Busy Planting

We had a busy week of planting and finishing up fencing in the garden this last week.  Not sure if I mentioned that the deer ate all our tomatoes for dinner before we put up the sprinkler scarecrow.  It made me so sad, we put so much time and love into growing those plants from seeds.  My hubby keeps reminding me though that gardening is a trial and error process.  We are definitely not professionals but we are constantly learning. Luckily we do know someone who is amazing at gardening and she gave us some of her extra tomato plants she started.  She's a giver and usually gives us some of her starts every year.  She also gave us some more of the plastic raised beds we put in last week.

It was time to put transplant some more of our starts into the garden so we loaded up our homestead rig and headed for the garden.

I worked on the tomato plants while the hubby worked on the swiss chard, bok choy, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli.  I know it seems like he did most of the work but I was determined to make sure those pesky deer didn't get my tomatoes again so I had to make barriers for them.  I put tomato cages over the tomatoes and then cut chicken wire to wrap around them.  I also made barriers for the cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and broccoli by wrapping chicken wire in a circle and then bending the top over itself.  It may seem like I'm going a bit overboard but I'm tired of putting so much work and time into this and not getting any produce. 

Our strawberries are doing good so far and so are our potatoes.  We are trying something different this year with our potatoes.  Last year we tried potato cages but it didn't produce the amount of potatoes we were expecting because we believe the dirt got compacted.  This year we just planted our first layer of potatoes and once they sprout we will cover them with dirt and repeat with each layer.  So far the potatoes are doing fantastically good, it's funny there were a few that sprouted in last years spot.  I dug up the potatoes that sprouted in the pea beds and moved them.  

Aren't those potatoes a beautiful site...I'm a potato loving girl, I can't wait to enjoy them in my tummy!!

The hubby is becoming a fast fencer these days.  He finished up putting up the small fence in front of the taller fence.  Our little farmer boy is helping out quite a bit too.  He loves "helping" his papa build fences.  We've got some more planting to do this week.  Some of our cucumbers didn't enjoy the quick heat we got last week so we need to sow some seeds plus I've got some flower seeds to plant.  Off to rest now for a busy homesteading day tomorrow.