Sassy & Sweet Notes

Below Freezing Temps and More Ice!

Thought I would share a few more ice photos from around the farm. This is ice that has formed on a cactus that's growing in the pasture. It was a challenge getting into the pasture, since the latches on the gates are all iced over. But I was on a mission!

Everything has frozen icicles.

The trees rustle in the wind and it sounds like a soft chorus of wind chimes around the entire farm.

It was 23* today when I took these photos... and we might see a whoppin' 27* on the temp gauge for our high today! But things are supposed to warm up a smidge starting tomorrow with a high near 35*. I realize that for some of you, our weather seems almost tropical! But I assure you, it's COLD here! *grin*

A roll of wire, coated with hundreds of icicles.

And finally, the chicken house and part of the garden. Those trees hanging over the backside of the chicken house are the ones that concern me. They are still very full of leaves, and those leaves are all covered with ice, making it very heavy. If those trees snap, they could easily take out the back of the chicken house. Here's hoping they hold up. You can also see the netting around one of my garden beds... it looks like white cloth draped between two posts in this photo.

Here is a close-up of that same netting. Pretty neat!

More Ice!

A few more photos from today's little ice event... this is netting around one of my garden beds.

Pretty cool how there are little openings between each of the weaves!

Another garden trellis.

Tomato vine. This is one way to chill your veggies!

Fence rail.

And finally, the trees behind the garden. I hope they don't snap ... and I really hope the trees behind the chicken house don't snap -- they'd take down the covered chicken yard in a hurry! Ack!

Three Cheers for the Wheelie Bug!

This is why I love wheelie bugs. They eat grasshoppers and caterpillars off of my plants in the garden! Any bug eating bug is welcome in the garden. Especially wheelie bugs!

Look how this one is hanging by its two back legs, like a trapees artist, while using its beak to suck the guts out of that awful tobacco horn worm! That's coooool! ;)

Garden Update: June 27, 2013 (Part 2)

I have more garden photos to share with you. I'm happy to know that the garden posts are enjoyed. Our garden is far from perfect. Each year it has it's challenges, and this year is no different. I've learned so much from gardening in Texas, and am fairly certain that if I can have success here, I could have a successful garden just about anywhere!

We've never had much luck growing watermelon, but I wanted to try again this year. And what do you know, we have little mellons all over the place! This year I placed soaker hoses in the rows where the watermelons are planted. I think it's making all the difference in their success this year.

We are having good success with the Patty Pan squash, too. They always seem to grow well for us, and with their fun spaceship appearance, they're also fun to eat!

I'm trying a new winter squash this year - Bush Buttercup. The squash are growing beautifully! Hopefully, the plants can survive to harvest time! I've found some squash bugs out there, so hopefully they don't do the plants in.

There are watermelons planted at both ends of the garden. Little round sugar baby melons at one end, and yellow moon and stars watermelons at the other. The plants have completely taken over the walkway down the center of the garden. They are loaded with blossoms, and bees!

The MASSIVE yellow pear tomato plant has lots and LOTS of tomato clusters, just waiting to ripen! I've been enjoying the ripe ones right off the plant in the morning when I water. Fresh tomatoes for breakfast ... you bet!

This is the full yellow pear tomato plant. It's well over 6' tall, and since it's planted in the trough, I'll be dragging a ladder out to the garden when it comes time to harvest all the tomatoes towards the top! They're WAY up there!

Zucchini is growing beautifully. I picked this beauty this morning! I really love growing zucchini. Not only do I love eating zucchini, but I think the plants are amazing!

In this part of the garden are more tomato plants. There is the volunteer front and center, as well as a husky cherry red, and a couple super sweet 100's planted in large blue tubs. There are also tomato plants in the small trough you can see in the distance.

The oldest of the super sweet 100's is already loaded with young fruit. The other two plants, which I planted a bit later, are coming along nicely, but have a lot of work to do yet before they start setting clusters of tomatoes like this. I think we'll be tomato-rich, soon!

Husky Cherry Reds are a new variety for me this year. I wasn't too sure about giving them a try, but after I did a bit of reading about them online, I thought we'd give them a try. I must say, I'm really pleased with them! Their plants are not as tall and gangly as other cherry tomato variety, and in fact, really are quite "husky". They held up to our spring winds beautifully! And boy, are they ever LOADED with fruit! Clusters like this throughout the entire plant! I would certainly grow these again.

