Garden for your life: Spring has sprung!

Just get out and do it.

Welcome to my blog, Garden for Your Life! This site will be mostly about my garden, but you can build one just like it in your back yard too. It can be bigger or smaller, just get out and do it. You can do it for fun. Your can do it for your health. You can do it for fresh food in these troubled times. The point is to get out and do it for whatever reason that you need.

Over time I will cover topics like canning and preserving your harvest, soil and beds, bugs, what to plant and when, and much more.

I've been working on this garden on mine and improving on it for over five years now. I will continue doing that for many more. You can too, just get out and do it.

Ken

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Spring has sprung!

Howdy Y'all

Spring, with spring showers, has indeed sprung in SE Texas. It made some difficulty in getting the garden in, but the plants have loved it! I use the Mel's mix from Square Foot Gardening as my base. My rabbits provide the manure for fertilizer in the mix. Between that and natural water from the sky, well just look at my potatoes.

I planted them the first week of march and on 12 march they were all up. Its now the 24th of March.

Yellow Kennebec in the back half and Red Pontiac in the other half.

I grew Kale over the winter that I kept under a cold frame. Mostly for my Rabbits for fresh greens. They just loved it. I've had four litters so far.

Our Herbs are kept in pots and most were put in the blackberry bed and then wrapped in plastic for the winter. The blackberries are blooming real well and I'm looking forward to a large crop. Bird netting to keep the Mocking birds out is in the near future.

My garlic was planted last fall and over wintered without a cold frame. It survived quite well and looks great. White in the front and red in the back

I have six Roma tomatoes planted, yellow cages, and two slicing, and two cherry tomatoes in the back bed. One red and one yellow pear.

I planted them last week and they've doubled in size already. My peppers are large Bell peppers in the back bed and hot peppers in the from with two tomatillos too.

The chickweed grew wild in the bed so I left it. My chickens and rabbits nibbled on it all winter as supplemental feed. Just cut a bunch and throw it into their run and watch them come running!

These two back beds have corn planted in them. Silver Queen in the front bed and Golden Bantum in the back. A few are starting to peak out.

This bed is overwintered Dill that exploded after the cold frame came off and the weather warmed up. In front is just planted seeds of summer squash.

This bed has red and yellow onions planted. They got a little beaten down from the heavy rains, but they are recovering.

My bees survived very well and I need to build a larger hive for them. That's next for this week to get done. With all the rain my water barrels are full and ready to help make my garden bloom!