The other night, everything outside looked pink. Living in our little valley, we don’t get to see the sun set. Here is my view of the red sunset over the top of the house.

The Daylily’s started blooming. I was only able to get a night shot of the first one because of the rain.

 Here’s a planter that my husband assembled. He and the kids planted it with flower seeds. It’s sitting under the big butterfly bush in our front yard.

Last weeks flower that I asked about was a Celosia.  Thanks everyone for your help! It is an annual, so I will definitely be saving the seeds. 


Here are a couple of garden tips:


1. Using cardboard for mulch in your garden is very helpful. Not only does it keep the weeds out, but it breaks down into a protein that attracts worms. I heard this on a garden show. I called my extension office to verify, but he didn’t know about the protein part. He did say that placing cardboard in the garden does attract worms. So less weeds and more worms sounds like a win – win situation to me!


2. On tomato plants, every where little “hair” on the stem will grow into a root. So when you plant your tomato plants, plant them deep.

Here are a few links I found helpful this week:

Home Remedies for House Leeks
How to Dehydrate Chives
Making Violet Salve
Planting a Tea Garden
Growing and Using Mullein
White Muscle Disease
Homemade Organic Weed Killers

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

I was told this plant was a house leek, but I’m pretty sure it’s a Sedum, instead.

These two plants are in one of the gardens in front of the house. The Sedum is in the lower left of the picture, right behind the trellis. You can just barely see the red flower right before the 1st Hosta. You can also see the Glad foliage closer to the house. If you look behind the van, on the left side of the driveway is where our main vegetable garden is. On the right of the driveway, across from the veggies, is where the apple trees are, with the raspberries behind them.

When you go to the end of this garden, and turn left around the corner of the house, you come to the Bible Garden. A Bible garden is a garden with either plants mentioned in the Bible or plants grown in Bible lands. Sometimes, it’s fun to use plants with names that have something to do with the Bible.

These are Day Lilies.

I have two of these, and they are getting lots of buds.  🙂

One of the rose bushes has a bud. My two rose bushes in the Bible garden are about 10 years old, and don’t have much life left in them.  They have been frost bitten too many times. You can see the dead wood in this picture. Yeah, probably should prune that.

This is my daughter Hannah checking out the Lamb’s Ear on the other end of the Bible Garden.

The Lamb’s Ear is shooting up, getting ready to send out the flower spike.

Look at the apples! These are not in the Bible Garden, but are along the driveaway.

The Chickens decided they wanted to go for a ride.

The Tulip Popular tree in the backyard is getting a lot of tulips on it. This tree is to the left of the chickens trying to catch a ride on the trailer. The Tulip Popular is the Kentucky State Tree.

Now we’re back behind the house in the herb garden. This is Feverfew.

My son looking at all the herbs. 🙂

Yes, I realize that newspaper and cardboard mulch is not very attractive. But these are the only things that will stand up to free range chickens. I have used hay as mulch in the past, and I love it. Unfortunately, so do the chickens. They love to shred it, and send it all over the yard while looking for lunch. So for now, the chickens win. Pretty soon, though, they will be penned up again.  I do believe that I will miss my little buddies knocking on the front door for food, and crowing outside my bedroom window at 4:30 in the morning. Ok, I won’t miss the crowing! lol

Here are some links I found helpful:

Learning About Pests & Disease
DIY Organic Fertilizer

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

Here’s a pic of the whole a/c garden. The trees are getting so big. Time to trim them again. You can see the Gladiolus stems sticking up behind the tree. My daughter planted them behind the trees and Iris’s all along the back of the garden. Yea, my weed wacker is slacking, so just ignore the weeds in the front, ok? 🙂

The Honeysuckle is blooming all over the property!

I fondly remember picking the blossoms when I was a kid and “drinking” the “honey” from them. I’ve tried to teach it to my kids, but they don’t really want to “drink flower juice”. lol It’s a shame. I have such fond memories of doing this every summer. They just don’t know what they are missing!

The Wild Roses are also blooming everywhere.

I even have Wild Roses growing by the clothesline in the back yard. I love their sweet scent while I’m hanging clothes on the line. There’s Honeysuckle back there, too. Some days, you can smell both of them at the same time. What a blessing! And what a shame that most people would cut these two plants down as weeds. They are so beautiful!

We made an exciting discovery this week. The Hawthorne tree has haws on it! My husband transplant this tree from out in the field to down by the yard about 12 years ago. Last year it bloomed, but no haws. So we were extremely excited to see haws this year. See the small round green fruit?

The Hawthorne tree is distinguished by the thorns on it. Can you see the thorns on the branch going across the middle of the picture?

