Carrots!

This is the first year I've ever planted carrots and they turned out beautiful!

I wasn't sure they'd turn out at all as I had a few people tell me they had terrible luck with carrots. Anyway I loved their colors so much I wanted to share.

We ended up cooking them in lentils for dinner.

We drove out to our nearest Organic apple orchard today. It was quite a trek! We bought two bushels of apples and are hoping to make lots of apple sauce and apple butter. The farm also had lots of animals which made K really happy. Hopefully I'll be back soon with pictures of our canning.

Picking Raspberries

What a great farm we found! We spent the day picking organic raspberries on a little farm about a hour away from us. Her farm was beautiful. She had a little African garden that had beautiful Amaranth.

K had a great time and even managed to pick some berries himself. I'm excited that we will now have both blueberries and raspberries all winter long and that we have found a great farm to visit again come spring.

Huge sunflower!

Today we cute down our sunflowers so we could save the seeds. We left a few outside for the birds and squirrels. This one was our biggest and ended up measuring 12 feet!

Sunflowers

K in the front garden. He's in-between the two smallest sunflowers. The two largest are all the way to the left and all the way to the right.

I love seeing them totally covered in pollen. Very cool.

Our sunflowers are enormous! One of them is at least 12 feet tall. I need to measure it. Here are some recent sunflower photos.

Picking Blueberries

K soaking wet in the rain while picking blueberries



We went organic blueberry picking last week. K did a great job collecting blueberries in his bucket for daddy, however, when I checked 5mins later they were all gone. :) Unfortunatlly, the closest organic farm we could find near us was a hour and a half away so we really had to make it worth our while. After 16 pounds it started to rain so we had to quit. Perhaps next year we can pick twice as much.

Sunflower

We had our first sunflower bloom and its beautiful! This was our first time growing sunflowers and I cannot believe how big they have gotten! We spotted lots of bees and butterflies visiting the flower.

Garden Loom

The first step (after collecting sticks from the woods that is) in making a garden loom is to use twine to tie the sticks together into a frame. Casey used knots he learned from being a boy scout.
Here he is tying the last one together.
After the loom was together we dug two holes in the ground and put the loom in. I then wrapped brown yarn around the sticks.
I used blue yarn to weave in the sky while K searched for leaves and grass to weave in the bottom.
For a finishing touch we wove in flowers from the garden.

I've been wanting to make a garden loom for a long time. I keep seeing them on other people's pages and have been thinking how beautiful they are. I love the idea of keeping it out all year and adding/ changing it through the seasons. We collected our sticks on a walk through the woods a week ago and spent Saturday morning putting it all together.

Our first harvest

Last year we planted a little garden in the backyard, however, it was too shady and we hardly had any veggies at all. This year we dug up our front yard and are amazed at our success. The other day we picked our first zucchinis and found 7 huge ones! Above is K enjoying raw zucchini. :)

Farmer's Market

If you ever have a chance to visit Detroit, I highly recommend Eastern Market on Saturdays. They have a huge market that sells fruit, veggies, meat, cheese, flowers, and plants. In winter they sell christmas trees and wreaths too. Their prices are amazing. You can also eat at the local restaurant venders. We had brie and strawberry crepes this week.

We stopped in this weekend to pick up some flowers, veggie plants, and lots of herbs.

Also just a heads up. I'll be away from the computer for a few days. See everyone one soon. :)

Planting the Garden

We finally had nice enough weather to get our plants in the ground. We had to separate our veggies into two gardens. The front garden is small, but gets more light. So we have corn, cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, tomatoes, and beans. The back is full of different greens and lettuce including kale, chard, and collard greens. We also planted lots of flowers in our side gardens and tons of herbs in pots near the house.

K loved helping out and even planted a flower himself. :)

Composter

My husband finished making us a composter last night. I'm really excited as lately I've just been dumping our scraps around in our gardens. We had a small compost bin last year full of worms but it became infested with maggots, spiders, and flies. It was not pretty. We decided to try something on a larger scale this year. Casey did a bunch of research online and came up with this design. As soon as he was finished we tossed in some dirt, leaves, veggie scraps and worms. :)

transplanting

We spent the day (well actually K and Casey spent the day) transplanting our over grown seedlings into bigger pots. We've still been having some frost warnings so we're going to wait another week until we actually put everything in the ground. Hopefully we can get a break in the rain long enough to plant.

Anyhow I wanted to show how much our little plants have grown. Its pretty exciting as we have never started our own seeds before. A few of the plants didn't make it including our cucumbers and tomatoes.

Springster Holiday

Every year I host a spring/easter party for my family on the day before Easter. We always have a big picnic potluck (which usually ends up indoors as it did this year) and do a craft or two. This year we made yarn nests by dipping yarn in glue and draping it over a bowl. When it dries we can pop the nests out of their bowls. I'll have to post more pictures after the nests are dry and out of their bowls. We also filled egg shells with dirt and grass seed. I'm excited to see how they look when they have begun to grow.

Indoor Sprouting

On sunday we went out to buy seeds to start sprouting indoors. This is our first year trying this so I'm sure we will make tons of mistakes. At least we are lucky that my mom has done it for years and is giving us lots of tips. Unfortunatlly I didn't think ahead to save my egg cartons and we had to buy a plastic tray. Its something to think about for next year. We also need to get some longer chains for the grow light (as you can see from the picture) so its much closer to the seeds.

K had a good time helping. How could a toddler not enjoy dirt and water?