It's been a few days so I'll go ahead and double post since I have quite a few updates to share.

~A few days ago my husband and I planted 9 sweet potato plants in our garden. These will most certainly take over the entire area if they're anything like last year's sweet potatoes. I have a lot of extra plants still, I will be taking them out to the farm.

~Whatever roundup mix we used must not have been correct. Nothing is dying that we sprayed and I have to get my tomatoes in the ground so we're going to Plan B on location. I'll continue my war against weeds and such later. We're also going to get some White Clover seed to plant in the backyard (I don't think our neighbors would appreciate it in the front yard as it would take over their perfectly manicured yards as well) and then use the extra seed out at the farm for our future bees.

~My husband helped me set up fence for the tomatoes last night. I got my two Cherokee Purple tomatoes in the ground last night and today I plan on planting my two San Marzano and two Juliet tomato plants. That should be it for my backyard garden this year.

~My mega-blueberry was finally ripe yesterday so we split it into three pieces between myself, my sister, and my husband (each piece was the size of one normal blueberry ). It was REALLY good. I'm thinking as the rest of the blueberries ripen, I may freeze them so I can get a large enough quantity to make... something. Pie? Smoothie? Not sure yet.

~Everything is blooming in my herb garden right now; chives, sage, thyme. Between that and the white clover in my lawn, my backyard has become the main attraction for the local butterfly, moth, bee, and wasp populations. It's really fun.

ETA: After checking the weather for today and seeing how muggy it was going to be, I finished planting my garden this morning (which was putting those four tomatoes in). So I'm done for the year. Yaaaaay!!!!

Did some flower gardening this weekend. Got my poppy planted, along with some more annuals. Also dug up some Echinacea sprouts and transplanted them to the side of our house.

I had a very productive gardening weekend so I'm really excited about that. The funny thing is that the list of things I accomplished is really short, it's just the amount of time spent on it was quite a lot....

Farm
~Put up fencing for, and planted 24 tomatoes
~Planted 12 hills of 3 types of bush squash
~Planted 3, 10' rows of peanuts (so excited about this one)
~Planted 15 sweet potato plants
~Planted 15+ peppers plants (lost count on this one). We put the mild peppers and hot peppers in the two separate gardens so they don't cross-pollinate.
~Planted 5 eggplant
~Hoed out as many weeds around the peas as I possibly could
~Planted a basil and parsley
~Watered
~Totally forgot to take pictures *headdesk*

Home
~Weeded

And having done all of that, there is still a lot to do even before general maintenance takes over.
My to-do list....
~Plant 3 more hills of Butternut squash
~Plant sunflowers
~Plant another full section of corn
~Correct the three sisters garden that I royally screwed up (if possible)
~Replant a second round of leafy greens
~Plant all of the root vegetables
~Plant pickling cucumbers
~Plant cantaloupe
~Plant okra (this can be put off til June)
~Figure out a drip irrigation and fencing system for the grapes.

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
This is what I get for wanting to plant way too much stuff every year...

Little bit to report here:

-I went out and hoed a row and a half (it's just too muggy today ).
-The peas are about 9 inches tall at this point. Climbing nicely
-Picked all of the radishes, which totaled about 2 quarts
-Spinach is just about ready to pick. A good bout of rain should do it.
-Garlic is growing like MAD!
-Onions are popping up
-Lettuce looks good, but hasn't gotten any bigger in 3 weeks. Suggestions?

On the "To Do List"
-Hand weed around the peas
-Weed and Hoe the area vacated by the radishes so I can plant more.
-Go to the garden centre to buy tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, stevia, and anything else that tickles my fancy
-Get said purchases in the ground
-Till more.
-Put up deer fencing

Speaking of fencing, I'm pretty sure that my "Rustic Fence" just isn't going to cut it . Nobody is willing to give me any help around here when it comes to gardening, and hand sawing all of those cross planks would take me a LONG time. It certainly gives one an appreciation for what those early settlers did. . . then again, they had help. Then there's the price associated with it. The nails alone would have cost close to fifty dollars! I'll use the posts that I put in place to support the deer fencing, but there are more important things that need doing garden-wise.

Hmm. . . I guess I had more to report than I thought

I don't have a whole lot to report after a week of gardening. Probably because all day yesterday was spent getting and installing our new bees. I suppose that distantly relates to gardening as they will hopefully pollinate all of our garden goodies.

