On Growing Garden Peas

You can now find this post on my other site, The Free Range Life. Here is the link to How to Grow Peas.

Making Progress

More garden progress is being made. Paul and my brother got the wire stretched along the fence this weekend. The boys attempted to help, but with hard locust posts they weren't quite strong enough to hammer in any staples.

With the exception of one walk-thru gate the fence is done. Since our garden is on a hillside, we will have to rig something to keep animals from getting under our 10 ft. drive-thru gate and eventually we will finish the upper side which is currently a weedy, brushy, barbed wire fence row.

This weekend I transplanted all of my tomato seedlings into larger containers, planting them a deeper to help their stems get stronger. We still have about 6-8 weeks until they can go in the ground. 

I also started our peas. Peas do just fine started directly in the ground. But I like to pre-sprout them so I won't have any holes in the pea rows. I've got 300 seeds going and I am still not sure that is enough. I plan to do another round in the fall, but garden peas are the one thing I don't think I could grow enough of. The kids pop them straight from the garden and we never cook them unless we actually get enough to freeze for later. 

Today the kids helped me step off some of the garden beds. I hope to eventually have them raised throughout the garden, but all of that probably won't happen this year. Below is the current plan. Each of the beds is approximately 12' x 30', with the exception of 2 which are smaller due to the apple tree.  I also have 2' pathway between each bed. All of this is subject to change, but for the time being it's what I am going with.

 This post has been linked to the Homestead Barn Hop,

Garden 2013: Spring Fever

 I have a serious case of spring fever and the fact that my seedlings are beginning to overfill our shelf isn't helping. My self imposed deadline to get the garden ready for planting is fast approaching, so this weekend, weather permitting, will be a busy one. Fence building, tilling, soil amending.

Here's how my seedlings look now. They are growing fast! First up is the Ragged Jack Kale. They are growing the fastest and hopefully can make it another week in their little pots. Growing Kale, when you have a son named Cale, is the source of constant jokes. And apparently the thought of eating your brother for dinner is hilarious!

Ragged Jack Kale

We started about 18 tomato plants to get an early start. They are looking really good and will have to be trasplanted to larger pots before too long since they still have a few months before they can be planted out.

Heirloom Tomatoes

 I was so excited about this one. Of all the things I want to grow, lavender is at the top of the list. I have tried time and time again to sprout it from seed with no luck. But I have 5 little sprouts now! They still have a ways to go, and I have been known to kill a large plant as well. But I am determined to have my lavender field one of these years.

Lavender

The eggplants are off to a slow start. Our seed shelf is on our bedroom, which stays around 64 degrees most days and colder through the night. The eggplant seeds are not happy with this arrangement. Rylan's yellow egg and my black egg and Turkish Orange didn't sprout at all. I planted a few more today and put them in the living room near where the woodstove is and hopefully they will germinate better.

Apple, Ping Tung and Purple Long Eggplant

The cabbage- both green and purple are also looking really good. I am starting to collect as many vegetarian cabbage recipes as I can, so if you have any to share I'd love to see them!

Cabbage

You know how when you plant seeds it is recommended that you plant 2 seeds to ensure germination? I usually ignore that when it comes to things like peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant because I am stingy with my seeds. But with the Brassicas we went ahead and doubled up, since the seeds were plentiful. So a few weeks after planting, things start to get crowded and you are supposed to pull out the weaker of the 2 sprouts. Yeah. I can't do that. I am incapable to throwing any plant out. Ever. So below you see a flat of the "weaker sprouts." I pulled them up and stuck them in the soil filled flat and hoped for the best. They all made it. So now we have double the amount of what we planted. I do the same thing with suckers. Tomato suckers I will pinch off and plant and do the same with raspberry suckers....

Here is our shelf from top to bottom. All 3 shelves are pretty much full. The Kale is about as tall as the lights will go. If I could find a chicken safe place outside I would put them out there, but I am still working on finding that chicken-safe place.

Happy growing!


This post has been linked to The Homestead Barn Hop,

Field Trip Friday: Asheville Botanical Gardens

This week Rylan asked to go to either the NC Arboretum or the Asheville Botanical Gardens so that he could take some pictures of flowers to enter in the fair. We decided to try the Botanical Gardens since we've never been. It was very nice, and not at all what I was expecting. I was thinking it would be similar to the University of Tennessee's Trial Gardens, but it was much more naturalized.


















  The kids were automatically drawn to the water and rocks. And flip flops are not the shoes to wear while chasing an excited toddler over slippery rocks! We spent a lot of time skipping rocks and stomping in puddles and streams.



















Rylan took pictures with my camera so he could get a better shot for his fair entries. He also hogged the camera taking pictures of every tree he hasn't seen before. And their leaves. And their sign. He was pretty excited about some of them since they were on his "want to see" list. He also has an "already seen list" which currently lists about 115 tree species.

We saw a few caterpillars to identify later. And we found a tree with an odd fruit-like seed pod. Rylan collected some seeds from the Cucumber tree and Spice Bush to try and plant at home. We also came home with a new Peterson's Field Guide- A Field Guide to Eastern Trees. And a new bird book too.  Rylan is excited to go back in the spring, since he saw signs for many of the wild flowers he's been wanting to see.

So that was our field trip of the week. Now it's your turn! Did you take a fun outing this week? Did you let your kids explore nature? A museum? Zoo? A neighborhood walk?  Link up below and share your experience! If you don't have a blog, just leave a comment with your favorite field trip.

Please link back to It's a Boy's Life and Field Trip Friday to spread the word!

linked to Fantastic Foto Field Trips,

My Junior Botanist

On the Fourth of July we took the kids to the North Carolina Arboretum. I've been wanting to visit for a while now and thought it would be a pretty day for it. It was a beautiful place, full of gardens and trails and flowers.

I wish I could show you tons of pictures I took of the Arboretum and my kids, but I can't.  You see about 5 minutes into our tour Rylan's camera batteries died. And because he was one of my main motivators to go to the gardens, I handed over my camera to him. These first 2 pictures are mine, but the rest were taken by him.

Last year my dad went on a few hikes with us in the spring and shared his knowledge of the Smoky Mountain wildflowers with the boys. Rylan soaked it up. He has 2 wildflower guides now and still brings  them out to identify flowers he finds- such as the Butterfly Weed in the alpaca's yard or the various members of the mint family sprinkled throughout the grass.

And since we moved he has been carrying around my dad's old Tree Identification Book, published in 1958, attempting to identify every tree on our property. This past week he has also gotten 2 other tree guides from the library in hopes of finding the few trees he just can't seem to name. So he was pretty excited when the first tree out of the visitors center was this one:

We have one in our back yard. And now he knows what it is. 

 The gardens had an amazing Bonsai exhibit, which was really neat to see.

Rylan hooked on to the Maple Family. And he keeps asking if he is allowed to pick up seeds off the ground to bring home.

He was very happy to see some of the trees he's been seeing in his books. He is tired of Red, Silver and Sugar Maples....

He wants to see and grow the more fancy ones, like the Chalkbark Maple and Paperbark Maple.

So I did come home with a camera full of pictures. Zillions of pictures of trees, bushes, barks and identification labels. And anything else he happened to find interesting.

What are your child's interests? How do you help them to explore them?


linked to Weekend Whatever