Sweet Corn

The other day, Ryan and I harvested two rows of corn. We thought we had harvested at just the right time for sweetness, but soon realized something was wrong...ants!  I hate ants, but they seem to love me. Of course, we both got online to see what does ants in your organic garden mean, well, it means aphids. Evidently ants are a warning sign that you have aphids. 

We've been working to get the aphids under control since. 

 

We cleaned and shucked our harvest, cooking one of the ears to try it out. Man was it good corn. Even though the aphids made our harvest about half of what we would've gotten without them, we stuck with our plan of prepping the remaining corn for freezing. We will test out how tasty it is with freezing in a few weeks. 

We still have much to learn about corn, and all our plants, and the critters and insects that like to eat them.  We have learned so much in the last year since we began this endeavor. 

Strawberry Plants

 

Ryan propagating our strawberry plants. We have 12 plants from the 2 we started with. 

Spring Planting

Today Ryan and I planted our second planting in the garden. We are not sure yet if our first planting took since nothing has sprouted yet. We dug up one of the potatoes to check and it seems to have sprouted. Maybe we are just a bit anxious. 

Ryan did most of the muscle work today, while I planted some free seeds that were included in the fall order from rareseeds.com. If all goes well, I'll have some beautiful Love in a Mist flowers. I planted two large containers for the sitting area that we are planning by the garden. 

We stopped by the local Home Depot and picked up a dwarf peach tree to plant in a container. On the way back home, we stopped at the local nursery and I picked out 5 more herbs to add to the herb garden. I now have another Rosemary plant, two varieties of lavender, fennel, and chives. 

Our day was wonderful, browsing the garden areas together, picking out plants, planting food for us to eat, and situating our container herb garden. Our breezeway sitting area is shaping up nicely. Hopefully we will be able to sit and relax and enjoy our beautiful plants together soon. 

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New Plants

We went to Lowes to find a climbing shade plant to go on our new gate we built. We found a wonderfully smelling Pink Jasmine. I can't wait for us to make the planter box for the bottom of the gate so it can go in and start making that area what it should be. I imagine EVERYTIME a breeze blows through the breezeway it will fill that area with its fragrance. 

Ryan also bought me a raspberry bush to plant. Raspberries aren't his favorite, but I plan I eating them freshly picked. 

The rest of our day was spent trying to convert an old dog house that someone made with plexiglass sides into a nice space for our quail's permanent home. We've placed it in view from our studio so we can enjoy watching them while he's making jewelry and I'm sewing. It's not quite finished yet, but I think it will be wonderful when it is. 

Pics around The Best Little Farmhouse in Texas

Our blueberry bush has buds on it now.  I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Champ daydreaming in Ryan's chair.

I love our rooster.  I think he is so pretty.  Ryan is posting to ADD LINK HERE to verify what kind of rooster he is. Ryan thinks he is a XXXX.

Seed Packets

Ryan and I have been talking a lot about getting some seeds and plants and planting a garden.  We've read about what to plant in our area.  So today we went and picked out some plants and seeds to start with.  

Seed Packets

 

Dirty Hands

Ryan Digging

                  Katherine and Isabella 

 

More digging

  

My Honeysuckle

 

Blackberry Bushes

Katherine

Isabella -Kat's friend 

Nick planting bushes