All this continual rain has made for a plague of slugs. My poor tomatillos just can’t catch a break. Whatever survives the drowning has to contend with plant predators. The slugs have eaten an entire planting’s worth – 24 square feet – of bean plants, setting me back another 2 weeks. I hate slugs. The […]
…in which the garden looks tidy. More or less. For the first time ever, I have filled all my beds. As soon as the weather permits the ground to dry out a bit, I will work on building up the areas to the left and right for more planting space. Who would have thought I’d […]
I finally took care of a major problem in the garden a couple weeks ago: This. It’s hard to tell from the photo, which flattens everything, but that’s the 45 degree hill where Backfill Hill slopes down towards the swamp. Because it is south-facing, and poor soil, I thought it would be an excellent place […]
Despite the constant temperatures in the low 60s and 70s – which, if it weren’t for the rain, I sure wouldn’t be complaining about, believe me! – things have decided to start budding up. The strangest tomato flower – it’s double. I honestly can’t remember if my Cherokee Purple were like this last year or […]
Everything I do, I do in the hope of creating beautiful memories for them.
My girls are doing great! No sign of small hive beetle – though the girls seemed a bit tetchy so I pulled only two or three frames for inspection. Those nasty beetles could be (probably are) still there, but if I didn’t see them running they are under control at the moment. I also saw […]
The broilers are getting so big that it’s getting hard for them to run. They sort of just waddle and flop around. They definitely know that me=food, and come running. It is bittersweet… I feed them, and they will feed me. At harvest they’ll be 13 weeks old, more than twice the age of the […]
Look who we found in the garden this evening, hopping along as if she owned the place: She (he?) dashed into this drainage tube, which unfortunately for her was only 4 feet long and flexible. I looped it up and she was trapped. This little cutie pie had already been chased out of the garden […]
Poor Lilu was outside for ten minutes yesterday and got 15 mosquito bites up and down her tiny, chubby little baby legs. Benadryl works fine, but I hate to smear so much of it all over her twice a day. As part of the story I’ve been working on off and on lately, I’ve been […]
I’ve been meaning to follow in OhioFarmGirl’s footsteps and can my own beans for quite a while now… two years in fact! And finally my chance came. I had nothing planned for the day, and black beans were on sale at the grocery store. I took a deep breath and jumped in. There are detailed […]