Jen & the Bean stalk

May Day

2011-05-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

May 1,2011

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful May Day. We seized our opportunity to work in the garden as a family. We started out early in the coolness of morning and eventually had to slap on sunscreen as the sun finally decided to come out to play in the garden with us.

The Onions are in... I planted Copra and Ailsa Craig varieties.

Our Cabbage, Broccoli, Kohlrabi, Green Onions & Leeks starts have been hardened off and planted. The Beets are in too!

Garlic is looks amazing!

The Spinach is growing along quite nicely too!

I love the fresh chives that pop up early in the spring...one of the first goodies we enjoy from our garden.

My weeding partner was sleeping on the job...Some help he is!

The boys worked all day on putting in the new 18 x 24 garden bed, removing all the sod, amending and tilling...

We really needed more room for potatoes, corn and pumpkins...We have never had enough room to really grow a good amount of these garden goodies and now we can.

We finally decided on a spot to put in the Asparagus bed. Patience is a virtue here as waiting 2 years to harvest is torture!

LET THE GROWING BEGIN!

Yes we are April Fools in the Garden

2011-04-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

April 1: Finished the demolition project. Garden was tilled and added 25 lbs. of bone meal added to the now 25'x 30' garden.

Transplanted Spinach and lettuce to the cold frames with the addition of watermelon radish's and more lettuce seeds.

We also burned more slash piles, since the rainy weather is permitting it.

April 3: Planted Carrots, Turnips, Parsnips and Peas ( the old-timers say it is way to early to plant...we will see how they fair this next month)I am feeling the need to push the limits of cold weather planting. I will keep you updated on my success and failures

(((perhaps someday we will invest in row covers))).

These short rows are 8.5 ft. long. I am anxious to see how many pounds of produce we will be able to harvest from this small space. It is just to hard to break my square foot gardening ways.

Peas planted after inoculant was added.

Levi and Corbin helped round up branches for the peas.

I love the idea of harvesting peas and then pulling the brush fence out...chickens can devour what is left on the branches and then be added to the burn pile. Should be easy peasy :) we will see!

The garlic is growing along quite nicely!

and just in case you ever wondered why I make soap....

These two grub worms may have something to do with it :)

March garden notes

2011-04-03T21:38:00.000-07:00

Just trying to keep it all in perspective :-)

March 26 : Added 50 lbs. Alfalfa Pellets and 50 lbs. Beet Pulp to the garden. Weeded and cleaned herb garden. Began tearing square ft. garden beds out

We just needed more room to GROW!

Saturday was absolutely a beautiful spring day...The boys helped rake up logging debris.

after the rain the pellets swelled up, fall apart and are a breeze to incorporate.

Diggin' in and tearing out the old beds

Corbin doing a fine job!

March 30: Troy finished the cold frames and put them in place.

March 31: Cold frames were amended and filled with garden soil.

Spring Fever

2011-03-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

I can hardly wait to get out in the garden and play in the DIRT and just couldn't resist a stroll out in the garden at the first sign of exposed earth.

The snow seems to be melting at a rapid rate now and I am so loving it!!!

Looks like I am not the only one excited...my hard workin' girls love to be let out free range. They all wanted their picture taken...Can you tell?

Guard kitty was on duty to make sure no one entered the garden.

Feels so good to get my hands dirty again ;-)

Found a pea sprout...

a couple rogue onions, sprouted garlic...

and some strawberries who are just as antsy for Spring as I am :-)

Tater Wagon

2009-08-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

Not a bad haul for only being planted in a 4 ft by 4 ft. Bed. Of course there would have been more had we not gotten into them. New taters and peas...yummy!

Time to harvest green beans

2009-08-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

Troy and I spent the evening after work having a drink and enjoying each others company while harvesting green beans. We decided to wash, blanch, Heat seal, and freeze this bunch as we both prefer the flavor and texture of frozen green beans over canned.

What I have learned

2009-07-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.

-Gertrude Jekyll

Tassle tops

2009-07-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

We planted "candy mountain" an early variety of corn this year. The stalks will only reach about 6 ft. tall and yet they have amazed be by tassling out before the end of July. I am already drooling and dreaming of fresh corn even though there are no signs of any ears just yet. We will be waiting patiently;-)

Sweet Carotts

2009-07-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

We had a fabulous weekend up at priest lake....We enjoyed swimming,boating, campfire hot dogs and sand between our toes for the entire weekend. With scorching temps I thought the garden would be a goner while we played the weekend away, but when we got home we noticed that everything held in there faithfully like champs. I immediately got to work and watered all my green babies. Filled the hummingbird feeders;-)and called it a day.

This morning I awoke to the magic of the sun dancing across my beautiful, peaceful garden. It was time to sneak a few sweet carrots and pick the Chinese pea pods that dangled in the morning breeze... Life is good!

It's a jungle out there...

2009-07-07T12:47:00.000-07:00

Everything is growing in quite nicely and the garden is looking incredible!

Knee high by the 4th of July

2009-07-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

Our corn is growing like madness and is actually taller than our knees...I sure hope we get plenty of ears as the corn is planted in a new garden bed. The weed block fabric is helping keep those nasty weeds at bay. What a pain to cut little X's in the fabric for each corn kernel at planting time....It is definitely paying off in the long run!

Tons of green tomatoes dripping with sweet summer rain

I am loving the organic Fish fertilizer from Neptunes Harvest..The garden gets fed every other Monday along with side dressings of our own compost.

Growing

2009-06-16T14:28:00.001-07:00

"As the Garden Grows, so does the Gardener"

Beauty in Bloom

2009-06-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

These sweet little Iris's are blooming by the back door...

