Ok so it was time to get everything in the ground last week, but its been a chaos of a week here (family members having surgery, other family going to the emergency room, lalala... not your basic stuff). SO I know this week I have to get GOING! All my seedlings have been sitting outside (day and night) for about a week so I know they are all "hardened off" and ready to meet the ground they will be living in. Since our garden is so large I decided to take it 1 bed at a time and have it done by the end of the week...I didnt want to set insainly high goals because after all I know I will be working with 2 toddlers, 7 chickens and 2 goats...they tend to slow things down a bit...but sure do make it alot more enjoyable!
Bed 1:
We have 4 rows. (from left to right) There is arugula, then lettuce, then 2 rows of Tomatoes interplanted with some some basil and chives. Further down the row the arugula and lettuce become celery and carrots...but its not very visible on this photo. All the plants look SO small! But I have to admit I felt so proud of the little plants, we started them all as seedlings and it is great to see them finally going into the ground!!
We did an heirloom salad blend of seeds so we have several varieties of lettuce.
The tomatoes look tiny but you are supposed to plant them all the way down to the leaves to help the tomatoes get a good root system goin on! Hopefully they get growing fast!
The potatoes are comin up!!
I also got some sage planted yesterday and didnt quite get to the broccoli, but that will be today!
My mom had a bunch of sage, garlic and basil from last year that she brought over for us to plant and I am SO excitted about it. This sage is already green!
Yesterday I Also go the radishes going! These are my dads favourite and I Really just plant the radishes for him to enjoy!! I read that if you plant lettuce in with the radish seeds that it will enhance the taste of the radishes and also the lettuce...so I gave it a try! This bed looks really sad right now because all you can see is a few green lettuce heads planted about 3 feet apart...but soon it will look GREAT!! (I hope)
Ok so the end of day 1 I got a little more than 1 bed planted so that is excitting...back at it today!!! I cant wait!!
Its been pretty busy around here...fun and busy! The garden has been extremely productive and some of the spring plants are harvested and gone and we are onto fall planting! In the first row you can see our watermelon hills that we just planted a few days ago that took the place of all the squash and zucchini from spring planting. Then the next bed up you can see the celery looking full and the empty spot is where we had some lettuce and radishes, but that has been worked in with some compost and we planted more lettuce and some spinach and chives. The third row up is where the beans and potatoes used to be and we have harvested all those (getting over 100 lbs of vegetables from that bed alone) and are working the soil with several wheelbarrows full of compost to get ready for more bush beans, bush peas and some arugula. The 4th row is where the sweet potatoes, tobacco, peppers and basil are residing. The 5th row (which you cant see in this picture past the tobacco) has carrots, peppers, eggplant, basil, and some newly planted radishes (planted today). The 6th row has all our tomato plants (we call it the wall of tomatoes) and a row of celery in front of that. The back bed is where the asparagus was planted, but it doesn't get much sunlight because of the wall of tomatoes so I hope it makes it.
This is a close up of the sweet potatoes, they are vining out everywhere and looking really good! 
The basil pretty much hides the rest of this bed...but its ok, I LOVE basil!! 
Eggplant! I couldn't be happier with this heirloom variety of eggplant! This one plant alone has 4 beautiful eggplants hanging off of it waiting for harvest! 
Close up of the celery and onions.
The shade is creeping in on this bed, but this is where we planted the next round of radishes. 
Here is one angle of the "wall of tomatoes".
Another angle of the celery and carrots.
Sweet potatoes, with the peppers and tobacco in the back of this picture. 
Eggplant.
Prepping the beds with rich compost to get ready for fall planting. 
Addie was a big helper today with the compost. 
Strike a pose!! Addie loves "petting" the basil, she thinks the flowers are pretty...she used to pick them and I didn't care because we had SO many, but now she has lost interest in picking the flowers she just loves to look at them and smell them.
The bees love the basil too!!
We are trying a new method of composting (well new to us anyway). Compost corral! We were having a hard time with the goats and chickens getting in the compost and moving all 3 of our organized piles together, so we thought we would give this a try with one of the piles just to see how it turned out...we'll keep you updated!!
