The Day Lillies are still blooming in the Bible Garden. A Bible Garden is a garden with plants that grow in Israel or that are mentioned in the Bible. Some plants are grown for their names, also, like Lambs Ear. There are a couple of books about Bible Gardens, too. It’s a fun garden to have.

The first rose of the year is also in the Bible Garden.

Along with the Lambs Ear.

Onto the food side of gardening……..The Raspberries are plentiful this spring, and are starting to turn red!

The Blackberries are also numerous, and are starting to fill out. They are not as far along as the Raspberries, though.

The Red Bud trees have their pods now. I learned these are edible, as the Red Bud Tree is in the pea family. You can cook and eat these pods just like peas. While I ate the flowers off the Red Bud, and even made Red Bud Jelly, I just haven’t talked myself into trying the pods yet. I don’t know why I’m hesitating. I’ll have to talk myself into it shortly, as the pods are  better when  younger. Have you ever eaten any part of the Red Bud Tree?

I had a lot of Spinach plants up. They were also getting to tall to keep the netting on them. So I took it off. That lasted a couple of days before something got into them and demolished them. There are only a couple of plants left. 🙁 Guess I need to replant. sigh.

I had Lettuce almost ready to eat on the left hand side of the same bed as the Spinach. Yep, they got the lettuce, too. I have a couple of plants left that you can see on the right side of this picture. Time to replant the Lettuce, too. sigh.

We think it was the little kittens scratching around in the soil. Oh well, it’s not the first time the animals have gotten into my vegetables and I’m sure it won’t be the last!

 

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Dandelions
Best Chicken Tips
How to Make Marshmallows from Marshmallow Plant Root
Add Tea Bags to the Bottom of Planters to Feed Plants
Growing Plants from Your Groceries -Ginger and Pineapple

Organic Liquid Fertilizers
Sage Remedies
Garden Markers
How I Built a Baby Greenhouse
How to Start a Medicinal Herb Garden

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I really need to get better about posting this on Saturday.  Oh well, let’s pretend it’s still Saturday. lol

This week is all flowers! Before long, I hope to be sharing awesome pictures of some awesome vegetables!

 

The Lamb’s Ear in the Bible Garden is starting to bloom.

 

The Day Lilies, also in the Bible Garden, are in full bloom.

Wild Roses grow in abundance around here. We transplanted some into the flower gardens and keep them trimmed. This one is in front of the house growing on an old wagon wheel. (just ignore the weeds  🙂 )

 

Here’s one last picture of the Iris. They are now gone for the year. They put on quite the show while they are here, though.

 

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Make Your Own Gardeners Hand Scrub
How to Make an Herbal Oil
Control Garden Pests the Natural Way
Edible Flowers – Lavender
Extend Your Gardening Season – Up to 4 months longer for less than $10.
Pruning Tomato Suckers

Epsom salt in garden – video
Growing Potatoes in Straw
Growing Chamomile
How to Plant and Care for Hostas
How to Propagate Geraniums Using Cuttings

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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

[Read more…]

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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