We're finishing up the peppers.  We've got a few we're trying to keep warm to let them finish.  But most of them have either been pulled or trimmed back.  The lettuces are on a rampage.  They are at several stages, and we have begun a lovely habit of salad at dinner.  Salad that comes from our yard.  LOVE IT!!  The carrots are getting to a pickable size.  YAY!  

The chickens have obliged us by going back to laying 3-4 eggs a day since we added the lamp to the coop.  We let them out around 7am and since the sun's going down before 5pm, we turn on a lamp until 7pm.  When the daylight hours dropped, so did egg production to 2, maybe 3 eggs a day.  That almost made us have to buy eggs, something we haven't had to do since the end of September.  So we gave the birds a lamp.  Now they have some time after the sun goes down to eat and drink before heading to the roost.  And it has helped.  The last few days have been 3 or 4 eggs every day.   Yummy for us!

I took this a few days ago, and found them exactly like this tonight.  Ha!

We had a few carrots pop up near the cabbage.

Field of lettuce. 

Iceburg Lettuce.

These birds love it when my hubby thins the lettuce out.

Hi there!

I noticed a bug on my arm as I was checking in on Sunflower as she was
laying, so out came the powder so everyone could get dusted. 

My question is, what are these things?  Mites or Lice?

I got your back.

They always get the itchy's when i dust them.

Those late grapes are still trying.  The warm week should help, but will it be enough???

Grape leaves are turning.

We still have a ladybug or two hanging around.

Getting Ready for More

So, now that it's gotten warmer and  many of the plants are in survival mode more than producing mode we've be looking to what's next.  What's next for us and our new way of thinking about our yard and what it does for us.  We want some fruit trees.  We want more planters.  And so we're prepping some areas.  Between our house and the nearest neighbor we had planted some Eucalyptus trees and some similar smelling bushes.  We knew how large those trees could get, but the calming smell of the leaves clouded our judgement.  And now we're pulling them out.  Boy, our compost smells good right now!  We're still trying to decide which types of fruit trees to get, which ones we need a friend to pollinate, which ones take care of that themselves.  Those kinds of things.  In the mean time, we're amending the soil.  

We've added three new plots to the yard.  They run the length of the large planter, but have pathways through.  We learned from the long run that we would step through or have to run around to get to a crying kid, and a place to do that without worrying about what we were crushing would be nice.

 We also got lucky to stumble on a 50% off sale on seeds at Star Nursery.  They're switching to a new supplier and are clearing out their stock.  We got more than enough to start our fall crops and we should be good to go for next spring.  It was definitely a tough deal to pass up.

So far this year...

In photos...

In January, getting the soil warm.

So exciting to see the plants breaking through.

Carrots, radishes, and romaine.  Oh, my!

This made for some lovely salads.

After the lettuce harvest.

Squash, peppers, melons, and potatoes coming in.

Peas were done (got warm), Cucumbers headed up.

Butterheads.

Release the ladybugs!

One of our many favorite things about having the garden-  our kids seem more willing to eat their veggies!