Yes, I realize it’s Sunday. And most likely, it’s Monday when your reading this. What can I say? It’s been a busy weekend! I never did get a post up last Saturday.

We have a few things growing and blooming. We will be working hard in the garden this coming week to get it ready to plant. Yes, we are a little behind. Since we have a long growing season here in Kentucky, we’ll be fine.

The Raspberries are growing!

Can you see all the Raspberries in this picture? There are a LOT of them this year. We usually get a small crop in the spring, and a larger crop in the fall. If this is any indication, we will have a TON this fall! yum!

I took a bench that we had that was falling apart, and turned it into a raised bed. I decided I liked the look of it with the 3 remaining legs still on, so I left it. My 11 year old son helped me plant it. My 17 year old son decided to hurl himself into the picture as I was taking it. lol

The left side is planted with Romaine lettuce, celery from the store, and a stray plant.

The right side has spinach and a couple more stray plants. I think they are watermelon and must have come from the compost. We’ll transplant them to our main garden when it’s ready.

I had read about cutting the bottom off celery from the store and planting it. So we decided to try it. This is less than 3 weeks old. So far, our experiment is working!

Here’s a picture of my little green house the kids helped me build. My daughter has lots of flowers planted in these pots. (ignore the kids pool towels in the picture! lol)

I was supposed to get shelves built to put the vegetables on, but that didn’t happen. yet. So the veggies live in the house at night, and I put them outside every morning. Here they are sunning themselves on the front porch. The pot has a pineapple top we planted. I’m not sure yet if it’s going to survive or not.

I have roma and beefsteak tomato seedlings, broccoli, brussel sprouts, green peppers and orange peppers seedlings. I feed them this week with compost tea. I’m pretty sure they smiled and thanked me. At leas that’s what I tell myself when I’m talking to them. roflol

We’ll end this garden tour, not with me talking to my seedlings, but with a picture of my Iris’s. These only bloom once, and will be gone soon. I love them!

 

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I didn’t get to take any flower or plant pictures today.  I’ll take some tomorrow and add them. In the meantime,  here are a couple of other pictures.

The chickens always come up to the front door and look in. They are looking for treats. lol They even knock / peck on the door to get our attention. One of the kids had the idea to put this stuffed duck on the inside to see what the chickens would do.

It was really funny. The chicken kept looking, and cocking it’s head to the side. lol

Our kittens will be 5 weeks old in a couple of days. We moved them outside the other day. Our outside cats come in to have their kittens, and the kittens stay in until they are up running around. They go out before we have to worry about a litter box. So they are now outside cats, and seem to be loving it. The mama cat misses the indoors more than the kittens. She likes taking naps on the kids cushy beds. lol She’s also one cool cat! lol

 

Ok, it is now Monday, and I’m finally making it back to share some flower pictures.

This is the last of the Lily of the Valley blooms in the Bible Garden.

This Iris is in the a/c garden (the garden around the end of the house where the a/c is, very creative garden name, I know!) I love these yellow ones, they smell like lemonade. We also have purple Iris in the same garden, but they are not blooming yet.

This is a different kind of Iris. We have these in the back yard by the creek.

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Two weeks ago, I planted some seeds, so I thought I’d share my little seedlings with you. You can see some of the seeds I post this year in this post.

This tray has Brussel Sprouts in the very front (they look purplish) and Broccoli in the back.

Here we have a couple of little Lemon Balm seedlings. I’m excited to try this in some iced tea. The little guy on the right is Basil.

These little Orange Peppers finally made an appearance. I was beginning to wonder, even though I just bought the seeds this year. The Green Pepper seeds were planted only a week ago, and none of those are up yet.

I have a lot of Thyme coming up. This is the first year I’ve grown Thyme. That’s one lonely Horehound plant on the left. My Horehound in my herb garden died out, so I’m having to start over. I need to plant a few more seeds in here, as it doesn’t look like any more are coming.

I have a big tray full of tomato plants. I planted Roma, Beefsteak and Cherry tomatoes. The Cherries didn’t come up at all, so I need to replant those. The Roma and Beefsteak are doing well. They have their first real leaves starting to come out.

I was at the farm store recently, and found these garden shoes. As soon as I saw the name, I knew I wanted a pair. Sloggers. I just like that name. Maybe because it rhymes with blogger? lol

It was a cold, rainy day today, so I put my Sloggers on and slogged out to take a few pictures.

We have a lot of buds on the Blackberries.

The Chives are blooming. This poor little guy was bogged down by the rain.

I found a lot of Iris buds. Can’t wait for these to open!

 

 

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

How to Build a Greenhouse
Veggie Varieties owned by Monsanto
Make Your Own Chicken Feed
How to Identify Wintergreen – video
Nettles

How to Start a New Hydrangea
Introduction to Straw Bale Gardening
A Greenhouse Just in Time for Spring
How to Propagate Geraniums Using Cuttings
How to Grow a Miniature Garden

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The weather has been much milder this week. No hail storms! We have been experiencing Dogwood Winter, though. It got so cold, we had to turn the heat on one morning. A few things got a little burned by the frost, but most our our plants and trees are fine.

The Lily of the Valley is still blooming.

This a Hawthorne Tree in full bloom. The fruit of this tree is call a haw, and can be used to make jelly. We got haws for the first time last year, but I wasn’t able to make anything with them. I’m hoping to try it this year.

The Hawthorne Flower is very pretty.

