Friday, August 3, 2007
Garden goodies!
After planting our garden this spring, we spent many hours "defending" it from the critters. The critters included jackrabbits, cottontail bunnies, chipmunks and birds. Oh, and a handful of unidentified bugs.
For a while, we just kind of "shooed" them away. When they returned with more friends and family, we declared war and got out the shotgun. It took pretty much a full box (50 rounds) of shells, for Cindy (our sniper) to get their attention... oh yes, we have about 45 less critters as she's deadly accurate.
Finally, we fenced everything possible. We've got chicken wire around absolutely everything, and it seems to have done the final trick, although the small birds can still get to the plants. (This picture was taken July 15, 2007).
So now, we have some garden growing, and even producing edible goodies!
What have we had?
We started with radishes... little "firecrackers" as we still didn't understand just how much water they needed. At any rate, we got a very good yield, several pints for Cindy's lunches.
Next up was our broccoli. This we grew from 6 transplants. The critters decimated one before we caged up the rest. The remaining 5 plants have given us a couple meals (4 portions each time) of tasty, tender heads. Mom steams them until just barely done, and adds a little butter, salt and pepper... Yum!
Just last night, we harvested our first carrot.
Now, there's a story about these carrots. They were the next to last seeds to go into our raised box. I dutifully soaked the little seeds overnight to help their germination. Then, I combined them with some radish seeds and began to plant.
The package had suggested the combination as the radishes would come up first and "mark" the rows for the carrots, which are real slowpokes. No problem... until the wind came up.
We found this carrot... the first we've pulled, hiding amongst the sugar snap peas and cucumbers.
Labels: Around the farm
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