The Garden at Ft. Tracy + Photos

I love pics that show progress week by week. Wonderful. Good job.

AH-Mazing

You are living my dream. I absolutely love your garden. It is a very lovely area.

And the memories you are making with your children and grandchildren are priceless.

Hope you get home soon so you can personally enjoy it, in stead of viewing it through pictures like the rest of us.

hope everything comes up fruitful

You flat put soem work into that.. way to go..

Stunning effort and congratulations on a gorgeous garden!

Thanks everyone for the nice words! If anyone sees anything that we're doing wrong or could do a better way, please speak up! This is our first SFG garden and only the third time we've tried planting in the ground. The first two times were pretty much abject failures because we didn't get the soil right (we tried too hard...read that "too much fertilizer" LOL) and lack of care due to travel. We're really working hard (some of us harder than others, thanks kids) this time to actually have produce to pick and preserve. All input is desperately welcome! Hopefully, we'll have more photos to post soon.

So here are some fresh pictures from Ft Tracy. Most things are doing well, some things are just OK and the strawberries are an epic fail. Not sure why, but out of both circles, I have one plant that looks mediocre and one that looks unhealthy. Nothing from the rest of the bare root stock that I ordered from American Meadows. I really don't know what to think. Do I leave the circles alone and see if they come back or try to replant. If replant is the option, when and where to get the plants? I am soooo disappointed over the strawberries. Here are all the new pictures, including some of the new babies at the Fort.



This is Rico Suave. He is our new baby Alpine buck. He is ADGA registered and we hope that he and Posey (our Alpine doe) will live long and prosper happily ever after.



This is Princess Leia. She is also an Alpine dairy goat. She had the misfortune of being born the runt and almost dying in the process. My son and daughter in law are bottle raising her. She has a front leg that was dislocated during birth that she doesn't put much weight on, We are hoping that it will eventually re-locate itself as she grows. She is very small but full of personality and is definitely a survivor.



These grape vines were here when we bought our place. Like most everything else here, they had been badly neglected. It is a miracle that they bear any fruit at all. My granddaughter was trying to help by pruning and generally cleaning up the arbor and pruned the best vine right out of there, along with most of the grapes. These are the sole survivors. Replanting next season!

Very interesting grapes. We just bought a house back in Dec. and I found an old vineyard with two plants in it. The arbor was all over grown since the house was vacant for 4 years, so we cut down both plants to the ground. One of them is growing back and is 3-4' tall but no grapes on it yet. It will be neat to see if it produces any. Have you ever grown grapes before?
Renee

I love the goats and the grapes are lookin' good.

I'm sorry about your strawberries. Do you have a local Home Depot, Lowe's or Walmart anywhere near you? They are selling strawberries in our neck of the woods in zone 5a and you're a cold zone so I think they might have some.

From what I hear on grapes, well established roots are tough and they actually do better for a good pruning. Don't write them off until after next spring.
Kay

So I had to go to work and interrupt my update. Here's the rest of the new pix:



This is kind of a group shot of some of the boxes and circles. Close ups to follow. The bare patch to the back by the gate is where the canteloupes are going in. Yum!



Carrots to the right, bell peppers in the middle, radishes to the left.



Corn in the middle 4 squares. Will have beans planted around them this week. The circles in the background contain jalapenoes, tomatoes, and my one lone strawberry. Sigh.



Tomatoes and onions.



Turnips and onions.



Sweet potato boxes uncovered. Have no idea what that lone plant is because my sweet potato slips from Sandhills haven't come in yet. Hurry up already...LOL!



This is the first cucumber sprout. The cukes are planted in the ground, like all other vining space eating plants (except the sweet potatoes. I really wanted them in boxes cuz I really want them to produce...ALOT!)



First watermelon sprouts! Wish there was a way to preserve a watermelon for the winter. These are Orangeglo and Chelsea. Mother Earth News says OrangeGlo freeze better than any other melon...we shall see!



The potato plants are starting to bloom!



The sunflowers are coming up nicely! There will be some happy birds and squirrels this winter!

These are just miscellaneous shots of other stuff not in SFG boxes.



Green peaches that the squirrels haven't gotten YET! They have stripped one tree bare in the back yard already.