Here are a couple of links for more information about Hawthorne trees and the haws: Hawthorne tree on Wikipedia , Tips for Growing a Hawthorne Tree – it also lists numerous uses and benefits of the haws.

The Comfrey in our garden is getting big.

It’s blooming now. Such pretty flowers. Except we’re not supposed to let it bloom. oops!

I’ll do a post on comfrey later this summer. We use it for animal feed. The goats and chickens love it. They can eat it fresh, and we can dry the leaves for feed for both in the winter, too. The goats love it. See?

Samson

 The buds are pretty, too.

Last week, I shared a link for information about plantains. We have this “weed” growing all over the property. I thought it was especially nice that some started growing right in the middle of my herb garden. How convenient!

I always take at least one of the kids on my “picture walk”. This time Calen went with me. He’s weeding the plantain so I can take a picture. It’s nice to take a kid along to do the work. lol

The plantain. Now that I know about it, I’ve instructed the kids to come and get a leaf if they get stung.

We also found an almost ripe strawberry!

There are only a couple of little plants, so it’s going to be interesting so see who gets to eat the first strawberry. Me, one of the kids, or a chicken!

Here are some links I found helpful:

I really need to make a Gathering Apron. How cool would it be to wear one of these when harvesting?
Fun Funky Garden Markers
Using Herbs in Food, as Nutritional Supplements and for Healing

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

The yellows are all blooming, and the purples are just getting started. These Iris’s only bloom once.

This garden is also where the girls plant whatever flowers they want. They planted glad bulbs that had been given to us last year. Those are all coming up again. This year, I bought them some Purple Hyacinth Bean seeds, (the link goes to the actual ones I bought, it is an affiliate link). I found pictures of a trellis that I really liked made out of branches, so they are going to be building that shortly so they can get the seeds planted. The package says to wait until nights are above 50, and we had it dip down into the 30’s this past week. So we have another week or two to get it done.

The Blackberries are blooming. Which explains the cold weather this week, Blackberry Winter. This is our last “winter”, so the temps will be getting steadily warmer.

Blackberry cobbler, blackberry jelly………..

I began my tour by the back door. When I had made my way around to the front yard, this is what I found at the front door. lol They always come and look in the front door. They will even “knock”. I’m pretty sure they are looking in to see if we are eating anything good. lol

 I do have seeds planted in the flower pots, and they are coming up, just not big enough to see in the picture.

The Raspberry bushes are blooming! These vines spread so much, that we have more plants than last year. My husband also transplant about 5 or 6 more plants that were coming up at his parents house. They gave us the raspberry plants a couple years ago, so they can keep their patch down to a workable size for them. We would love to have a very large patch, hopefully with enough to sell. Might be another year or two, but that is our goal.

My daughter found this flower growing on the side of the road, and transplanted it into the flower garden in front of the house. I don’t know what kind it is, but it is pretty.

You may be wondering why you haven’t seen more of our vegetable garden than just the tomato plants that I started. That’s because our garden looks like this:

Not pretty. We have had so much rain the last couple of months, that we haven’t been able to get out there. It’s just to soggy. The farmers around here haven’t been able to get their crops in for the same reason. Thankfully, we have a long growing season here. I’m hoping it will dry out enough this week to get in there and work.

The grapes are getting big. The vines have a lot of grapes this year. I need to make sure we cover them in a few weeks to keep the birds from eating them all. Again this year.

We  have a couple of strawberry plants that showed up in the herb garden a couple of years ago. I call them wild strawberries, but I don’t know for sure if they are “wild” or if the kids threw strawberries out there, and they seeded themselves. It’s also possible that the chickens dragged strawberries into the herb garden to eat and they got planted that way. Whatever happened, the strawberries are doing nicely. I sure would love to have a big strawberry bed. Someday…..

That’s some of what’s growing in my yard now. What’s growing at your house?

Here are some links I found helpful:

Silver Spoon Garden Markers
Uses for Plantain Growing Wild in Your Yard – lots of uses listed in the comments
Foraging Project – Make Elderflower Cordial
Nettles Leaf Herbal Infusion
There’s a New Canning Jar in Town – with giveaway!
$10 off a $50 Burpee Order – expires 5/31

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm:

• Write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. 
• Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. 
• Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

But the flowers are so pretty!

To the left of the Chives, is the Echinacea. They are getting big.

To the left of that are some wild strawberries. They have small berries on them!

This is Lamb’s Ear in the Bible Garden.

The Lily of the Valley in the Bible Garden are so pretty. The flowers are starting to fade, and I’m sure they’ll be gone by next week.

I found itty bitty apples on the apple trees by the driveway!

The Iris’s in the a/c garden are blooming! There are two open. I don’t know what kind these are, as we transplanted them here, but these yellow ones smell like lemonade!

