Inch by inch…

What’s growing at Morning Star Meadows?  Our garden gets bigger each year!  

Now that the sheep have all lambed, it’s time to get down to business with the garden!  We snuck in some onions in between lambings.  They’re coming along nicely…red, yellow and sweet.  To the right of them is a row of broccoli-rabe and a row of sweet peppers:

For the first time, our rhubarb actually made it through the winter and is getting established!

When we moved in, we were gifted with a cutting from an 80 year old grape vine from RI.  It’s an eating grape – last year it produced it’s first fruits – one grape cluster!  I think it amounted to one grape per family member!  Looking at it now, I think we may end up getting a bit more this year:

We put the potatoes in, thankfully, before it got horribly wet.  Many farmers weren’t as lucky and have had a hard time trying to get them planted in the wet weather.  They’re starting to burst through the soil.

Here’s a little row of red beets starting…

Patty pan squash:

Green beans:

Snow peas:

Lettuce:

Spinach:

And the strawberries are going to be plentiful soon!

here’s the patch…

And a closeup to see that the berries are already forming…

Yesterday we finally got our tomato plants in.  These are gorgeous heirloom varieties that we obtained from Studio Farm/Stonyledge Farm’s stock.  The Learned’s and Wingate’s do a tremendous job with their seedlings (as well as with everything else they do on their farms!)  This year we’re trying something that we learned from them for supporting the tomato vines.  In the past we’ve tried tomato towers, but the winds are so strong here, that inevitably we’d end up with one or more blown down after most storms.  We’ve resorted to putting T posts in to keep the towers up.  It was just getting ridiculous.  SO – 101 uses for sheep and goat fence…We ran a length of sheep and goat woven wire fencing through some T posts, hooked it on to the posts, then planted, staggered on either side of the fence, all of the tomato plants.  Now, as the plants grow, we just tuck the stems into the fence, weaving them in to allow them to be supported by the fence.  Ideally we won’t even have to do any tying!  The Learned’s and Wingate’s use cattle panel to achieve the same effect.  By the way, you can see how many weeds are already filling up the space we tilled a few weeks back!

All of the herbs this year are planted up near the house, where herbs should be, finally.  In the past it would always be a bit of a chore to walk back down to the garden (after weeding and picking all morning) to grab a bit of basil or parsley for dinner.  Now we’ll just have to step off the porch!  We have established as perennials thyme, oregano, lavender, rosemary, sage, and tarragon.  And now we’ve planted cilantro, parsley, and our biggest crop of basil EVER!  We just can’t get enough pesto around here!

So…what’s left?  Memorial Day weekend (AFTER shearing, hoof trimming, vaccinating, etc.) will find us planting zucchini, cucumber, enormous butternut squash, watermelon, and canteloupe.  And when it gets a bit warmer we’ll put in the sweet corn and sweet potatoes.  I just hope there’s enough room in there by then!