garden meals

So I have planted a lot of veggies. I have a small garden so I have picked up some pointers from the master gardeners at the extension services.

I will next year bunch my salad veggies closer together. I noticed they had this little postage stamp salad patch. It was about 3x 6 with 9 rectangles of assorted greens , and root veggies. .

This your though I did a ,to of companion planting so they could be closer together.  So far I have harvested radishes, potato, and lettuce. My peas were a bust this year. Not sure if it is the bunnies or my soil. maybe I need to plant them in a new spot. Will try that with a fall planting of peas.

One night we had potatoes in the oven, salad from the garden along with some chicken from our local farm. It was a delicious fresh meal.

Wishing we had a better crop of peas. this year they failed miserably. I am not sure if they were bunnytized or just weird weather or bad soil. Either way, I am rotating this crop to a new location next season.

This morning, Little Ms Bunny was still as  a statue with a large sheet of swiss chard hanging out of her mouth. She stood still and eyeballed me. Luckily Anthem’s old eyes are just that.. old, so she did not see Ms Bunny yet. I clapped my hands and she ran like the wind, quickly hopping through the slats on the fence. Anthem watched but did not bother to give chase.

At this point Bunnies 3 Chard, romaine and beet greens 0!

As long as I get something out of my garden , I am willing to share… I guess.

The harvest season has only begun so more to come on gardening with a friend/foe named Ms Bunny or “Chubs” (as my youngest refers to all bunnies).

Garden

This is where the garden starts. We ordered seeds and planted them. I was able to get these seed cells from the farmer at the market last fall. I put them away and was able to use them this year. It is nice because you wast no seeds unless you drop a second one in the same cell.  I started a variety of heirloom tomatoes and peppers indoors. Now they are being put out side. We live in a small house so it is always difficult to find a sunny location that does not look trashy with a light hut(which we have used in years past or even just theses cells. I reuse sandwich trays as the base for the seed cells.

Other veggies, like radish, chard, lettuce carrots and beets I plant directly in the garden. I am a gardener on a shoestring budget. So as you can imagine I am frugal with my seed use as well as with my supplies. I do my best to get every seed to germinate. My weed block is a cheap plastic garbage bag with  rocks weighing it down and holes cut out. We have an abundance of rabbits in the neighborhood.

Even though my Garden Dog Anthem peruses the yard and leaves her mark , the rabbits are undeterred.  So this cheap weed block turned into a great rabbit deterrent. There must be something about the texture, but this weed block prevented my rabbit friends from eating all my sprouts. I was able to sprout the seeds : Chard, lettuce, radish, beet and carrots successfully. Once they were  sprouted, I was able to get some agribon on them so they would be protected from kid’s feet and other “predators”.

Anthem likes to “help” me dig. Once she has barked and dug she settles in and watches as I work. The potatoes are doing well; we even have some flowering! I wanted to try alfalfa this year but for now I am concentrating on the summer veggies.

My peas did not do so well this year. Usually by this time i have had an abundance of peas  harvested. It has been a strange spring. Cool in the beginning and maybe a few fits of heat. In DC, May is usually like summer but it has been either cool or rainy. The sunny days have been breezy bordering on cold.

I harvested my first radishes this week and they were peppery crunchy goodness!

I still do see the rabbits in my garden and see evidence they have been digging. ( the holes are too small for Anthem to have dug). As long as I can still have my greens, that I had to fight for last spring and summer, I don’t mind a few holes!

I planted some lettuce seed in a pot and two days later the dirt had been turned over. I watched and realized a squirrel thought that I was leaving treats for him out there! So I ended up covering the pots with agribon and have had some success. Continuing with my budget garden. I asked my husband if he had anything in his truck that could serve as support for my agribon. He brought out some pipe and bent it and I was able to drape the agribon over it. We secured it with rocks.  This has been a wonderful help in protecting my young seedlings.

Gardening has become a constant battle against the elements and creatures. My desire is to be able to live with the measures I take to protect my produce. I must also do it on a budget. Certainly there are a number of wonderful gadgets and garden “stuff” that would be great but on a beer budget, found objects and second-hand items are my solution. I did buy the agribon on-line but I shopped around for a fair price.  I am looking forward to some lovely veggies soon!

 

 

Catching up and a baby bunny

This little fella was sneaking around my garden. I happened to have my Garden Shepherd out there.. Luckily I had just taken her out for a walk( as always on a leash). I came into the yard and since Anthem knows there are bunnies and other creatures that visit( usually in the veggie patch) she was all alert looking towards the veggies. Imagine my surprise when I see this little guy ( about 4.5 inches at the most long) scurrying towards the porch door.

I called to my kids who were inside in the air-conditioned house. Finally my youngest comes out , sees the bunny, and rushes in stealthily for the camera. Good girl!!!

She snaps a few shots of this guy. I really liked this one .

We have seen him or her since in and around the yard.

This has been a banner year for bunnies. No fox and no feral cats.

After the bunny moved on we harvested our potatoes and peas.  Here is a sampling of the harvest.

The peas are sugar snaps and it is very difficult to keep them on the vine because my older daughter has a habit of snacking on them right off the vine and in the veggie patch.:)

This was a hard-won harvest as the rabbits in the hood liked to nibble on the new leafs for the snap peas. I finally realized if I put the cardboard paper roll  around the seedling, it would give it enough time to toughen up.

I have so many essays in my mind I wanted to write about, but we got so busy.

I will try to catch up with all the things about home schooling, gardening and crazy days of summer.

Stay cool everyone and hydrate!