Planting a Forest

The kids got baby pine trees from school for Arbor Day. We only have less than an acre of land, so we planted them at Grandpa and Grandma's who have almost 10 acres.

Emi's tree

Andy's tree

Planting Will's tree

Planting Sarah's tree

Emi with the tree she got last year

Me standing in front of a tree that started out the same size as the ones the kids got when I was their age!

The Garden is IN!

Dan tilled the garden on Wednesday and I planted the plants on Thursday.  I still have to plant some seeds, but I wanted to start with the plants we had first.

Before being tilled!

After being tilled.  A nice blank slate! 

We have the following plants that came from seeds from last year's plants:

• Cantaloupe
• Bell Pepper
• Roma tomato

We have the following plants that came from produce we bought or were given:

• Jack-o-lanterns
• Red Seed watermelon (a Native American plant)
• Mini Pumpkins
• Bell Peppers in red, orange, and yellow
• Regular tomatoes (not sure what variety)

We bought the following plants:

• Watermelon (ours got eaten by a chipmunk!)
• Yellow Squash
• Zucchini
• Grape Tomatoes 
• Cuccumbers

We will plant the following seeds from last year's plants

• Native American beans

We will plant the following from produce we were given

• Black Sweet corn

We bought seeds to plant for the following

• Carrots
• Sweet Corn

Hopefully they all grow and give us produce!

Garden Update

I thought I'd share how my "garden" was doing.

A Start to the Garden

I got a late start on planting our seeds.  But I figured since we still had snow into the middle of April, it would probably be a slow start to when we'd be able to put the plants into the ground.  I only had a refill pack of soil pellets (which I don't really like, but it's what I had) so I planted what I could and then picked up bigger pots and soil.

I forgot to take pictures before I transplanted the plants to bigger pots.  But here they are in the bigger pots.  We also replanted some pepper seeds that didn't grow the first time and more pumpkins, watermelons, and cantaloupe.

Grow Little Tree, Grow

Emily brought home a little Blue Spruce sapling from school.  We thought about planting it in our backyard, but since we only have about 1/2 an acre, we asked if we could plant it in my parents' yard instead since they have almost 10 acres.

It will be fun to track their growth over the years!

And the Garden Is In!

I took pictures of my garden all last summer, and never posted ANY pictures!  So I want to be sure to post them this year!  My rototiller has been out of commission the last 2 years.  The first year, I planted a couple tomato plants and a couple pepper plants.  Last year, I still wanted a full garden, so I hand turned it all (in 80°+ temperatures!).  This year, we found out a friend from church would be able to fix it, so we hired him to do it and he had it fixed in 2 hours!  Dan tilled the dirt this afternoon and the boys and I planted the plants after dinner.

The garden area after we burnt the branches that were piled on it

Dan tilling the soil

We rescued a toad from the tiller

All done ☺

Bed 1, front to back: Blank area for the kids to dig in, cucumbers, heritage seeds from reenactment, watermelon

Bed 2, front to back: carrots, beans, yellow squash, corn, cantelope, sunflowers

Bed 3, front to back: tomatoes, bell peppers, pumpkin, onions, potatoes, zuchini

My sprinkler has some issues!

Knee High by the Fourth of July

Well, not quite!

Unless you are 2 years old!

Andy checking out the corn

My letuce is growing (and so are the weeds, time to get out there and weed again!)

What I thought was a yellow bell pepper is actually a chile pepper!