Update on Outdoor Life

Okay, so I still need to update these pictures even more because Dale has completed the coop. However, this is what everything looked like a month ago.My girls are thrilled to be outside!James likes them outside too.My garden's beginning. With all the cold weather, my poor broccoli almost died. My tomatoes weren't too happy either.Six out of eight peas died, but Dale quickly replanted some more and they are growing a lot better now.Clara's flowers have had some bad times too.Kansas better decide pretty soon what season we are in and stick with it. This cold stuff is for the birds!

Rhode Island Reds

Today, we traveled to 3 farming stores, in search of our chickens. We got word that they were getting them in this week.

This is what we came home with.Here they are: 8 Rhode Island Red (pullets).Aren't they cute?!

We will post pictures soon of the chicken run and coop that Dale is currently building.

Canning: Take 2

We go through life learning by the mistakes we make, right? Well, a couple days after we canned our first batch, I was brave enough (and with the pain gone) to retry my applesauce canning. All the apples finally were canned and we ended up with 8 jars of applesauce. Jonathans on the Left and Gala on the Right.
Note to self: Jonathans are a bit more tart and you really don't have to add anything sweet to it. Also, if you don't take the skins off, they make the applesauce "pink".
Galas are a sweeter apple, so don't add too much sweetness to it or no one will eat it except for Clara and daddy.

The Price of Canning

So, Dale and I decided to try our hand at canning. We went with something simple . . . applesauce. It was lots of fun!Jonathans on the Left and Galas on the Right.You know that apples get hot? And if they get on your skin, they continue to cook? They don't say, "Hey! Wait a minute. Stop cooking while we 'rest' in this person's hand." Nope! They just keep on cooking.My hand is better now, but the 3 jars we canned were the only ones we did that day!

June 29, 2010 Garden Update

The Tomatoes have officially grown taller than Dale. Can you believe it?!Our Bell Peppers aer doing much better now that they are in the ground.Grapes, Green Beans and Cantaloupe are doing great.Yellow Squash is big and hearty!This is one Tomato plant. It looks like this on all our Tomato plants.Here are 2 Squash.Some of our vegetables have funny characteristics. This one has a "nose".We've had lots of fun harvesting!

Another Harvest!

Here are the infamous carrots I thought were Bell Peppers. They didn't get really big because I picked them to early-obviously.Here are my amazing cucumbers!Here is what we got that day. Clara really enjoyed the tomato.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

We've been extremely busy and so our garden had gone 2 days without water. Uh, yeah, not good!

It doesn't look so bad from far away, but up close it's just sad.Here are our Cherry Tomatoes. I can't wait!Yellow Squash is a beautiful sight!Here's the ugly part. Look at those sad wilted plants. By the way, those feathery looking ones aren't Bell Peppers like I thought they were. Nope, after this incident, I pulled them out. Guess what, they're Carrots. Can we say "Oops!"Our Grapes made it to the buckets. We are going to try and get them in the ground soon.Here are 2 of my 5 Cucumbers. They are simply beautiful. Here are the Grape Tomatoes.My Big Boy Tomatoes have at least 8 on each plant.Zucchini is still growing, not real well though.This picture is to show you how big the stalk is on my Tomatoes.This picture is to show you how tall they are. That is Dale in the background, just in case you can't tell who or what that is.

New to the Garden

So, the cucumbers have become a problem. We have wanted to get some kind arch trellis going. Lowes has them for $59-$160. Needless to say, we decided to fashion one ourselves. With my idea and Dale's expertise, we came up with something really cool (hopefully it works).We took some fence posts and drove them into the ground, then attached a fencing material to them. Then we connected the other end to our extra piece of "hog fence" that is resting along side the fence - as you can see in the picture below.We had to make 2 arches because we have 2 cucumbers along the fence line. This is a shorter version of what we made. We didn't arch this because their wasn't a fence close enough to attach this to. We figure the cucumber can just vine it's way up and down this post.My zucchini is looking kind of pathetic lately.We relocated our strawberries into round pots so that they can have more room to grow. These pots used to have Bell Peppers in them, but they were in some poor soil and weren't doing so good. So, we relocated them in the compost pile.Clara has lots of fun being outside, playing in the water.As you can tell by the "dirt circles" on the ground, we've done some rearranging. We have had to "thin stuff out" lately. All the stuff that wasn't doing so good, we gotten rid of. I also had to go through my densely planted tomatoes and trim them up. My marigolds also got thinned out as well. It's a good thing my neighbor's favorite flower is a marigold. I gave her a few.

Overall, our garden is still getting bigger. The tomatoes are now up to my shoulders. I am so excited to see how many we get this year.

May 24, 2010 Garden Update!

Another week has gone by, and another major difference. We have had a ton of rain, which has made everything gloomy. But our garden has reaped the benefits. Our tomatoes are really tall. We added taller, bigger cages a while back, and now, they have almost outgrown them.Our green beans, peppers, and melon are big too.Our Bell Peppers.

The feathery green one is a bell pepper that I planted by seed. We still don't know exactly if it will grow any peppers or not. Looks great as a "filler" though.Our Cantaloupe Melon.

There are a ton of blossoms underneath those big leaves.These BIG blossoms are our Zucchini. I almost pulled an ugly, wilted blossom off a couple of days before. It's a good thing I didn't. Meet the ugly blossom- a zucchini!Here's another one!

My Cucumber is growing!

And there are lots of tiny cucumbers growing on it too. This weekend, we are going to make something for these to vine up on.This is the back part of the backyard--future site for our garden next year. My grandma said this would be the perfect spot for a bigger garden because it gets the afternoon sun and the neighborhood kids don't play back here. Our poor dogs are going to have to find another place to do their business.Just a view of our backyard from the back fence line. It looks really huge but it's not that big.A view of our garden.

Good times!