~I've started picking and shelling peas.
~Pretty much everything is looking really good. The only stuff that isn't is because the rabbits got ahold of it.
~Did a lot of weeding and hoeing and weeding and hoeing. There's still a ton more to do but what I got done looks good. This is by far the hardest thing to keep up with since I don't actually live out at the farm.
~I noticed that two of my mega pumpkins are up and looking... eh... ok. I don't think they're getting enough water and I think that's the only reason they're growing more slowly than the other sugar pumpkins. Really hoping these do well and I get some ridiculous gigantic pumpkins out of these guys.
~I did get some pictures taken and I will try to get them uploaded later today, but they're on my husband's camera phone, which is currently at work with him.

It's such fun reading the updates from all you gardeners.

On the Canadian long weekend (May 19-21), I planted for a few hours on the Friday evening, then for 13 hours on Saturday, and dribbles and drabbles this week as I've noticed lonely spaces that needed filling. The soil prep was done prior to last weekend, and all the years of composting have truly paid off = rich, healthy soil in most of the gardens now. Plus I'm expanding into perennials, which I have been wanting to do for years.

We couldn't have a veggie garden the past couple of years because of construction we were doing on the pool, and I sorely missed it. But this spring, we were able to salvage a decent-sized space, which fit one row of radishes, and three rows each of peas and beans; a cucumber plant (English cucs) and three tomato plants—a Jet Star, Sweet Million, and Cherry. Mmmmm ... and the radishes have shown their first wee sprouting over the past 36 hours. I must say, they're just so cute! I'll wait until they get to a couple of inches tall to thin 'em out. I've planted sunflower seeds many places, along with
zinnia,
aster,
columbine,
hollyhock,
delphinium,
cosmos,
nasturtium,
and marigold seeds,
the latter of which are supposed to repel small animals, which would love to eat the gardens up *coughrabbitscough* .

We have foxes around our area this year, but I don't think they'll be interested in what I've planted. My clematis are coming up nicely (some of them blooming beautifully already). In mid-summer, we can see the rabbits reaching up to nibble on the leaves, but there are so many on clematis that it doesn't matter if a few are shared.

I've also heard that human hair can deter creatures. Every time one of us washes our hair, I try and collect what gets caught in the drain, wrapping it around some of the tender young shoots that bunnies love—snapdragons and dusty miller, in particular.

As I've mentioned before, I am such a autumn/winter person, that, to me, the only redeeming feature about the warmer season is gardening, which I really enjoy, finding it therapeutic, relaxing, challenging, with more new things to learn every year. I can totally see why people go into botany and horticulture.

nasturtium

I read in a magazine that the blooms are edible by pet birds. I wonder if people could eat them too.

As I've mentioned before, I am such a autumn/winter person, that, to me, the only redeeming feature about the warmer season is gardening, which I really enjoy, finding it therapeutic, relaxing, challenging, with more new things to learn every year. I can totally see why people go into botany and horticulture.

I agree wholeheartedly! I cannot wait to see the snowflakes flying again!

Interesting about the nasturtium blooms being edible to at least pet birds. I know impatiens blooms are okay for human consumption. We've tried 'em: they're rather silky and ... tasteless. Aren't pansies edible too? I'm sure there are others, but those are the only two I know for certain.

In beginning my evening garden watering a few minutes ago, I see some of my other seeds are beginning to grow ... the sunflowers and possibly the hollyhocks too. 'Tis exciting.

Ah, all this hot weather is making my peppers really happy. I forgot to water my tomatoes one day and they were all wilty, but I watered them and they sprung right back up. I need to post a full length catchup and I've really been enjoying reading all your updates, Fantasia, Digs, and Jo. I'll be back soon, but I wanted to ask a question in order to be able to help my fast-growing plants soon.... so, because the ground here is really rocky, we dug through one especially mulched area that had something that was almost loam and picked out some rocks. However, I don't want to put everything into the ground and am thinking of putting all my indeterminate tomatoes, some determinate ones, and majority of peppers in the ground, but I have some determinate tomatoes that I'll put in large containers.... However, I really don't want to go and buy bags of potting soil and I got topsoil for sale, so I'm wondering - is it possible to mix the topsoil and the Moo-Nure to make a homemade potting soil or will that cause trouble and hurt the plants? Is there anything I can do with the topsoil to make it adequate potting soil?

We also got a rose plant for cheap which I need to put in a larger container one of these days... I'm hoping it'll turn out okay.

Also, another question! Some parts of the leaves on the tomatoes and peppers seem to be yellowed and dry/brown, while the top is perfectly healthy. What seems to be the problem? Aslo, I think something is eating my eggplant leaves and my basil plant... >.< I'm not particularly sure what to do, but will these things dangerously hurt the plant?

