Taking Root

Pretty much everything in the green house is taking root. We lost a few plants during the transplant phase but the rest are bouncing back and perking up. The other day a lady gave us a few dozen tomato plants. Every year she starts more than she needs and usually gives them away. She couldn't find any takers so since we did the farm stand last year she wondered if we could use them. We sure could and they were twice the size of our biggest ones. We were saving a few beds for succession plantings but, these are far enough along to probably produce way sooner than any of the ones we already had and we put them in the saved beds. Kind of succession in reverse. What a blessing.

The top soil we use has a lot of weeds in it so our beds are already pretty weedy. We have had good luck in the past by choking out the weeds with mulch. So when ever we get a chance we'll be hauling a bunch of it up to the green house and mulching all these beds. In the mean time we have to pull weeds. Actually they are easy to pull out and in fact I personally find it a little relaxing. In the above picture you might see Kelli and Shalea "relaxing" at the other end. Well I don't know if they feel the same way I do.

Here's an example of one of the beds planted with various things. Green beans mostly here with a few herbs and a squash plant. I think some radishes are in this one too. We used string to mark off the square foot sections. It's kind of nifty doing it like that. Real neat and tidy. This is our first time ever trying this. The only draw back that we're finding is it is a little slow going when you have a lot to plant.

We planted more carrots in the outside gardens and I resorted to putting in short rows like we have always done in the past, instead of 16 tiny seeds per square foot. Our old way is much quicker. But, not as tidy. Plus we'll have to thin them out later too. But then again those thinnings never go to waste as we put them on our salads even if small. I put in a bed of rutabagas the old way too as those seeds are even smaller than carrots.

It's been cool weather in these parts so far this season. There's even talk about possible patchy frost in a couple nights. Well I hope it doesn't frost but, this is the north woods. Anything can happen here. I was talking to an old timer awhile back and he was telling me about a frost they had in July, way back when and he lost his whole garden. He did tell me what year it was and the exact date but, I don't remember those kinds of details very well. Anyway, he pretty much gave up on gardening after that.

This is cranberry country. I remember hearing that when ever there is a threat of frost the cranberry growers flood the bogs to protect the plants. We always have to be ready to cover ours plants here, any time of the year. That's why this green house is an invaluable thing to us.

We had 5 goslings born last week. Here's ones of the cuties.

Picking through some weeds to see if there's something good to eat!

Protective papa standing guard over the 5 babies. This old gander won first prize at the county fair about 9 years ago.

Until Next Time