Delay in posting

Big delay in posting but been busy. The pond/pit/greenhouse is officially 100% in and operational in the greenhouse. We made a decision that since this was the first year and we have no historical data on a pond inside a greenhouse would do over the winter we didn’t want to invest into Tilipia this year. At around $200/100 fish and a required growing time of 6-9 mo it would hit us in the middle of winter. We decided to get another 100 feeder fish at the pet store and see how they all do. 100 feeder fish – $15 bucks. DH build his own biofilter out of recycled materials. This helps work with the fish waste, bacteria and plants to create a balance within the nitrogen cycle.

We took a trip out to Aquatic Designs a pond store about 50 min away. Way better than the local place we have by our house. Bigger selection, more fish, and really helpful. Lots of ponds of every size to get ideas from. We bought some new water plants to go onto the deck/off deck ponds (we added another in ground pond off the deck). We picked up some giant tadpoles for hopes of bullfrogs later this year or next. We learned that American Bullfrogs take around 2 years to go from tadpole to frog. We got them for algae control and mosquito control.

Egg production is lower and we think due to the warmer days of summer. The ladies spend most of the day in the shade under our deck. One of these days we will shoot some videos to post. The ladies are just hours of entertainment. It is like a relay race, game of tag, scavenger hunt, and comedy all rolled into one when we throw something out for them. Worde really cannot describe and even better if you have some cartoon music in the background.

The garden is going like crazy. We harvested 5 large yellow squash. The chickens harvested their own 4 or 5 squash. Our fault for not closing the garden gate. The first of 4 rows of corn will be ready any day. We planted one row every 2-3 weeks so that all of our corn won’t come on at one time. We harvested purple Cherokee green beans and Kentucky wonder green beans and cooked up a big pot in out crock for Father’s day. Sadly our outdoor broccoli just couldn’t take root. Either a bug, slug, or the ravenous vultures (the ladies) kept taking all the plantings out. We are harvesting hot peppers, and have bell peppers coming on the size of a baseball. Almost all of our tomato plants have tomotatoes, but are all still green. New “volunteer” tomato plants are found almost every time we go out to the garden. There has never been plants in these locations, last year it was grass, and no seeds were brought out there. Best guess we have 30+ tomato plants at this point, and could be any number of varieties. Just have to wait and see. The eggplants have flowers, and the onions and garlic are doing well. The potatoes are not doing so hot, but we will just have to wait and see. We harvested our third bunch of radishes, and just planted another batch. The lettuce outside has been fried by the lack of water and heat. The spinach went to seed real quick, and we were able to harvest a little, but only enough for 2 salads. We added some loofa plants in hopes of getting those for shower. Never grown before so should be interesting.

Now, in the greenhouse we have gotten 5 large cucumbers, two heads of lettuce, and everything is growing like crazy. The watermelon finally has a small fruit, and we have more poles for plants. We should be able to start harvesting 5-10 salads a week from the greenhouse or more. We have found that we can grow broccoli in the greenhouse, a and now have tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, swiss chard, several medicinal herbs, garlic, several bunches of basil (harvested 3 times already), chives (which have been harvested at least 6 times already), water chestnut, zucchini, and water plants. The water plants grow like crazy, and we have given some to our neighbor, and would like to sell if anyone wants some floating water plants.

The medicinal herb garden is growing and blooming. We have taken some of the extra space until the herbs get going and put in peas, cucumber, peppers (which do have medicinal properties) culinary herbs, and along the fence watermelon, tomatoes, and more peas.

So we had some left over containers (due to get more soon) and we made big pot gardens on our deck. In there we have the water features, and now watermelons (we have like 10 fruit already) beans, culinary herbs, morning glories, marigolds, and moon flowers. We put in some mosquito plants, and put in a new wooden picnic table. The new pond by the deck has a walkway for the chickens to drink. Currently fenced off until our boarder plants can grow a bit more. We planted buckwheat in punches to hopefully keep them from getting into the cucumbers we put in to grow up the deck.