Gardening at Hummingbird Farms

 

I came by to post this picture of the first apple ever from our orchard and noticed that it has been a very long time since I last posted.  Our plants survived the fungus gnats and in fact I have had my best year in a long time with my garden so far.  Everything looks healthy and growing nicely.  I am even seeing some tomatoes getting to a really nice size.  Last year at this time we were just planting and then we had a frost.  This week though we are getting into the 100’s so the weather is quite different than last year.

 

 

The top picture shows my favorite method of trellising my tomatoes.  We put t-posts on each side of the beds then wire on concrete wire mesh.  I tie the main stem to the wire mesh and weave the bigger branches carefully in and out as they grow.  When they have a huge growth spurt though I sometimes wrap the whole thing with stretchy green tape.  It is easy to harvest like this and when the season is over clean up is easy (that might be the best part).

I have been harvesting peas so that I can pull the plants and plant the rest of the tomato plants that got a late start.  I think I have over 20 plants now and 5 different summer squash, 2 winter squash, 3  different melons, and 3 kinds of cucumbers.  Add to that about 5 kinds of basil and some flowers and my garden will be over flowing!  I actually harvested more than 10 cups of strawberries the other day and made my first batch of jam.  It was from a 3 year old patch so the berries are small, but packed with flavor.  Most of the seeds for the veggies I am growing have come from Bakers Creek and Seed Savers so I have some fun old varieties of heirloom vegetables.  My most anticipated new tomato for this year is the Indigo Rose and I have a few plants out there all of which are doing great.

Our little orchard is growing in leaps and bounds and my Belgian fence is filling in its first row of diamonds and even needs some pruning and tying.  Looks like I have a little work to do there.

This picture is of the cat playing in the little field of rye grass that we have let get tall hoping to harvest some one of these days and see if we can get some rye to grind into flour…we’ll see how that goes.  It has kept the star thistle from coming up so if that is the only good it does it is worth it.  The cats love hiding in it too, so it is kind of a cat toy…

So if this post gets old and dusty just know that I am out in the garden harvesting or fertilizing and enjoying every minute of it. 

Gardening makes me happy!

Ferne