Our Happy Acres

I’m using two different systems of supporting tomatoes here this year. For the majority of the plants I’m using cages I made from 5ft tall concrete reinforcing wire. The cages are all either 22 or 24 inches wide (72 inch or 78 inch diameter). The cost per cage in 2008 was about $5, and they [...]

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I started to add ‘Warts and All’ to the title, since it seems like many of the photos I took indicate weeding or other work is needed. Regardless, here’s what some of the gardens look like as we near mid-June.
The potatoes in the lasagna bed are starting to bloom. The foliage looks good, and so [...]

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I was walking barefoot across our yard the other day and when I got to a patch of clover I slowed down and started walking very carefully because I didn’t want to step on a bee. I wasn’t really concerned about getting stung, I was more concerned about hurting a bee because they are in [...]

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Last week was definitely the week where the strawberry shined. We harvested 8.4 pounds of them, fully half our total harvest for the week. In addition to eating some every day, we started freezing them for later use. They are great in breakfast smoothies, alone or mixed with other fruits. We freeze them much like [...]

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Earlier this year I decided to expand my kitchen garden area using the lasagna technique. No, I’m not talking about using noodles, sauce, and cheese, but rather a quick no-till way to build beds using layers of organic materials. So far the results are pretty impressive to me.
I made one bed that was 4 x [...]

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…three tomato, four! I know that’s not the way the rhyme goes, but that’s the way I have felt in this Week Of Planting Tomatoes.
The tomato planting frenzy started Wednesday, when I planted 200 or so tomatoes in our Master Gardener food pantry garden. We also planted cantaloupes and watermelons that day, which means we [...]

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