Another Veggie Coop

I have joined another Veggie coop. I am not sure if I am keeping both or dropping one. This one seems to be a lot closer and a lot better because its a local farm that does not spray their veggies. However its not a lot of stuff and its $5.00 more then the other group. I like the goodies I get on the other group its things we use.

This last week I got beets. I am not sure what to do with them. We don't usually eat beets. Before I could think what to do with them I left them out too long...sigh..I am sure its not going to be the last time we get beets.

We got a lot of young cumcumbers so I peeled them and cut them up in slices and put lemon and salt boy where they yummy! So far I can afford it and with the prices going up at the grocery store I guess I am glad to even get it especially locally.

I did find out that they will take kids to help work the farm for a field trip. I am thinking we can do a co-op class next semester on square foot gardening and gardening in general I am excited. I would have it early in the morning so that the kids can work at the farm for awhile before classes on Monday.

Sam

Garden is growing

Its hard to see but my garden is starting to grow now. So far I have planted and that is growing is tomotoes, onions, yellow pepers two of them, lettuce, carrots, radishes, peppers and green beans. I will try to be planting okra, climbing peas and pototoes, but I need to get to my compost first for the pototoes.

I am having trouble with the dog digging on the part I havent planted yet so yesterday I bought some cover for the plants I hope to get to that today too. I bought the dog a pool so he can cool off hopefully he will go there instead of my garden.

Hubby bought some fencing this weekend for the part of our field near the garden. We plan to put the sheep there to graze then later my chicks when they come out of the brooder, this way they are double safe from predators including my dog who killed 20 of them last year.

This is a great place to put our turkeys too. He was going to put the fence up this last weekend but he got sick so it will have to wait. This weekend hubby is going to a gun show in San Antonio with a friend and I am going to flea market a tad. Later on we are going to see that movie Expelled its something hubby wants to see I would rather go see Iron Man hahaha but I am happy to just be with hubby and usually I pick the movies so should be interesting.

Miranda my daughter is going to her friends Katies house for a few hours and Tommy will be at our gym for kids night out where they will be making fiesta floats, watching movies and eating pizza and of course playing in the gym. Should be a nice date night. If I am lucky I might get dinner too hahaha

Well thats about it for now I have tons to do today.

Sam aka Frugalcountrymom

Square foot gardening

Ok so just above you see Tom my hubby putting in the cattle panels in the middle of our garden so the hanging crops can climb. The top picture is my attempt to try to do a little square foot gardening of course its 1 foot wide but across its going to be a bit more so I am dividing that too for the hanging crops.

The first day after we had done all this our dog decided it was a nice cool place to lay down in so we had to scold him about that, then the next day today I see what looks like cats digging in it. I told hubby in an email that we need to get some sort of netting otherwise any seeds I plant are going to be wasted.

Tom at this moment is telling me to search for floating covers. It looks hot to me I was hoping on just some netting. I am waiting for his reply on it. Each week that we wait it gets hotter and hotter here in South Texas.

For reference I use "All new square foot gardening by Mel Bartholomew-We have his older version book somplace in our house so we decided to buy the newer one. Everything he says in it makes sense about wasted space. I highly recommend his book.

Experiment gone wrong

Well all the work I did to my companion gardening to my roses was ruined today. It took me two days of work to get the garden ready and plant the onions. Actually it had taken me a year to get the poison out of the ground from last year.

Chemicals got on my roses and onions. I am not even going to go in details on how it got there.

I read the ingridents...well it said DO NOT HANDLE with your bare hands, do not get it in your eyes. Well if I can't handle it with my hands I really dont want it in my food. We have fertilizer already its called compost. I am sure it works well but its not what I want my family to be eating. Its like the giant tomotoe that might grow in a Neclear waste dump its huge, its big and red but would you eat it?

So I pulled all the onions except the chives in the pot and when my compost is ready I will spread it on my rose soil and start all over again and give it another year and try it again. We wont be eating any rose petals once again with our salads for another year.

My tomotoe plant in the middle of my roses at least thank goodness was not touching the roses because I had a black thing around it so I am going to leave that be for now. I just planted carrots near them so hopefully it will be ok.

Its still a bit early and Tom said the onions are still for sale at the local feed market so I am going to stop by tomorrow to pick some up and plant them in our new garden instead.

Sam

Companion Gardening

So in our pursuit of raising a garden this year I am trying a hand of "Companion gardening" which is not a new thing but its new to me. With Companon gardening you plant things together that will benefit each other.

Above second picture you can see my rose plants that I planted last year and this year some more. In between I planted onions and chives and in the pots on each corner I hope to grow more chives in those too. They help keep the bugs away from my roses and help prevent the dreaded black spots.

On the other plot up top I have with roses I planted in the middle some tomotoes and onions in between the roses. I am not sure what I will be planting in the middle of it yet, time will tell and I need to get some more nice soil for it.

All this information I got from an author named Louise Riotte who lives in Oklahoma which as you know the climate is pretty close to Texas :) her book the one I have is called "Carrtos love tomotoes" I love this book and I am reading it every chance I can get.

Is it going to work? Who knows I can only pray that it will. I hated the wasted space between my roses I felt guilty planting stuff I couldnt eat....well...I guess you could eat roses in salad some people do that but...anyways....I am happy with the results so far.

We plan to do the bigger plot like this too companion garden so they can benefit each other.

I will update pictures as they grow ....or if they grow :)

Sam

Spring Garden-Burn baby burn

This was taken in Austin at an organic garden center-this is sort of the goal we want with ours someday-Used cattle panels that made up the beds

Tom burning the Grass -He's new toy-It wont die! Also killed some fire ants boo hoo
After burning laying down cardboard to keep from coming back-Had it laying there before we burned it for months and it just turned yellow as you can see in some parts of pic ! It wouldnt die!
Laying down mulch over the cardboard I dare you to show your face grass! Feed bags inside to put soil in it next weekend-also finish putting mulch on it later

Yah I know it seems to the extreme but this is going to be our third attempt to plant a garden at our place. Each time it gets covered over with the grass we thought too big. At least the soil is really good if you have seen some of my old pictures from my website we have laid down in the past soil so its there.

The farmers who were here before pretty much sucked up anything good in the soil, they used it up pretty badily. I have also put down tons of rabbit manure around the field the last three years. We decided we kept thinking too big so we are going to start with this one first and next fall we will do another on the left hand side of it and so on.

I am starting small pots with seeds to see if any of our old seeds will work if not then at least i would have tried and we will buy some starter plants and learn from our mistake on buying old seeds hahaha.

So far in other garden near my dads house he has water melon planted for my son, 3 orange bell peppers, 4 tomotoe plants including one cherry and many onions. I also have 4 strawberry plants and I am despertly looking for more before it goes out of season.

We had 2 1/2 inches of rain the other day yah!!!!! Us!!!!!!!

Well tomorrow is egg/milk run I am also picking up some beef from a local rancher. A local rancher that used to be my principal hehe-small world eh

Sam