The yellow thing is a trowel. I’m not sure why a trowel was not only left in the garden, but also covered in cardboard. shrugs  At least I know where it is now.

Since most people have finished with their gardens, I’m not going to post a linky this week.  I’m going to end it for this year. I will start posting the linky again in the spring.

If  you are growing a fall garden (or if it’s spring where you are) please post your link in the comments and I’ll be sure to visit.

The weather has been cooler. Which is such a relief after our really hot and humid summer. It rained all day yesterday. A nice steady, soaking rain that is so good for the garden. It’s raining again today. This should really give our fall garden a good boost.

Of course, all the rain means I wasn’t able to get any pictures to share. I did hang out the front door and take a picture of the rooster this morning. Poor little guy. His tail feathers are so water logged they won’t stand up.

The kids did find an interesting caterpillar the other day. It was  a Spice Bush Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillar. Their host plants are the Spice Bush and the Sassafras. I don’t think we have any Spice Bush, but I know we have Sassafras. The kids found him in the side yard, and they had to go up in the woods to get sassafras leaves for it, so I’m not sure how this little guy ended up in the side yard. Anyway, here’s his picture.

You should have heard the kids try to explain to us what the caterpillar looked like. lol If your kids came in and told you they found a caterpillar with a snakes head, what would you say? lol But they were right! If you follow the link above, you can see a clearer picture. He is now living in a jar in the house with sassafras leaves and a stick. He started to make a cocoon, so hopefully we will have a butterfly hatch and set free.

It’s time for the Saturday on the Farm Carnival!

For more gardens, visit Weekend Warriors at It’s a Blog Party. and Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.

Also visit Saturday Share at Kerri’s Klutter
Also visit Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Day Dreamer.

Jewelweed is in full bloom all over the property right now. It has popped up is so many places this year. I guess that’s my reward for the guys not keeping up with all the weed wacking this year. Most of it is growing where it would have been cut down.

One of the cats was following me around and jumped in the picture. Silly cat.

We think we see carrot & beet plants, as well as cabbage. They are down by the squash, and lets just say, thanks to the chickens, they are no longer in rows!

The spinach and lettuce are safe down by the peas, where the chickens didn’t bother. So they are in nice little rows.

Speaking of the chickens, they have taken to roosting in this tree at night.

The rest jumped down when they saw me with the camera. Guess they didn’t want their picture taken. They have a nice house, but they choose a tree. I just wish they would lay their eggs where we can find them! lol

It’s time for the Saturday on the Farm Carnival!

For more gardens, visit Weekend Warriors at It’s a Blog Party. and Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage and Oh, How My Garden Grows at Just Trying to Save Money.

Also visit Saturday Share at Kerri’s Klutter
Also visit Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Day Dreamer.

I have no pictures to share this week! I’ve been battling a sinus infection. ugh….. Nothing major happened in the garden this week. A couple of kids worked on weeding yesterday, but that’s all.

We did discover that the chickens got into the garden. They were scratching around where we had planted beets and carrots last week. So who knows if they’ll come up now. I hope they come up, even if they are all over the place!

Since I have nothing this week, I thought I’d share some of my favorite websites.

The Farmers Almanac Frost Chart is a good link to have saved.

Naturally Controlling Pests in the Organic Garden We try not to use any chemicals in our gardens, insecticides or store bought fertilizer.

Homesteading Today has forums for everything from gardening to goats to plant & tree identification to recipes.

Fiasco Farm has tons of information on goats. As well as goat milk recipes.

What are some of your favorite websites for gardening or animals?

It’s time for the Saturday on the Farm Carnival!

For more gardens, visit Weekend Warriors at It’s a Blog Party. and Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage and Oh, How My Garden Grows at Just Trying to Save Money.

Also visit Saturday Share at Kerri’s Klutter
Also visit Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Day Dreamer.

We got a break from the heat this week. Which was so welcome! We got a lot of rain this week, though.

I had planted a few vine pomegranate melon seeds in the spring, but I never saw any plants. Either they didn’t come up, something ate them when they were little, or my helpers weeded them. Either way, I didn’t get any of my little melons. The lady from church that had given me my first one a few years ago found out I didn’t grow any thing year and gave me one. I enjoyed having it. When it started to go soft, I cut it open to save the seeds. We have tried them in the past, and they taste like mild cucumbers.

These little melons go by many different names. Vine Pomegranate, Plum Granny Melon, or Queen Anne’s Pocketbook Melon. The date back at least 1,000, according to what I have read. In the Victorian Era, they carried them in their pockets. They used them as perfume & to mask odors.

