GARDENING!!!!!

My grandson, David, with a sweet potato he helped harvest :)

Ok you guys ... what else does one think about when they wake up at 4am but GARDENING? I'm so behind!! Who remembers this post about Organizing Seeds & Garden Planning? Yep. I still do it the same way [though some of my seed-starting dates have changed a little based on trial and error ... which mainly has to do with selling starts]. Since this is the way I've been doing it for several years, even though I'm totally behind right now I at least have a well-worked system and should be caught up this morning. I haven't even started any seeds yet!!!!! But, oh well. Such is life. Thankfully I'm not really much behind on that side of things :) 

This garden season we are really stepping up our game. Now we have 3 locations ... and since it's been a long time with no updates, here's a very quick rundown of the state of things in our neck of the woods. 
My oldest son, Tylor, has been living on our fellowship property for several years. Over the years he has been building up various gardens and berries and grapes. Since I do most of the planning and seed saving, and since we have 3 locations, I assign the harder-to-save seeds / plants between the 3 so we don't have to worry about cross-pollination, hand pollinating, and so on. Besides all of the perennial things he grows, he also grows most of the baby greens / salad greens, and whatever plants I assign to him for seed-saving. He is now married (YAY!!!) so he has a helper and best friend by his side. It's so sweet to watch them working together outside :)
My daughter and her family bought my youngest son's first property. Right now they have all of the Nigerian Dwarf goats. Brian, her husband, grows lots of potatoes and this year he plans to grow a lot of sweet potatoes, too. They also grow veggies for themselves and whatever plants I assign to them for seed-saving. David (pictured above) LOVES to help in the garden!!!! That picture is about 1 1/2 years old already, and now there's Elvia, too :) 
My youngest son got married last year and they have a baby boy, Austin. They live on 20 acres just outside of town ... since it came with 3 houses, he fixed up one for me :) Last year was the first year we had a garden here ... which was thrown together in a hurry with the help of friends ... and we were all surprised at how well it did. Corban plowed up a bigger plot elsewhere on  the property, and that will be the main garden this year. Tylor planted cover crops in the existing garden and we are getting it ready to be a perennial garden. There's also a smaller 'kitchen garden' literally right next to my house for me, and Corban's wife, Megan, has a kitchen garden too. 

Now that you are all up to speed on these things, I'll share a few more gardening photos from last year and the year before ........ then I'm going to get to starting some seeds! Peppers, okra, rosemary, and eggplant are on my hit list for today. Even though I'm totally behind, I did manage to start some sweet potato slips ;) While Brian is growing a lot of sweet potatoes at his place, I am growing my favorite variety here. I don't know what it's called ... but it's white and "meatier" than the deep orange ones. I love the deep orange ones, too, but there's just something about the "meaty" white ones!!! I get them from Azure Standard and let some of them sit "forever" until they start sprouting. Once the sprouts get about 3" long, I pull them off, put them in water, and then roots begin to form. Leave them forming roots for too long and they will all be jumbled up together, which takes work to untangle ... so it's best to mess with them daily to make sure they do not tangle so much.