I love how dainty they are and the foliage is a lot smaller than typical Iris blades. I received a start a couple of years ago and they are starting to fill in quite nicely. Such a joy to see them in bloom!

New Garden Signs

2009-06-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

Troy actually got a rain out day this week and we were able to team up and make some fun new signs for the garden. This way he can stop asking me "now what is planted here"? ;-)

There was a reason we hung on to those scraps of maple flooring for 10 years. It took us a while but we finally found a use for them ;-)

We left the signs untreated as we love the weathered grey look...It may take them a little while to grey but in the meantime we will enjoy them as is.

Make her giggle

2009-06-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. ~Douglas William Jerrold, A Land of Plenty

Update on the Garden

2009-06-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

Look what's happening in the garden this week....

Tomato's are blooming

Peppers are safe and snug in their little micro climate

Corn has sprung up and is about 10" tall

Simple Salad

2009-06-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

Life has been pretty crazy around the Maltba house lately with school getting out last week, Soccer practices, games, The Farm chick Show, and Troy working ridiculous hours.

It was a beautiful relief to walk out in the garden and grab the ingredients for our first salad of the Season. Just a simple salad but it was fresh,tasty and delicious and grown by us ;-)

Richard Scary

2009-06-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

We added a new member to the family a couple of weeks ago and I am just now getting around to adding his mugshot to the website. As you can see he's not to scary and he's wearing all of Troy's work clothes;-)

I know better...

2009-05-05T11:14:00.001-07:00

Than to stop in to the nursery here in town...I just had to grab some of these darling little English daisies to add to my herb garden...

Did I mention Troy is amazing!

2009-05-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

Well he is....Amazing! We wanted to make our garden bigger this year and this past weekend he made it happen. Troy removed the fencing off the right side, added a couple new post's,extended the garden,tilled new growing section and replaced the fencing...ahh...the possibilities of what can be grown here makes my spirit so happy!

I got the job of amending the beds with all the natural compost and bunny poo we had left,added sprinkling of alfalfa meal,and a touch of ash and bone meal. Covered with a weed cloth barrier and staked it all in place.

We are both looking forward to what may be sown here on our sweet little piece of earth.

2009-04-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Wow what a difference a few weeks can make in the garden....I am so excited to get my garden going that I just couldn't wait. Parsnips,Carrots, Chinese Celery, Radish's, Potato's,Lettuce,Spinach,and Onions have all joined the Peas and are now in the ground as of Sunday and the Garlic has been happily relocated! I am definitely not having dilutions about the frost being gone as of yet...We will just have to watch the weather,be on our toes for frost warnings and take the necessary precautions of covering.

Barrel of Monkeys

2009-04-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

The boys sure had fun rolling down the the hill with our old dryer drum. The dryer went ka-poot last fall and after line drying our clothes all summer our family realized we could live with out the dryer. While my friends can not imagine living with out one we have done just fine. I have to admit I do love a nice soft fluffy dried towel straight from the dryer like the rest of you but nothing beats the smell of pulling fresh sun dried laundry off the the line.

Garden turned

2009-04-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

The snow has finally melted and we were able to get our hands dirty, turned the garden beds and thanks to the bunnies we were able to add lots of poop to the beds this past weekend. The leaf mulch from last fall decomposed perfectly and we were rewarded with a bounty of worms and night crawlers (Shhh... don't tell,the chickens just couldn't help themselves to a few of the plump little morsels).

The sugar snap peas were put in on Monday, lets hope with the upcoming rain and snow warnings for this week that they will be safe and sound.

We found a surprise under the leaf mulch...My garlic was already springing up! We put the garlic into a container to be relocated.

The chives are already up and at em'... I have been craving chives, so their timing is perfect!

Making a plan

2009-03-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

Well it's the first day of spring break so I figured it was time to sit down and take some time to make a plan for our 2009 garden extravaganza. Normal people would have done this at the time of ordering their seeds and maybe even during the cold days of winter. Nope not me, procrastination is my middle name. The singing Robins in the morning were my clue that I better get my garden plans in order.

Last year I made a diagram of our garden and kept notes of planting dates and tucked it away. This has turned out to be a big help for this years garden plans,crop rotation, and general planting dates. I will continue to keep a general diagram for future garden planning.

The end of March

2009-03-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

Wow this month has been a tough one.... It seemed as though the snow was never going to stop coming. On the bright side the garden is just starting to emerge from it's winters rest and the Heirloom seeds we planted have been sprouting along quite nicely. The weather has been a mixed bag of tricks teasing and taunting us with glimpses of golden sunshine we haven't seen in months, only to vanish all to quickly behind the clouds again.

Whats sprouting indoors this month....

Oregon Spring Tomato(HL)
Whipper Snapper Cherry Tomato(HL)
Mt. Roma Paste Tomato(HL)
Hughs Yellow Tomato(HL)
Tommy Toe Cherry Tomato(HL)
Golden Acre Cabbage(HL)
Kan Tsai Chinese Celery(HL)
American Flag Leeks
Walla Walla Sweet Onions
Ethnic Sweet Antohi Romanian Peppers
Hybrid Carmen Sweet peppers
State Fair Mix Zinnias
Decicco Broccoli(HL)
Italian Mt. Basil(HL)
(*HL denotes Heirloom seeds)

*on Jen's 2009 wish list.... A Greenhouse!
We have seeds started in the kitchen window and in the livingroom and who knows where next...lol

Live Good

2009-03-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.
-Alfred Austin

Welcome

2009-03-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Jen and the beanstalk. A little blog about my families journey to living a greener and healthier lifestyle. Join us as we learn more about organic gardening in North Idaho.