First Tomatoes of the Season

Today we harvested a few more blueberries, so now we are at about 1 3/4 pounds from our two blueberry bushes for the season so far. I was excited to harvest our first tomatoes of the season! They came from my Gartenperle tomato plant that I have in a hanging basket on the back patio. So far I have 5 gorgeous looking red ~1" diameter tomatoes.

Frenching Green Beans

This year for Julia's birthday, one of the things the kids and I got her was a bean frencher. This past weekend we were able to try it out on some homegrown and local farmer's market green beans. The kids were very happy to help out, and Julia was amazed at how easy it was. It is a simple mechanism that slices up the green beans as you put them in from the top and turn the crank, very much like the old school pencil sharpeners that used to be on walls of classrooms.

It was a huge hit! The kids love eating french cut beans, and quickly ate every one we put on their plates. Now Julia is itching to get a pressure canner, so we can start canning our own french cut green beans, now that we'll also have more space to grow a larger quantity of green beans.

Blueberry Season is Here!

Today we harvested our first blueberries from our two blueberry bushes we have in the yard! The kids were very excited, they had been following the progress of the berries all spring, seeing how they were little green balls, then slowly darkening as they grew. So this morning we (the kids, while I telecommuted from our yard that is) picked 3.64 oz of blueberries. I am thinking that we may expand and get maybe two more bushes next spring, as we will finally have more space. We harvested just over 2 pounds last year from these bushes, and so hopefully we will harvest a bit more now that they are three year old plants this year, but with an additional two, we may be able to grow all the blueberries we eat for the year. We are finally going to move into a house that has a yard, I'll tell you more about that later, but what that means is that I am going to get to restart my garden, but also expand it.

New Raised Beds

Here are pictures of the "Homestead".

Green Beans on the Berm

May 11th

The Klein Box

 I was given the gift of a raised bed from a friend who had extra wood, and so I decided to go ahead and make myself another one I had been playing with adding as well.  So now I have space that I didn’t originally think I would have back when I was starting seeds, there are plants I want to grow now (and have seeds for), but was afraid that it was too late, but with talking with Julia and seeing a post from Chiot's Run has encouraged me to go ahead and try. And it may work out for the best as are going tob be busy during high harvest time, so this may delay the harvest just perfectly (hadn’t thought about that aspect).