Happy Friday, y’all!
It’s been a busy couple of weeks here, and some weird cold, rainy weather last week made us a little wary of how our seeds from The Big Plant were doing. But never fear – we have sprouts, hooray, with hopefully many more to come, as well as some new flowers and fun things that I haven’t yet gotten a picture of.
Anyway, onto the pictures:
Although there’s only two pictures here (and I can’t remember which is which), we have sprouts for our cucumbers, summer squash, and cantaloupe. Hooray! And in the cantaloupe bed, I spotted some of our sunflowers finally starting to peek out.
Behind that row, our corn is starting to come up (it looks like thick grass), which is pretty exciting. We’re attempting a row version of a three sisters bed (corn, beans, and squash), so we’ll see what happens, and likely try to do the proper 10×10 plot next year. Plus, those are all delicious crops.
Also unpictured but finally sprouting are the cucumbers, some new tomato plants, what I hope are herbs and not more weeds, and various pollinator plants (borage, nasturtium, and sunflowers), yay! Why are they unpictured? Because I went out today without a camera. So there.
So, full disclosure: I panicked about planting pepper seeds, so I started about, oh, 72 pepper seeds, and got about 60 of them to grow. Oops. So, we now have a full 30-foot row, as well as two large beds full of pepper plants. I sincerely hope we are inundated with peppers, both hot and sweet. Is it even possible to say we have too many peppers? I don’t think so.
It’s baaaaaaack – the daikon was the first thing to sprout, and it is doing beautifully so far, despite our weird, wet, cold week followed by a hot, dry-ish week. I believe I caught a glimpse of some of our okra sprouting around the daikon in the same bed today. We’re okra fiends in this house, so I’m checking the bed obsessively to make sure we’ll get our haul again this year. Cross your fingers!
Broccoli’s looking great, although something is starting to munch on it as of today (this picture was taken a few days ago). Pyrethrin to the rescue!
The fruits are coming in! I have to pick the flowers off of most of our strawberry plants this year, since I just planted them, but the one pictured is from last year, and so it is finally allowed to flower and fruit! (We actually did manage to get one ugly one so far, but it was stunted by the weather. Alas.)
The peaches are filling in nicely, and I’m sure we’ll need to go in soon to do the second pruning. I hope we are also inundated with peaches. Mmmm, peach jam. And, although I can’t remember which is which (oops), the last picture is of one of our papaw tree cuttings, yay! Keep growing, little one.
The blueberry bush is thriving (our other one is surviving, but not as well, alas), and our blackberry bramble has little pink blooms all over it, plus some new, giant creepers coming our nearby. Get ready for a blackberry and raspberry yard!
This is most exciting – the raspberries are fierce this year! On the left are two giant extra creepers that they put in right under our noses (thanks, rain!), and on the right are the rudiments of actual berries, yay! It’ll be about time to put out the bird netting soon.
Our herbs are doing nicely on the porch! My sage plant didn’t return this year (alas), so we ended up getting a new one at market last weekend, as I can’t live without sage for a year. Both the Genovese and Thai basils are finally getting some substantial true leaves (pictured is the Genovese). The dill is doing beautifully, and I was able to use a good deal of it recently for tuna salad, yay!
Slowwwwwww parsley is finally looking like actual parsley. We’re gonna have so much parsley, which means so much tabbouleh, which means so much happiness. And husband can have all the cilantro to himself.
Oops, it’s out of focus because it’s very thin, but hey, it’s one of our many asparagus sprouts! So fluffy and cool. We’ve gotta wait a while before we can harvest them (years!), but it’ll be well worth it when we do.
Finally, I’ll leave you with flowers once again. The first is a lily that hangs out in the front bed (yep, the one with the strawberries and peppers) and has come back the past two years with gorgeous yellow blooms. The second is husband’s new and only pet flower, Gerry the Geranium. (Yes, he named it. Clever.) Gerry hangs out in the moon garden.
And speaking of moon garden, we have sprouts of some of our moon flowers and borage, which is extra exciting. Stay tuned for more pictures as the season continues. Until then, happy homesteading!
The Crunchy Baker 