Friday, April 16, 2010

Farming, Errrr Gardening

Last year when I started gardening, I used transplants from a nursery; however, this year I'm doing seeds. It is pretty exciting to see the seeds come up. These were planted about 10 days ago and all have come up except the row of green peppers. Apparently green pepper seeds take 14 to 21 days to germinated.


Snow peas on on the left, green beans are across the back, blackeyed peas are on the right, and squash is the second row from the left. The blank row is green peppers, I hope.


The tomatoes are transplants but African marigold seeds were planted near the tomatoes 7 days ago. When I look close, I see little stems trying to straighten up.


Cucumbers are coming up on all three of the recycled molasses tubs.



These are t-posts. We couldn't get even one post in after several days of pounding because we kept running into rock/calachie. We used the wrecking bar to break up rock but even that did not workout. After a couple of days we decided we were too old to kill ourselves getting the posts into the ground.

Soooo.........we had a man come out with an auger to drill post holes. The posts are kattywhampus right now but will be straight when the holes are filled with ready-mix cement, water poured into the hole, the cement hardens, and viole', the posts will be ready for attaching wire panels. Still quite a bit of work to do, but much less than if we pounded in 13-14 t-posts!

Since we did not have to do the fence posts ourselves, the garden went from 20' x 40' to about 70' by 40'. I figured if we were paying to get the posts done, we might as well get a really big garden. There is plenty of room to expand next year without worrying about moving fence.

In addition, I'm thinking about getting some chickens. I've been looking into what is called a mobile chicken tractor, i.e., the coop and run can be moved around. It is re-enforced with what is called a wire hardcloth to protect the chickens from predators. I plan to free range the chickens and hope like crazy the chickens do not fly inside the yard fence with the dogs. I don't think the chickens will fare well if one meets up with Luc or Maggie. I'll probably keep the chickens in the run until the dogs have done their walk and then free range them. We'll work out the best way to keep the chickens safe and still allow the dogs the freedom to which they've become accustomed.

Fresh eggs, fresh eggs; anyone want some fresh eggs? lol Life is good!

Until next time, God bless.

6 comments:

Rae said...

You are very busy with gardening and all. Your vegetable patch looks good. It sure will be nice when it starts to produce. I hope you are successful with raising chickens. My dog would find a way to kill them even with fencing.

Brenda said...

Wow, that's a lot of work but I know you will enjoy the final product. We love our little garden.

DJan said...

I had to look hard for those cucumbers, but I found them! So if nothing else, the chickens will make for some interesting posts!

Lillian Robinson said...

Mr J pushes his T-posts in with the tractor bucket. We use electric wire around the garden. That way he can take it down after the season and make it easy to till.

Before you free range, check out my horror stories! Our free-range chicks now have a fenced free-range area. When they were running everywhere, Sadie had fun playing with them, but never tried to catch them. I even have pictures of them standing side-by-side.

Al said...

Lynn, I am planning to raise chicken in the garden, last week I met a friend who lives in the countryside and he got lots and lots of chicken, and I envy him. If I raise chicken in the backyard, I hope my dogs will not feast on them.

Daisy Soap Girl said...

You are sooo blessed to have a large garden and space for chickens too! But I am thankful that I at least have a small space to grow a few things. I want chickens too. I just completed a course on how to keep honeybees. Now for that move to the country.