May 20 Garden Update

This spring has been cold and wet and like most around here our gardens are suffering. The pasture is looking good (though next year we will need to lime and fertilize) and the flowers, trees, and bushes are thriving but the vegetable garden is hurting and we are way behind in planting. We even had a frost a few days ago that damaged our sweet potato slips. We cant plant corn or sorghum yet because its too wet, its been to cold for the pumpkins, watermellon, honeydews and squash and what we have planted is often awash in water. But at least we arent suffering the flooding that many places around here are. Just an hour or so to the east of us whole houses are under water so its hard to complain too much.

Holly and Heather planted the sweet potatoes but they have since been frost damaged (in mid May no less) so they may have to be re-planted.

We compost everything and generally have three or four piles going at any one time. One thats about ready, one that is mixed brown and green, and one thats mostly raw hay and cow manure.

The piles steam when we turn them and the gardens love the stuff.

We have soime blue berries forming but they are still a bit stunted.

The grape arbor ir doing well despite the weather.

We plan on planting more Viburnums as they have great foliage and a nice flower and they seem to like our soil.

We have seven or eight Iris patches and will have to start thinking of dividing them next year.

The Yuccas seem to be blooming. We have never had them before but they didnt bloom last year and we are really curious as to what they will look like.

We have blue, purple, while, blue and white varigated, and these interesting yellow Iris' that Judy planted.

These old school roses only bloom once a year but they have the old time fragrance.

We have lots of Peonies as well. Pink, red, white and a deep purple.

This Clematis looked like it was dead a couple weeks ago and then bloomed on the new barn fence.

We are also still feeding the birds and they go through about 80 lbs of seed a week.

These Wild Roses are all over our pasture fence line and though the blooms arent very spectacular they leave huge rose hips that are good for tea and tinctures.

Holly, Heather and I started this other side of the barn fence while she was here and if the weather ever breaks we will finish it and give Maybelle a bit bigger pen.

Maybelle just keeps getting bigger and she enjoys playing with Rose the Farm Dog and the barn cat Eve. She thinks she is a dog.

We really havent had time to do much with the new pole barn yet....another project in waiting.

This time oif year we also have hundreds of pasture Daisies and they seem to like all the rain (have I mentioned its been raining every day for weeks?).

The cole crops are slowly gaining but are often soaked and we arent sure how that will affect them.

Just one of our potato patches, the potaoes and onions like the rain.

We so want to pull up one of these to see how big they are but have resisted the temptation so far.

And the poor tomatoes are just seeking some sun but they are hanging on.

The grape vines are loaded with grapes and this particular vine is a very sweet Concorde variety that has the most grape flavored grapes you can imagine (if that makes sense).

We dont know why, but our grapes are thriving and we are thinking of making wine eventually.