Full of Compost

This weekend I decided to do something about the compost.  I used it!  We had added red worms and a bunch of enzymes to eat up the scraps faster so we have heaps of the stuff.  It took all day, but I flipped and turned and dug it all up then hilled the potatoes, asparagus, shallots and garlic (I have the farmer's tan to prove it).  Now I just have to work on the other bin!
 

slug problems

So our cabbages are being eaten and we are pretty sure of the culprit... slugs.  It has been so stinkin soggy that they have taken up residence in our cabbage patch.  While searching for organic ways to dispose of the little suckers we found an interesting solution.  Beer.  I like to think that beer solves many things so it is worth a try right?  We took tiny yogurt containers and cut them in half.  Then we filled them with beer and set them right in the cabbage bed and covered the bed with our muslin covers.  guess what?  slugs like beer!  It seems that they love it so much they are willing to drown in it.  We found many little alcoholics floating in the cups and our cabbages are happier for it. 

Apples!

We planted apple trees!  They are oh-so-small, but they are ours and we will love them and squeeze them and call them George... rather, Jonafree, and Liberty.  Here are the little guys. 

The second one is barely visible, but it is there... trust me!

It's Been A While...

This post will demonstrate how fast things get growing once you have gotten everything established.  I took some pictures of the garden in Early May, Mid May and Early June.  You can see that once things heat up for good the garden truly comes to life. 

Early May

herb garden

 shallots











 lettuces and greens

 Asparagus

 strawberries

broccoli and cabbages

 potato patch

black raspberry
















Mid May

herb garden

shallots

 asparagus

 potato patch

black raspberry

strawberries
















Early June

 potato patch

 Peas

shallots

 broccoli and cabbages

 black raspberry

 strawberries

 herb garden












We have also added our tomatoes and some of the peppers to the garden.  We planted the following tomatoes:

Early girl-red
Valencia-orange
Jelly bean-cherry

plus any volunteers that have sprouted out of the compost we could manage to salvage.  We'll call those the mystery tomatoes.  Every garden needs a little mystery, right? 

Not counting the volunteers, we planted 16 tomato plants.  Some are in ground, some in pots, and some in buckets.  Obviously we are not worrying with aesthetics as much as we used to!  I've also made up some tomato cages out of heavy gauge wire that we had in the garage. 

As for peppers... we like them hot.  Jalapenos are this year's focus since we plan to do a lot of pickling.  We also planted some sweet bell and cayenne.  Last year we did habaneros and pickled almost all of them because they were just so stinking hot!  It takes a long time to go through those so we'll grow habaneros every other year.  The peppers are so numerous that they too are spread through the garden and planted in pots on the deck.