So pretty!

The tomato seedlings are getting big. On sunny days, I put them outside on the porch.

This is a Wild Rose Bush behind the house by the clothesline. I always love it when these are blooming. It’s just heavenly to smell them while I”m  hanging clothes on the line.

I found buds on the Blackberries!

Hope you enjoyed this weeks tour! Link up below so I can visit you, too!

Here are some links:

Best Planting Dates for Seeds – You put in your zip code, and get the dates for your area.
Medicinal Uses for Horehound
Must Have Herbs – 5 Culinary Herbs to Grow in Your Garden

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm, just write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

Photo by Abby, 12

The tomato seeds are sprouting! The ones in the big pots are full size tomatoes, the paper pots contain cherry tomatoes, that haven’t sprouted yet. The last couple of days, I’ve been putting the tray outside in the sun. It’s been windy, that’s why the seedlings are laying over.

This is one end of the gardens in front of the house.  The plant in the back on the right is a wild rose we transplanted there, there’s another one just to the left outside of the picture. The other end of the house looks similar, right down to the transplanted tree and wild rose bush. This is a “real life” picture that includes weeds, tall grass, and siding that needs to be washed. lol

The butterfly bushes are leafing out!

This is my Burning Bush. Behind it, you can see the hostas from the picture above, and the unfinished front porch.

The Lily of the Valleys in the Bible Garden are blooming! So pretty!

I started with maybe 9 bulbs a few years ago. Now I have this many. And there are no flowers where I originally planted them. They’ve spread farther back into the garden. That’s Cyclamen in the lower left corner of the picture. Yep, weeds, too. lol

The grape vines have not only leafed out, but they have grapes on them! Aren’t they the cutest little grapes you’ve ever seen? lol

I told you there was a lot to see this week. The raspberries have buds on them! I can hardly wait for these to ripen! lol

Some of the Dogwoods in the back yard. The backyard is to the left of the trees, then the creek, and the goat pen. The green box in the far left of the picture is the rabbit hutch.

And look what I found roosting in the Dogwood tree? Yes, they have a coop. They prefer the tree. Even this past winter, as cold as it was, they would be in the tree every night. Crazy chickens.

And here are the wild strawberry blossoms in the herb garden behind the house.

This is one of my Sugar Maple Trees in the side yard. I planted these about 4 years ago. They were only about 2 feet tall when I planted them. Now it’s taller than my 16 year old. I’m going to make maple syrup with my grandchildren. No, I don’t have any yet. Hopefully I will when the trees are old enough. lol

Hope you enjoyed this weeks tour! Link up below so I can visit you, too!

Here are some links:

How to Choose Edible Flowers
Planting, Trellising, Watering

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm, just write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

Dogwood Tree Flower

 Here’s a picture of some of the goats on the hill behind our house. Can you see the boy and the baby goat way up on the top of the hill? The hill is considerably steeper than it looks. The goats run up and down it like it’s nothing. It sure is hard on people, though lol

And to get that picture, I had to stand on this. What I won’t do for pictures to share! lol Now, I could have gone all the way across and gotten a better picture, but I’m not that crazy! lol Hopefully, this summer, we’ll get another bridge up.

Lily, the rabbit, sure is enjoying Spring!

The Apple tree is flowering!

These are the raspberries. We have a lot of new vines coming up this year. The raspberries don’t usually make it into the house, as we stand out there and eat them. lol Maybe with more vines, we will actually bring some into the house. I hope to freeze some.

This is a Hawthorne Tree. It’s full of buds. We have never had any haws off it. Since this is the most buds we’ve ever had on this tree, maybe this will be the year we get some haws.

Photo by Calen, 16

 The Hawthorne Tree buds.

Photo by Calen, 16

 The Chives already have flower buds! I don’t remember them ever having buds this early.

Photo by Calen, 16

Hopefully, next week, I will have some vegetable garden pictures.  I have tomatoes started inside, but we have nothing planted outside yet. We are so behind!

Here are some links:

7 Nifty Ways to Grow Your Own Herbs
8 Money Saving Tips on Gardening in the City
How to Garden – Garden Beds

Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!

<a href=”http://lindaslunacy.com/search/label/Saturday%20on%20the%20Farm”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/4608457251_49ba7771a6_o.jpg” alt=”Saturday on the Farm at Linda’s Lunacy” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.

To participate in Saturday on the Farm, just write a post about your homestead, farm, farmette, or the tomato plant on your deck. Your cows, goats, chicken, or your favorite kitty cat. Add the link to your post (not your main page) below. Please link back to me so others can join the fun, too.

For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers
Frugal Gardening
Cottage Flora Thursdays