The Hills Are Alive...

Once I got all the tomatoes, peppers, corn and beans planted, I started phase II.  That consisted of straightneck and crookneck yellow squash and zucchini.  Those seedlings were started in hills in the garden as soon as they put their first true leaves on.  Then I planted some other items that we transplanted.  I'll show you those today.  In the seed trays on the back patio, I started two varieties of cucumbers - Suyo Long Cucumbers and Boston pickling cucumbers.

What we'll focus on today are some of the vegetables in the photo below that we'll be transplanting:

• Butternut Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Green-striped Cushaw Squash
• Tahitian Melon Squash
• Georgia Candied Roaster Squash
• Moon and Stars Watermelon  

These plants were all started from seeds and the germination was fantastic - even the Moon & Stars Watermelon seeds which were saved from back in 2012 all popped up.

Spaghetti Squash

To give these seedlings a good head start, I dug holes and lined them with some biochar we made.  The photo below shows a big tub that we made last year.  It consists of homemade charcoal mixed with cow manure, hay and shredded paper.  This was put into a tumbler and tumbled over a year.  The bacteria in the cow manure inoculated all the microscopic holes in the charcoal.  Now all this will go into the soil and will give the soil fertility to assist in growing healthy vegetables.   

Here is a hill of spaghetti squash.  It was time that they get put in the ground.  The leaves were just starting to turn a bit yellow.  It will green up in no time now that the roots are in the soil.

In the very back of the garden I have a huge pile of wood chips that we use in our Back to Eden Gardening method.  We had 24 truck loads in all delivered to the house - for free!  I kept hauling it to the garden by wagon-load and stacking it high.  We compost directly into the wood chips.  There is one downside.  The hill has taken away some space that was formerly planted.

But then again, as I thought about it, I can still grow veggies on the hill.  I planted all of the squash and melons around the perimeter of the hill.  As all of the squash and melons listed in the bullet points in the second paragraph above begin to grow, they'll vine over the hill.  The brown hill of wood chips will be transformed into a productive green hill of squash and melons. That's a good use of square footage in the garden that might otherwise been fallow.

After the rain passes...

It has been pretty dry for the last month and our pasture really needed a rain.  As far as the garden, you can pull the garden hose out and give the plants a drink of water (rainwater is better), but you just can't do that to the pasture.  You quickly realize how dependent you are on things outside your control.  When the grass in the pasture doesn't grow, you start straining a bit for the cows.  We have hay and we can obviously buy some feed, but fresh green grass is best.

So when it clouded up and rained, we were all happy, animals, grass, and plants included.  It rained an inch, but you'd never know it, because the ground drank it all up quickly.  You could almost watch things begin to grow with the refreshing rain.  I like to step outside right after a rain and enjoy the smell.  You know the smell I'm talking about?  The thing you are smelling, I learned, is ozone, oils from plants, and bacteria.  It's just fresh and clean smelling to me.

The concrete is slick with a recent rain

So let's go check things out in the garden.  The sugar snap peas are producing big time right now.  Yesterday I picked a colander full of them an sauteed them just slightly in butter and kosher salt.  Then I added a dash or three of Criolla Sella ground pepper. It was like eating candy for lunch.  Look at all the pods that are growing!

Sugar snap Peas

The rain drops were beaded up on the leaves of the sugar snap peas.  Quite a sight!

Raindrops...

We'll step a few rows over but stay in the legume family and check out some Roma Italian beans.  They are blooming and putting on pods now.

Roma Italian Beans

Same thing can be said of the Contender green beans.  I think next week we'll likely be harvesting potatoes. We absolutely love to eat fresh green beans cooked with some new potatoes.

Contender Green Beans

The tomatoes are all blooming as well. I'm hoping that this rain will really make the tomatoes grow quickly. As it heats up in the summer, the fruit doesn't set and more troublesome, the stink bugs arrive.  We want to harvest as many tomatoes as possible before the heat and stink bugs begin taking a toll on the harvest.  This year we're aiming to can a bunch of tomatoes, tomato sauce, and salsa.

A big tomato bloom

Speaking of tomatoes, here's the first Black Krim tomato!

Setting Fruit - A Black Krim

Here is the squash patch with several types of zucchini and yellow squash.  Once the rain hit them, they grew overnight!  Before you know it, they'll be spread out and there won't be much room to walk when we go to harvest them.  I like steamed squash with butter and sauteed onions.  I also like squash casserole.  Won't be long now...

The Squash Patch

Here is a baby squash that is still green:

And here's one just starting to turn yellow.

The Swiss Chard is still producing well.  It adds some nice color to the garden.

Swiss Chard

And finally as my walk comes to an end I wanted to check out the raised bed that I've got in the yard by the corn.  Everything in this box is some type of squash or melon. I'm going to let them run in the yard and I'll lay down some blue tarps for them to run on.  Along the top I have some Jubilee Watermelons.  On the far left side is a Charentais Melon, then coming down the front from left to right I have Cantaloupes, Spaghetti Squash and Butternut Squash.  Finally on the bottom right is an Orange flesh Honeydew melon.

Raised Bed of melons & squash

The rain really refreshed man, beast and animals alike and it was nice to not have to drag the water hose around today.  The best part about it is we'll be harvesting plenty of wholesome, healthy, and delicious fresh vegetables real soon.