Gearing up for Spring

Gearing up for spring we had to take out all the old plants still there the only thing I left was some curled parsley, love it plan to put in a lot more! Grass is overun in some parts hubby wants to burn it but he better watch my parsley

I plan to put one more of these plots in when ever hubby gets a chance. I also messed with my compost today, I really need some manure for it I have a bit in the rabbit cage but it needs to be mixed so I put some chicks in there to do the job.

I really need to get some sheep manure but I would have to get the tractor in there and they are all having babys in the barn right now so will have to wait.

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June 9, 2008

Well here is the last update on my garden before I let it go for the winter. I wanted to work on it so bad for winter but alas not meant to be. I will be luck enough to get it going for 2009 spring.

May 17, 2008

Well my garden has been updated a lot. I took off the chicken wire around it because it was squishing my garden. My husband put a fence around it so now Bobo the dog wont be digging or laying in it.

I bought this week the tomatoe wires from Walmart in Hondo. I had looked for them all over San Antonio at 3 other walmarts and Lowes but only found the huge ones for about $6.00 each these only cost around $1.23 each. These were smaller and fit perfect in my square foot garden.
If you look really close you will see the small green tomotoes growing :)

If you look close too you will see my new watering system that I got from walmart. It was a 75ft long seeper flat soaker hose. It was made out of Nylon Mesh a lot different from the other soakers I had seen. I didnt like the others. This one was flat and as soon as I put the hose on it inflated and soaked up everything really fast. I was really impressed.

I bought two of them at $15 each I think it was a great bargain. I pulled weeds today and also mowed the lawn. It was a good day. It sprinkled for a bit today but later it just got sunny I think it was in the high 80's today lovely.

Sam

How does your garden grow

Thur May 8 2008

Yes that is chicken wire around my garden and its not even put up right just drapped around my garden. The dog got in one day and tore up two of my tomotoe plants and some onions. The really big green stuff is green beans growing it seems to be doing the best. I've had to spray it recently with a mixture of water, hot sauce and starch to keep the peel bugs away.

So far its been working but its only been a day/night and I didnt see any on them this afternoon. Time will tell, everything else is growing really nice and I got tomotoes growing already in my bush near my roses I am so excited. Our fruit trees have some apples, plums and aproicots growing too.

My chicks are doing really good they are sort of skitish when I get near them they scare really easily. So far I havent seen any dead chicks and the temp is keeping ok, I opened up the side window to it to let some air in.

I went to go pick up my local veggies today in Castroville and found out they will be having a farmers market once a month in Castroville it got me thinking about selling eggs someday there when the chicks are grown. Its only once a month but that is enough time for me. Maybe if I get my garden going more I can sell some of that along with honey and pecans too. Right now I have all the cutomers I can handle for all the stuff we have on our farm.

Speaking of honey I bought some locally in San Antonio the other day just to compare and have some in stock, boy was it light, in fact it was too light. It didn't have much taste it was like it was strained or something I didnt really like it. I won't buy from there again. I am sure everyone else loves it from the group but if you have had some of our honey or even the honey from the old man in Devine that sells it you would see the difference.

Honey season is coming up in August. I have to remember to save some of the cone for my highschool friend Leah. She asked me last year and I completly forgot, hopefully I will remember this year. I need more jars! I saw some at the thrift shop Hospice the other day for 25 cents each I am not sure if that is a good price or not I need to compare.

Well thats about it for today I need to go do chores and close up my dads pecan house for the night. He should be back in June he said. Our income tax check rebate thingie came in today so I sent him $300 since we claim him in our taxes.

The lady at the tax office said it was better to let us claim him then give him some money so that we we can get the tax credit on our income tax. It worked out really good. Dad said he is going to use the money to make it back home from California. He said he was hoping the gas will go down but I told him not to count on it. He was going to wait till July but I think he wants to come back sooner.

Got to do chores
Sam

April 23, 2008

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

Experiment gone wrong

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

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Spring Garden-Burn baby burn

The First picture 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

Second picture: Tom burning the Grass -He's new toy-It wont die! Also killed some fire ants boo hooAfter 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