Best website ever?

Ok, I know I'm late to the party here, but I just found ana-white.com, and it might be the best website ever. My husband and I are already planning lots of furniture for when we someday move into the farmhouse... these are projects I can totally tackle!

Planting

The hops are up! All 6 have leaves poking out of the ground, which is about the most exciting thing ever. Now it's a race for the sky!

The garden's all planted, as of this weekend. I thought for a little bit about taking pictures, but at this stage it's just a large rectangle of dirt - not much to see there. The planting took two Saturdays, and ended up being more of a "put everything in the ground" than a well-planned planting session. Next year, there will be a plan of attack. And twine.

So, today we planted:
"Titan" sunflowers
"Elegance" mixed greens
"Jade" mache
"Spargo" spinach
"Deertongue" lettuce
"Focea" lettuce
"Bright Lights" swiss chard
"Red Ace" beets
"Nabechan" bunching onions
"Vermont Cranberry" beans
"Kenearly Yellow Eye" beans
"Lemon" cucumbers
"Genuine" cucumbers
"Caveman's Club" gourds (These have really neat-looking seeds! They're still obvious cucurbit seeds, but all angular and weird - I'd never seen them before.)
"Spaghetti Squash" squash
"Potimarron" squash
"Honey Orange" melon
"Long Island Cheese" pumpkins/squash
"Sunshine" squash
"Tom Fox" pumpkins
"Diablo" brussel sprouts (replaced some that were eaten)

Last week (5/7) we planted:
"Hermes" flax
"Miniature Colored Popcorn" corn
"Red broomcorn" broomcorn
"Cream of Saskatchewan" watermelon
zucchini (a nondescript transplant from Lowe's, and they've ALREADY been eaten)
"Vision" sweet corn
brussel sprouts (a nondescript transplant from Lowe's)
"Walla Walla" onions
tomatoes (a mix of transplants - "Black from Tula", which I grew, and which have been eaten; one "Early Girl" from Lowe's, which has suffered heavily from frost; and two "Black Krim" from Lowe's that are faring better.)

I may yet replant some Black from Tula - perhaps next week? I know there's an ice cube's chance they'll make it by frost, but somewhere in my heart I'm still hoping for a "Black from Tula" this year. I've also got some really late-season crops and some "replant every 2 weeks" crops waiting in the wings (parsnips, more beets)... but at this point, it's really: cross my fingers, pray for just-enough rain, and hope for the best. Next Saturday maybe it will be photo-ready.

Bike, Scarecrow, Hops... oh my!

A weekend of firsts:

A sixth (!!) birthday meant a first bike, and first bike-riding lessons, on a gloriously sunny Saturday over at the farm. He was so excited, and he had a phenomenally good time.

Pre-flight systems check

"Mommy, I did it all by myself and Daddy!!"

What are you looking at??

He and I also made our first scarecrow together, which ended up being a fierce viking to overlook the garden plot. The scarecrow's made of old clothing, an old pillow, yarn for hair, an old plastic viking hat, and a patriotic pinwheel to add motion and reflective light-play. I sewed in a hanger when I put him together, so  hanging him up was easy - we put a nail in a big stick, put the big stick in the ground, and then hung him off the nail. A length of yarn through his belt loops runs around the stick to keep him from flying away in a strong wind. We doused him with some stinky perfume and put a bar of Irish Spring in his back pocket to make him smell more "human", since deer are my main problem.

Admiring a job well done.
(For reference, the real one here is a solid 4' tall!)

Wheee! 

Grrr... What are you looking at?

We also got our very first "farm" crop ever into the ground! We've gotten a late start with the snowing and the raining and the flooding, but we put 6 "Cascade" rhizomes into the ground (from Thyme Garden, cost about $35 with shipping and handling). Later - next week? - we'll put up a PVC tepee trellis system to support the hops as they grow.

Hop rhizomes, after soaking

Rhizome in prepared hole

The circle of  planted hops, marked with flagging tape

Clarification of where the hops are: 7' radius circle, with rhizomes equally spaced at 6 locations around it.
Later, in the center, we'll place a 15-20' pole, with twine secured to the top.
Hop bines will later run up the twine, and it will be awesome.

Assuming that we didn't plant the hops way too late - I don't think we did - I believe we can hope for a hop harvest in October. It probably won't be a super-impressive harvest, as in the first year hops are mostly establishing their root systems and don't produce as much as they would otherwise. I'm very eager to see how much I get from these, though, as this is something of a feasibility study for further hop growth. I'm absurdly excited to be growing these, though, and I hope they do well. I'm already wondering if the guys are interested in Fuggle or Nugget for more variety next year. :-)