Let the good times roll!

The Half Acre Farm has really been going to town over the past week and a half! All seeds are in the garden, all tomato and pepper plants from the green house are healthy and could be planted in the garden any day, the blackberry raspberry and strawberry plants all look good, and the chickens are pretty much back on track of laying 1 egg per day! Life is good on the farm! Last Thursday (April 23rd) I planted all the seeds in the garden, I planted radish's, carrots, spinach, egg plant, and okra. Pretty much all of our peas have sprouted and look really good, we have a couple cucumbers that have sprouted, and our beans are starting to sprout as well. Also last Thursday (April 23rd) I put another row of 2x4's on my potato box and another layer of cotton bur.

The Planted Garden (Sorry it was almost dark)

Peas

 

Cucumbers

 

Potato box

The berry patch is coming right along as well. The blackberry and raspberry plants have a lot of leaves on them and even are starting to get a few buds on them too! The strawberries are starting to come up more and more it seems every day and we have our first straw berry bloom! The blueberries are doing good...well the one that has made it is doing good, we're still not sure what happened to the other blue berry plant. We walked out side one day and it was gone, there was no sign of anything digging it up or it a stump where it had broke. The funny thing is, the one that is alive and well, is the plant that Duke dug up! The not so funny thing we are having a hard time finding another blueberry plant like the one we planted.

Strawberry bud

 

The blueberry plant

 

The Green house plants are really doing well and we have started setting them outside for a couple hours per day to start hardening them up for the big transplant in the garden!

 



Gardening!

We have had an extremely busy week this week so I didn't get this posted until now. Nicolle and I have reached a new age in our lives.....we are officially Minivan old.....we have been busy all week minivan shopping and finally picked one out, and get to go pick it up tonight. So I apologize for the late post!

Last Saturday (April 11th) Isla and I decided that it was time to start pulling the straw off the strawberry patch! After doing so I think this will be the last time I use straw to cover my strawberries for the winter. Straw still has seeds, which have started to germinate in my strawberry patch. I hope that when I raked it all off that I have removed all the seeds that have germinated and that will be the end of it, but we will see.

 

When I pulled off the straw I couldn't believe how many strawberry plants were already coming up even with the straw on top!!!

 

 



Then after pulling the straw I decided that it was such a nice day that I might as well not stop there, so I measured off my garden rows, got the tiller out, turned some dirt and planted my green beans and peas that evening! (I used my handy dandy app also that I talked about in a previous post!)

 

I may have had a little helper with laying it all out!

 

On Sunday (April 12th) my Dad came down, and we went and bought a hog panel. I took the hog panel and staked one end down in the garden then staked the other end to the ground with the middle up off the ground like a dome. Then I planted cucumber seeds on each end of the hog panel. My hope is that the cucumber plants will vine up the hog panel and then I can walk under it to pick my cucumbers! Now time to wait and see how long it takes for these bad boys to germinate!



Potatoes, Onions, and a Green House

The weekend turned out to be more of a laid back lazy weekend with me cleaning out the garage and doing some odd and end things around the house. So not a lot happened around the farm this weekend. However, Monday night I started in making some changes! I have really been struggling with my green house keeping it at a steady temp, not drying out the soil, and keeping all the plants that have germinated alive while waiting for the other seeds to germinate. So Monday night I made the decision to pull all the plants out of the green house, by Monday I would say 85%-90% of the seeds had germinated by that time, and my tomato plants were starting to look a little droopy from being in the green house. I set up a table in the sun room, broke down the green house and use some of the pieces to run my lights and placed all the trays under them! So far it is really working out well. I only have 2 tomato, 1 green pepper, and 1 serrano pepper plants that have not germinated as of yet. So far I have had a really good germination rate. When my tomato plants were in the green house I had moved them to the second shelf to get them away from the heat, but it reduced the amount of light they received. When I pulled them out the leaves are a little yellow and a little droopy, at this point there could be 2 scenarios that could be happening 1. they weren't getting enough light on the second shelf, 2. I am over watering them. Given my history with plants I'm going to guess I am over watering them, so moving forward I am going to back off of the water a bit!

 

 

 

The flowers are not doing the best, the Bachelor Buttons are for some reason almost pulling themselves out of the soil. I'm not sure how to explain it, but that's the best way I can describe it. Isla's sweet peas, the moon flowers, and the impatiens are all doing fairly decent right now.

 

Out in the garden we had exciting news! we had our very first potato sprout!!! So mark it down it took exactly 21 days for a sprout to emerge. I'm going top let some more come up first before I put another layer of compost down and another 2x4 row. I went ahead and snapped a picture of the onions because I think they look really good and I wanted to share!

(Potato Sprout)

 



 

The First Flowers

We had our first flower seeds germinate last night, and they are the Bachelor Buttons that Aiden planted! Just about all of them came up yesterday which means if you ever plant bachelor buttons from seed you can pretty much guarantee 4 days until they germinate! Thats about the same amount of time it takes for tomato seeds to germinate as well. We had 2 tomato seeds germinate yesterday out of ten that we replanted as well.

Here are Aidens Bachelor Buttons, and I know its just a matter of time before I hear "When are my Sweet Pea's going to grow Dad?!?"

 

The Half Acre Farm has been pretty dull this week, not a lot going on. Its still a little too early to get seeds planted out in the garden. I am thinking I might plant my peas in the garden this weekend, but we'll see how the weather fairs. There are still no potato sprouts, but the onions seem to be doing really well so far. The sprouts are starting to get tall, and there seems to be more sprouts every day when I go check on them. I hope everyone enjoys their good Friday tomorrow, and if there is nothing new to report tomorrow I want to wish everyone a Happy Easter!