A planting I shall go...

Back in early April, I started my garden by planting seeds. Since it's cool outside with warm weather soon to be on its way, I planted the following seeds: spinach, lettuce, carrot, squash, cucumbers and onions.

Here is the garden growing as of Mother's Day.....

Carrot Forest

Cucumbers, pickles will be in our future. 

spinach

onions with a few left over carrots growing.

So the first weekend after Derby, which is a standard event that marks planting your garden in Louisville. Because everyone knows up until then it could be sunny, rainy or even snowy. With that date in mind, I took a vacation day the Monday after Mother's day just to plant my garden.

The day before JP helped me take the compost out of our two bins. It was nice to see that rich black soil that we made from our food scrapes, leaves, grass and chicken coop straw. There was enough to fill the potato bed high and add some to each of the other raised beds to be worked into the soil. With joint effort we got this done rather quickly.

I woke up just as if it was another work day, went through my routine. Dropped little bit off at day care and stopped on the way home for a jog. By 9 a.m. I was dressed in a tank top, overalls and boots. Wheel barrel, shovels and garden plan out and ready to go. It took several trips to get all the plants down to the garden.

Reviewing the garden layout, I got all the plants next to their raised bed. I made sure to rotate plants into different beds. Here are the beds after hours of work, joyful work.

Pepper plants I purchase from the farmers market, half of mine seeds did not sprout.

Here are some of my pepper plants, small compared to the others I purchased. 

Tomatoes

More tomato plants!!

So after all was said and done, I planted 50+ tomato plants including cherry, yellow pear, roma, early girl, beefy and heirloom, 30+ pepper plants including bell pepper and banana, 9 squash/zucchini. It was  a wonderfully cool slightly breezy day, with the sunny popping in and out. I also planted a bed of potatoes.

Now I just need to keep it de-weeded, watered and growing. This is going to be our best garden yet, can't wait to see all that it produces.

Here's whats growing in my herb garden...

Basil

Oregano

First Strawberry

Thyme

Less then an week later.... this is what I saw, my greenbeans sprouted

My Fair Tale Weekend

Hula Hoop Face-off 

Playing with a new friend

Ice Cream Round 1

Colorful Fashion

Sprouting Green Beans

Kale and Swiss Chard

Purple "Green" Beans

Daddy and Little Bit

Ice Cream Round 2

The Girls'

My Fairy Tale Weekend

Purple Carrot Harvest

Cucumber in the making

When you feel bad, dress pretty

Rainy Mama Day

BLT, Please

With the warm weather begging for crops in the ground, kid filled playgrounds, grill planned meals, I’ve been craving tomatoes. I went to the farmers market on Saturday morning for some lettuce and asparagus. Asparagus they had, but at last no lettuce. 

With more errands to run I decided to try a local grocery store I had not made it to. Root Cellar is a small grocery selling produce, herbs, dairy, meat and eggs from local farms. The store is lovely setup like a outside market with each bin displaying were the produce was raised. I looked around and what do I see but tomatoes, bibs of lettuce and a quick glance back to see the bacon. That’s right BLTs are on the menu.

That night we made up homemade french fries, while they bake in the oven, JP fried up the bacon in out cast iron skillet. Bread slices were toasted, tomatoes washed and slice. Then sandwiches were assembled with fries surrounding them.

The left over tomato was seasoned with salt and pepper to eat by itself, so since wasting any of it. Yummy I know!

And we are off to a good start:

So a few weeks ago I posted about starting seeds. So about a week and half since planting my seeds and they are starting to pop up from the dirt. I check them daily to see if they need to be watered and as they grow and lean towards the sun, I rotate their tray around to face the other direction. Its always encouraging when you see the little stem popping up and days later a leaf is forming. 

About two weeks later:

And as for the current, I'll post some pictures in the fairy tale weekend. I hope everyone has a great weekend.