We are starting to get some really yummy things out of our gardens. Here is a couple pics of this morning’s haul! YUM!

We are averaging 8 eggs a day – the neighbor’s love us! Haha! There are still plenty of potatoes growing, now with more room after this morning’s take. Plenty of green beans, both pole and bush. Our peas just got anhiliated in the sudden heat though…the girls were able to get a few before they just burned up. We’ve got several volunteer tomato plants with green fruit on them, so that will be fun! I have no idea how big they will get, but they are organic and homegrown so I’m not complaining. We are still pulling onions, although we lost one whole patch due to bad dirt I think. One area of our larger garden still has too much kalichi dirt in it, so we are going to be working on really making that area better. But the rest of our onions are just going crazy. We’ve never been successful with onions before and I realize why now, we were planting them too deep! This year we went much shallower and are much, much more successful. We have a ton of lettuce and chard that I just clip the leaves off when needed rather than pull the entire plants. And our cukes are starting to really take off, so hopefully should do well!

We are also going to experiment with watering by the moon. My sister was explaining to me her friend’s garden, which she says is an organic masterpiece. Apparently her friend waters deeply – 3 to 4 hours – everytime the moon is in one of the astrological water signs. From what we could deduce, you water deeply the first day the moon is in the sign and again the last day, then wait 5 or 6 days until it moves into the next water sign. After much research, the novice gardener that I am, discovered that this way of watering promotes much healthier and deeper root growth. It also means you water less, thus conserving at the same time. We are having such hot hot days now, that we are watering every other day already. So we figure we’ll try the deep watering method and see how it goes! I like the idea of gardening by the moon, feels very traditional.

We will be adding some new life to our little homestead in June. We are getting 10 baby broiler chicks from Barnison Farm. Jeremy, who owns the farm along with his lovely wife Alison, is going to help us when the time comes to process them. We did it on our own with 5 birds, but could definitely do it better. So we’ll take a trip to the farm when the chicks arrive and get a lesson from Jeremy on what NOT to do mainly. I’m hoping we can sweet talk him into allowing us to bring the birds out there when the time comes! We’ll see. We are looking on Craigslist for a freezer and will hopefully be buying a side of beef cuts at one point as well.

Our zukes haven’t fared well however. The squash vine borers pretty much attacked them right away. I’m going to replant as we did manage to get several fruits off each plant, and they grow so fast that maybe we can get another harvest in, wish us luck with that!

So that’s the garden update for now. Hope your Memorial Day Weekend is a good one!

Peace!!