Search Results for: label/Saturday on the Farm

The Echinacea is starting to bloom. I love to take pictures of the beautiful flowers.

We transplanted two Mullein plants from beside the road to the herb garden. The other one suffered more chock than this one. But it’s making a comeback.

And they are starting to bloom!

In the vegetable garden, the cucumbers are growing well. Yes, those are catalogs and magazines as mulch. I ran out of cardboard and newspapers. Have to keep the weeds down somehow. lol

The green beans are doing great. I don’t know for sure what kind of green beans these are. I got them from my kids piano teacher about 6 years ago. They are the only beans she’s ever grown, the only beans her mother ever grew, and the only beans her grandmother ever grew. She said they’re like a half runner, but they’re not half runners. So I don’t know what they are, other than good! They freeze great, too.

The tomatoes are doing well, also. This is taller than it looks, the cardboard is not lying flat on the ground.

Something keeps eating my raspberries before I can pick them! I think it’s the chickens. Rotten chickens. Lucky for them, they give me eggs. But they better lay off my raspberries!

These are the black raspberries. A few are starting to ripen. yum…..

That’s a few highlights from my garden this week. How are your gardens doing?

Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:

Homemade Gardeners Hand Scrub
Using Coffee Grounds in the Garden
How to Make Natural Mosquito Spray
Natural De-Skunking – Good to know!
Organic Gardening and Homesteading

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

Even with all the animal traffic, the herbs are starting to grow. So I’m happy about that. Now I just need to figure out a fence or something to keep the animals out when the plants get too tall for the netting.

We’ve done a lot of work in the vegetable garden this week. We got most of the tomato seedlings in the ground. This is my husband and two of the kids cutting holes in the cardboard to plant the seedlings.

It got dark while we were out there working, and the moon paid us a visit.

The grass and weeds are getting tall along the fence. Here’s Zach, my youngest cutting them down with scissors. Hey, it works, and keeps him busy. 🙂

We have raspberries almost ready! Actually, one was ready. It had an ant on it, and when I brushed the ant off, the perfectly ripe raspberry fell to the ground, and I couldn’t find it. I was sorry to not be able to eat it. I’m looking forward to these being ready.

These are Black Raspberries that are growing wild in our yard.  These are really yummy, too.

The girls got a lot of flowers planted this week. Plants as well as seeds. They spent the night with their older, married sister, who took them plant shopping. They came home with some flowers and had fun deciding where to plant them.

Hannah planting some Celosia seeds around the plant that I already had.

These are more Wild Roses growing in front of the house.

How are your gardens doing this week?

Here are some links I found interesting and helpful:

Keys to Redneck Gardening
Best Plants to Use on a Retaining Wall
Canning Jar Cloches to Protect Young Plants
Companion Planting
How to Harvest, Dry and Store Herbs

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
The Little Round Table
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

Looking to the left, I can see the front garden, with the glads, hostas, and the small cedar tree. Not seen in the picture are the Sedum and Celosia. The first bush you come to out in the yard is a small Butterfly Bush, this one purple, the next two smaller plants are Hardy Hibicus. One is pink, the other white. These bushes were planted out there a few years ago as part of our long term plan. There will be a long ramp going off this side of the porch, all the way out to the end of the house, then a sidewalk around the corner of the house to the driveway. Both sides of the ramp will be gardens, up to, and including these bushes.

Looking off to the right, you can see the other half of the front garden. Containing Hostas, glads, a small cedar tree, and a Holly tree on the end, were the garden wraps around the house to become the a/c garden (the garden around the air conditioner, lol ) There is a metal wash tub you can see by the Holly tree, with nothing planted in it yet! The blue you can see in the picture is the pool that isn’t set up yet. The two houses you can see are where our parents live, my in-laws live in the brown house, and my mother in the tan one across the street. Even though there doesn’t look like a road is there, it is. We have our own little compound here.  🙂 To the left of the ramp, will eventually be a garden that wraps around the front up to the Butterfly Bush.

So, that’s the view from my rocking chair. 🙂

This is my husband getting ready to plant the tree that Abby, 12, started from an acorn. She is very protective of her little tree, and did not want it to go outside.

The Daylilies in the Bible Garden are blooming. I love them!

The Rose is right next to the Daylilies. It’s huge!

You can see how big it is.

The grapes are doing well. So far, the birdies are leaving them alone. Hope they continue to do so!

In the herb garden behind the house, the Echinaea is starting to bloom. I look forward to these flowers every year. This year, I hope to learn how to harvest the roots to save for medicinal purposes.

A pile of clippings got left by the back stairs for too long, and the grass died. So, what else is one to do, but put in a new garden?! Abby, 12, help me get it ready and plant. We planted Lavendar,Cilantro, Basil, Oregano, and Parsley. We also planted Marigold around the outside of the garden on three sides. We used plant markers that I had cut from a plastic milk jug. My goal this year is to grow enough of the herbs that I use most often to last until next summer. 🙂

Here you can see the whole thing. The bush behind the garden, next to the stairs are Lilacs, we transplanted last spring. They didn’t bloom this year, but I’m hopeful for next year. 🙂 The stairs lead up to our back porch, and then right into my kitchen with my herbs. That makes this cook very happy.  🙂

We covered the garden with netting to keep the chickens out. They just love fresh dirt! The herb garden with the Echinacea is on the other side of the gravel sidewalk you can see at the bottom of the stairs. I’ll have to get a picture of both gardens together next week.

This is our main vegetable garden. Which we are still in the process of planting. That’s Hannah, 15, working hard while I’m taking pictures. I’m standing on the road at the end of our driveway taking this picture.

The green beans are planted on both sides of these fences. And 3 hills of cucumbers are planted amongst the cardboard. Yellow Squash and Zucchini are coming to the right of the cucumbers.

Hannah is busy planting Broccoli, her favorite vegetable. The creek is where the weeds are tall. And our Comfrey and Asparagus are on the other side of the creek. We are going to plant corn over there, too, very soon.

The Lambs Ear in the Bible Garden is starting to bloom!

Hope you enjoyed my little tour this week. See ya next week!

Here are some links I found helpful this week:

Build a PVC Cucumber Trellis – I really want to build one of these!
Garden Tips
Mullein & Herbal Learning Tips
How to Make a Pallet Garden – I really want to make one of these!

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
Square Foot Gardening at $5 Dinner Mom
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers

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