I believe the garden was waiting for me to leave for a few days to start growing. Everything has exploded in the last few days.
The baby chicks are getting big. I love when one of the older hens comes over and you can tell it is trying to teach the young ones how to forage. I haven't caught it on film but I will keep trying.
George and the older girls are still just looking for treats.
Here are the bee hives and I am finally getting getting wildflowers growing on this part of the hill. Only the 2 hives on the left have bees. The other frames are just being staged there till I need to put them on the hives.
I am growing potatoes under netting to see if it will keep the potato beetles off of them. It is full of sunflower sprouts due to feeding the chickens there so they would scratch out the weeds before I planted. I will pull them before I hill them up again and feed them to the chickens.
The hazelnuts are doing well. This one is the happiest of the bunch.
The grass is really trying to take over. My angelica is thriving, the asparagus has survived the deer trampling and I am not sure if the peach tree will make it. It is just starting to leaf out and only on part of the tree. The other peach tree is in similar shape.
My lovage. It took me 3 years of trying to get this established and it is thriving. I use it to flavor soups and stews since I can't eat celery. There is also strawberry, blueberries, and milkweed in this photo.
Here is part of the annual garden beds. I now behind in getting them planted. The peppers, tomatillos, and eggplant are in for the season and I have 2/3 of the tomatoes in these beds. Garlic is in the background.
Several of the raspberries are setting buds and my husband is super excited.
The Jostaberries look like they are going to take off this year. They were struggling last year.
Hopefully this bed of wood chips will give us wine cap mushrooms this fall. We are hoping to spread them throughout the garden once we get them established.
I only have 2 thornless blackberries so we are trying to tip root this one so can expand the berry patch.
This year's attempt at establishing an asparagus patch is much better than the last 2 attempts. Hopefully the deer won't trample this batch.
Something is trying to dig out my seedlings. Luckily I have extra tomato seedlings to fill in with. My husband is working on figuring out what it is and how it is getting into the garden.
This lilac was from a shrub that was being ripped out to make a community garden to grow veggies for a local soup kitchen. Both the lilac and the garden are thriving. I am hoping the lilac will flower next year.
I hope I planted enough pepper plants. These are mostly sweet peppers and jalapenos.
The garlic is looking really happy. This is the 2nd season I have been saving my own garlic. It is a hard neck variety called Music. I am looking forward to scapes.
I am experimenting with using cattle panels to support my bigger tomatoes. I have Upstate Oxheart planted along this fence. The fruits easily weigh 1 to 3 pounds each and love the flavor of these tomatoes. They do tend to pull down weaker supports so I am hoping this works.
http://hudsonvalleyseed.com/vegetables/tomatoes/upstate-oxheart-tomato.html
These Irises were a gift from a friend last year. They were a thank you for helping her with her first veggie garden. Irises are one of my favorite flowers.
My thyme and sage are flowering already. Unfortunately our local bee populations were hit really hard this past winter and I am not seeing all the native bees this year.
This is my oldest patch of waling onions. I will be spreading the bulblets throughout my perennial plantings this fall.
I have named this oregano Godzilla. It is about 3 feet in diameter and the number one favorite pollinator flower when it is blooming. I never see less then 8 different kinds of pollinators on it. I will be harvesting and drying the oregano to make it bloom latter and need to divide it and replant it on the hill.
Here is a very happy sage, comfrey, and sour pie cherry. I will cut the comfrey down once the blooms start to die. The bumble bees love them and there are not many of them this year.
One of my high bush cranberry is blooming for the first time. I love how pretty this shrub is.
Last year I grew some multiplier potato onions. I replanted them this spring. They are so much easier than starting onions from seed.
My rhubarb is determined to flower this year.
It looks like I won't need to buy bunching onion seed next year.
Blueberries
We were going to get a pond liner this year till we had to get the well pump and pressure tank replaced. So it will be a wildflower garden this year.
One of the strawberry beds. These are ever bearing we are working on getting as much of the grass mulched as possible to slow the weeds downs and reduce watering. We are on a windy hill with sandy soil that drains too well so we mulch.
This is a male hardy Kiwi. The 2 females are not doing well. Hopefully they will make it but they need warmer conditions to get established than we had this spring. Frost killed the sprouting leaves twice since I planted them.
I should have a lot of strawberries in a few weeks. My June bearing strawberries are very happy this year. There are some walking onions, comfrey, daffodils, and irises in this bed too.
This comfrey is 4 feet tall and covered in blooms.
I love that all of this is in my front yard.
I need to thin out the California Poppies and Boston Buttons. I have more flowers I replace them with. This berm full of flowers is my favorite part of the garden.
Peas, carrots, parsnips, and diakon radish. Unfortunately the flea beetles are hitting the diakon pretty hard. They also wiped out my early bock choi seedlings.
My dwarf cherry tomatoes are finally starting to set flowers. I was hoping to get tomatoes by mid June but it doesn't look like I will be that lucky.
The kitchen garden is coming along nicely. I have various herbs, snap peas, bush beans, and spinach growing here this year.
One of my grapes is setting flowers this year. I am hoping I get fruit this year.
I still have a ton of planting to do so I will post more when that is done.
