Progress

It has been about 20 days since I last posted. I apologize for that! This summer has been hectic! I have been updating my Facebook page www.facebook.com/KimsGreenThumb If you would like to stay more up to date!

I was late getting my garden planted, since I had to build new boxes this year. But now-20 days after planting, things are doing well!
I'm going to keep this mostly photo-graphical, as time is still short, I will be sharing my progress.

On the chicken coop and run:
The girls are finally moved in an loving it! AND they have started laying at only 16 weeks! In the past 6 days I have gotten a total of 5 eggs! I think that is great!

I also have progress on my garden beds. I got them planted June 13. VERY late this year! But the last week we have been getting some nice rain, and they seem to be catching up!  I have 4 beds, that I've mentally numbered. 1-4 and I drew a little map so I know what I planted where. 

 This is Bed #1 on June 20, and on the 30th

 This is bed #2 on June 20 & 30th.

 

This is bed #3 On June 20 & 30th.

AND This is bed #4 on June 20 & 30th.

What a difference a little rain can make in 10 days! 

I hope you all are having a nice summer! Enjoy!

Crazy life

I have been so busy with lots of things going on-I haven't taken a moment to write to you lately. I apologize for that! 

Recently the family took a weekend camping trip to mammoth cave in Kentucky. We had a wonderful time & enjoyed our cave tours. 

I've also been working on some drywall at my parents house, and school is back in session, so I am also busy with that. 

I have a nice bunch of peas, just about ready to harvest in my garden pots on the porch. So my St. Patrick's day planting was successful! And the frost didn't hurt my plants. I am still behind in planting a lot of other things in my garden. I currently have some leeks, 15 tomato plants, and 4 zucchini plants, a little but of kale, and some herbs going. I have a lot more to plant. It's raining today, so it looks like today will not be the day I get that done. 

Here's a picture of my peas.

Have a great day!  

It pays to shop local!

Today I headed out to the local feed store to try to get some straw for my potato towers, and garden beds to use as mulch...Unfortunately he had sold his last bale of straw yesterday, and wasn't expecting the farmer to bring him more until tomorrow. I was a little bummed, but planned to return tomorrow to get my straw. When I told him my plans for the straw he stopped me and said..

"Well, if you're just using it in your garden, I have a bunch on the floor of the barn over there where I keep the straw. If you have a way to haul it, you can have it!"

I tell you I jumped on that opportunity. The hubby and I left to empty the bags of dirt off the trailer, and returned with tarps, and rope to collect our straw. It took about a half an hour, the feed store man also let us use one of his tarps, we filled an 5'x14' about 6" deep with straw, covered it with his tarp, he also gave us 4 pallets to place on top, to hold the straw down. We tied it all down and returned home with WAY more straw than we had intended to purchase originally. When we returned his tarp, I also gave him 11 of my tomato seedlings, which he was very happy to get. And we got 4 more pallets in return!

IT PAYS TO SHOP LOCAL!!! 

The people in these stores become part of your lives and sometimes you can be mutually beneficial to each other! I got the straw I needed, and got rid of some of my over abundance of tomato plants, and he got his barn cleaned out and ready for a new straw delivery for free, and HE got 11 tomato plants!

I was also able to give my neighbor some of my tomato plants today, and planted my tomato beds with 13 plants. I plan to plant some out by the chicken run as well as in my raised beds.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I will be busy playing in the dirt, mixing my planting mix, and my straw and hopefully be ready to plant my garden! 

It's a dirty job but...

I have been a bad blogger lately! SHAME ON ME!
But I have been REALLY busy! So busy in fact, that MY projects have all come to a virtual stand still! But I have been learning new things too! I've learned how to lay hard wood floors, how to use the circular saw, and also how to hang drywall (although I don't think I have the strength to do that alone)
We did take the time last week to go out and purchase the "ingredients" for the soil in my raised beds. For my 4-  3'x6' garden beds we purchased 3 big cubes of  peat moss. This helps hold moisture, and I LOVE to use peat in my garden. In addition to helping the roots stay moist longer, the dirt doesn't seem to get as hard as a lot of garden soils do. I also purchased compost. The one I have commonly bought is composted manure. NO-it does not smell like manure, so don't worry about that, but it is a nice dark soil with a natural built-in fertilizer, after all, it WAS manure! And I also bought top soil. I never use top soil alone, in my experience it is always hard as a rock! I mix these 3 ingredients to make my own rich soil that my plants really seem to like.
In my 2 raised beds I made last year, I didn't even buy the top soil, I just used the composted manure and peat. My tomatoes REALLY took off in that mixture!  Off 4 tomato plants, I canned over 48 pints of stewed tomatoes. Not too shabby if I do say so myself! :)
The other day I took a short inventory of the tomato seeds I'd sown off my tomato plants from last year and I am up to 109 in small pots. There are still more in the raised bed to transplant into small pots so I can give them to friends and family, and since there are so many, I will probably also sell some. I plan to plant some over by the chicken run as well, to give the chickens a treat from every now and then!

So Busy Lately

I wrote this about a week ago and forgot to click publish...

