This Years Garden

This year, Shusli and I got our garden in late. We got a good amount of produce out of it, but no where near as much as we could have. We also produced this mini-melon. It wasn't supposed to be a mini-melon, but there you go. It was tasty and the chickens loved it, but it was the only one that grew.

Our corn failed because we planted to late I believe, and it got but infested. What we did get we passed on to our chickens.

We got lots of tomatoes, green beans, and chard. Some zucchini and other squash, and one pumpkin. We got about 80 pounds of grapes from our grape vines and made juice (the best grape juice I ever had) from it all.

Our apples didn't do well, but at least we no know we have an apple tree. Last year it didn't even flower. This year we didn't see it flower, but we suddenly had fruit. There is some sort of worm infestation and I have to clean it up come this winter when the poor thing is dormant.

Our chickens have slowed down in their laying. They are only a year and a half old. We are thinking of getting more next year and even some eating chickens.

RECENT ACTIVITY

I built this rain catchment system under Shusli's suggestion. We bought 7 barrels in early summer, but I was thinking you'd need a Ph.D. to figure out how to make something work like she wanted. I finally got off my ass and watched a couple of videos and found it to be rather easy. Took a weekend and about 8 hours altogether, including trips back and forth to Home Depot.

I also built a compost bin of pallets with 3 sections. We keep it in our chicken camp.

I also tore apart the area in back around our lilac's. I removed a bush I had no idea what it was, then cleared out all of the blackberries and such to find we also have a volunteer hazel nut tree back there. The nuts are bitter so we are thinking of cutting it down and planting two others besides the lilacs.

I will be working on tearing about the side yard and possibly grinding stumps so we can make a nice little area over there that Shusli has some good ideas for.

I tore apart our garden and planted cover crop seeds last week. We'll see what happens. We never did anything like that before.

GRAPES

We had a good year for grapes, about 80#'s. We then went wine tasting and found out there are better ways of growing the things that we are going to attempt next year.