And, they were the first plants to give us ripe fruit, too! ...which I have also been enjoying for breakfast while I water the garden. These were delicious... *grin*

I mentioned in part 1 of this garden post that the volunteer tomato plant is LOADED with blossoms. I wasn't kidding. Here is just one of the branches ... and each branch looks like this. The plant has set a lot of fruit, so if it manages to set these as well, whoa, will we have some tomatoes! Not bad for a volunteer. I'm kind of interested to see how it performs so I'm not planning on topping it off. I'll just keep watering it, and see how it grows. We're supposed to have some relatively "normal" weather for a while, so growth in the garden should be interesting to watch.

I can't forget to mention the Cherokee Purple tomatoes. They have set quite a few tomatoes -- we've even had 1 ripe one that was ubber delicious! I can't wait for these babies to ripen up! YUM!!

And finally, the friends in the dill. We are up to at least 4, possibly 5, swallowtail caterpillars in the dill now. This little guy is only about 1" long. It's kind of painful to watch them as they munch on my dill, but I'm willing to share with the butterflies.

Hope you're enjoying the weekend, and the last bit of June!

Garden Update: June 27, 2013

I took a couple photos in the garden this morning. It's a jungle out there! I hope to get more photos this evening. I usually take garden photos in the evening since the light is better, so hopefully things won't be all wilted down from today's heat. These two beds in front of the chicken house are doing great! The front bed is Patty Pan squash, and a few salad slicing cucumbers in the back corner on a trellis. The back bed is three Cherokee Purple tomato plants, and three zucchini plants. These beds are always great producers, since they're protected from the southern winds by the chicken house. I have a late-planted black cherry tomato in the blue tub at the end of the raised bed. It's growing beautifully, and I can't WAIT for those little tomatoes!


The tomato plants are doing well this year. And that makes me wish I'd planted more! I have a couple of volunteer tomato plants that are completely LOADED with blooms right now. One of them is right in the front/center of this photo. There are so many blooms on the plant! I'll snap a detail photo later so you can see all the blooms ... it's crazy, really!

You can also see the pumpkin plant has started taking over the yard, and behind that you can see the cucumber bed has completely grown out into the grass as well. There's a 6' tall yellow pear tomato plant in the large aluminum trough towards the back of the garden, which is now so tall I can no longer reach the top of the plant without a ladder. It's loaded with blooms as well, so I hope this weekend's heat doesn't ruin the possibility of fruit setting.

Stay tuned for more! *grin*

In the Dill

Some insects really aren't welcome in the garden, but I'm willing to share my dill with the lovely monarch swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. (Thanks for the correction, Shala!) I spotted two of them in the dill earlier this week, when they were but little tiny things. They've really grown! The larger of the two is not quite as big as my pinky finger.

I thought it was convenient that they're facing opposite directions on their dill stem, so I didn't even have to move to get a backside, and a frontside photo!

We also have two American Painted Lady caterpillars in the dill right now, munching away. The Painted Lady's are a bit small for getting any sort of in-focus images of. I'll give them a couple days to grow -- they're about as long as lady bug larvae at this point -- and I will snap some pics when they get a bit larger.

And I keep meaning to get some new photos of the garden! It's been a month since my last update, and things have really changed! Maybe tomorrow... *grin*

soaking

Guess what I will be doing shortly...

Now THAT'S a pickle!

...it got a little out of control in the garden...

Weighs in at 1.5 pounds.

Garden Update: June 7, 2013

I am enjoying day 2 of my 4-day weekend today. It's a gorgeous day, and I have a garden update to share!

Remember our grasshopper infestation? Sooo not fun. Disgusting, actually. We are doing what we can to keep the numbers down to something a little less horrific. We have free-ranging chickens, ducks, and guinea, and lots of wild birds coming in to eat. We have most of the area around the house and yard mowed to discourage the grasshoppers from moving between pastures and the yard/garden area. But it wasn't knocking down the population like we needed.

I'm still using organic methods in the garden -- even relocating wheelie bugs and ladybugs to the garden when I find them other places on the farm. But when the numbers of grasshoppers creep up in the tall grass and trees in and around the yard, we spray those areas with a Malathion/water mixture. It's a little more serious than we normally use on the farm, but is still a garden-safe method of control.