We bought two new trees the other day. We stopped into the farm store looking for seeds and I was sadly disappointed to find only a small handful of organic seeds and the rest were hybrids. 🙁 They didn’t have the organic green pepper seeds I was looking for, so I had to find them online. We did spot some fruit trees for sale and decided to try a couple.

This is a little Peach Tree. Isn’t it cute? Hopefully, it will survive and give us lots of peaches in a couple of years.

This nice, big tall tree, haha, is a Pear Tree. Behind it, is a Blackberry patch.

These Blackberry vines all came up by themselves. yes, we have tons of wild Blackberry vines around. We used to get a lot of Blackberries, but decided they weren’t worth the inevitable chigger bites. These kept growing in the yard, and we kept cutting them. Last year, we decided to stop fighting them. lol Now we’ll be able to harvest Blackberries without going to the chigger prone areas. We recently put some old 4×4’s around them, and now we’re working on filling it in with mulch. Today, the guys added quite a bit of bark and other wood pieces left over from my in laws cutting their wood for the winter.

The Blackberries have buds on them!

I even found a few buds on the Raspberry bushes today. We can’t wait for some fresh berries! yum!

 

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Edible Landscaping
Secrets to Growing tomatoes Successfully
Plant these Herbs & Veggies to Attract Beneficial Insects
7 Herbs That Grow in Shade
1 Hardy Medicinal Herbs for Your Homestead

10 Must Have Medicinal Herbs from the Grocery Store
How Many Plants per Container?
Make a Buggy Birdfeeder
9 Food Cures You Can Grow at Home
Shade Vegetables

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We had a bad thunderstorm here on Tuesday. we got a LOT of hail.The ground looked like it had snowed. Thankfully, the biggest piece was saw was the size of a quarter. The rest were all smaller.

Even though the hail was small, it still did a number on the plants. The poor hostas. All of our hostas look like this.

Poor, poor hosta….

 

The Lily of the Valley is blooming.

Unfortunately, they were damaged in the storm, also.

I finally got around to starting some seeds. I’m a little late, but as we have a long growing season here, it doesn’t really matter. Im using these disposable pans to start seeds in this year. My tomatoes are in this one, sitting on the front porch soaking up some sun. lol Cherry tomatoes, Beefsteak tomatoes, and Roma tomatoes.

I shared a list of seeds that I ordered the other day, If you interested in seeing what I bought, click here. I’ll share what else I planted next week. And, hopefully, pictures of little seedlings!

 

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Toothache Plant
How to Grow Your Own Indoor Culinary Herb Garden
Blueberries – Growing the Superfruit
How to use Lemon Balm

Recycled Backyard Tire Gardens
How to Store Heirloom Seeds
DIY Compost Trash Can
Natural Ways to Kill Bugs and Weeds

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Last week, I mentioned making Red Bud Jelly. Well, I made it! You can read all about it in my Red Bud Jelly post.

Here’s this weeks tour:

We have several Red Bud and Dogwood Trees. I love it when they bloom at the same time. These two trees are in the back yard by the creek.

I found this flower growing down on the edge of the creek. I had one of the boys move it.

I moved it to this new garden in the back yard right next to the creek. The creek is between the green in the front, and the mud hill in the back. When we divided the Hostas from the front yard, I put them here and off to the right of this picture. You can see the yellow of the flower above on the left behind the Hostas. Also in this garden are some Wild Iris’s and Wild Roses.

While I was out for my picture walk, I took one of the front yard. The Bible Garden is on the end of the house, you can see a little sliver of it. There is another Front Garden on the other side of the porch. You can see the red of the Tulip in the Front Bulb Garden.

The Apple trees are blooming. So pretty!

Here’s our line of Apple Trees. My husband transplanted all these trees from up on the hill a few years ago. We got enough apples last year to make a small batch of apple cider. I froze it, and we drank it on Thanksgiving. It was sooooo good! I hope we get more apples this year for more cider. My inlaws next door (the brown house with the white shutters) have a couple of big apple trees and they share with us. Those are the ones we use for pies and applesauce. Hopefully, in a couple of years, we’ll be apple self sufficient. lol You can also see the fence of Raspberries in this picture. We actually need another fence, as lots of new vines are coming up.

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Stevia – Grow Your Own Sweetener
Recycled Spoon Garden Markers
How to Recycle Jeans into a Garden Apron

Growing Herbs for Beginners
7 Ways to Plant Potatoes
Container Gardening

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I have more Daffodils blooming. These are in the front bulb garden.

Last year, my Tulips didn’t bloom. This year, I have one.

Beautiful! And here’s the Tulip and the Daffodils together.

The Dogwood trees are getting ready to bloom.

The Red Buds are blooming!

Did you know the Red Bed is in the pea family? I didn’t either until this week. See the beautiful little flowers? They are edible! You can eat them raw in salads. The kids and I were nibbling on the tree today. I think the flowers taste like lettuce. They would be nice in a salad.

You can also make jelly out of the flowers! I have my flowers soaking right now to make this Red Bud Jelly. The pods that develop on the tree are edible, too.  They are like snow peas when they are young and green. We will be trying them as soon as they are ready. Have you ever eaten Red Bud flowers or pods?

 

The Dogwood trees are getting ready to bloom.

 

 

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:
10 Tips For Growing Onions From Seed
5 Newbie Gardening Tips for a Successful Season
Homemade Wasp Trap

Seed Starters Out of Paper Pulp
How to Grow Carrots
36 Things You Can Compost

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