Lil's Garden

We're seeing some hopeful signs in the garden. We harvested a couple of beets from the little garden. The potatoes have shown up. Our Crawford Lettuce is coming along. The sugar snap peas are blooming now and should be producing in a week or so. A few of the tomatoes are blooming. We also have a little spinach among the onions. The cabbages given to me by my neighbor, Sharon Binsell, are doing ok. Although I do have some weeding to do.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:  yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Matthew 6:28-9 Robert and I went for a Sabbath walk this afternoon. After three rainy days and almost three inches of rain, we found quite a few things blossoming...some in the garden and some in the fields. Robert captured some of them with his camera. The poppy that just came up in the little garden of its own accord was the first one that caught my eye. But the poppy had caught the eye of a little bee before I saw it. April Strickland at the Indian Springs Middle School garden in Waco, Texas, had given me a few surplus tulip bulbs which I planted around the little garden. The first one to show up was a yellow one. This little red sweet pea was the first one to bloom. I hope this rain spurs them all on. They smell so sweet. My mother often had grew sweet peas along our ...

I got some wonderful tomato seeds from David's Seeds in San Antonio — ten different varieties.  With youtube guidance, I started the seeds under my new grow lights. I had great success — almost 98% germination rate. The next move was to be into the garden. Here's where I failed to follow my thus far dependable youtube advice. Between seed starting and planting in the garden the seeds should have been transplanted to larger pots, hardened off outside for a few weeks, and then planted. The plants looked so strong and healthy that I skipped those steps. They went straight into the garden, and into a windstorm which beat them up ferociously. I lost more than half of the plants. It was a sad lesson to learn.  Luckily, I had repotted a few plants, and they are hardening outside. After the next bout of rains, I will move them to garden, hopefully, with more success. I have repotted about 50 lavender plants, also grown from seed, and they will soon spending s...

Last year we acquired a BCS walk-behind tractor, an Earthway seeder, a 1949 Ford 8N tractor, and a greenhouse, and we are trying to put them to good use. Last spring we created eight eighty-foot beds and grew potatoes, onions, sunflowers, beans, watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, eggplants, okra, tomatoes,  jalapenos, other peppers, Swiss chard, asparagus, cucumbers, figs, and corn. Our fall garden was enjoyed by the deer mostly. We have begun again this spring, creating 20 beds, and making an effort to grow our starts from seeds. Depending on how successful our efforts turn out to be, we would like to invite others to join us in the garden whenever that becomes possible. I will be letting everyone know what is ready to be harvested. You will be welcome to come and pick what you need at a socially appropriate distance. If you have any seeds, cuttings, fruit trees, berry vines, gardening equipment, compost, expertise in restoring old tractors, time to weed or seed, or advic...