Growing Growing Garden

The garden is moving along beautifully.  We are harvesting a couple tiny sweet strawberries every other day.  I’m picking radishes almost daily as well.  Our daughter loves to eat the peas right off the vine so none have made it back to the kitchen yet.  They go straight from the vine into her mouth.  I love that I don’t have to yell, “STOP!  I have to wash the chemicals off that first!”

I was told that my whole childhood and now I think it sounds disgusting.  I mean, we wont let our kids eat that french fry that drops on the ground, but they can eat fruit sprayed with bug killer, as long as we rinse it first.

Not in my house.  I haven’t gone 100% organic by any means, but I do buy organic when I can, and I grow a lot of my own food organically.  I hope that soon organic food becomes the norm and anything with pesticides is shunned.  We are getting closer.  I have been able to find many organic fruits and vegetables on sale for approximately the same price as non organic ones.  The more that happens the healthier we will all be.

This year I am not going to weigh out my harvest.  I doubt I will have the time or energy to weigh everything with the pregnancy and new baby coming right at the end of harvest season.  I might keep records of how much I preserve, but no promises.  I got most of my transplants and new seeds from the local town hardware and garden store.  They had a beautiful selection of veggie transplants to choose from.  I kept things simple and grabbed a few determinate tomatoes, strawberries, a few herbs, and beans.  Lots of beans, I don’t know what I was thinking planting all those beans.  I have six green bush beans I bought as transplants, then planted 8 purple bean seeds and about 12 yellow bean seeds.  I didn’t expect them all to grow, but they did.  Guess I will be learning to preserve beans this year.

My one “fun plant” is an Italian Tomato Tree.  It’s supposed to grow vines up to 25 ft long and produce three bushels of tomatoes!  I’m planning on growing it along the chain link fence in my backyard.  That way I don’t have to build a massive support for it.

We also have loads of squash, cucumber and zucchini transplants I grew from seed.  If you live in the Sonoma county area and would like a free squash plant send me an email because I have several extras.

The chickens are turning into a brave little horde of bug catchers!  They fly from the coop in the morning without even a glance back at the chicken feed that I am pouring into their bowl.  They are headed for the trees and the feast of bugs and grass that awaits them there.

By evening they have learned to head back to the coop for a safe nights sleep.  Which is a good thing since we have caught a family of raccoons in our backyard every night this week.  Anyone notice the footprints in my garden bed?  Does anyone know what raccoons will do to my veggie garden?  I don’t have much experience with raccoons other than they are mean and steal cat food.