Sanctuary Gardener Update ~ 4/28/14

It’s been a busy week here on my homestead. I have all my seed in the ground except for some of my herbs. I’ll be sowing my chamomile and medicinal herbs after work today. My additional culinary herbs will be sown along my front walkway today, too, if I have time. My transplants are adjusting well to the outside world, and much of what I’ve planted is germinating and growing. Come take a look.

HARVESTS:

I have three pots of parsley and a pot of oregano that I transplanted last spring, and they survived the ice-pocalypse this winter. This week, it was time to give them a trim!

Parsley & oregano harvest ~ April 21

I then dried them in my oven and got this:

Dried parsley & oregano

FLOWERING:

My squash has been flowering, but this is my first cantaloupe flower.

Cantaloupe flower

My purple potatoes are starting to flower. Look at this beauty.

Purple potato flower

My yard is full of wildflowers ~ clover, Mock Indian strawberry, wood sorrel, dandelion, and blue-eyed grass. The blue-eyed grass flowers are my favorite. They are so tiny but so beautiful.

Blue-eyed grass flowers

GROWING:

This past week, my cucumbers, strawberry watermelon, early moonbeam watermelon, noir de carmes & rich sweetness melons, lima beans, dragon tongue beans, wax beans, and green snap beans all germinated. A couple lettuce seedlings are starting to poke through the soil, too.

Here’s one of my beans.

Dragon tongue bean seedling ~ 6 days post planting

My Glass Gem corn is growing so quickly, I’m going to have to give it its first major feeding this week!

Glass Gem corn ~ 2 weeks post planting

All my newly planted raspberry canes are sprouting leaves now.

Raspberry cane sprouting

TROUBLING NEWS:

Yesterday morning, I watered my garden and all was well. In the evening, I was walking around my beds and found one of my mini yellow bell pepper plants wilted to the ground. How was that possible when I had watered it in the morning? When I touched it, it fell into a hole. Something cut the root from the stem!!! I’m praying this is a fluke thing and not some vole or other critter planning to eat my entire sweet pepper bed!

Bell pepper chopped off at the root – by a critter??

HOMESTEAD PHOTOS:

I usually take pictures of my 18 side beds from the back yard. (I have 3 more beds against the back fence.) Yesterday, I decided to take one from the front yard. Very different perspective! I’ve got a mini farm.

Front view of 18 of my 21 raised beds (viewed from between the teepee trellises)

I planted more culinary herbs in pots around my patio, along with dahlias I bought a couple weeks ago on the $1 rack at Lowes. I brought them back to life and planted them between my pots (on the left – you can barely see one of them).

My patio with culinary herbs in pots

I started planting along my front walkway this weekend. I bought petunias on the $1 rack at Lowe’s yesterday and planted them close to my front door, near the pots of filius blue peppers. One one side, I also planted fern leaf dill.