Garden and 2012 Goals Updates and our Big News

I'm still here...really! Thought I'd update my small readership on the current goals, garden, and what's been going on lately to keep me from posting.

First my favorite subject, the garden: I've accomplished most of what I wanted to do there. The small boarder plot along the back fence is half as big as originally intended, but I have a wonderful variety of things in it including watermelon, cantaloupe, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and pole beans in green, yellow and purple varieties plus radishes, nasturtium and marigold intended to keep the bugs away. So far so good! *edit- I found a couple of squash bugs, eggs and a cucumber beetle today. The battle has begun!*

The squash bed right after planting.

We'll be adding lattice on the fence in the next few days to
train everything up. Some of the beans would be
more than half way over the fence already.

In my salsa beds I ended up with 13 mostly different organic heirloom tomato varieties including 3 Cherokee Purples, a German Johnson, Pink Brandywine, Striped Golden Peach, Yellow Blondakee, Yoder German Yellow, Bear Creek, Grandma Josie, Arkansas Traveler, Striped Peppermint, and Southern Night Black. I also have four bell pepper varieties and a couple of jalapenos plus a section of red onions and shallots, a large variety of basils, yellow thyme, rosemary, cuban oregano, stevia and one tiny little dill plant. Definitely an improvement over the last two years when I planted nothing save a few herbs!

Salsa bed shortly after planting.

Salsa bed today (6-20-12) I still need to pick up supports for a few of the tomatoes :-p

My first tomato of the season is almost ready! This is a striped golden peach heirloom.

Unfortunately my potatoes aren't doing well. If you remember I posted pictures of the towers I made, well the reds have mostly died. The yellow russets are doing a little better but still look like they're struggling. I can't figure out why. Some took in the compost pile though so maybe I'll get a small harvest from those. God has a sense of humor doesn't he? I still have sweet potato slips that I'm going to sneak into a bare spot in my front beds. Hopefully those will do better.

When they still looked good...

My poor potatoes.

This is what my salad table looked like a couple weeks ago shortly before things started bolting. I've since given up watering it and will just wait until fall for a fresh crop.

Here's a shot of my muscle man helping to haul all the compost and mulch for me. Gotta love him. :)

Still have about half of the pile to go...

And for fun, here are a few pictures of my patio beds and window boxes as they have progressed throughout the season.

Window boxes shortly after planting.

The heat has taken its toll on the creeping jenny and violas.

My patio garden holds strawberries, hardy kiwi, rhubarb, cannas, lavender, creeping thyme
roman chamomile and sunflowers.

I finally pruned the kiwi vines!!

Night garden at the beginning of the season.

Night garden today. Looking a bit overgrown. Things need desperately to be divided.

My favorite part of the patio garden right now. I'm loving the coleous!

And I must not forget this gorgeous "Carnival" hibiscus I picked up this year!

As far as growing some citrus...I planted a couple of  meyer lemon seeds from a batch that I picked up at Wally World of all places in early spring. One took and is growing beautifully. Maybe I'll get lemons in a few years. I won't be able to purchase any plants until we figure out for sure whether we are going to be moving in the near future or not.

Another goal I can say that is really coming along is sourcing grass-fed/pastured meat and eggs. I've been buying grass-fed ground beef at the farmers market and have several possibilities for a bulk purchase that may or may not happen in the fall. One of my husbands co-workers is getting us pastured eggs for a great price every 2 weeks and she just brings them to work for him to bring home. It doesn't get better then that! Chicken is the only thing I'm still working on. If I could get one whole bird per week we'd be more than set. *edit- Wolf Creek has posted that they'll have pastured chicken available at their market stands as early as Sat. Woo Hoo!!* Soon I'm thinking I want to create a source page where readers can find a list of my local contacts. That will help me keep them all straight too! In the meantime, some websites that I've found to be great overall resources include: RealMilk.com (if you're interested in raw milk products), pickyourown.org for u-pick farms, eatwild.com to source local grass-fed meat, eggs and diary, and the USDA Farmers Market Directory for a national list of markets in your area. If you're in the Kansas City area, Kansas City Food Circle is a wonderful resource as well. They hold an organic farmer's expo every spring that everyone should attend.

And last but not least I have almost finished cleaning out my craft room, which I no longer get to have because my two year old is moving into it to make room for baby number 4! That would be why I haven't been blogging as much. Pregnancy exhaustion makes it difficult to just keep the house clean (read clean up after my two year old tornado!) let alone keep up with the garden, learning new recipes and everything else. Our fourth boy will be along sometime in mid-October.

Check out all the other cool posts at the barnhop!