The Rab Farm // May Updates

Finally! We’re now seeing fruits of our labor! It’s been a lot of work and a lot of waiting, but the last week has been fruitful. 

Chickens // They are going to be 20 weeks old Sunday. Generally, egg laying begins any day now. So we’re on egg watch and I’m so anxious to see what these girls start giving us. We should have a variety of beautiful colors. Some shades of blue and a wide range of browns. 

Cut flowers // Have you seen my floral arrangements in my house? Oh wow! This is the best thing ever. I planted a ton of different seeds from Botanical Interests. And after my guys gave me the book Cut Flower Garden by Floret Flower, I learned that I need to cut the flowers. They are made to be cut and brought inside (or given away).  Plus clipping/pinching stems can send signals to the plant to create more blooms. So now….I’m cutting! I’ve already got to give two little arrangements to friends and it was so nice. Hopefully I can keep learning and growing because this is so exciting. The seeds that did the best for me at this point are Botanical Interests’s Flower Mix Grandmother’s Cut Flower Garden Seeds. They were the easiest to plant, as in we just sowed them into the tilled dirt. Very easy. I just made another seed order and included 4 more packs of these seeds. This week I also invested in a few new tools. I got some new garden pruners and snips! I’m so excited and have already warned my family against using them for anything besides what they are made for. 

Tuesday, we carved out some time in the rain to start some new seeds. We planted a few types of herbs, two types of lavender, and a lot of marigold seeds. I’m hoping to get the marigolds growing (sprout time is 5-7 days) and healthy so I can transplant them to hanging baskets around the porch. I’ve read that mosquitoes don’t like marigolds and a few of the herbs I also have so maybe some companion planting baskets will help with the bug population that we have here. 

What else am I planting?  Zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, delphinium, echinacea, hollyhocks, iceplant flowers, lupine, strawflowers, poppy, and sweetpeas. Are they all going to make it? Who knows! But I’m going to try!

Garden // Whoa jalapeno peppers! We’ve been picking them left and right and the plants look like they’re about to explode with more. Tomatoes have been slow, but there’s tons of green ones now so I’m guessing I’ll need to find some good recipes or some friends to give them to. We are definetly not successful with the brussel sprouts and the carrots are so tiny. We think our soil is too compact for the carrots to grow. We haven’t yet dug up any onions, garlic, or potatoes so who knows how that’s going.  The peas are almost ready to pick and the cucumbers are growing. We’ve had a few things get eaten by birds or bugs so those get tossed to the chickens. The blueberry bushes were planted and they have tons of new growth! 

Follow along on Instagram to see more daily things! @theRabFarm