And what did you do today?

I was kinda busy.

New Waterline!!!

Waaaay back in...oh, what was it Martha? 20 ought one? When we put in our new well. Yes, 2001. Waaaaay back in 2001, we had our new well drilled and even though we wanted to put in another outside water line then, we didn't.

Well, we have one now. Over the weekend, Matt dug a 4' deep trench and we laid the line. It goes from the orange cone at the right of the picture across the yard to the left. You can just barely make out the wellhead at the far left.

The outside hydrant we did put in 8 years ago sprung a leak last spring and we replaced it this weekend, too. What a PITA that was. Matt had to dig down 6' to get at that one.

Hopefully these new outside hydrants won't freeze. This was all done primarily to give us more water options when watering the new garden.

We have a line of 6 pine trees behind the house. In the event of heavy winds after a nice, wet spring these trees may land on the house and/or garage. We will be taking these 4 down in about a week. Say goodbye to the pine trees! >> You can see one of them is split, it's amazing that it hasn't broken and come down yet.

We will be able to begin demolising the garage as soon as the trees are down. I'm excited about that.

I did some planting this weekend, stay tuned for an update on that tomorrow.

Expanding the Veggie Patch

You can see from this picture exactly how steep the slope is on our property. We'd decided long ago that we needed to terrace it in order to really be able to do anything with it. We didn't decide to expand the veggie patch until last fall, though.

At the bottom of the picture, you can see the beds we've started. They kind of look like graves. We are using the 'Lasagna' no-dig method for creating the raised veggie beds. What you do is layer materials that you have collected to create what is basically a slow compost heap. Leaves, grass, peat moss, dirt, compost, saw dust, manure, just about anything you can get ahold of. Eventually, the mound will become a very nice, rich black dirt that will give you fantastic results with anything you plant. We may frame them in, we're not sure yet.

We used the hay bales and the dirt we'd collected from terracing this area. You can see the table in the middle of the picture, there is a screen on top. Behind the screen is our Kubota lawn tractor with a load of dirt. A couple of the beds have leaves at the bottom thanks to my neighbors.

You can see the two huge round hay bales we bought at what we thought was very reasonable ($30/ea). They will go a loooong way for us. Off the left of the picture is our greenhouse. I'll be writing a post on that in the near future.

Winter

I haven't updated this in a while, so I thought I'd kick one out here for the new year.

Garlic is coming up, but I'm worried that the 2nd batch I planted got in too late. None of it has come up yet, and it rained like 2" a couple days after I planted it, I hope it didn't rot. Or freeze.

Publish Post

Parsnips were wonderful for Christmas dinner, roasted. Not tough or woody at all, which had worried me because they were sooo big,

We have plans to expand the Paw Paw Patch (named after my paternal grandfather, a post on him is to come sometime in the future) to include a larger section for paste and sauce tomatoes. We're going to call that the Grandma Mary V. Annex, for Matt's maternal grandmother who died this past summer. She did literally HUNDREDS of cans of tomato sauce every year, so it seems appropriate to invoke her presence for that.

The compost bin didn't get a 2nd batch out this year, but it will work very quickly once the weather starts warming up, and I just keep adding to it. The green house is totally finished and re-inforced. My potting bench is done, too, I will get some pictures of that sometime for a future post.

And the catalogs keep coming. I got a burpee catalog, which went directly in the trash this year. I got the Seed Savers Exchange catalog a couple weeks ago quickly followed by Seeds of Change, and a new one called Pinetree Garden Seeds out of Maine. They seem to have a nice variety with more than a few heirlooms and such, so I may order from them this year, too.

All I need now is the John Scheeper catalog, and then I can toil away making lists, researching, fretting and pacing to and fro, trying to decide on the perfect varieties for this year.

Monthly Update: 8/3/2008

Sorry it's been so long, but as you probably know thing have been up in the air for the past month. Max is doing well, we're still keeping him 'coned' because he keeps trying to rub at his eyes. I posted a picture on my other blog.

The garden grows. BOY, does it ever. The pathways I had planned out have been overgrown in a couple spots by the cherry tomatoes and the bush beans. Sun Gold cherry tomatoes are very prolific in their vines, and I have two plants (right). I'm just starting to get ripe large tomatoes, namely the Mortgage Lifter. Very tasty. Can't wait for the first Aunt Ruby's German Green to ripen, I haven't grown that in a few years.

This viney mess is a mixture of morning glories, cucumbers, and pole beans. There is also a melon vine on the ground, you can't see it. The cucumbers are very prolific, too, I like the variety (Boothby's Blonde), but I'm not sure I'll grow it again next year. Matt's mom is growing a standard variety that is much sweeter than Boothby, I may try to grow that next year. But these are soooo cute, light yellow (blonde), maybe 4 inches at the largest. Nice to take to work to munch on, you don't need to peel them.

It's funny, the overall garden seemed so large when nothing was growing yet. Now it seems so small and short on space. We want to expand it this Fall, we'll see if that actually happens. We have sooo much to do.

The asparagus beds are doing well, everything seems to have taken and maybe we'll even get some usable asparagus next spring.

I also planted the lettuce seedlings I'd had going. These varieties (Forrellenschluss and 4 Seasons) were listed alternately as being very good and very bad in hot weather in different catalogs. So far, I've found them to be doing just fine in the hot humidity that is south central Pennsylvania, so I'll probably continue to grow them.

The leaf lettuce I'm growing has bolted, which I exptected. I would have pulled it by now and added it to my compost bin, but I haven't had time due to all the other unforseen circumstances that have hit us. At one point the frilly leafed lettuce (in the background) looked very much like tall, thin Christmas trees, very pretty. I'll have to consider growing them as ornamentals sometime, because I wasn't thrilled with the taste of that variety and they were very difficult to clean.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for the beans, beets, garlic, onions, and squash update!!!