Brrrrr!

So far this week down here in southern Illinois, we've seen some brisk mornings. The over night temperatures are still in the low to mid 40's with this morning being a cozy 41! A dandy storm blew thru here around 6pm yesterday with some freaky lightning crashing all around the farm and 3/4" of cold rain.

Remember back in the winter months when I was all excited about container growing? Well, I've set 2 tubs up to show how easy it is for even the suburban folks to have some food growing even when they can't have an in ground garden. These tubs are cattle mineral buckets. I would estimate them as being around a 20 gallon tub. I have filled them with a combination of our lousy clay dirt and some 4 or 5 yr old composted manures from the pile. I also added a 3 gallon bucket of creek sand and about the same in bunny berries. Mixed it all up, a little at a time in the wheel barrow and filled the tubs. The empty tub is going to get beefsteak tomatoes planted in it when the overnight temperatures get warmer. The other has the strawberries i received from my neighbor. They still look a little root shocked in the picture but this morning, they are perked up nice and one plant is flowering.

As the weather becomes increasingly warmer, i will be whipping up a couple quick cattle panel arbors and planter boxes for the 2 types of cherry tomatoes to climb on. The arbors will make it easy for me to pick the tomatoes and allow the plants to maximize the sunlight. Plus, it looks cool, LOL.

My kitchen is about over run with seedlings with more sprouting every day. I'm so excited about this years gardens.........

Windy Wednesday

The wind is whipping here for the second day. It's warm and partly sunny but our over night temperatures are still cold. Not too much going on around the farm today. I did manage to get a batch of cheese made last night. No falling asleep over it this time! How pitiful is it for a cheese maker to not have any cheese? Well, now I have some!

Today, I transplanted the beefsteak tomatoes into bigger containers. They had exposed roots in their little baggies so they all got put in some soil. Hate to lose them from roots being dried out.

I've got 2 loaves of bread rising on the counter and a pile of potatoes that need peeled for supper. Guess I better get to it!

Storms and Trick Weather

April showers bring May flowers. Isn't that the old saying? i remember that from my childhood. I don't know why that little rhyme has stuck in my head, but it did.

Things are really starting to green up around here and the yard clean up and garden spot clean up is in full swing. I wish I had more energy tho. The last few days have been kind of rough. I should be feeling pretty good but instead, I just feel wiped out. Hopefully it will pass and I can get on with it.

My friend from up the road a ways brought me about a dozen strawberry plants. The darn things have taken over her raised bed. I'm thrilled because we were eating strawberries off those plants during first deer season, last fall! I put them in one of my grow tubs next to the porch for now.

I turned the little front garden patch over yesterday. It was still a bit more wet than I was hoping but I did make it thru it. One row of onions went in, I'll probably plant another row or so soon with the garlic.

The weather has been outstanding here, a few rain showers tucked in it. I am resisting the urge to put my seedlings out because we've got some cold overnight temperatures coming for this week. 70s during the day but 40s overnight is not good enough to put them in the ground.

The old house cat is misbehaving the last couple of days. She laid in my carrots and knocked my parsley off the table. She's not making me very happy. Hopefully the carrots will spring back but the parsley is a total loss.

Todays picture is one of the tires i cut the sidewall off of per the instructions for tire gardening from the Alaska Preppers Blog. I'm hoping it will improve the drainage and in turn, the potato yields so I can actually have enough to make it thru the winter this year. We're big tater eaters and we get a little testy without them.

Sad morning here, I started a batch of cheese late last night. I know better than to do that, especially when I'm already tired to start with. I made it all the way to the 30 minute cook time and walked off without turning the heat off. The buzzer dinged and I had a melted, gooey mess instead of pretty, cooked little curds. I ruined a 5lb batch! I guess i was more tired than I thought I was. I left it in the sink and went to bed. Oh well, I'll just have to pay better attention and not try to make cheese at 2am. Not today tho, I plan on walking another stretch of back roads in search of more beer cans. Hubby has got to make it to work......

We Just Can Not Win

April Fools, yep, that's it. sometimes it really sucks being a Murphy. We lost a u joint on the jeep this morning. 10 miles from home and no tools. there goes a days worth of fuel to get it home and another days worth of fuel getting parts. We simply can not win.

It was at least a pleasant day with a dry wind blowing all day. Just 44% humidity today, I've watered the seedlings twice now.

I forgot about sharing this one... I've got chives up! I had run out of window space so I filled a gallon ice cream container up with soil and sprinkled some chives seed in it. I'd been misting the soil every day and now I have little green shoots showing. So, since that worked out so well, I have another container right next to it with parsley, one with oregano and another with thyme. Hopefully those will sprout right up too. While I was handing hubby tools, I noticed I have some garlic coming up in the front garden spot. That's kind of funny tho, I thought I pulled them all last fall! Guess I missed a couple....

So, now what?