows of soil to plant seed. I planted 3 and a half rows of cushaw, 1 row of cucumbers, 1 row of watermelon, 1 and half rows of corn, and a row of transplanted tomatoes.

Then today I transplanted more tomato plants in my grandparents porch garden bed.

Not only have I been focusing on the veggie garden, I am making flower beds. I have started one flower bed at my grandparent's around a tree, which I am decorating with turtles and frogs. The other flower garden is where I planted gladiolus bulbs and decorated with my grandmothers angel figurines, which you can see below.

Despite the mess, there is some beauty in all of this...the blackberry patch...the thyme...the strawberries...are all very lush, green and vibrant...

Blackberry patch

Lettuce...with some weeds

Thyme

Arugula flowering

Strawberries

Garden harvest & Tulip photography in April

Last week I posted pictures of covering my garden and fruit trees for frost protection. The good news is, the blueberry fruits are still growing, and veggies are very hardy; the bad news is, all the fruit trees are not so hardy. You can see small black fruit dangling from the pear trees, the grape vines are wilted, the mulberry leaves died, the pineapple sage died, the plums that speckled the sky all turned shriveled and black.

I'm not sure if any of the fruit from the peaches and nectarines survived, but I still see some hanging on for life.

Still, I harvest food everyday. I have so many radishes and little greens to prepare salads, vegan seaweed rolls, garnish for ramen, salad wraps, and other pasta dishes loaded with garden food.

I have also been delivering garden food to elders that are social distancing, and to coworkers as well.

Garden veg out for delivery

Spinach & arugula used for tomato pasta dish

Potatoes in grow bags

French breakfast radishes poking out from the soil

Yesterday I planted more pockets of seed around these strawberry plants and other bare spots in the garden beds. I sowed spinach and basil seed which are supposed to be companion plants to strawberries. I sowed the spinach and basil seed around additional bare spots in other garden beds.

Strawberry plants and lettuces

Cilantro bed

Arugula and spinach bed

And the tulips rise, regardless of the frost. However, as of tonight, there's not a petal in sight. The Irises will be taking their place in the upcoming weeks--once again brightening the landscape.

Aronia berry plant blossoms