A very consuming garden

As to the reason why my house is an absolute disaster, I have a very good excuse.  Okay, I am full of excuses:  five kids, homeschooling, crucial (to my sanity) sewing projects, poor time management skills, etc.  But right now it’s this garden.  We keep thinking we are almost “on top” of things, and then I take a walk around and realize that there is still so much to do, it seems there will always be so much to do. 

All of the cedar beds are in place now, and we are in the process of planting not only our vegetables, but also the white clover we want growing between the beds; all the while battling the weeds with our hands and a couple of hoes. The four large beds in the center of the garden are our melon and pumpkin beds.  For years we have grown melons through black plastic, but this year when I realized that our plastic was too shredded to make it through another season, I couldn’t bring myself to buy anymore of it.  We instead have been saving cardboard, and Jonny has even gone dumpster diving to collect large cardboard boxes from construction sites.  We are mulching with a layer of either cardboard or newspapers covered with either grass clippings, used chicken bedding, or a combination of both.  Those melon beds are pretty big, so right now a lot of the cardboard is exposed as we haven’t hauled enough mulch to cover it yet.

I am not sure that gardening with a raised bed system like this is the most efficient use of space, but I think it is the only way Jonny and I can manage a large garden space.  By breaking the garden into twenty eight beds, we can tackle things one bed at a time.  Mentally, that is a very good thing for us.  We both have minor (ahem) attention span issues.

Along the fence we will be growing several types of gourds, pumpkins, and sunflowers.  The left corner in this picture above is our raspberry patch.  I think I see a large sumac growing in the middle of it (can you see it?)  Better get that pulled out.

I planted cucumbers, pumpkins, melons, and gourds in flats and need to get them in the ground tomorrow.

Our tomato plants are looking happy so far.

And while I am not sure that I got my sweet potatoes slips in the ground early enough, all but one survived and they are looking good.  Hoeing, and mulching them are on this weeks agenda.  This is my first time to grow sweet potatoes.  I will be pretty excited if they produce for us.

Because we were still in the process of getting our beds in place, I didn’t get my potatoes in the ground on time either, but they are starting to flower and are looking good.

My kids have all decided that they like beets (not me!) and they prefer them picked small and eaten raw.

Gabe and I picked lots of peas today.

For dinner we had potato soup (local new potatoes) with fresh peas and it was quite good.  Peas are awfully time consuming from picking to shelling though!

Tomorrow I have got to figure out how to make the time to homeschool, get my flats transplanted (100 plants), pull more weeds, shovel more mulch, and get these bathrooms of ours scrubbed-my goodness!  All while breastfeeding my newborn baby.  Does 19 months still count as a newborn?  I hope so, because she sure does still nurse like one.  Oh yeah, tomorrow’s Tuesday, that means piano lessons for me and Seth and I promised Gabe a trip to the barber shop.  And then there’s cooking, we’ve got to eat too!

Can’t a mama get a break?

I’ll let you know what actually gets accomplished!