Gardening Pics

My garden is fully planted. We added onto the garden as I realized had I planted everything I wanted, we would not have had enough room.
We have spinach, 11 pumpkin plants, 5 Cantaloupe and 1 honeydew growing so far.

(This is the new section)

This is an iris that was at my grandmother's house I transplanted here. They did not bloom last year.

Sunflowers are starting to come up near the house.

Here are the flowers planted in front of the house on the deck.

Beginnings of an Orchard/Plant buying Advice

Yesterday our loam/compost combination was delivered and our raised beds are now ready to be used. (Thank you Black Bear Lawncare) We also put soil in our potato buckets. I'm looming forward to planting our garden this weekend.
Yesterday we purchased another raspberry plant and a blackberry one. I'm excited to tell you we bought 2 plum trees!! We will be planting those closer to the house. I learned that most fruit trees need pollinator trees. (I really should start reading my gardening books) Next on the list to purchase will be a Contender Peach tree. I learned those are self pollinating. Then we eventually will buy apple trees and cherry trees as well as 2 more blueberry bushes.
I also learned some herbs are annuals. I was watching my herb containers and wondering why some were not growing. I read on a tag at one of the stores we wwre at they were annuals!
This weekend we are going to have an herb raised bed! I will post pics of my garden area this weekend. It will be later on as 4 of my boys have baseball games today.

I'd like to take a moment and discuss buying plants. I have purchased the majority of my plants from either Home Depot, Tractor Supply or Blue Seal. Home depot and Blue Seal take the best care of their plants. Tractor Supply you need to comb through what they have in stock as 70% has died.
 The absolute WORST place would be to buy from Lowes. Their flowers and herbs are all dry and brittle. A few of their bushes and shrubs were ok.  Look around before buying your fruit, veggies and flowers. Purchase from a place that cares for the plants so you dont plant something and it dies quickly.
I'm looking forward to gardening this year and will post pics soon of our garden area this weekend.
Happy Saturday

This week around the homestead in pics

Mother's Day Project

A couple of weeks ago we saw an ad on Facebook for a free deck. A friend of ours dismantled it and dropped it off to us.
Today, we were able to make 5 raised beds out of it and put a small deck on the front of the house. We used the deck boards over our pallet one we had temporarily put up. I forgot to take a pic of the deck in progress but will add one later on.

The last one shows the raised beds by my garden area. We started to till the garden but our new tiller sounds like it has carborator issues.
One great surprise were the chives growing in my garden!!

I was able to find the last flowers for my memory garden!

I planted these for my Great-Grammie Lyons as her name was Viola.
Also as my Mother's Day gift is a blueberry bush and some strawberry plants which we will be planting in the small raised bed.
Dom's girlfriend Sarina brought over a Mother's Day gift for me. It is the sweetest cookie jar!

Flower Beds

Today we finished putting mulch on the flower beds. The flower bed in front of the living room window im not sure what im doing yet. I have the Rhodendrun planted there but is also has something that looks like Ivy through it. I need to find some shady perennials to put in there.
Here are the 2 flower beds.

Here's the lilac we just planted.

Farm Update

So our newest addition Coconut passed away a few weeks ago.  He died unexpectedly and we were all heart broken over it. Eventually we will get a couple more sheep once we,ve added onto the barn.

This past week we purchased 3 ducklings. We have not named them yet but here they are.

I noticed this morning one of them has a boo boo on their eye. Can anyone tell me how to help this? I washed it out and put a warm compress on it.

I finally put up a nesting box in the chicken coop and we built a run out of pool frame.
The girls laid most of the eggs in the nesting box and there were 3 in the bottom of the coop.

I absolutely love gathering eggs with the apron my Aunt Ginny crocheted.

This week we will be tilling the garden. We planted a purple rose bush and a pink rose bush in one of the flower beds put front.
We also planted a lilac bush that i am going to put a tomato cage around so the boys do not crush it.
My garlic is starting to grow that I planted.

If you have facebook, I have a page where I post pics. Http://www.facebook.com/wylddreamfarm