During the day, grasshoppers are very active and hard to control. But at night grasshoppers stop feeding and climb up out of the grass and perch themselves along the edges of the pastures on the tall grass stems, along the fence wires, on trees, and weeds. And there they sit, waiting for us to make our way around the yard wearing our headlamps, armed with a sprayer. And yes, I still have grasshoppers in the garden. But not nearly as many as I would have if we weren't able to control the population in the areas around the yard.

So how about a small garden tour!

Some of the radishes have grown a little larger than I had expected. Not a good enough look?

How about now!? THOSE are some radishes!

We've harvested our first couple of zucchini, and lots more are well on their way!

I even picked a couple of ripe cherry tomatoes yesterday evening! And they were deeeee-lish! These are Husky Cherry Reds.

Those ripe cherry tomatoes came off of this plant, which is nothing short of amazing! And it's loaded with little green tomatoes, just waiting to ripen!

This yellow pear tomato plant is also amazing -- it's HUGE, and has officially reached the top of the 4' cage around it. The plant next to it (can't remember what it is!) is doing really well too, but there just aren't a lot of flowers on either of these plants. Some flowers, but not a lot. Maybe I need to supplement with some phosphorus to encourage flowers. I use bone meal when I prep the beds for planting, but maybe adding some worm casting tea might be beneficial. Hopefully I can encourage these two to put on more flowers!

I have cucumbers growing in several areas, but this is the largest area. A full 4'x8' bed of them, and they are quickly vining out of the bed's edges. Under those leaves are a bazillion flowers! And we've even picked a couple cucumbers! I think they are enjoying not being trellised this year.

The pumpkin is doing well (for just being old seeds tossed at the edge of a zucchini bed), and the zucchini and other squash plants are looking healthy. In the blue tub at the left are some mini white cucumbers, a great little variety that is really fun to grow!

I also harvested our first patty pan squash of the season! Alan loves having them grown in the garden, so they got planted again this year. We should also have some other variety to harvest soon.

Here's some organic bug control in the garden ... ducks! Chickens can be really hard on a garden since they're really drawn to eating leaves and small tender fruits, and like to take dust baths in the soft soil -- which isn't so great for plants. But ducks and guinea are great in a garden! They are more focused on bugs! They pull them right off the stems and leaves, and the ducks also root around the edges of the garden beds where other insects like to hide during the day.

Here's little Butter-Butt, doing a bit of insect patrol.

This is a happy garden sight ... three ducks, all munching on grasshoppers! Numm-nummm-nummmmm!

Seriously!?

Photos taken today. Do you think we've got a slight problem on our hands!?

Our farm, and our neighbor's farm are being invaded, BIG TIME!

I. hate. grasshoppers.

And this is just in the yard ... it's worse farther away from the house!

Time to bring out the big guns.

 

Garden Update: May 27, 2013

I haven't done a garden update since I prepped the beds for planting in February, so how about an update! Here's an overview of the garden. The building you see is the end of the chicken house.

The garden with two rows is the new area we put in a year ago. Here I'm growing various squash (spaghetti, acorn, 8-ball, yellow, black zuc), watermelon, and some cantaloupe melon. Just yesterday I put down soaker hoses along the tops of the rows and covered the hoses with compost to help with water conservation. This bed gets a LOT of southern wind, which is very hard on the plants. So, just out of view on the right side of the garden I put an aluminum windbreak in place. You'll probably see parts of it in other photos.

Last year we pulled the two large metal troughs out of the barn to use in the garden. They're completely full of holes and I thought they would make great beds for the garden. I was RIGHT! There are two tomato plants in each trough, as well as either spinach or radishes to fill in the growing space. This trough happens to be a Sweet 100 tomato, and a yellow pear tomato, along with spinach (which I need to pick!) I have a couple pieces of plastic roofing temporarily clipped to the trellises to block the strong southern wind we were getting today.

Behind the troughs are nine 4'x8' beds (two I'm not using this year), three 3'x5' beds, and lots of large containers.

This is the main area of the garden (click photo for larger view). Where we live does not have the best soil for gardening, and we don't have a tiller, so I do my best to grow in raised beds or large containers with a mixture I create using our soil, farm compost, and sandy soil we had delivered a couple of years ago. The large blue tubs are not my favorite visually, but they are great for what I use them for. Alan buys the tubs in the winter for the cows. They're filled with a hard sticky mess that the cows just love to lick on. When the tub gets emptied, it becomes mine for the garden! We drill holes in the bottom for drainage, set them on a couple inches of gravel, and I fill them up!

