Garden update

It is now June 2nd. We have at least three little tomatoes and several paprika peppers on the vine.

These are blue potatoes. As compared to our purple potatoes, which are purple all the way through including skins. 

Tilled up the chicken run and planted quinoa, amaranth, wheat, oats, clover, alfalfa, and sunflowers. The hens are current blocked out until July to give the plants time to establish.

One of several wagon-loads of plants we put in the ground mid-May. We grew most from seed indoors. At one point the count was over 500 plants!

Payge washed all the planters when we finished.

A little green tomato

The bee hives - currently they are working the raspberries and the berry patches are louder than the hive entrances with buzzing. 

Our row garden with potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, peas, and pole beans

Our raised bed garden with tomatoes, sweet basil, celery, bak choi, peppers (18 different kinds this year), onions (white, yellow, red, and walking/Egyption), bush/dry beans, lettuce, cabbage, chard, and cucumbers. This picture was taken two weeks ago.

Bee bee tree seedlings. This is a late flowering (August/September) tree I want to establish in our and neighbor's yards to provide late season nectar flow for my bees (and my neighbors bees, as some already have and other want to obtain colonies).

Funny story. This is a hibiscus seedling. I have spent 6 months trying to get hibiscus (rose of sharon) started indoors, and finally have three 4-inch plants. When scoping the area I wanted to transplant them to, I found the picture seedling already in the area. Then I looked at the bush I have not bothered identifying at the end of the row I wanted to populate with hibiscus...yes, it was a very mature hibiscus bush. Irony? Coincidence? Both?

We ran out of space, so I tore out the grass next to our neighbor's new parking pad to put in the squash (yellow, green, black, and white pattypan summer squash; acorn, butternut, potimarron, and mormon pumpkin winter squash). This is separate from our patch of hulless pumpkin winter squash that we hope to get much seed from for granola.

The raised bed garden as seen from the back door.

From left to right behind the shade tree, pumkin patch, red, bear lake, and purple raspberries, corn/pole beans (though I think the robins took out most of the seed), and asparagus along the fence. Most can't be seen well in this picture, but I wanted it for comparison at the end of the summer.