I'm really excited about the tomatoes and peppers now; I've been seeing plenty of little buds forming and there is the most adorable white blossom on one of my pepper plants!! I can't wait to get everything in the ground/larger containers. But this weather... The watermelon plants, too, have little vines forming. *really needs to get them in the ground.*

I've learnt one thing this first year of gardening: Do not overplant... *facepalm* and trust Totally Tomatoes' seeds to always be successful. I planted more in case I made grave mistakes, but everything grew and produced more along the way. I have no idea what to do with all these plants... >.> <.<

Thanks in advance for the answers to my questions!!

I don't know the answer to your topsoil question, Bella, but I've had some yellowed leaves on my tomatoes before, and for me, anyway, it's been over-watering. Once I back off on that, the problem seems to clear up. No doubt, though, fantasia and/or DiGs have further ideas.

How exciting about the growth your seeing. Aren't baby plants just so cute?

We had SO much rain these past few days that the gardens are very, very happy ... as are the weeds. So I've got to get out hoeing before the humidity hits this weekend, and before they begin to take over.

The gardens looks so alive. With the sun the week before, and the rain this past weekend, they're thriving. Everything is still quite young, but all the veggies are coming up well, and the many floral seeds I planted are peeping their heads up too. Such fun!

Now, for some photos: some of you have seen these on FB, but I've been meaning to post them here too. They were taken just over a week ago, and are only a taste of what we've planted, plus the veggies have certainly grown since then. Must get updated photos. There are a variety of pics there, including our neighbourhood fox, and a couple of really weird ones at the end, but ... enjoy!

*waves* Hello everyone! I'm not a gardener or anything, but I had a question for you all. Or, actually, several questions.

We have some blackberry bushes in our pasture and I was looking at them today and noticed a number of the bushes had some black bugs/bug shells attached to their leaves. They looked a little like snail shells though much smaller and they were stuck to the leaves via the opening. Some of them were empty and came off if I poked them a little, but others were still occupied and stopped up and only came off when I poked them harder. At any rate, do you all have any idea what types of bugs they could be? And, possibly, how to get rid of them? Considering that the blackberries are already green, I don't think there's much that can be done one way or the other, but for future reference, it might be nice to know.

Also we have some much neglected (like, it's probably been 15 years since we did anything at all with them) fruit trees in our "orchard", which I also visited today and, surprisingly, some of them are actually bearing! We've got pears and apples and something unidentified, but appears to be either peaches or cherries* (they're the size of cherries, but they're ranging from white to a pinky-red-orange colour and they look a little soft to be cherries, and everything in that orchard is stunted right now). I'm guessing the trees all need to be pruned (or, at the very least, the dead branches cut off) and sprayed (...I think that's what my mom said). Again, it's probably too late for anything to be done this year for them, but does anyone know anything about fruit trees?

*Or, there's an infinitesimal chance they might be apricots since we apparently once had an apricot tree. But they don't really look like them, I think the tree was in a different place, and that'd be too much good news. I can't believe we let the apricot tree go.

Ok, FINALLY getting around to posting a reply here. I actually tried a few weeks ago and lost my post twice so I gave up and figured I'd come back later.

@AitB, Moo-Nure, I'm not a professional on manure, but typically with compost, they recommend mixing it in 50/50 with your soil. Doesn't the bag have instructions on it?
The brown tomatoes, I tend to find that comes on with either overwatering or underwatering, but if you look up tomato wilt, that's also a common cause. I usually be sure to water 20 min in the morning every other morning, and with tomatoes, you want to water the base only, try to avoid getting water on the leaves if you can. Also, I trim off the dead/dying stuff.
Overplanting, story of my life. That's how I got into giving plants away.

@Jo, I've been enjoying seeing your gardening pictures on FB. And your fox is so cute.
Oh, and on the subject of Marigolds, I planted them around the outside of my garden one year in the hopes of deterring rabbits from eating my plants. I stood outside and watched a bunny go from marigold to marigold and eat the leaves. So I guess it sort of worked.

@Valia, I'm not good with identifying bugs at all, so I can't help you there, but I can help you a little bit with fruit trees. You can trim off the dead branches at any time, and that will certainly help the tree cause it lets more sun in. Most fruit trees like to be pruned in the fall after the first hard freeze or in the spring before they start to bud out. There is a lot of info out there on how to prune trees and each tree likes to be different. My sister said a rule of thumb if you really need to hack up the tree, never take off more than 1/3 of the tree each year.
Let us know if you discover what the mystery fruit is cause I'm curious.

Both my backyard garden and the farm garden are rocking. It's been so long since I've posted that I can't even remember what all I've talked about.