I have been SO busy lately, I can't even think right anymore! What with the school semester winding down, building the fence, (which still needs gates) building the chicken coop, (which still needs a couple doors) and we haven't even gotten to building my garden boxes which I am starting the feel a desperate need for...

I feel like everything is just sitting here 1/2 done, or not quite started. I can't even find time to crochet, which is one way I relax! The house is a mess, the chickens are staring to get crowded and NEED their coop...I'm about to move them into the dog cage and I'm sure that the dogs wouldn't appreciate that one bit...but at least the chickens would have more room to move.

The sad thing is, for as busy as I've been, I'm still feeling like I'm lazy, probably because nothing is getting done.

Here's hoping we can get the doors mounted on the coop and the chickens moved out today & then I can clean the dining room and actually be able to use it again! Maybe then I'll feel like I've DONE something!

I realized that its been a while since I gave you an update...WELL, since I wrote the above on my "down day" last week, I did move the chicks into the dog cage for a couple days and then we DID get the chicken coop completed and the chicks moved in. They seem to like it out there too. More room to move.

 We also got 2 of the 3 gates made and hung on the fence. I was surprised to find that Walmart had the fence hardware that we had been looking for since the project started, at a reasonable price. We had seen the gate hardware other places, but not at a price we were willing to pay. So THAT project end seems in sight.

My raised bed garden boxes are also assembled now. I have them in the place where I want them, I just need to get the dirt into them. I have tiny vegetable plants all over my picnic table waiting to me moved into their permanent home. So I am feeling a little antsy about getting the garden working now too.

I also went out yesterday and Weds and helped my hubby work at his parents house, laying hardwood floor. Now, this is not a "green thumb" type project, but I did learn a lot. I can now select, and randomize hardwood planks for floors, set them in place AND use the pneumatic stapler to secure them. I also used the 10" compound sliding miter saw. I am not proficient at it, and it takes a little more muscle than I thought it would, but I can make a straight cut with it!

Peach Tree

I was at the local Tractor Supply store last week, buying chicken feed, when on the way out of the store I stopped to look at their selection of trees. A peach tree caught my fancy and I just HAD to have it! It was a good size tree, already blooming, and only $20!  But my lot is only .47 acre INSIDE the city limits, and I had to think a bit on it...I currently have 14 trees on my property already! (and a bucket of rooted cuttings to add to my hybrid willow fence line)

I went home, discussed it with the Mr. who shook his head and just said "Another tree..." in a slightly exasperated way. Then a few days later, I saw my mom, who handed me a $20 bill and told me she looked at the receipt for my birthday present, realized it cost a lot less than she thought, and the $20 was the rest of my birthday present. Well,  I took that as a sign. I again discussed it with the Mr. and decided to go buy my tree.

Unfortunately, I was in such a hurry to get it once the decision was made, that I went to buy the tree in my car, the truck having left town with the Mr. & little Mr. the day before on a cub scout camping trip...Luckily, I have a sun roof, so getting the tree home was not much of an issue, although I did get some interesting looks in the parking lot as I loaded it into the car.

 My daughter and I made it safely home with the tree, unloaded it, and planted it over my my 2 apple trees, in a kind of triangle so my mini orchard now has a good start.

 

It's kind of hard to see, but the peach tree is in the center here & my apple trees in the back.

And, as you can see, the fence project is done too! (minus gates) 

Updates...

We are still working on the chicken coop, and the chicks are about a month old now. They are running out of space in the indoor brooder. The bonus is, at least this group of gals gets along together better than the Buff Brahmas that started fighting so we had to move them out early and then my dogs killed them...

In an update to my sweet potato blog sweet-potato-starters The slips are coming along very nicely.  Now I need to get the space in the yard ready to plant them in...I don't know if I'll be planting them in a container, or a potato tower, or just in one of the raised beds that I still need to build.

In an update to my planting peas on the 17th of March eager-to-plantpeas-and-potatoes. They are coming up nicely. And just after they started coming up we got our first frost warning...I had a mini panic attack on weather to cover them or not, did a little internet research and found this posting how-low-of-a-temperature-can-peas-stand which made me feel better knowing I'd missed the first night of frost on my peas without a problem. I am going to have to thin them out a bit here soon. 

I also did a little experiment when I started cleaning out my tomato bed from last year. There were a few tomatoes left on the vine over the winter, and I decided to sprinkle the seeds into the bed to see if they would grow or not. I placed a couple of windows over the raised bed, and then just left them be...OH BOY! to I have tomatoes now! 

 I scooped out a tight clump one day to figure out what they were, and saw little tomato seeds in with the root, so I gently separated the plants and planted them into a cardboard egg carton to see if they'd survive. And since that day I have also transplanted 36 more of the larger plants into larger peat pots, and I will need to do it again today, as the plants are starting to  touch the windows they're getting so big. 

Our fence is in the home-run stage, having less to complete than has already been completed, so that feels nice. We will have to stain it, but that can wait a short while until the other projects get done. The yard  also has finally woken back up from its winter slumber, so now we also desperately need to mow the lawn. So these two items are on the to-do list for today..

Have a great day everyone!