Pickin' Strawberries

The strawberry patch Monticelo MN.

pickin'

Strawberries are Shianna's favorite fruit so we had to go pick some while they are in season here in Minnesota.  We picked about 8 pounds.

We are gonna make strawberry ice cream, strawberry jam and Grandma is making strawberry shortcake dessert. 

Bike Race

We went to the Bike Race in stillwater on Fathers day.  I took a lot of pics but they were flying by so fast they looked blurry.  They go up to 55mph down hill and thats were we stood must of the time.

Cute pic with Grandma and Grandpa who invited us to meet them, they go every year.

We went camping for one night at a state park.  We had a good time.

This Shianna in a Hammock that we spent a lot of time relaxing and swinging in.

Community Garden progress

This is our garden on June 5th.

20 days later.  We were able to harvest a few peas.

Our beans are really filling out and will cover this teepee soon.  I planted a couple morning glorys with the peas for fun. 

Here is our brussell sprouts

Buttercup squash plant.

Como Town

Shianna has been looking forward to going to como zoo for a month now and the weather was not cooperating.  It was not stopping us...

It was actually a very busy wet place and the temp 70 degrees.

The best part of the day was meeting the cat in the hat and super why. 

Gardens

This is our community garden in the begining.  It dosen't look like too much but there is a lot going on in this 10 x 10 space.  I planted over 15 different veggies here.  I love the teepee I got for the green beans.  Menards for $6 it's bamboo and is collaspable and expandable, and didn't blow away with the storms last week. 

Shianna enjoying a picnic.

These are peppers and brussel sprout plants.

 

Shianna having a picnic at uncle Jesse's house, where we have our second garden this year.  I'm trying the three sisters planting method.  It is a Native American way of planting.  Corn, beans and squash.  They help each other grow, corn provides stalks for the beans to be supported, beans provide nitrogen which corn needs a lot, and the squash provide ground cover for weeds and keeps the soil from drying.

The center row is the pumpkins (squash) and to the right is the rows of beans and corn, which is not looking that great.  We had some strong storms right after I transplanted them.  I started some new seeds to add to the rows of beans and corn.  There is a lot of creeping charlie around the garden, I'm trying to kill it off by placing black plastic on top of it. 

Garden Plans

This is my garden plan. 

My seedling are ready to go outside...

Hail Storm

We had a hail storm last week.  This is our third spring with a hail storm.  It was kind of late but what kid can sleep through hail, not mine.  Shianna collected snow balls like it was easter.  Some were golf balls and some were baseball size and left holes in the lawn.  Our neighbor got a hole in her back windshield of her car. 

Here comes the sun



Green beans looking for the sun...

This is yellow and red corn, summer squash, basil and sunflowers.

Here is our setup for the seeds, it works great under the table.  I had a old shop light in storage and added full specturm daylight bulbs ($5) and we have our own sun.  We first started beans and peas in a sunny window
but they grew very leggy from the lack of sun lately.   I think our new setup should make up for the cloudy days

We are giving them a windy treatment (fan on high) to make there stems stronger and keep them from getting any taller.  I will also plant them about 6 inches into the ground.  We have a second round of beans and peas just started today, so we should have beans and peas all summer.

Happy Easter

She found them all...

4th Birthday

Snow Day

These our some pictures I took the day after the blizzard.

She was able to walk across the snow without sinking down.

Making Cookies

 

Everything is sticky now...

I think I had more fun then Shianna.

Shianna loves cooking, exspecially cookies and cakes.

SNOW FUN

Woo what a fun weekend...

Snow angels...

Eating Snow balls...

Shoveling...

Sledding...

and Snowmen...

Fall Havest



We had a great harvest and had a great summer with

lots of sun and rain... 

 This is our brussel sprout plant,  its pretty cool looking.They are delious!!!  We planted a jack-o-lantern plant justfor fun not really counting on harvesting pumpkins, but to oursurprise we harvest 2.  They both fell off the vine will they were green and we brought them home and they turned orange just in time for Halloween.

I don't even know the name of this type of squash, butit tastes and its texture is just like a acorn squash.  We harvested 8 of these, YUMMY!!! 

 We got about 12 green peppers, only four beets, 10 onions, 8 lbs of green beans, 4 lbs of snap peas, these hardly made it to the kitchen table we ate them as fast as they grew, next year we will double the snap pea seeds we had planted. Our watermelons turned rotton when they quite small.  We grew about 40 carrots they were so good, they took 4 months to grow and took a lot space in the garden, I think next year we will be buying them at the farmers market. We had a dozen cuccumbers and our hot pepper plants didn't ever grow, they were next to the pumpkin plant and were smoothered.

Yellow Tomatoes.  They have less acid then red.  We decided we like the red better.  They make sauces and salsas.
We already have some plans for next spring to do some things different.

Everyone should try to grow a vegetable plant next year...