Gardening on the Farm

So the state of my herb garden has been shameful!  This is what several years of neglect looks like. There are still some things thriving in there though. That's why it's generally a good idea to plant perennial herbs in their own area. Despite all the weeds there are herbs still thriving in there. There is chocolate mint, apple mint, chives, horseradish, oregano, terrigon and in front you can see the poor rhubarb valiantly attempting to grow in this mess. There is also some very neglected garlic hidden in there. The area between the rhubarb and the other herbs is only weeds though so I decided it would be a great spot for some berry bushes. And it just so happened I found an online end of season clearance on raspberry canes and some cherry bushes. Now I had never heard of cherry bushes before but I really like the idea so I ordered 3, along with 6 raspberry canes. I believe the cherry bushes are ordered are hardy crimson passion (but I could be wrong on this, they only h

I didn't managed to get much weeding done today, but I still took a wander around to see how everything is doing. Early in the season something, I think a groundhog decided my newly planted tomato plants would be a delicious treat. Some came back and some I re-planted but now I'm worried I will go out there one day and everything will be chewed off! I had some beans that didn't come up so I re-planted those. They are coming up nicely now The first beans I planted that came up are about to bloom, I can't wait for some garden fresh green and yellow beans My tomato plants are still fairly small but soon I will need to start thinking about tying them up. I also put a couple picking cucumber plants in some space between them. I'm not sure great this is for companion planting but we will see how it goes. My thought behind this was the strings tied across for the tomato plants would make a great trellis to keep the cucumbers off the ground. I had some pota

So, often I will try to get the guys to plant me some peas along the edge of the oats or mixed grain fields but since this spring was so wet they decided to plant something else as they couldn't get out on the land early enough. So this year I had to improvise. My Farmer was nice enough to help me prepare a plot behind the driving shed just for peas since they take up quite a bit of room and my garden was already all planted. After the wet spring we had a bit of dry spell so the peas took a bit to sprout. This is what it looked like a bit after I planted it. I really should get out there and weed-eat those burdock plants before they become an issue! Oh well, that's this years pea patch. A walk around there on the weekend showed that the peas have liked the recent rains and are coming along. Sadly the weeds also rather enjoyed the rain so I need to get back there with my hoe!

This past weekend was Father's Day, and I hope everyone had a good one! Since we have 3 little farmers in training around here I decided to make the Farmer a nice dinner. So I went out and harvested what I could from the garden. I managed to get some lettuce and radishes planted in April despite the wet spring so those were ready. There was also some spinach I could grab, though those plants are sparse. I while I was out there I wandered my way over to the chicken coop to collect eggs too. This made a delicious salad. I also added some Ontario grown cucumber and bell pepper to the salad along with some cherry tomatoes. Since those things are out of season they are of course greenhouse grown. But I was aiming for as locally grown as possible for this meal. This went nicely with the steak from one of the steers we raised and I made a nice mushroom cream sauce to go with it. I steamed the last bag of green and yellow beans I had in the freezer from the garden last year. 

Welcome! I've decided to create this blog because I really enjoy gardening on our dairy farm here in southwestern Ontario. I will be posting about gardening, canning and cooking, as well as the odd post about our farm. I'm still learning but do we ever really stop? This blog will give me a place to post my gardening pictures and stop bombarding my Facebook with them! So instead I can post here and share with people who share my love of gardening and canning. I would also like to use this as a sort of garden journal. Hopefully it can help me see what's working in the garden and what isn't.