Bells of the North Homestead

You know one of the things I love MOST when going away, even for the smallest vacation, is coming back and finding SURPRISES. That is something really rather endearing about our very modest garden.  We can leave for even a very small time, come back and VOILA. We have new things popping up. This past weekend we escaped to one of our favorite State run campgrounds for a bit of R&R, came back and found this! Ostrich Ferns Barely peeking through the soil. These are Ostrich Ferns which I planted in this area that has barely EVER produced ANYTHING. There are many areas of our yard that have massive handicaps.  This one has massive shade and very poor soil.  We have slowly added things (including manure and compost) here to see what WILL grow in this area. Most plants have died, failed to thrive or just simply didn't grow at all. Well lo and behold we have found Ostrich Ferns will grow here.  Now the really great bit about Ostrich Ferns. ...

This weekend I decided to bite the bullet and tear out our lovely, beautiful lone tomatillo plant.  If you remember right I posted earlier that I made the rookie mistake of only planting one tomatillo plant.  You know, the old saying, it takes two to tango? Well that applies here. Tomatillo plants are self infertile which means they need two plants to produce fruit.  Since I only planted one plant the tomatillo was going to do nothing else in my garden but draw bees (good thing), take up room (bad thing) and bring shade to my pepper plants (also bad thing).  So, it's gone.  In it's place I planted some Cumin seeds that I hope will come up soon.  Edward and I love cooking with Cumin so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  This will be a new spice for me to grow. I also have one other spice that I will be trying soon but a blog will be following shortly on that to cover that one. So onto the state of the garden.  First we had a...

Last night I planted two varieties of Swiss chard; Fordhook Giant and Organic Red & White. Two varieties of Spinach; Bloomsdale & Renegade Hybrid. I want to also start some seedlings of Arugula but I don't know if I have the room!!! As it stands I need to start my herbs. I have Feverfew that I use to treat headaches and then my cooking herbs to get started. So far the only seeds I have are basil, cilantro and dill. I plan to possibly start some oregano and maybe parsley here soon. Again, all dependent on space. That reminds me I need to set up the timer on the lights we have for the "nursery" for our seedlings. We have 5 seeds coming up. 1 Super Sugar snap, 2 National Pickling Cucumber, 2 White Wonder Cucumbers. The cukes are no suprise. Neither Edward and I are also suprised about the pea. Those are always easy. I noticed yesterday while we were working the soil in the second bed that some arugula was coming up. Too bad I noticed it AFTER pulling i...

LOL Just kidding! We started our seeds today! Only on the plants that will have to grow taller like the tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers, cucumbers, okra, sugar snap peas(3 different varieties), Italian Rose beans, annnnddd I cannot recall what else. I'll see as they come up! By the way this is our improvised growing system/nursery thanks to CWTSatoTravel. This used to be a printer stand for old Sabre printers however our office was getting rid of it and I accepted it! So that being said I think we can share some Italian Rose soup beans, Sugar snap beans, Burgundy Okra, and sweet peppers. I think the sweet peppers are not of the bell pepper variety but I'm not exactly certain. As I said earlier, we'll see as they start to come up and produce.