Planting Time

We have four garden spots tilled up and two are mostly planted as of now. I had Esme out in her car seat (with the sunshade up) but she has begun to get fussy. Mark and I will probably take shifts now, one staying in with her and the other planting.

I've put ornamental corn in the plots alongside the road as well as sweet corn, beans, leafy vegetables, dill herb, 3 varieties of squash, cucumbers, pumpkins and cataloupe. I still need to get the broccoli and carrots out there.

We have more corn to put in the bigger garden, watermelon, tomatoes, cayenne peppers and sunflowers. Mark is planning potatoes, but they need to be planted next month. He has been planting marigolds and morning glory and other beneficial plants all around the fence and garden edges. He put some scarlet runner bean near the fenceline on the roadside plots, although we still need to put some actual fence there.

I've also been looking into the uses of barley as livestock feed and wondering what we can do with that. It's good for sheep food as well as excellent for things like homebrewing beer, which Mark is interested in, too. I hope to get more information at my local extension when they are open next week. Making beer would be like real-life 'alchemy', although it would be years before we had enough production of ingredients to actually do any more than a single batch for experimentation.