Home
~My peas are done. I've pulled them all in my own garden and I think my sis-in-law is working on getting rid of the ones at the farm.
~My onions are HUGE. I got a good batch this year and it's only June. I'm already using them in food and stuff.
~I'm starting to get tomatoes. Most of my cherry tomatoes are starting to produce. I've got several heirlooms coming on and a couple San Marzano tomatoes.
~My sweet potatoes are doing their best to take over my entire garden. I thought I had lost one, but then it spontaneously came back to life, so all nine of them are rocking.
~I have a cabbage coming on!! It's about the size of a softball and it looks really good.
~Oh, and I have one nice sized eggplant coming on. It's some weird white variety so I don't know if it'll be any good.

Farm
~My father-in-law has gone crazy with the round-up. I've never seen the weeds so under control out there before. It's fantastic. Weeding out there for the first time ever is manageable.
~I have a TON of pumpkins and watermelons coming on. Like seriously, if they all reach full size, I don't know what I'm going to do with them. I love pumpkin, but I think I processed 8 of them last year and only just recently used up the last of my puree.
~Our squash are coming on. Gotten a couple summer squash myself and I've heard some people are eating zucchini too.
~I literally squealed last weekend when I saw some pole beans growing up my corn. My three sisters garden is doing what it's supposed to do. *happy dance*
~I may try digging some potatoes this weekend to see if I can get a few good new potatoes.
~I got my first broccoli ever this last weekend!
~My sis-in-law has been going crazy making odd jellies this year. She's done mulberry and current jelly so far, but once the Concord grapes ripen, we're gonna have grape jelly for the rest of the year and maybe the year after that.

Things that are coming up soon...
~Run wire for our baby vineyard. I noticed last weekend one grew through and grabbed onto the chicken wire surrounding and protecting it... eeep!! We need to get them something to grow up right away.
~Plant okra.
~Start thinking about what to do with all the produce I have.
~Start thinking about a fall garden.

From Page 19:

Thanks for your answers to my questions, Digs!
And thanks so much, Fantasia! I'll do what you said with the strawberries--getting offshoots and putting them in water.

I can attempt to help you if you want to post pictures on here or FB.

That's so sweet of you!! Thanks. Unfortunately, everything I was unsure of either died due to too much rain or too much sun. So I've got what I was sure of, but thank-you so much.

Your blueberry plant looks really lovely!

DigS, for some reason, your posts about choosing different flowers reminds me of Samwise Gamgee. Not sure why.

I've really enjoyed seeing your pictures on Facebook, Jo! And yes, baby plants are so cute. Even though my first year gardening has been a lit challenging in some cases for me, it's been really neat to watch plants come from little seeds into large plants--makes me marvel even more at God's governing the universe!

I don't know the answer to your topsoil question, Bella, but I've had some yellowed leaves on my tomatoes before, and for me, anyway, it's been over-watering. Once I back off on that, the problem seems to clear up. No doubt, though, fantasia and/or DiGs have further ideas.

The brown tomatoes, I tend to find that comes on with either overwatering or underwatering, but if you look up tomato wilt, that's also a common cause. I usually be sure to water 20 min in the morning every other morning, and with tomatoes, you want to water the base only, try to avoid getting water on the leaves if you can. Also, I trim off the dead/dying stuff.

Thanks for answering my question! I believe overwatering was my trouble and I've tried to stop drowning it. However, it's been really dry (wish we could have some of that rain, Jo!! ) and I forgot to water them one day, so they've been really dry of late, but I fixed that today. Okay, I'll be trimming that stuff off. I'm worried I'll get that leaf-fungus stuff because some odd things have been showing up.... but I'll just do what you said, Fantasia, and take care to water the bases only.

RE: the Moo-nure, after I posted, yes, I found instructions on the bag. It says mix it with good topsoil, add peat, and put in some hydrocks. I wasn't particularly sure about hydrocks and the topsoil said something about peat, so I took a chance with one container tomato plant to see if it works and it looks fine

Overplanting, story of my life. That's how I got into giving plants away.

Haha! I was trying to think if anyone would want them, but was unsuccessful in that feat...

-----

So far everything has been pretty slow with my garden and I'm really behind. It's taking forever to dig in the rocky ground and they're growing kind of fast... Amateur me went along and planted a bajillion plans and never made time to dig. I'm purposing to dig the ground and put them in this week, if I haven't stalled too long. I'm thinking of putting some plants on the other side of our yard in a small strip that manages to get an adequate amount of sunlight, because it's much less rocky there. Now to hope and pray for rain so it's easier to dig...

On the happier side...