In the tubs I grow things like tomatoes, mint, small cucumbers, herbs, and even flowers. This is a new tomato variety for me this year. Husky Cherry Red -- and boy are they not kidding about this thing being "husky"! Some of the branches are as big as my thumb! It holds up GREAT in the wind, so I'm hoping it puts out some nice fruit. It might be a good variety to grow here, if the tomatoes are good!

 
In front of the chicken house are two 4'x8' beds. The back bed is filled with three black zucchini and three Cherokee Purple tomato plants. The front bed has some small watermelon (backside), and three monster sized Patty Pan squash plants. I also have a small grouping of cucumbers set to climb up a half circle trellis in one corner.

Here is the backside of the bed that is just in front of the chicken house. Plants always do super well in this bed, where they are protected by the chicken house from the southern winds. What a jungle.

In front of the chicken yard is the tee-pee trellis we built last year. This year I decided to just plant a grouping of sunflowers in that area. The HUGE plants closer to the fence are volunteer sunflowers that popped up in the grass. As far as I'm concerned, sunflowers can grow any where on the farm they'd like and volunteers are always allowed to grow. In the blue tub is a Black Cherry Tomato, just transplanted and trellised today.

Back in the main garden area, I have a 4'x8' bed of red beets ready to harvest. They're destined for pickling! Yum! Not sure what I'll plant in this bed once the beets are pulled. Decisions, decisions!

A zucchini plant, and some small watermelon seedlings are growing in this bed.

I had several OLD packages of basil and dill seed I thought I'd just toss into this large aluminum tub. I wasn't sure the seeds would germinate ... the packages said 2005 on them. I guess they were OK afterall! Haa!

Thought I'd drop a few old pumpkin seeds next to this bed and see if they'd grow. Yup, they grew!

This year instead of trellising all of the cucubmers, I thought I'd try growing an entire bed of them on the ground without a trellis. We just get so much wind here and the vines get really dried out. I thought maybe they'd do better if kept lower to the ground. We'll see. They're just now starting to flower. I'm already battling cucumber beetles, and have lost a few plants to wilt. I have cucumbers in several locations, so hopefully we'll get enough for us while battling the bugs.

I haven't been short of challenges this year. I thought we'd be able to get a good jump on the garden, getting seeds in the ground in February in time for some good spring rains. But, I was wrong. We didn't get the rains we expected, and the ground temperature wasn't ideal for sprouting seeds. Much of what I seeded didn't even come up. And then we had a frost, and I lost a good portion of what had sprouted.

I think I was expecting a spring like we had last year, where the garden was in full harvest by the first of June. So, mid-April, I reseeded most of the garden (even using old seeds, if I had them). We might have some surprises, since when I replanted, I didn't exactly write down what I planted in every location. I'm sure I have a few of the squash plants mixed up. Oh well!

I sure hope we have a good harvest this year.... and if you garden, I HOPE YOU DO, TOO!!

Tobacco Horn Worm

I was out in the garden today and noticed that one of my Cherokee Purple tomato plants had a few bare stems.

Stems completely stripped of their soft, green leaves.

I knew exactly what I needed to be looking for...

...and I found HIM! Happily munch, munch, munching away at another leaf stem.

This is the first Tobacco Horn Worm I've found in the garden this year. Longer than my middle finger, and about as big around. I know there will be others, so I will have my eagle eyes on the tomato plants from now on. Horn worms cause great damage to plants. Thankfully, they're easy to pick off, and easy to dispose of. The ducks LOVE them!

Don't remember my first ever encounter with one of these monsters? Read about it and see more detailed photos, and even learn the difference between Tobacco Horn worms and Tomato Horn Worms.

Learn even more about the Tobacco Horn Worm, or Manduca Sexta.

Fresh Picked Radishes

Fresh picked radishes for tonight's dinner salad, if they last that long! Grown in compost from the farm, these babies are HOT!

Just a note to say Hello!

I found this card in my files and don't think I've shared it with you yet. I used one of my favorite (and old) PSX stamps, along with a sentiment from one of my Whipper Snapper cling sets to make this card.

