Our Garden has been blessed

 I was excited to see Wasps hunting in the Cabbages but I am absolutely thrilled to find a baby Praying Mantis this morning. . Below you can see my cabbage worm loved cabbages, Celery success from scrap and the Sunflowers getting ready to bloom. They are atleast four feet tall. And the Corn is blooming too!

  
  

We have had a Romaine harvest this last week as well.

a week later?

A New Year... 2012

We are awakening our Backyard blog. The kids and I would love to track and share our gardening and landscaping and discovery adventures with anyone who wants to know. Welcome Back!

We are growing Collards Greens, Onions, Parsnips
Cabbages, Leeks, Strawberries and Grapes. Corn and Sunflowers.

Garlic, Beets, Asparagus, Romaine lettuce, Carrots, Sweet peas, Basil, and Bay.

Volunteer celery and Broccoli from compost

A Variety of Flowers and two children's Gardens full of seeds and promise.

That trick with celery works. Find a blank spot in your garden, and the next time you cut off the bottom of you bunch bury it about 1/2 inch in you soil. Try the same with a Broccoli stem and let me know how it works for you.

The old Homestead

PIcs of the house in Clayton, as of last week. I know it has a beena considerably long time since I have updated the bog... but hey, we are busy people. What was once a garden in the biggest section of weeds! Check the last pic for an idea on how well ants are doing there. I'll probably post more ant pics soon.

Before the Heat there was stink bugs

And death follwed. I had to start picking everything in order to save it.








Here is a link to a pest I had to deal with earlier this season, I smashed 'em up with rocks, they gave me the heebee geebees... they were in larval form at the time.
http://earthfriendlygardening.wordpress.com/2006/04/03/ipm-the-colorado-potato-beetle/

Still Hoeing

I am still trying to get our garden together. UGH! I was sweating gallons last night. I probably have about 4 more rows to hoe. Then ofcourse I will be preoccupied all summer trying to weed out the ever advancing crab grasses (ever heard of aligator grass?) and turning the sprinkler on and off.
I have had a hard time finding a good source of seeds to fill in my garden but I did find some. I put in some parsley, butternutt squash and turnips yesterday. We'll see if they take...
I still have iceberg lettuce seeds, and parsnips to put in. I'll also probably try and start more tomatoes soon. I doubt we will be able to harvest much of this.

Growin'

Hey Y'all I'm growing corn!
This next photo shows about half our garden. The rain has been sparce, but the last two days it has finally cooled off and some rain has fallin'. Good thing two since we are on water restriction and I can only legally irrigate on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. We have planted corn, carrots, green onions, leeks, basil, chives, dill, brussell sprouts, cabbage, collard greens, spinach, lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, cantaopes, watermelons, pumkins (pie), peas, zucchinni and yellow squash. We also have some volunteer cucumbers.