First Day Of Spring-March 20, 2010

This first day of spring began a little dreary but later in the day the sun decided to come out from behind the clouds and officially start SPRING! William and I worked in our garden area for a while this morning. We cleaned around the winter onions, planted the fig bush (that actually survived in a pot throughout the winter) and then William put pine straw mulch around the fig tree and the blueberry bushes. That was the extent of our outside work except I planted some more radishes in the container.

The lettuces are growing. I plan to fertilize them tomorrow if it's not raining all day. Rain is in the forecast for most of the day tomorrow. Since it's already begun to rain the forecast looks pretty promising.

If it rains then William will stay in and rest on his last day of spring break. After tomorrow, it's back to school for all the teachers and students. They will have a long weekend for Easter. After that no more holidays until school is out.

William has done a good job with my secret garden. He's got the walls up and we've set some plants out in the garden area. Weather permitting, I plan to paint the glider and the chairs to go inside during the Easter weekend. I'm thinking Easter egg blue for the glider, one chair will be pink and the other will be yellow. We will paint the table William is going to make a light green. Won't that be a colorful place to relax? I'm looking forward to it and am hoping to get finished before the weather gets hot so I can enjoy sitting out there. A good book and a glass of good iced tea. UMMM.....I'm just a southern belle. LOL

We've been discussing purchasing some more easter eggers. We've been well pleased with the ones we bought last year. We didn't get loads of eggs this winter but we got enough that we didn't have to buy any from the store. That's more than I can say for the barred rocks we had.

Maybe I can order some more chicks around the first of April as the temps will be getting warmer. That way it won't be so hard to see after them. I do so hate to have to buy 25 though. I only need about ten pullets to go with the ones we already have.

That's all that's going on around here for now. Except for one wonderful event taking place this week. Our son came home safe and sound after being deployed to Iraq for nine months. A happy heart I'm carrying. :)

Makeshift Garden

Today has been a gorgeous day. We had the heat off and the front door opened for most of the day. The sun was shining and it felt good to be outside.

I found an old charcoal pan that was in a smoker we had. I cleaned it out, put some gravel in the bottom then filled it with potting soil. After I got it cleaned and filled with the potting soil, I planted some lettuce mix and a few spinach seeds. A salad in a pan! I left it on the back porch where I can keep an eye on it. It will need watered and covered if the temps drop low.

In a couple of weeks I'm going to plant some more lettuce, spinach and chard in an old plastic tub. We can eat salad from our own lettuce mixes. I'm looking forward to a fresh salad.

We don't have the garden tilled yet. Every time we think we're going to be able to get it tilled the rain comes again. William and I walked through the garden yesterday afternoon checking to see if the ground is dry enough to till. It was still a little too damp but now we have rain in the forecast for the next four days. Tilling is out again for a while.

Eventually, we will get the garden tilled, the beds made and the seeds in the ground once again. This time of the year I always get antsy wanting to dig in the dirt. The time will come. It will come. Surely!

My Fingers Are Getting Itchy!

The temps have been in the mid sixties the last few days. The sun has been shining and the skies are blue. A little promise that spring is on the way. This weather makes me want to dig in the garden.

I'm planning a bed for fingerling potatoes. This is to see if we can grow them here. I've seen several dishes prepared on cooking shows and they look so good. Now it's time to try my hand at growing my own potatoes and make those dishes. :)

We need to get out our pots and plant some cabbage seed so they will be ready to transplant by the end of February or the middle of March. I need to make a bed where I can plant greens. Fresh salad greens sound like a heaven send at this time.

We were watching a cooking show this afternoon where the woman was slicing cucumbers. I turned to William and said "Just think it won't be long before it's time to plant our cukes." Can't wait.

I think I am coming down with a huge case of spring fever. There's a cure so don't worry. The cure includes a tiller, rabbit/chicken/compost fertilzer, bunches of seeds and a couple of digging tools. LOL Add to this a bright sunny day and a couple of Naproxin Sodium (for old stiff achy joints) and I will be fine.

Now that I've worked myself into a frenzy wanting to get into the garden....I will tell you the weather forecast for this weekend starting on Friday (tomorrow). Ice and snow is possible along with freezing rain. Yep...that's a cure for spring fever too. Brings one back to reality pretty quickly.

But there's a promise that springs on it's way and I believe the promise. A couple of more months and spring will be here in it's bright, sunny green glory!

It's Been A While

I didn't realize it has been such a long time since I posted on this blog. Nothing is going on in the garden now.

The kale is just sitting there shivering in the frost and the green onions have all bowed to the cold. The green tops of the onions look like mush from the cold temps we've had.

I live in East Central Mississippi approximately two hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico. We usually have mild winters in our area. Most winters we see a few scattered days with temperatures that get into the twenties. Once in a blue moon we have temps in the teens. This winter has been an exception. We are working on two weeks of nighttime temps in the teens.

According to the weather forecasters this is the first time in thirty-one years that this area has seen this many days with temps as low as they've been the last couple of weeks. Now this is a good thing for "southern bugs". The bugs that we are plagued by all summer will be killed by the low temps. Ticks, chiggers (AKA redbugs) and mosquitoes can't survived cold temps for long periods of time. Two weeks of below freezing temps is a long period of time in my opinion. :)

January and February are the two months we begin to get our gardens ready to plant for early spring crops. Potatoes, English peas, cabbage, and other greens are usually put in the ground in January and February.

I don't think there's too much planting right now. The ground is frozen and it's too cold outside to work.

