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!

 

 

Starting the summer garden

Happy Mother's Day! Here is a beautiful Iris to all the Mother's out there...

My grandma has been perfecting her little flower garden amongst this tree. It's looking better and better...

On this day after some drinks and food on our family get together today, I investigated the gardens. 

It seems to have been cold and rainy this past week here at the food forest gardens. 

I was in away on vacation this past week so I didn't get to check on the gardens till now. It also seems that the weeds have taken over! 

I have sowed lots of different seed of greens, herbs, melons, and squash.

Here, I have tilled a long patch with rows of different plants. The potatoes are up at least 10 inches from the ground in severalpatches, I have several rows of peas growing. I have separated each row with sticks.

This is the winter broccoli and kale patch. These plants are flowering now, but amongst them I have carrots, onions and radishes growing. 

I caught a sluggish munching on these radishes today...

At the other garden, not much has taken off besides the plants that have reseed themselves such as this lettuce. I had asparagus finally come up! Some have bolted to seed though. 

I believe this week should be dry, and perhaps a break from the rain--but, probably not the cold. Hopefully, I can finish some much needed weeding and mowing.

March Spring Flowers & Mulching Garden beds

On this March evening, it became warm and sunny. So, after work, I headed over to the nearby greenhouse to buy a scoop of mulch. Once I applied the mulch over each garden bed,  I snapped a couple of pictures of the daffodils and hyacinths that are blooming at the food forest garden. This garden is full of different types of daffodils.

In a couple of the garden beds, I still have kale, swiss chard, cilantro, onion, and strawberries growing. This kale as well as the other veggies have survived through the entire winter. They have a beautiful green color.

Each garden bed got a layer of mulch today, but it wasn't enough. I'll have to get a full scoop next time to cover around the fruit bushes, flower gardens, and fruit trees.

While spreading the mulch, we also had a fire, and dropped off the compost in the main compost pile. I recently added some carbon material to it, as well as old potting soil. Adding existing soil normally helps speed up the decay of these composting materials. 

When you have a day like today, you can't spare a moment. You must do all you can outside before there are longer days of gloomy weather. For every 1 warm, sunny day, there are 3 to 4 rainy, cold or cloudy days here. 

After today, we are expected to have another week of rain, but I'm going to try to plant some onion bulbs, peas, and radish seed in the garden Sunday. 

It is still quite cold at night. So, in April, I will be more inclined to plant some lettuces, and have decided to hold off on planting a lot of greens because of this. What makes it harder, is that I can longer regularly take off the transparent plastic every morning and cover plants at night which would protect them through the cold and frost. Because I am living on a different property now, a lot of my gardening tasks have been delayed, slowed or challenged in some way. But I digress! And so should you! Gardening is crucial, it is life, it is what gives me life. 

Remember to take rest, and sit on your porch in the sun with your libations and watch the sun go down. I had a mojito, haha!

Rain for weeks grows BIG mushrooms & how to forage/identify Chanterelle mushrooms

I feel very fortunate to be in part of the US that is receiving ample rainfall. In parts of the country, such as California, are experiencing drought for months. On June 1st,  urban water users in California, had to abide by the state's first ever mandatory water restrictions, by reducing consumption to 25 percent. 
Even farmers found it more beneficial to start selling their water reserves instead of growing food! 
Much of the food that is sold in the grocery store comes from California, and this could really hurt our country's food supply. This is just another reason we, the people, should take food into our own hands--strive to make the home garden the primary food source, forage wild edibles, and spread the seeds of fruit around the world. 


Of course the persistent rainfall, here in Kentucky, is assisting in the growth of the squashes and melons. Below are photos of recent garden harvests, including recent photos of the growth of birdhouse gourds, squashes, and melons.

7/6/2015 garden harvest

This rainfall has also prompted the growth of many mushroom varieties, such as boletes and chanterelles. We harvested chanterelles today from the woods in two different locations, along with a gallon of blackberries. 

This mushroom, seen below, was incredibly impressive for its size. It was definitely a bolete, but we were unsure of the variety. We concluded that it was the Bitter bolete, which is classified as poisonous. 

Chanterelle mushrooms are quite distinctive, even compared to their look-alike, the Jack-o lantern and false chanterelle. For example, chanterelle mushrooms grow individually spread out over a large patch of ground, whereas jack-o lanterns grow clustered. Chanterelles smell pleasantly fragrant like apricots, as many have suggested. The cap is convex and usually vase shaped. The gills are referred to as false gills because they appear to have lumpy folds instead of true gills. Chanterelles grow amongst the ground floor around oak trees and conifers. I find chanterelles growing in people's yards mostly, and along the edge of the woods. 
Where you know there is a grove of pines during the months of July and August, you will also find Chanterelle mushrooms. Another way to ensure you have collected Chanterelles, is by the spore print. Lay a mushroom facing down on a white sheet of paper, and within several hours you'll notice a pink spore print.

Chanterelle mushroom forage #1, July 9th 2015

For three weeks, James and I have dedicated much of our time to foraging berries around the yard and in the woods. With the extra berries we have started to make jelly. So far we have stored over 20 jars of jelly in the fridge. I hope to sell many of these at $4-5 for each half pint. When making the jelly, I strain the seeds from the blackberries so that I can throw the seed out for growing plants.

July 9th chanterelle forage #2

July 10th 2015 chanterelle forage

We are still unsure what these pink blackberries are called, but we are picking them to save for seed. I may stick each individual berry into a pot of soil.