Down on the Farm, In Pics

Lots of hard work going on here. Lots of fruits of our labor, too. The garden is beautiful. The chickens will be here soon. Here's what we've been up to.

This handy dandy container blew into our yard one day. There was a tree farm behind our house that went out of business. This was one of the planters they used. We put our sweet potatoes in it. See how cute they are? We didn't know at the time that sweet potatoes are vining. Normally we do our research first. Yeah, not this time. Hubby also planted onions in there. So far, they are living amicably.

We bought kits for the raised bed gardens. Hubby was working alot and just did not have the time. We bought two. I didn't take a pic of the first one before we filled it with dirt and plants, so this is the second one.

This is the first one we did. There's a tree in my way so I had to stand funny to get the pic. This is the first one we planted. There are tomatoes along the back and peppers down one row and the middle two sections of the front row. We planted onions in the empty spots later.

This is the view from the tomato side.Now they're at the bottom of the pic. We didn't even have them all planted yet.

 This was about two or three weeks ago. They have grown so well. All the tomatoes and onions are planted by this time. So happy to see the growth and so quickly.

These were the plants about three days ago. They are even bigger now. I have tomatoes on almost all of the plants. I have Romas, Beefsteaks, Cherokee Purples, Lemon Boys, and Chocolate Cherrys. No Mr. Stripey's yet, but soon.  

It isn't a great pic, but this is a cluster of Romas. We are so ready for them to get bigger and ripen up. We have plans for those babies.

Our second raised bed garden, we planted cucumber, zucchini, and eggplant. I didn't get a before pic except when it was empty. This was taken the same time as the previous pic. Hubby and I were looking at the plants today and we have veggies on all of them except a couple of cucumber plants and the eggplant. The eggplant is being shadowed by the zukes so we rearranged some foliage.

This is the sweet potatoes that are starting to cover the onion. Oh, well. We're gonna let this play out and see what happens. Hubby said we have another planter. We are thinking red potatoes. We're going to use our compost and see how well the potatoes do. We think they'll be great. Go, sweet potatoes, go!!

You would think I would have gotten a pic of the tower right after we put the plants in, but I didn't. These are the strawberries. We get about two or three strawberries a day right now. We're hoping that the plants fill out and start producing more. After the coop is up and running, hubby is going to build a screen to keep the birds off the berries. It hasn't been too bad lately and we've actually managed to eat what's been on there before the birds get them. There's cabbage in there as well.

We are loving gardening. With the raised bed gardens and the tower there is little weeding and little maintenance, but lots of checking for bugs and making sure plants are growing well. It has been a joy and we are excited about the results so far. And you know as soon as we harvest you know you'll get to see it. For now, we focus on finishing the coop. Chickens will be here in about 10 days. Whoo hoo!!

Have a great day.