The trouble I was having with my peppers seems to have disappeared now that they have more sun. There's plenty of adorabible little white bulbs on them! I put a couple plants in larger containers to get a little more time, and one was a pepper. To my delighted surprise, there is one two-inch pepper and some other ones growing!!! I've never done this before and I'm so ecstatic about this. Some tomatoes are budded, but my bad watering schedule had them a bit dry, so some buds did not do well. I'm thinking that the tomatoes will be better once they're transplanted. With the 2 watermelons, the vines have grown a little over one foot, which made me excited (but, of course, reminded me to get them transplanted pronto.) and I recently saw that there was a teeny tiny yellow flower and behind it an infinitesimal watermelon!! I'm hoping it grows well. The peppers are growing and the tomatoes are doing pretty well; only one eggplant is doing alright, but the rest have all these little holes in them, which I'm assuming are bugs. Still pondering what to do about them. There's also one or two okra plants, but I think I started them out wrong, so I don't have much faith in them. I'm hoping for with as simple a garden as possible this year, and plan to put some black-eyed peas, lima beans, spinach, and zucchini in the ground when I get to digging this week. (and hope I'm not overdoing myself in the whole fray. )

That's about it for gardening! I'm really enjoying envisioning what I have, but I'm praying and hoping these hopes come into fruition. A Jung Seeds catalog arrived today and I enjoyed looking at the flowers and possibly planning something for next year as far as flowers go. The tulips look nice.
But I'm getting ahead of myself... *clicks post*

Lots of things are starting to ripen around here, and so many of them are super early due to the unusually warm spring.

My parents got a ridiculous number of apricots off of their tree. It bloomed in February. FEBRUARY! And we never had another hard freeze after that to kill those blooms/baby fruit off. So we're all loaded up with apricot jelly and apricot pies and other pastries. I think several bags of apricots have been frozen for future use as well.
(They also got several bags of sour cherries used in my favorite pie in the world... )

I just saw on the local news that peach farmers are having a hay day trying to keep up with the fruit coming on right now. In fact our nearest peach farm has implemented a 'pick your own' policy cause they just can't keep up. There's another nearby berry farm that has really ripe blackberries and other fruits..... yum.... There may be some short roadtrips in my near future.

I personally have started getting several cherry tomatoes off of my plants. Tomatoes make me crave salsa. But the peppers are a good deal farther behind. I've got a lot of little hot peppers I can see coming on (Red Thai and Habanero in my own backyard, and Jalapenos at the farm).

I also got my first random eggplant this morning. I looked it up and it's called a Rosa Bianca eggplant. Aptly named because it's mostly white with some rose colored tints in it. I guess it's a very popular variety because they're far less bitter than your regular varieties of eggplant. Can't wait to chop this guy up and try grilling it.
http://whiteonricecouple.com/recipes/gr ... m-variety/

Would anybody like some white or yellow onions? Mine are ridiculous. I don't know how I'm going to use them fast enough because they are HUGE already and there are so many! I may have to pick them and hang them in the basement or give them away to friends and neighbors because this is a little ridiculous. Getting the same varieties next year for sure!
Actually on the topic of onions, I saw a tip this year about a guy who didn't bury his onions at all, he just put the roots in the ground and that was it. I didn't exactly do that this year, but a good two to three inches of the bulb is out of the ground, and I think with the lack of dirt they have to push out of the way, they're a good deal bigger than any I've grown before.

On the subject of beekeeping, our first hive is awesome. My brother and sister-in-law (who shall from this point forward be referred to as J&D) put the two honey supers (the boxes where bees make honey) on the top of the hive bodies (the bigger boxes where the bees make more bees and honey that the beekeepers leave alone) and several workers have already moved up there and started building new wax. In fact we discovered something quite hilarious, in the top hive body we were short a couple frames, so the bees just made their own, just like they do in nature. The only problem is that now I'm not sure how we're going to get our frames out of there to check on those bees cause they're uh, permanently attached.
The second hive that wasn't doing as well we also popped open this weekend and found a brand new queen. So we think this one will start making a come back as well.
And to relate this back to gardening, I've found several bees that look like our bees on our squash blooms. Go bees!!!

Actually I found something kind of funny about bees yesterday when I was reading about blueberries. I found blueberries are mostly grown in Maine in the USA, and when blueberries start blooming, the farmers have hundreds of thousands of bees brought in from other states to provide a good crop of blueberries. I thought that was kind of funny.

/shuts up and leaves as this post is now very long.

Our front flower bed is now infested with aphids. I took some samples of leaves to the local arboretum and they were able to identify them pretty quickly. I've sprayed an insecticide on the bushes. I'm hoping to save one bush, but it's pretty far gone already. We have several others though so I'm hoping this works well enough to keep those from getting so bad.

Any tips or tricks?