Plantin' Season around the Ol' Homestead

Plantin' Season is in full swing in these parts of the country.  The local farmers have already put out the baby tomato plants. Local nurseries and the Co-op have veggie plants and more for sale.

Local people are weeding, hoeing, tilling, planting, and more... us included.

We've been weeding and cleaning out the herb bed in preparation of planting a few new herb plants. Pulling out dead plants, get other plants to start rootings so I can make transplants come fall. The chives are in bloom with delicate purple ball blooms. The lavender is gorgeous in it's purple finery. The varieties of sage, the thyme, and the rosemary smells heavenly. The pink blooms of the soapwort are gorgeous. I saw rose buds peeking out and gaillardia (Indian Blanket) showing startings of blooms. The chamomile is almost ready for production. Little sprouts of cilantro can be seen as well as dill. The sorrell is doing really good... just have to watch the children as they love to nibble on it like little rabbits. lol  The lemon balm, rue, and lemon verbena are doing nicely as is the peppermint. All my other mints died in the heat wave we had two years ago and I was hoping they would come back last year they didn't. So now I need to replace those as I liked using them for teas... chocolate mint, pineapple mint, spearmint, grapefruit mint, and a few others.  The chocolate mint tasted like a peppermint patty.  I think the parsley needs to be replaced this year as well as I couldn't find it in it's normal spot. 

The raised beds are being cleaned up in preparation of getting new plants in them.

The strawberry bed needs to be revitalized and the runners need to be took care of.

The little cherry trees I planted about 2 years ago are looking good. I noticed little green cherries on the two trees at the neighbors. Their cherries are sour cherries and they give them to us to pick every year along with pears from their pear tree.

The grape arbors will need to be put in place this year for the 24  Concord grape vines. We got a few grapes off them last year and I hope we get more this year. That reminds me... the Muscadines that are down the road at the edge of a farmer's friend's big tomato field will be ripening about last part of June or mid-July. He lets us pick them and boy are they good!  Oooh, thoughts of wild blackberries just peaked itself. We pick wild blackberries from a neighbor's field and along the roads were we live. Delicious cobblers, buckles,  and pies are to be had from these. I freeze the majority of them for later use.

The two little blueberry bushes I planted shortly after we moved here are doing wonderfully. Not sure we will get any berries from them this year, but we are watching them We can pick wild huckleberries from bushes from our property and a few spots along the road we live on too.

Our Rhubarb and asparagus plants are doing good... not too much longer and I can harvest a few and the turnips too (we use mainly the greens more than the tubers).

The children planted another horseradish root in the smallest raised bed early today. It's used just for horseradish.  There's a raised bed for the rhubarb and another for the asparagus to keep those from going nuts on us. The Rhubarb can do like mints and take over everything.

Oldest dd planted some flower seeds this morning in the bed near the sidewalk and I can't wait to see that area all prettied up with blooms.

The main garden has garlic in it in two rows that we've wintered over twice now.  It looks so pretty.   We currently have 5 rows of bush beans planted as well as 1 row of okra in addition to the garlic.  We need to finish preparing a more rows so we can put in tomato plants, radishes, and a few other things.

We also need to finish cleaning up the remaining 6 raised beds to put in zucchini, squash, pumpkins, watermelons, and cucumbers. I like these to be in the raised beds as they are viney plants and can be trained to climb better in the beds than in the main garden were we need to walk between the rows to weed. Weeding is not one of my favorite things to do. lol