ethin's doings

[ethin]

Yesterday: Planted out tomato starts, also direct sowed some, inter-planted with basil starts and seed.
               Sweet peppers starts. 
               40' row of beans (bush, pole, snap, dry).


Today: 7 40' rows of sweet corn, 3 of early 4 of late, inter-planted some Indian with the early.
          6 hills of Watermelon, 4 of new varieties, 1 of old, plus a hill of last years homegrown seed).
          5 hills of 'cumbers, 1 for slicing 4 for pickles, planted snapdragon starts in the row between the hills for the squash bees and 'bumbles.
          5 hills of winter squash, pepo, moschata, maxima, cosmos in between the hills for bees, wasps, and hummingbirds.

I had another encounter with a swarm of bees today, this one past over head, they where high enough that I couldn't see them but I could definitely hear them.   

[ethin]

Bunch of pics:


Starts and stuff being hardened off.


Chickpeas, I need to take some close ups. The big ratty ones are my germination test, they where started about 3 months ago. I only had 3 or 4 of the direct sown ones come up.


The bottom one is of the only almond that came up this spring.


This years seed carrots are hiding behind the irises in the top pic, hopefully there not CMS like last years.
I got a few seed from the peonies last fall, no signs of germination yet.
The columbines attract lots of Bumblebees.


Rhubarb bed.


Self sown broccoli. I thought I planted spinach in there?


Compost bins.


Plant room. Sure feels empty with all the starts outside.


Some amaryllis seeds I'm trying to sprout.

[ethin]

Mostly everything is up now, no thanks to the cats.

The radishes are done, whats left is for seed including some that I planted yesterday. Found a cheep seed pack that-had a blend of ten different varieties, a few were repeats of what I already had but most where new, planted them in the next row over (the parsnips came up really sparse, the seed must be past its prime, good thing I set aside some for seed production this year)

Last years cabbage is in bloom, the flowers look complete to me, now to see what the bees think.

The raspberries are blooming too, there is more bees in them than I think I've ever seen in the past, should have a good harvest this year.

[richardw]

Looking good ethin,is that old well in the top photos?

[ethin]

is that old well in the top photos?

It is an above ground pond framed and covered with old barn wood. The green wire cover is to keep the kids safe and the smaller wire is the fall cover to keep leaves and walnuts out.

[ethin]

A day in the life.

Weed, weed, weed.
Water.
Weed, weed, weed.
"STOP rolling on that you DARN cats!".

[richardw]

Even worse when they bury there crap where you are about to weed

[ethin]

Or when they fertilize and bury seeds before you can get back to cover them.

[ethin]

Pic time

Oats

Parsnips in bloom

pretty lettuce

loaded chickpea, started indoors.

lentils

one of many darn cats

pond

bee magnet

two different chickpea verities, direct sown. the pics are three weeks old, now in bloom.

[ethin]

First picking of the peas today.

I've also harvested some chickpeas that had dried over the last couple of weeks.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jun 23, 2014 16:02:19 GMT -5 ethin said:

I've also harvested some chickpeas that had dried over the last couple of weeks.

Jealous!!!! I hope that we can swap some chickpea seed this fall.

[philagardener]

Excellent! Congratulations - that's great news!

[ethin]

I hope that we can swap some chickpea seed this fall.

Sounds great. But just so you know the plants with the mature seed are from my germination test I did in mid February.
The few plants from direct sown seed are in blossom, but no pods yet.

[ethin]

Saw some mason bees working the lentils today, and some tiny thing the size of a flying ant in the chickpeas.

Waiting for the carrot flowers to open so I can see if they're any good.

Speaking of carrots, I was going though a bag of old seeds and found a mailing envelope with carrot written on it. Opened it up and sure enough there where two or three carrot seed heads in it, no one remembered collecting them, they could have been anywhere from three to ten years old. I planted them just so they would be laying around anymore, not expecting much, but they did come up. Now I'm curious to see if they are actually carrots since there is a chance they came from a plant that flowered it's first year.

[ethin]

First wave of strawberries ended last week, they'll start blossoming again in a few weeks.
Half way through the raspberries and blueberries.
The blackberries will be ready in a few weeks.
Mulberries are on.

I have no clue when the gooseberries will be ready, we have had bushes as long as I can remember and have never harvested them, always too buggy.

We have an early apple variety, so we will be busy with them in a few weeks.
No apricots to speak of this year and very few peaches.
We'll have some plums but not many, in the middle of transitioning from old drying trees to new younger ones.

We have four pear tree but the three younger one will need to be removed. They where grown from seeds from the older tree, this was the first year they bloomed but the fruit is the size of a marble. I have been collecting seeds from store bought pears for a few years now, I'm trying to start some of them, we'll see if they do better.

We also have a small pie cheery tree, this was the second year it has produced. Most of the family doesn't like them, too tart or something. I think they taste great and I don't like cherries.