Jacob's Cattle Bean Plants

July has been beastly hot, but nearly everything is doing really well in the garden!

Flowers are blooming, weeds are prolific, veggies are iffy, medicinal and culinary herbs are thick, and most of the small and tree fruits are either finishing up or nowhere near ready depending on what you’re looking at.

I’m excited, we may actually get to enjoy a few of these peaches this year! Most years they are eaten by Japanese beetles but since they are currently busy destroying roses, nectarines and Marshmallow, we have hope for a fresh, home grown peach.

Young Peaches

Most of the flowers are doing nicely, too. Except for the ones hubby keeps mowing down.

Anyone that knows me know that my flowers have to be tough. I’ll water when needed, but absolutely no floral mollycoddling goes on around here.  Heck, I don’t deadhead most of the time… but I will go out and cut bouquets when I’m feeling girly.

Which leads us to this next photo…

It just sort of happened. It’s what the late TV painter, Bob Ross would have called a “happy accident”.

In a girly fit of flower arranging I set the pitcher on the birdhouse while snipping and filling it with blooms. I stepped back and  LOVED the way it looked sitting there so much that I probably took 56 pictures of it.

Bouquet on Birdhouse

I also killed the rechargeable camera batteries, but it was totally worth it. Don’t you agree?

.

chickens hard at work

Chickens are the best little compost helpers ever!

I love the way these silly birds peck and scratch…unless it’s in my newly planted plants. Then it’s not so cute.

In the winter when the weather is bad the chickens hang out in the barn. With no cable or internet they get pretty bored and just sit around with their feathers all puffed up to keep warm. It’s kind of sad.

Since I have been deep bedding my animals, these sad birds seem less lethargic and are much happier chickens. I think.

What?! I'm working!

Deep bedding is just a matter of laying more bedding down on top of the old, and as the underneath stuff composts it produces heat.

Did you know that you can even heat greenhouse grow beds with composting bedding?

Yep, it’s true and it works beautifully.

So the compost-making-chickens do their part by cheerfully scratching around in the bedding looking for seeds and…whatever.  When snow covers the ground, I pull some bedding out of the stalls  into the aisle every week to keep them happily scratching and out of the bunny/goat/horse feed. This drives daughter #2 mad. The aisle should be spotless.

Ummm, it’s a BARN.

Heidi Supervises the Chickens

If I rake the stall muck up into a pile in the morning, they’ll have it trashed and all over the place by late afternoon. Sort of like a dorm room filled with a bunch of partying college kids 4 minutes after finals.

The system really works well though! I keep fairly fit with obsessive compulsive raking, and the chickens stay busy and out of trouble. Best part? Each time they scratch it breaks down more material and they even lay eggs because they are so thrilled with the arrangement!

I love that the big pile of barn bedding becomes a mere wheelbarrow load of mixed garden composting goodness in a week, and I have to admit getting that one load out to the compost pile is easier than having to make a bunch of trips.

Go chickens!

No, not like getting rip snorting drunk and rolling around naked in Nettles or anything…heck, I don’t drink.

I mean idiotic garden plantings that seemed like a good idea at the time-but were never going to work. I am by nature an experimenter and forever want to try new things. Based on my growing location and climate you’d think I’d know better than to plant some of the stuff I do, but I still keep trying.

Insanity or Incurable Optimist? Hmmm, it’s a very fine line.

Basket Willow in the Herb Garden

Willows are my latest mishap…but I haven’t given up. Yet.

I wanted a graceful willow planting.

Like the kind you see in the UK. Living willow arches, willow seats, willow domes. Try a Google search for ‘willow arch’ and you’ll see some of the gorgeous photos. These are things I long for in my garden.

I already had lots of willows from the nursery, and many varieties are perfect for what I wanted to do….however my climate does not cooperate with my plans.

The plan was to take some cuttings and make a series of small interlocking willow arches on one end of the patio for morning shade. The problem? The willows often die back to the ground in the winter. They grow back in very odd ways.

Here is one of my small willow arches that certainly has grown back in an odd way. Sad and in need of a haircut, isn’t it?

Seriously Bad Willow Arch

Here is the same arch after it’s haircut.

Still just as bad

Yes, It looks like Dr Seuss went on a bender armed with a pair of hedge clippers.

Well, I’ve decided to give the willows one more year to shape up…or I am afraid I’ll have to replace them with something practical and attractive.

That actually makes me feel kind of weepy.

.

My Cattle Panel Greenhouse

At home, besides my medicinal herb garden I also have a kitchen garden. I start almost everything from seed or cuttings, so I have a nice little ‘homey’ greenhouse to work in.

The greenhouse at home is unheated except for heat mats in raised grow beds, so most seedlings and starts go into the greenhouse around late March. Around here nothing goes into the ground before mid May-except peas- and we wait until the guys down the road have quit spraying in their fields.

This greenhouse is a nice size for home growing. It’s also a cheap affair, my “Cattle Panel” lean to.

The whole thing is a mere 16′ x 15′- and is attached to the back of the potting shed….or as I like to call it-the Mental Health Center.

There is a small mist system for cuttings, and an 8′x 16 shade house for the 100* months of July and August- it’s also a cattle panel job.

Here is the shade house frame, completely naked and without flooring. It will have it’s top on and have landscape fabric laid down by early summer.  See? Nothing fancy. The LP tank for heating the potting shed is to the right.

Oh sure- go ahead and laugh at how ugly they are, but these things have held up through snow storms, straight line winds that took out a goat barn -WITH the goats in it- and more. Since I am in the middle of open fields I need sturdy. The metal arches wired together does the trick.

New plastic is definitely due this year on the greenhouse-I’ve gone 5 years on this bit and it is showing it’s age…and it was just a 4 year plastic.

The fact that the cats insist on climbing it doesn’t help with rips and tears, so until it’s replaced, all I can say is thank goodness for repair tape!

There are buds. Buds on things that share the herb garden. And there is actually supposed to be sunshine today as well.

That means Spring is here-despite the below freezing night temperatures. Robins have been spotted as well-which makes it all official.

You can see grass greening up which is beyond thrilling. I’ll enjoy it while I can, since I know perfectly well that our lovely Midwest has hellacious Spring storms that can bring tornadoes, ice and snow. Sometimes all at once.

Here is a dwarf Forsythia about to bloom as well.

Kind of brightens up the dull fields behind, don’t you think?