I haven’t carried any in my pocket, but I love the way they smell. I love that I can walk into a room and smell them. It’s kinda of a melonish aroma, but not straight melon. It’s hard to describe.

For such a small melon, they have a lot of seeds!

It’s a fun addition to your garden.

We got the fall plantings in. We planted lettuce, spinach, peas, green beans, carrots, beets, and I think they put cabbage in. Our first frost isn’t normally until sometime in November, so we have time for everything to grow.

I actually like fall gardening better. There are less bugs, and the weather seems to cooperate better. In a couple of weeks the temps will cool down to only the 80’s during the day. Even until the end of October, we have temps at least in the 70’s during the day.

Check & see what your first frost date is, then check the back of the seed package for “days to harvest”. You might be able to plant another crop where you are, too.

It’s time for the Saturday on the Farm Carnival!

For more gardens, visit Weekend Warriors at It’s a Blog Party. and Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage and Oh, How My Garden Grows at Just Trying to Save Money.

Also visit Saturday Share at Kerri’s Klutter
Also visit Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Day Dreamer.

Phew! It’s been another hot week! We have to plant the fall crops in the next week, whether it’s hot or not. I’m hoping for not! We’ll plant more green beans (a different kind then we planted in the spring) lettuces, and spinach. Those are the must plants. We’ll see what else we can plant if we have time. Where we live in southern Kentucky, we can get two crops in of some plants.

This week, I canned squash and onions. I got 5 quarts of yellow squash and 1 pint of small onions. I’ve never canned onions before. These little onions from our garden just screamed creamed onions to me, so I wanted to save them for Thanksgiving.  I also dehydrated more squash.

I sent one of my daughters out to get green beans for supper Thursday night, and this is what she came in with:

These are greasy beans. This is the first year we have grown them. They are not our favorite. We will save some seeds, though.

I went out this morning to take pictures of the apples, and found this butterfly:

He tried to run away from us, but since my husband was chasing him around to take his picture, he gave it up and posed for us. lol The orange is much brighter in person. It really stands out against the black. I’ve never seen one like this before. Very beautiful.

Now on to the apple trees. My husband transplanted these trees from up on the hill. We have no idea what kind they are. They are not a sweet apple, though. They are better suited for canning and cooking, then eating fresh. In this picture, you can see the raspberries on their fence behind the trees.And our driveway going up to the road. Yes, we are lower than the road. We are not the lowest point on our road, though, so we don’t have any problem with flooding.

Last year was the first year we had apples on some of these trees. We have a lot more this year.

Here’s another group:

They are not very pretty, though, are they? That’s because they have two different fungi on them.
Sooty Blotch and Fly Speck. The black smudges are the Sooty Block, and the specks are the Fly Speck.

These fungi will wash off the apple (or you can peel them), and they are still good for eating fresh and using in cooking or canning.

It’s time for the Saturday on the Farm Carnival!

For more gardens, visit Weekend Warriors at It’s a Blog Party. and Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage and Oh, How My Garden Grows at Just Trying to Save Money.

Also visit Saturday Share at Kerri’s Klutter

Also visit Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Day Dreamer.

It has been such a hot week! We had heat warnings a couple of days this week, with the heat index of 105-110. So needless to say, not much got done outside!

I thought the hens had stopped laying because of the heat. Turns out, they were laying, they were just hiding them in one of the flower gardens!

That’s not even all of it! We had a corn husking party. Our four kids, a nephew and my husband gathered around the table to work. I put on music, and started getting the canning supplies ready. They made pretty quick work of it. Let’s not talk about what the flour looked like when they were done!

We ate corn for 3 meals, I put 30 ears in the freezer, and I canned the rest. I got 22 quarts and 1 pint.

I love my pressure canner!

Thanks to the groundhog for chewing through the vine, we had to eat a cantaloupe.

It was pretty small. It was very pretty inside.

I didn’t try any, I gave mine to the kids. My husband tasted it and said it was good, just not quite ripe. It was ripe enough to eat, but could have used a couple more days. The kids loved it, and didn’t even notice that it wasn’t quite ripe.

There’s another cantaloupe out there, hopefully the groundhog has had it’s fill of cantaloupe vine!

It’s time for the Saturday on the Farm Carnival!

For more gardens, visit Weekend Warriors at It’s a Blog Party. and Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage and Oh, How My Garden Grows at Just Trying to Save Money.

Also visit Saturday Share at Kerri’s Klutter
Tackle it Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Also visit Outdoor Wednesday at A Southern Day Dreamer.