Back from the Dead - the January Farm

Hello, friends. I've been pretty quiet here because the past year, farm-wise, has been such a disappointment. Late spring/summer in 2019 gave us such a severe drought, coupled with our absence in June/July, that the farm suffered. Compound that with two hurricanes in two years (Florence and Dorian), and our little place looks rather woeful. It was too easy to shake our heads and walk away from the garden.

But we intend to garden this year, albeit on a smaller scale. Adam removed one of the long raised beds in the veggie garden. He made these beds when he was push-mowing the spaces between them. But now we have a riding mower, and he needed to remove a bed so he could get the wider mower in there.

the metal that lined the bed

Hurricane Dorian flattened a lot of our garden fencing. He's begun that repair.

My elderberry tree, which was a tiny plant last April, looks pretty good! I hope to cut slips off of it this spring and start some of my own. I'd like four more trees this time next year. I want to make elderberry jam.

I still stand and contemplate this big ol' field and wonder what we should do with it. We've pondered a Christmas tree farm, and an RV park, and a few other things. For now, it's just a beautiful field for dogs to run around in.

The fire ants are thriving in parts of the garden. Ugh. I hate them.

Miraculously, it seems that a tiny bit of my lavender has survived! That's a first. I still have no faith that it will keep going if we have a wet spring or summer, which we often do.

It looks pretty DEAD.

But there's a little bit of new growth at the bottom!

And some bits of branches still green too.

Our strawberry bed seems to have a fighting chance of doing well this spring too. We shall hope!

There's not much else to report right now. I'm past due ordering seeds, but this year I'm only ordering my Matt's Wild Cherry tomato seeds (one packet) and probably some sugar snap peas (one packet). We're cutting, way, way back on what we plant in the garden:

*peas

*maybe lettuce, maybe collards

*okra

*strawberries and asparagus we already have

*potatoes

I imagine that will be IT for the garden. So many things just haven't done well over the years, and we personally are inclined to limit ourselves to the plants that thrive here, rather than the ones that present us with failure year after year. The tomatoes will be grown in a huge container near the house. This will give our garden beds a year to kill off any tomato diseases residing in the soil there.