Crooked Creek Farm

Russian Sage Wreath

Last Thursday, I trimmed the Russian Sage in the Bible Garden. I used the trimmings to make a wreath. It smells sooooo wonderful! This picture was taken right after I hung it on the wall.

And here's a pic I just took. It still looks good, even though it is drying out. And it still smells wonderful.

Plum Granny Melons

Sunday at church a lady gave us some yellow squash, as well as what she called  pomegranates. The pomegranates that I knew were the red ones, so of course I had to look this up.  

Here's a picture of what she gave us:

They are Plum Granny Melons, also known as vine pomegranates. If you visit the link, you have to scroll down. They smell incredible! We ate a couple Sunday night, and thought they tasted like a mild canteloupe. We found it funny that in the Victorian era, people used to carry these in there pockets to mask body odor. lol I saved the seeds, so we can plant some next year.

We'd never seen any of these before, so I thought I'd share.

Growing and Harvesting Lavender

I have been trying for several years to grow lavender. I've been growing from seed, without much luck. I acutally have a couple of seedlings that are doing pretty well now. They are about 2 inches tall. I have bought lavender from seed companies, only to have them die. Last year I bought a plant from Walmart. I grew quite large, but didn't bloom. But now......it is blooming!! I am sooooo excited! Lavender is my favorite scent for EVERYTHING! I even have lavender essential oil that I put in my homemade cleaners. lol  I was looking up how to harvest and store the lavender,  and thought I'd share some links.

About.Com

ehow.com

Lots of info about growing from seeds, cuttings, and varieties

Cabbage, Cantelope and Chickens...

Tonight we found cabbage worms on the cabbage and broccoli. sigh.... So I mixed up 1 part salt to 2 parts flour and we sprinkled that on the plants. The worms eat this, bloat up and die. I've read that you can also use self rising flour, but I don't use that, so I mixed up the other. Hopefully this works. The cabbages were really looking good! We don't have any flowerettes on the broccoli yet, but the plants are looking really good. So hopefully this will help keep the worms from destroying all our plants.

Now, for the cantelope and chickens....

We have a few (5 or 6 ) chickens out of 36 that keep getting out of the pen. When we walked over to check on the chicken garden last night, we caught a couple of chickens in there next to the cantelopes. The chicken garden is next to the chicken pen. That's why it's call the chicken garden. lol Anyway. D said "maybe that's why we don't have any insects in this garden, the chickens are eating them." To which I replied "As long as they don't eat the cantelopes" Well, guess what? When we got close enough to see, there was a chicken eating a cantelope! I'd say this cantelope was bigger than a ping pong ball, and the chicken ate it! grrrrrr! We found the remains of another partially eaten cantelope also! grrrrr!  Lucky for the rotten teenage hens that they will be giving us eggs soon, or they would hve ended up in the pot! Guess we're going to have to cover the pen with something to keep them in. D clipped all 30 of the teenagers wings (one wing on each chicken) But we consistently have 5 or 6 out everyday.

They better leave our garden alone, or eggs or no eggs, they just might end being our dinner!

Blooms in our front yard

Gladioulis in the front yard.

Our butterfly bush.

The bees are loving it. I haven't seen any butterflies or hummingbirds yet.

Our Mimosa Tree

We planted this Mimosa tree 3 or 4 years ago, with branches that a friend gave us. Just stick the branches in the ground, and they grow. Last week, we found blossoms on it! This is the first year it has bloomed and we are so happy!

Abigail pointing to the flowers.

Aren't they pretty?

The Bible Garden

Rose...

Delphinium...

Delephinium close up...

And the whole Bible Garden..

You can see the Delphinium flower spike to the right of the wagon wheel. And the large rose above is in front of the Delphinium. There's lots more in this garden, but you can't see it because of the shadows. I took this pic in the evening. I'll get a better one soon!

pics taken 6-12-06

Radish and Snow Peas

Our first picking of Snow Peas, and our first radish on May 30th. We've had many more snow peas now. But none have made it into the freezer! Hopefully, with the fall planting we'll get some in the freezer to enjoy this winter. We have succession planted the radishes, so keep getting lots from the same small row.

Grandpa's Garden Tools

D's Father recently gave D permission to use HIS Father's garden tools. That' would be D's Grandfather.

Calen using the wheel hoe and Hannah using the cultivator to get the Front Garden ready to plant. They liked using the tools that belonged to their Great Grandfather.

D using the wheelhoe in the Garden of Mystery, getting ready to plant corn.

D using the corn planter. He didn't have to do anything to it to get it to work. You'd think after all these years, that the parts would have frozen up. But it works great!

Hannah and D back in the Front Garden planting corn. Grandpa's sitting on his lawn mower watching. He enjoyed watching the tools being used. He said he remembered watching his Father use them.

May 27, 2006

Planting Cucumbers

Abigail and Zachary doing their part to help plant the garden. LOL I have a really cute video of them actually getting the fence to the garden. As soon as I figure out how to get it on here, I will post it.

D and Calen planting cucumbers, after putting up the fence that Abigail and Zachary brought over. This is in the Chicken Garden. The chicken pen is behind the guys.

Dining Room Greenhouse Revisited

Here are a couple of pics of the dining room right before we moved all the plants out to the garden. You can see the newspaper pots that we made after learning about them on someone elses Homestead Blogger blog. I really liked them, and plan on doing this again next year.

We really started to feel like we were eating in a jungle. lol The Passion Flowers were so big that the kept trying to grow onto the light fixture. And that was after wrapping them around and around the stakes in the pots. The are now outside in the Bible Garden.

