Almost Summer

We have had a busy week. We got several bags of turkey poo from Home Depot that we have been tilling into the garden. It's made by a local company, and it seems to have done a lot of good to our soil. We did a soil test, and found out that our dirt has hardly any Nitrogen, and is very alkaline. Most plants like a pH slightly on the acidic side or neutral, so this is not good for our farm. We have been applying peat moss, compost, and poo to amend things. Lots of poo.

We planted our tomatillos, some yellow bell peppers, banana peppers, and jalapenos, and started an English cucumber and a zucchini from seed. They are all covered by walls of water, so they will get a good start before Summer is here.

Right by our south facing fence we put 14 broccoli plants. Kari asked if they were for him, and when told yes, started to water them excitedly. It's one of his favorite things to eat, and he's very happy we have so many this year.

Our tomatoes are growing fast. We took some of the walls of water off because they were outgrowing them.  We also put cages around five of them. I need to make another trip to the store to get more of them so we can have good support for the tomatoes and the tomatillos.

The onions by the tomatoes are doing very well. I might put a few more in the ground, we eat a lot of onion.

I found some praying mantis cocoons at the store, and we tied one of them to a tomato. When they hatch, there will be about 200 or so of them running around. They are good predators to control aphids and other insects that ruin plants. We have had an aphid problem every year, so there should be plenty of food for them. The second one will probably go to the front yard.

I planted most of our flowers today, hopefully there will be no more frost at our house. A permanent place was found for some Wallflowers, poppies, a Geum, some baby's breath, scarlet flax, more nasturtiums, and some more uncommon things like "poor man's weatherglass", and  a couple of geraniums. These will help pollinators find our yard, and hopefully increase our harvest.

We now have some purple basil with all the green ones, and our neighbor gave us a small leafed basil that has a very strong fragrance. Our dill was finally big enough to be planted, and I decided to plant a sage as well. They are fairly invasive, but I'm hoping that since there's only one plant, we can keep up with it so it won't take over the whole back yard.

Last fall we bought two honey suckles, and the other didn't make it through the winter. On Monday I went back to the garden store where we got it, and got a new one that is already making some new growth. It will eventually cover our chain link fence, and give us some privacy from the church we live next to.

So things are going well, and the God of all urban farmers has been good to us. We're hoping that he will  make our harvest bountiful, and that in the meantime our children learn where food comes from, and how much work it takes to make it get to our table.