Update 6-28-10

Lots of rain here - it pours almost every other day. :) We already have gotten 1.02 more than the average this month! We're getting tomatoes, radishes, lettuce and peas. We are also getting a lot of nice flowers. Zinnias, roses, begonias, petunias, geraniums, verbena, lillies and marigolds. Mama is growing an herb garden - sage, fennel, cilantro, parsley, marjoram, thyme and rosemary.
Here are our pea plants. We picked at least 20 today.


Lettuce, carrots, beets and more peas at the back.


Here are our yellow lillies we planted last year. We got ten more this year.


Daddy's row of salad tomatoes. I have some baby Homesteads - hamburger tomatoes ;) - but they're not ripe yet.


Ambrose's zinnia. We got some more fencing up today; more pictures later.

Irrigation System

I am putting together an irrigation system for our gardens here at Saxonbourg Greens. For now we have a timer that controls four separate sprinkler valves. I put together a manifold that connects a hose from our well tank. The hose connects through a series of fittings and water from the hose flows into several tee pieces and an elbow. Then the water will go up some risers and into the valves. The valve, when closed, will not let the water through. When the timer sends an electrical charge to one of the valves, the valve will open, letting the water through into a buried poly-tube. Poly-tube is a black plastic poly-fiber tube used for irrigation purposes. Our tube is 1" wide. We will bury it 18 inches deep so that it will not freeze during the winter. As the water courses through the tube, it will encounter several tees with a riser connected to a sprayer. The sprayer and all the others will water the garden as long as the timer sends the electricity to the valve. As soon as the timer stops sending electricity to the valve, the valve closes, the sprinklers fade and stop. Then the timer can send a new electrical charge to another valve, watering a new zone.
Here is the timer. I hooked the cables up from the valves on the right side.


The timer and the hose from the well tank. I used an old dryer exhaust pipe to lead the cords and hose through the basement wall. ;)


Here is the valve manifold with the first test sprinkler hooked up.


Hurrah! It works!


From a greater distance. We haven't buried any piping yet, but are putting in systems to be timed while we go on vacation. Eventually everything will be in place and we can continue adding more sprinklers and zones.

First Day of Summer Tomato!

Four days ago, on Monday night, June 21, the first day of summer, we picked our first tomato!
Ready for picking in the afternoon.


Picked at 8:30 pm! It was a good tomato.

Update Overdue 6-14-10

We finally have been getting some warmer weather this month and the flowers have started blooming. We have gotten quite a few seedlings in now, and half the tomatoes are also in. Daddy planted his cucumbers yesterday. We've been eating lettuce, spinach, asparagus and radishes from the garden now.
Our red rose bloomed yesterday!


Another bloom.


This is a purple-pink petunia of Stella's. It's supposedly miniature.


And here is a purple veined petunia.


This rose flower is as large as a normal rose; but the plant itself is tiny compared to a normal rose.


Here's the Sweet William Opa gave us.


Another Sweet William.


And another.

This one decided to send out two different color flowers.


Orange marigold in the cold frame!


Yellow marigold!


Here is a tiger lilly. It gives a really nice bloom.


This is a wildflower, possibly a weed. We call it indian paintbrush even though it isn't.

Here is a flowering tree we have in our yard. It looks like the flowers are mini snapdragons.

Baby apple!!

Baby tomato!

Here's one of our irises. They are really happy this year. In fact, alot of plants were really happy this year.

We planted some strawberries - and now we have a baby one!

Daddy's carrot rows. Ambrose planted them and managed to fit 1000 seeds into 3 or 4 rows.

Here's Daddy's lettuce. We already have been eating alot for salad.

Daddy's beets!

Here is the first flower I've had on one of my new raspberry canes.

Another iris picture.

I put in a couple of window boxes up on our barn windows facing the road. I planted verbena and geraniums in them and Stella planted some petunias in them.

The other box.

A verbena flower.

Powerbud!