GOOD NEWS: We have come out of the drought we were in. We were over the normal amount of rainfall for the year of 2009. This is wonderful news as we have been in a drought situation for about three years. It's great for gardeners, it's great for pastures, ponds and the farms in Mississippi.

i've gotten a chuckle several times listening to the people complain. Last summer when we were getting NO rain a lot of people were praying and talking about how much we needed rain. Then last fall when we started getting rain the people were talking about how wet and muddy everything was and how they were so tired of rain. I just smiled to myself and thought about how a lot of them had prayed for it to rain then when God answered their prayers they complained about it.

I'm thankful for the rain. I hope it helps our garden do better this year than it has the last two years. No complaints on my part. I have it figured that God is in charge, that He made it all and He knows what's best for His creation.

The chickens are still laying. We're getting five or six eggs a day. This is great for wintertime. I really like my little Easter Eggers. They've earned a special place in my heart for being so productive even in the coldest temps.

That's about the jist of it all. Nothing major can be done right now so I'm waiting out this cold weather knowing spring is not fall ahead.

Thanks for dropping by. Come again any time. As spring comes closer and we get busy outside I will be posting more news from around Hunny Bunny Haven along with pictures of the goings on.

Bad News!

William went to check on the chickens this morning before going to work. Another Freezer Camp bound rooster was killed last night. That's three dead killed by varmints. It's still too hot to have a day of butchering but if we don't get the job done we're not going to have a job to do.

It's heart rending to put out the amount of money, work and energy to get these birds ready for the freezer or canning only to have a wild animal make their meals out of what was supposed to be our meals. Another thing is the wild animals only eat a small amount of the chicken leaving the rest to be disposed of where we would use the whole chicken. PFFFFT!

We are to a point of not knowing what else to do. William has reinforced the pens. Put wire over wire, boards in the ground around the outside of the pens and wire in the ground and these animals are still getting in. He also has traps set but the wiley little rascals avoid them.

It looks like one of us will have to stay out there at night. I really, really don't want to have to do that and William can't and work the next day. So what do we do? Turn the chickens out and just let the wild varmints graze?

That's the news from Hunny Bunny Haven today, sad as it is.

The Chickens Survived Last Night

All the chickens were still here this morning. We're hoping that the work William did yesterday around the chicken pens will deter anymore invasions from unknown intruders. I sure hope so. I don't want to have to set in the dark with a gun that I'm not sure how to shoot and a flashlight waiting on a varmint to come wandering into view.

I'm an old woman and my heart gets all fluttery when I get scared and wild animals scare me. Case in point the noises we heard in the front yard last night. My heart still goes pitter-pat faster when I think of the way that animal sounded.

If I was pulling a stake-out and heard an animal near me that sounded like the one we heard last night I'd probably shoot myself trying to get inside. LOL

Truly, I'm hoping that the repairs William did on the pens will stop the killing of our chickens. It's too late for the ducks but may be not for the chickens.

We are going to reinforce the fence around the pasture with some six foot wire and get a dog to live in the pasture. That should take care of all crawling/walking problems. Those flying raptors there's no way to stop. That is unless we can come up with $5,000.00 for each raptor we were to shoot and don't mind a few years in jail.

When the pasture is more secure I will get some more ducks. SSSSHHHH, don't tell William. Let be a surprise.

That's the day around here today. Y'all are welcome to drop in anytime.

What Constitutes Botanical Murder?

I think I've committed botanical murder. After planting the greens last week, I decided the squash and cucumbers needed some fertilizer. We have some organic liquid fertilizer that we had bought. Being in a hurry I didn't take time to dilute the fertilizer instead pouring a small amount onto the dirt and then digging it in around the squash and cucumbers.

Today I went to the garden to look at the little greens poking their heads up through the dirt. Lo and behold the cucumber vines look horrible. They have yellowed leaves with spots on them. I've burned them up with organic fertilizer.

Now I'm wondering just how organic this fertilizer is if it burns like this. I've poured strong rabbit manure tea over plants with no sign of burning whatsoever. When I fertilized the plants last week no fertilizer touch the plants but the leaves still look cooked.

Before:


After:


On a lighter side the greens are up and looking good. They are planted thickly. When the plants are little larger I will transplant some of the plants and thin some. The thinnings I will use in stirfry or a salad. No waste here.

This is the kale:


Here is a picture of the lettuces. I mixed several varieties of lettuces and planted them together.


The next picture is a small spot of swiss chard. There is a row about ten feet long of swiss chard but I only made the picture of a small spot.


We are still getting a few tomatoes from the volunteer vine. I hope this one vine will supply us with a tomato here and there until frost. The tomatoes on this vine have tasted so good. I don't know if it's because I know the tomatoes are about gone for the summer or if these tomatoes have a better taste than the others. Either way, we're enjoying the last of our harvest.

On another note. The wild animals are still attacking our birds. All our ducks have been killed except for the old Pekin, Matilda. I guess she's too tough for the animals to digest.

They have killed several of our roosters we've raised for the freezer and some of our Barred Rock hens. Last night some kind of animal dug into the rare breed (Buttercup) pen and killed one of the young pullets.

William worked this afternoon to reinforce the pens so as to keep the animals out. Traps aren't working. We may have to set up a stake-out to find out what type of animal this is.

It's heartbreaking to raise birds up to the age they are just before beginning to lay and then have a wild varmint come along and make dinner out of them. I know that is what wild varmints do but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

That's the goings on here at Hunny Bunny Haven. Thanks for dropping by. Come back again, y'all.