You'll notice by the date that I am very behind with my posting. I hope to catch up soon! :)

Hawthorn Tree?

We have a tree in our yard, that we're trying to identify. The closest I can come is a Hawthorn Tree. Does anyone know if this is, in fact, a Hawthorn?

The blossoms: the buds are small, tight, and round. The blossoms look like wild roses.

The thorns:

Here's a link to a description.  There is no picture, though. Our Kentucky tree book has a pic of a hawthorn, but not this species. So we're not 100 percent postive that's what it is. This tree has never blossomed before. Wouldn't it be cool to have some Haws? I guess that depends on whether they are sweet or bitter. lol

Pinto Beans

We had pinto beans growing in our Diningroom Greenhouse Here is a pic of some of the pods and beans. We ended up with a total of 21 beans. 21 beans, not pods. lol The kids said I should make 21 bean soup. roflol  "Maybe you should make biscuits, too, Mom" lol

So you can grow pinto beans in the house, but you won't get very many!

The Side Garden and the Bible Garden

Last night, we spread some leftover black plastic in the Side Garden (on one end of the house) Tonight we spread hay on top for a mulch.  This garden doesn't have very much stuff in it yet. 2 evergreen trees, I forget what kind lol, that DH transplanted, and a row of irisis that he also transplanted. Oh, and the lovely a/c unit. lol But it does look a lot better mulched with hay with some rocks along the edge.

Tonight I also spread hay in the Bible Garden as a mulch. It looks soooooo much better now! I can't wait until later in the season, when the plants are big and blooming. The Bible Garden is on the end of the house where we pull up into the driveway so it really shows.

I also had our oldest son build me a bench, and they got that put up in front of the Bible Garden. It's just a log cut in half for the sit, with 2 smaller logs for legs. It looks great!

Pics coming, as soon as it stops raining!

Shadey Acres

That's the name the kids and I voted on for the new garden in front of the house. And nope, it it doesn't involve any acres. lol But it only gets about 2 hours of morning sun, and the rest of the time is shaded.

Last week, I moved  5 Hostas from the Bible Garden, that were there before it became the Bible Garden. To the front  of the house, which hasn't had any plantings since we moved in. Tonight I moved 3 more. That leaves one Hosta in the Bible Garden to be moved to the front after we put the porch in. So now there are 8 Hostas in front of the house.  Just sticking up out of the grass. lol  As soon as I get to it, I will lay newspaper down and mulch with hay.

So we have a start on Shadey Acres Garden.

Front Garden, Bible Garden and Compost

This afternoon, I cleaned out the front bulb garden. 2 different kinds of daffodils are blooming, and several other blubs are coming up. I took out the leaves and hay that I had put on the bed for the winter, and pulled a few weeds.

In the Bible Garden, I pulled weeds, and checked on flowers coming up.  The yarrow is getting bigger, and spreading.  The hostas (which will be moved, as they don't belong in a Bible garden) are starting to come up. Need to get those moved soon! Some Delphiniums and Geraniums are coming up.  The rose bushes are leaving out.

I took all the leaves, hay, and weeds that Ipulled, along with a bucket of scraps from the house to the compost pile, added it, and turned it.

Dining Room Greenhouse

We have growing:

3 Passion Flowers, the 3 pots on the left. They will go outside this summer, in the Bible Garden.

The 2 flat trays have 3 kinds of tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, and green peppers.

Pinto beans in the pot on the right side. Yeah, I know, not something most people grow indoors. lol But 4 kids had made Ida Bean dolls, and one broke open, so they decided it would be fun to plant the beans in mom's plants. lol We were surprised to actually get beans on them!  Guess we'll have to eat them now. lol  Or have the kids do another craft project! lol

Potatoes and Peas

We are trying a few new things this year for growing potatoes. We haven't had much luck growing potatoes in this Kentucky clay.  The first change, was to plant them today, like my Grandmother used to do.   My DH has talked to several people around here, that grow their potatoes in straw.  So that's the other change.

Yesterday, the kids and I worked in the garden. First, I raked back all the hay that we had put in the garden when we cleaned out the barn (last year) the soil underneath looked AWESOME! So we smoothed out the old hay, and layed down a new layer of straw. Then we got SEVERAL wheelbarrow loads of some great looking soil that had been part of an old compost pile in an old cow pasture (on the property when we moved here) We spread that out over the straw, until we couldn't see the straw.

After we finished that, we decided that we'd gone soft over the winter! We're out of practice doing farm chores! We're acutally not sore today! But my hands do hurt. No raised blisters, just sore red spots. So anyway....

Today, the kids (Calen 11, Hannah 10, Abigail 7, and Zachary 5) spread out 50 pounds of seed potatoes on top of the dirt/straw bed. Then covered it with more straw. Hopefully, we'll have an AWESOME crop of potatoes this year!  Melissa 18, helped yesterday, but had to work today, she just started this week working at a store.  

After the potatoes, we planted 2 rows of snow peas. Yum! Can't wait for those!

Calen decided to take a nap in the wagon!

HELP!

I'm totally insane!! Yesterday, I was clicking around Homesteadbloggers, and found a blog talking about making your own mulch. Well, I left a comment, asking how you do that. Do you think I can remember where I was? NO!!!!  So........If you're that blogger, would you please leave me a comment, and let me know where I was!?!

See, there IS a reason why my personal blog is called "Linda's Lunacy"!   ROFLOL

Today I Started Seeds!

I planted the Roma, Beefsteak, and cherry tomatoes, along with Bell Peppers, cabbage, and broccoli.