Gardens-Return to sustainability menu

I have a lot to learn about gardening ,but I seem to produce a lot. The compost from the sunflower meal and composting toilet seems to be the answer! It takes about a year to get it ready for the soil.

2010

	Jamuary 4, 2011 Mung beans sprouting one with the top on, and one with the top off.
	This is sunflower sprouts and wheatgrass.

November 9 , 2010

Mat trying out the new garden tiller.

mat has a neew pully on the lawn tractor...

	October 26, 2010 Heres mats drying jerusalem artichokes ..
	Heres the flax . This is what it looks like here in the fall ...
	Mats corn is all knocked over , and wont be up again 'til spring !!!!!!!
	The backyard in the fall.
	plants among posts, or posts among plants..
	The corner yard.
	Garden .
	Notice all the coulorfull leaves on the ground????

	October 19, 2010 Mats picking some stinging nettles (commonly known to sting you!) , to dry in the greenhouse .
	Here's a question for you ; why are mats squash upstairs????? Well here's the answer; Squash needs to be stored at room tempature or it will go bad very fast. Did you know that?????

	October 5, 2010 Here's mats sweet potato's ,white and normal, and blue corn , there all supposed to be drying , but its raining!!!!!
	Here you can see the rain drops under the corn collecting.
	see the rain begin.?

	All the sunflowers in front of the shop have been pushed down and are wet (like everything else today !! ) .
	Heres the garden. Alot of plants are pushed flat to the ground from all the rain today.

September 29 , 2010

Mat now has a "Walk behind tractor", which can/will be used for mats garden, this machine has a blade sort of thing on the front that cuts rye ect. and has a plow attachment. It will be very useful for future gardening.

	September 21, 2010 This is Trish volunteering here at Mats for a a little bit from Australia. Here Trish is hand drilling holes for when washing vegetables ( here at mats )here at the new vegetable station ( you could call it that ), for the water to drain out of .
	Trish is drilling the holes , and when she finishes, there should be a total of about 48 holes .
	Next to Trish , is some drying carrots on the new vegtable station (as seen with other vegtables in photos below !) ..
	Heres a shot of the garden taken today, september 21, 2010 and then compare it to this shot below taken 2 months ago in the same place (above the photo was two photos of a sunflower ) .
	July 20, 2010 And heres the rest of the garden.
	Here is the garden in foront of the shop . Everythig is turning a bit brown... TIME FOR FALL !!!!!

	September 14 , 2010 Heres the milkweed opened up a little more.
	Dring on the drying/cutting board are some beets.
	next to the drying beeets, theres drying corn. Both popcorn and blue corn.
	In mats garden there is perfectly ripe, red peppers.
	mat got a new chipper / shredder which we were experimenting with today trying it out with corn stalks.

Here mats adding a corn stalk into the chipper.

	September 8, 2010 Milkweed bugs ..... Birds don't eat them because thier posionous look, but they eat milkweed which is basically posion??? wierd.
	Mat's winter Carrots.
	Flax seed patch..... Ready for harvest!!!!
	Mats Blue corn.

	Somewhere In mats buckwheat patch......... There lurks a... a.... a.. A DUSKY!!!! Silly cat. "The Buckwheat jungle cat" , or so he thinks . Anyway, this buckwheat is ready for harvest.
	Here is the seeds fresh from the buckwheat plant.
	Q: Can you guess what this is??? HINT : its some form of potato.......ANSWER IS AS SEEN BELOW!!!!
	A: Its a white sweet potato , grown here at mats (And other places too ofcourse!! ).

	Mats little lettuce it basicly as big as its gonna get (which seems kinda small, no?) !!!!!!!!
	Here's Dusky hiding behind golden rod .
	Again the wild Dusky ...
	Oh, and while were still talking about dusky, Here is a kinda neat flower..
	Mats big and ready, green peppers !!

	August 30, 2010 Here in the sunflower patch (next to the windmill) , there is alot going on.......
	Why, there's a bird in the sunflower patch ..... Its either a sparrow or a finch of some kind.
	And there is another bird .... This one is some sort of sparrow.
	Oh, there is a butterfly near the sunflower patch ... Its a wonderful ,common, Cabbage White.

	On the other side of the sunflower patch (and the windmill) , there's the tomato patch!!!!!
	In the tomato patch, there's tomatos of course!!! These ones are special tomato's that are ripe now.. See the yellow-er ones? , Those are ready. This type of tomatos are called green tomatos or green zebra .
	In the other garden towards the fruit trees, there is popcorn growing!!!! That stuff is really neat.
	Growing near the pop corn is ....... PARSNIPS!!!

