Saturday, April 22, 2017

Spreading Manure



Today I spread some aged manure on the garden plot.  Living with horses has many advantages one of which is a nearly endless supply of very nutrient rich compost. 

The mowing crew.

My mother taught me gardening and the love of it has stuck with me all my life.  When I lived in the city I only had a small strip on the south side of my house where I could cultivate a small crop of tomatoes and maybe a few pepper plants.  The rest of the property had too much shade and not enough sunlight to support a vegetable garden.

Here is a few photos from previous years:







While I like to can, dry and freeze a lot of my harvest it is nice to eat fresh from the garden.  The above photo shows tomatoes, jalapeno and red chili peppers ready for a batch of homemade chili.

A feature I noticed right away when looking at the farm was a perfectly situated garden spot chosen by the former owner. I wasn't going to grow a garden last year because we had so much going on having just moved. In the end I threw a few plants in the ground anyways and we enjoyed this first garden on the farm.

Here is the garden about mid summer 2016:
  
From left: Sweetcorn, tomatoes, cabbage, bell, cayenne and jalapeno peppers.  

This year after some extensive soil building I'm looking forward to many hours spent working my little plot.  Back in the fall I covered the entire garden with leaves once they all fell and now I'll continue to cart loads of manure up and start tilling it in.


Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Springtime Flowers



The last time I was back in the woods the ground was covered in dead brown leaves. This weekend I took a walk back and discovered the renewal of spring in full bloom.
 

My knowledge of botany is limited so I have no idea of the name of this ground cover. In any case it sure is nice to see things greening up finally.