I stamped the image in brown ink, colored it with markers, and inked the edges to "age" it a bit. I chose a cheerful, springy color combo of pink and green.

We've been crazy busy this week, and I just haven't had as much time for blog updates as I would like. I guess that's bound to happen now and then. We had a bit of a cold spell and it was feeling a bit more like winter, rather than spring! But spring weather is back in our forecast again. The grass and wildflowers should grow, grow, GROW!

The garden isn't nearly as far along as I would like. In fact, the cucumber seeds I planted WEEKS ago are just starting to sprout! But, at least I didn't lose any plants during the cold weather we just had! I'll be getting tomatoes in the ground this weekend, and hope to finish seeding the rest of the garden as well. Wish me luck!

Let me be the first to wish you a very happy FRIDAY!

Seeds!

My Baker Creek seed order arrived today! Alan wanted to know why I wasn't out in the garden this evening planting seeds! *Haa!* I'd have to prep more beds first, that's why! I still have some seeds from last year, so this isn't a complete list of what will be grown in the garden this year. These will just fill in a few spots with something new to grow, and provide us with a couple favorites. Let's see what I ordered.

I ordered up this Fordhook Zucchini simply because of the note on it that reads "freezes well". We get a LOT of zucchini from the garden, so this might allow another method for prolonging the harvest. I'm excited for the Bush Buttercup squash. Since they grow in bushes, like a zucchini, they won't take over the entire garden like a vining plant would.

I wasn't able to find scallop (patty pan) squash seeds locally, so they are were top priority on the order list. I also picked up some Patisson Strie Melange, which will be new to our garden. We thought they looked like fun!

Long Standing Spinach ... because I love to grow spinach!

I need to get these kale seeds in the ground ASAP.

You know I love Zinnias, so I couldn't resist putting a couple of these beauties on the order.

...and these...

...and these...

And what's a farm without sunflowers!? I ordered the Tiger Eye mix, and they tossed in a Lemon Queen packet for free. Yay!

I've tried growing strawflowers two years in a row now, and have had miserable luck with them. I thought I would try them one more year before coming to the conclusion that I just can't grow them here.

And you can't grow strawflowers without Statice nearby, so I ordered a packet of Blue Seas Statice as well.

I know many of you are still having freezing temperatures, and may even still be getting snow! So hopefully this little promise of "spring" warmed you up a bit!

Here's what I ordered, if any of these spark your fancy!
Bennings Green Tint Scallop  SSQ109
Blue Curled Scotch     KA101
Dwarf Siberian Kale  KA102
Bloomsdale Long Spinach - 1/4 lb  SP101-E
Patisson Strie Melange  SSQ134
Fordhook Zucchini  SSQ139
Bush Buttercup  SQ168
Tall Double Mix - Strawflower  FL640
Blue Seas - Statice  FL662
Tiger Eye Mix Sunflower  FL743
Orange King - Zinnia  FL818
Pink Senorita Zinnia  FL831
Redman Super Cactus Zinnia  FL820

What's on your list for this year's garden?

Garden 2013 ... the beginning

Today I prepped three 4'x8' raised garden beds and the two old aluminum trough planters we moved into the garden last year, for planting. Prepping the soil included loosening and turning the soil that was in each bed, digging up and hauling many wagon-fulls of farm compost (soil and POOP!), filling up the beds w/ the additional compost, turning it all together, and leveling out the soil.

And believe it or not, I actually got seeds planted in the beds I prepped! Five rows of beets, two rows of spinach, two rows of giant peas, and and entire bed of cucumbers. I haven't planted anything in the two aluminum troughs I prepped yet though. One of them is fitted with two super-great round wire trellis, so I want to plant something in that trough that needs upright support. Maybe slicing cucumbers? Last year it did a fantastic job of supporting a couple of monster sized yellow cherry tomato plants. The second trough doesn't have any upright supports in it this year, so I might just plant spinach and chard in it.

I think this might be the earliest I've ever gotten seeds in the ground, and it sure feels like it's time. I worked extra hard today prepping the beds because we're supposed to get some rain tonight and tomorrow. And that would be GREAT after working the soil and getting those seeds in the ground!

Miss Daisy went with me when I went out to snap photos of the beds.

She really wasn't all that impressed with my work. There weren't any cookies involved, so I can understand her disappointment.

There's still loads of work to do for this years garden, but at least I've got it started!