At last, at last, the sun has come

Last week the sun made an appearance and the planting was on!  For the most part everything is going well, although the hops are not doing so well and will need to be transplanted to a more sunny spot.  

One of our chickens seems to really dislike fireworks and has been shaking in her nestbox the past couple of days.  She's still eating, walking and doesn't seem to have anything exciting going on in the rear end so I guess we will just wait it out and see what she does.  Speaking of chickens one of the laid a GIGANTIC egg yesterday...here it is:

I am hoping this little blueberry will be the beginning of berry empire.

Potatoes still going strong

Our "Pot Garden" (not that kind of pot people)

Lemon cucumbers peeking through

Our first "seed saving" success!  This is from the pie pumpkin we saved from last year.

One potato, two potato

I’m not sure I did the right thing by taking out the weed barrier and loosening up the volcanic rock underneath. I suppose time will tell.

The fence is finally up around the root garden and the potatoes are in. This year I planted four varieties, French Fingerlings, Chieftain, Baker, and Red. I’m trying the “straw” method where you basically throw the potatoes onto the ground and cover them. I’m excited to see what our yield will be.

 Speaking of the chicken proof fence…turns out, it’s not so chicken proof after all, so we had to put a piece of wood between the 2 inch gap at the back. Who knew chickens were like cats that way?

So, planting season is finally underway. I feel like all I have been eating for the past four months are carrots, potatoes and chard.

Almost there!

I finally got all the edging stones up from the former ornamental garden.  I can't believe it's taken me over 2 years to recondition this little piece of dirt on the side of my house!  There is still some of that
"weed barrier" and volcanic rock in there, but I think I got most of it out.

I've reconsidered the rototiller, there are so many worms and caterpillars under there, and the soil is so black and earthy, I just don't want to kill it all just because the volcanic rock annoys me.  So I'm just going to hoe it...sigh...


St. Patrick's day is almost here and I have to decide which potatos I want to go in.  I'm pretty sure I want fingerling potato again, they were so tasty last year.  I'm also going to go with some bakers and perhaps some Yukon gold and red.  With the expansion of the garden I can increase my potato selections.

Doesn't look like we will get the raised beds in this year, since we are going to allocate the money to large composting (too...much...hay...) bins to handle the chicken waste.

Quick Post

We planted our red onions in the root garden area 2 days ago.

Still to go in:

Carrots
Garlic
walla walla onions (so yummy)
potatoes


For other veggies and fruits, I'm thinking:

strawberries
cucumbers
romaine lettuce
zucchini

If I get really productive, I might plant a blueberry bush, but we'll see.