Plums on the limb. Small but sweet. We just found this particular tree after clearing out some brush. Hopefully, we'll get them thinned out in time next year so they'll get some size to them. We just keep finding stuff buried in overgrown patches that were probably prime producers way back when.



One last shot of what's left of the grapes. Do ya'll think they might be Red Flames?

I love your updates

Any chance that lone plant is a self seeded cherry tomato?

@ Turan:

I love your updates

Any chance that lone plant is a self seeded cherry tomato?

I didn't even have any cherry tomatoes this year (which was an admittedly dumb omission on my part) but I was thinking it did look like a tomato plant. If so, it would be either a Brandywine or Martin's Roma. Thanks for the love, also!

quiltbea wrote:I love the goats and the grapes are lookin' good.

I'm sorry about your strawberries. Do you have a local Home Depot, Lowe's or Walmart anywhere near you? They are selling strawberries in our neck of the woods in zone 5a and you're a cold zone so I think they might have some.

So try and replace them right now in June? What did I do wrong with the bare root stock? Out of 30 plants, I ended up with 1.

kat51415 wrote:@ Turan:

I love your updates

Any chance that lone plant is a self seeded cherry tomato?

I didn't even have any cherry tomatoes this year (which was an admittedly dumb omission on my part) but I was thinking it did look like a tomato plant. If so, it would be either a Brandywine or Martin's Roma. Thanks for the love, also!

My son just called and said that this was an old picture and this is the first tomato plant put in the tomato box. It was all a bad dream.

Strawberries are very fussy about how deep you plant them. You have to plant them right at the crown line where the top and the bottom meet. Speading out their roots around a cone of soil also helps.

quiltbea wrote:Strawberries are very fussy about how deep you plant them. You have to plant them right at the crown line where the top and the bottom meet. Speading out their roots around a cone of soil also helps.

I can't say how deep they were planted or even if they were planted right side up cuz I didn't get to do the planting. The kids are going to try to find some plants to replace them with so maybe we'll have a strawberry harvest next year. Should they go ahead and mulch around the new plants as soon as they plant them since they won't be producing this year?

Got a couple more shots from the kids yesterday. They are busy trying to get everything else that's left to be planted in the ground.



This is the canteloupe patch complete with trellises. I can't wait to see how this turns out. I've never trellised melons but thought that a wagon wheel arrangement might look nice and be practical, too. More experimentation this year than in any year before.



My son decided to lay down black plastic in the watermelon patch after we decided against using trellises there. I read somewhere (probably on this forum) that the black plastic will keep them cleaner and warmer and that means sweeter. More experimentation!

Here are a few shots from 6/9. Some of this stuff is just exploding...



This is the largest bell pepper we have to date. There are more peppers, just smaller.



This is the canteloupe patch complete with trellises.



This is the squash patch. There will be trellises here too.

I had to give it up and get some rest last night. Here are the rest of the pictures from 6/9:



This is the first marigold to bloom!



This is the first lima bean sticking its tongue out at us.



A load of grass clippings to mix with the camel poo to add to the compost bins.



This little frog (or toad?) is hiding in the thumb depression on a spray can of bug repellant. If one doesn't get 'em, the other one will. Too cute.



One last cute frog picture.

I can't wait until some of my flowers start to bloom. Congrats on the marigold!

That froggy pic is so cute!

GG

I thought I'd share these 3. One is dark but you can still make out my son's hard work building and filling compost bins.



This is the compost bin picture. He is shooting for 14 bins so he will have one a day to turn. We want to make enough compost for double the number of new boxes next spring. Turning 14 bins, even if it is just one a day, is quite a commitment and alot of work. Thank you, son.



This is one of the first tomatoes to start reddening. Looks small to me. I think these are the Martin's Roma.



After all the bare root stock strawberries simply refused to cooperate, the kids gave in and went to the Farmer's Co-op and to WalMart. They bought what was left of the Quinaults and another variety whose name escapes me right now. I don't know which variety this is, but it seems to find absolutely nothing wrong with the Mel's Mix. It is putting on berries and doesn't seem to know that it is the end of their season. When should we mulch the strawberry circles?