ANNNDDD, growing near the parsnips is a nice long row of Turnips.

	August 24 , 2010 These several green pepper plants already have green peppers on them and are also a fair size.
	The buckwheat patch is brown and filled with crickets and grasshoppers... They were making lots of noise !!
	The other garden at the base of the windmill, has all sorts of ready food including tomatos and sunflowers !! Speaking of sunflowers......
	This is a picture of a sunflower in the garden, rotated clockwise.

	August 4, 2010 Mats garden is huge!!! everything is tall.
	And the other end.

	July 20, 2010 Hey, Mats sunflowers are finally out, and what pretty flowers they are!!
	Here is the same sunflower, but a little farther away.
	And heres the rest of the garden.

	June 22, 2010 Here are the pretty flax flowers from mats flax patch, in fact, they just came out today.
	Here are mats unknown potatos from Ken laings place.
	Heres a photo of the beets , lettuce and turnips.

	June 15, 2010 The vegtables in the big garden have gotten larger than last week (as seen below a few photos) .
	Here Mat plowed down the cover crop or Rye to create more nitrogen in the soil.
	The blue and yellow corn are alot bigger , the lettuce is also big and ca be eaten now.
	The Buckwheat has grown lots , like the other plants , but the Buckwheat now has lots of flowers, just like this one .
	Over by the windmill, and next to the strawberry patch , there is a patch of peas. There were lots of ready ones to eat , like this one.
	Here is the new rain-water set up , for watering the plants on the side of the house. This simple set -up uses the rain water (from the eaves troughs) to the plants .There is a hose attached to the barrel at the side of the house.

	June 10, 2010 Here is the right side of the big garden, in this picture starting left to right we have : Turnips, two different types of lettuce and three types of Beets.
	This is Mats blue corn its coming up to about 1 inch (2 1/2 centimeters). Mats sweet corn is about the same height
	Ahhhh, look , a perfect strawberry, from Mats garden .
	The buckwheat has shot up, and now the buckwheat sign is hidden in the buckwheat.. updated by Clare

	June 2, 2010 All the seeds in the garden have come up and are alot bigger.
	Here the Buckwheat has shot up to about 8" , and covers a large area. Which was planted on April 19 , 2010 , amonth and a half ago.

	A few yeas ago at the latest, somebody planted some brussel sprouts , and here they are now ,really tall.
	The short lettuce has sprung up , and is now big enough to take small bits off to eat. These were planted on May 17 2010.

There is now Blue Corn growing in Mat's garden approximately 5" tall ,planted just under a month ago on may 10. All the other vegetables are doing well as well, such as the onions, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, watermelon and Flax seeds.

Updated by Clare

	May 18,2010 The lettuce planted on April 21, seems to be growing nicely. It is definitley getting bigger. Lots of the seeds came up.
	After the frost not too long ago, all of Mats buckwheat died , so some more seeds got planted.
	Here are Mats rhubarb plants, they are ready for harvest.

	May 10 2010 Alot of things have changed in the garden lately . Here some grapes have been planted to climb, the type are unknown, all that is known is that they are from Ken and Martha Lang.
	In that dirt patch, sunflowers were planted. The chickens are getting wet ,only Stripes and the new new chicken ,Ginger Too (as seen on "Chickens" page). The frost also got the fruit tree , wich mat is hoping the buds still live.
	The frost we had a few nights ago got at this shriveled tomato plant.
	All the buckwheat was exposed to the frost and died.

	May 4, 2010 The buckwheat planted on April 19, 2010, is shooting up nicely in a large patch.
	Here is what I think is a peach tree (I forget) or maybe apple , or cherry tree. This is the first time mat has seen it blossom, the story goes, that the previous owner sprayed it with round-up to keep the bugs off, but nearly killing the tree. So take my advice, and don't spray this type of tree with round-up if you are counting on fruit next year.
	Here is a fresh row of parsnips planted just today. Updated by Clare

April 27,2010

Here in the "Big" garden there is some lettuce plants. There is also some buck wheat and beets planted too.

In the "Little Garden out front", there has recently been three rows of beans planted.

Near by, some squash was planted.

Updated by Clare

	April 20, 2010 Here is a Robin enjoying mats garden!!!! Happily walking around.
	Darlene planted two rows of beets in the garden just today.
	Mat planted some potatoes next to the windmill. Inbetween the potatoes he planted some onions and saved lots of space. Updated by Clare