garden beds - House Of Joyful Noise

Early August Gardens, at Our House.

August 11, 2011 By Laura 6 Comments

Just a quick update on how our gardens have grown. It’s August now.

The most exciting recent development, is we finally have some watermelons growing!

They are still fairly small. I forget what variety we planted, so maybe they won’t get much bigger.

I need to find the seed packet, and find out, because we’ve got a (passed due) deadline here!

We need to use the ‘Watermelon Patch’ as our ‘Pumpkin Patch’ soon! If not yesterday. If you were with us last year, you may recall we planted our pumpkins way too soon. We had to harvest them by early October, and so we didn’t have any WE grew, by Halloween. : ( But apparently, it takes 120 days to grow pumpkins!… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, Photography, The Homestead Tagged With: cucumbers, garden beds, Gardening, gardens-in-August, green-bell-peppers, New-England-gardening, pumpkin patch, pumpkins, sugar-snap-peas, sunflowers, tomatoes, wasp, watermelon-patch, watermelons

Garden Peek!> Early Summer 2011

July 20, 2011 By Laura 1 Comment

I believe we’ve been both gardening and blogging, for about 3 years. Our life is filled with so many various passions, there is more than we are actually able to get to blogging. I sure try to get it all in though! But one area that is especially hard to keep you all updated with, is the gardening! Good gosh. Things grow and change SO fast, by the time I photograph what I want, edit the photos, and start putting a post together (while you know, living my life and doing 1,000 other things in the midst of it all), the post report, explaining the photos I took, don’t seem very current by the time I get to typing it out!… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, Photography, The Homestead Tagged With: cucumbers, garden beds, garden photography, Gardening, gardens, green peppers, jalapenos, peppers, squash, strawberries, sugar-snap-peas, vegetable-plants, watermelon-patch, yellow-summer, zucchini

Mailbox Tub Garden

June 4, 2011 By Laura 4 Comments

We are still very much working on our long-term front garden-yard plans, and we’re far from completion. A little each year, as we need to roll, but we’ve enjoyed the planning and the progress along the way. We always wish we were further ahead than behind, but that’s the way it goes.

Our mailbox out front by the street, has really been looking like it needs some sprucing up, for some time. Last year, we just planted some flowers around the post, in what sandy and rocky sloped dirt was there. But because our front yards are our garden, and the general landscape plan is not completed yet, it didn’t look so nice. The crabgrass that grows in the sandy dirt, spread into flower bed, and it just didn’t look clean.… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, Home Improvement, Re-Purposing, The Homestead Tagged With: garden beds, Gardening, Home Improvement, mailbox flower beds, mailbox planter, mailboxes

You Have To Know, This Pains Me.

August 23, 2010 By Laura 7 Comments

You know, nobody told me, that so much heartache can come with gardening. <sigh>. Each and every year of gardening, well…..wait, this is only our second year….but we’ve learned a little bit more. I enjoy the learning process. I really do! Just as in life, I can handle learning through little mistakes along the way. But I prefer NOT to learn, through sheer devastation. You know?

But this year, we learned a really hard lesson. We learned about one of a gardener’s worst, ugliest, most destructive enemy:

The squash vine borer.

I was confused about the sudden rapid decline of my beautiful squash plants, in this post, when my friend Maria clued me in about this common squash plant destroyer, in the comments of a previous post. I researched immediately, and found she had indeed hit the nail on the head, and correctly identified the dasher of all of our squash hopes and dreams. This year anyway.… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: garden beds, Gardening, gardens, jalapeno peppers, pests, pumpkin patch, pumpkins, squash, squash vine borers, squirrels

What's Growing in the Gardens!

July 13, 2010 By Laura 12 Comments

Finally, I have gotten it together enough, to show you what we’re growing in all of these garden beds we’ve got going. I’m telling you, I find it extremely challenging to blog about garden updates, because everything changes so fast! So, this post shares some of the rapid garden progress that can happen in what seems like the blink of an eye.

But I also wanted to share this little story with you. A couple of weekends ago, we had a spontaneous tag sale. We had quite the traffic for it too (thanks to Michael’s Tag Sale professional signage that no one could miss). But what was so funny, was people were more interested in our gardens when they got here, than our tag sale items!! It was comical. They were walking around, peeking under leaves, asking questions and generally flattering us to death. For 2nd year gardens, we were puffing up a bit and struttin’ around like peacocks.… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: cucumbers, garden beds, Gardening, green peppers, jalapenos, raised garden beds, squash, strawberries, summer squash, tomatoes, zucchini

Mid-May to End of June 2010/Front Yard Transformation

June 29, 2010 By Laura 12 Comments

There is so much to catch you up on, where our front yard transformation goes, that I’m lost in my own thoughts, in trying to figure out where I tell you what we’ve gotten done, and where I tell you about where all of this work in progress is heading. So, if it all seems a little mixed up at time, that’s pretty much where my head is at.

But to brief you, in case you are new around here; Our front yard was basically just a big square sandy lot, with no purpose or beauty of it’s own, for all of the years we have owned our home. We have had a side yard that we have utilized well, but the front yard, beside the (dead end) street we live on, was never safe enough for our then very young kids, nor private enough to relax in.… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, Give Aways, The Homestead Tagged With: garden beds, Gardening, gardens, Give Aways, home flags, pumpkin patch, yard transformation

Pansies, Verbenas & Berries

May 19, 2010 By Laura 7 Comments

Yesterday morning, I found myself up wicked early. And not at the computer, in my bathrobe, with coffee. But up, dressed, and outside with my camera, taking photos around my yard. (With coffee.) I had to wonder what in the heck was going on with me lately. I have never-ever been one to get up early, unless I absolutely-no-way-out-of-it-have-to. This morning, I was not only up at the crack of dawn, but after a night where I had laid in bed during the night, for at least 3 hours, wide awake! I thought for sure I’d be sleeping like a rock, come morning.… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, Photography, The Homestead Tagged With: flowers, garden beds, Gardening, gardens, pansies, photography, photos, planting, strawberries, strawberry beds, verbenas

Gardens Progress Update/Front Yard Transformation

August 25, 2009 By Laura 8 Comments

In our last post, we shared with you the very beginnings of our front yard transformation. We planned out 3 gardens, built 3 garden beds, had loam delivered, filled the beds with the loam, and got our strawberry plants planted all in mid-May.

At the end of May, after the threat of frost had past, we planted all of the vegetable and flower plants in the beds. I did not take photos of the extensive work we did that day along the way, because frankly, I was covered in earth and sweat, and wasn’t about to touch my camera. : )

Here’s a photo of our front yard now, with the 3 garden beds.… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: cucumbers, flower photos, flowers, gardeing, gardeing beds, garden beds, garden photography, garden photos, home, honestead, peppers, photography, photos, projects, squash, strawberries, tomatoes, vegetable photos, vegetables, yard, yard projects, yardwork, zucchini

Our Gardens / Front Yard Transformation

August 16, 2009 By Laura 4 Comments

We have grand dreams for our yard, and it’s likely you’ll be able to watch the transformations take place right here on our blog! But we can tell you right away….it’ll always be slow-going. A little a year. Whatever we can do. Whatever we have the time, or the money for. And when we’ve thought about it, we’ve realized we need both at the same time, to see any real progress. ; ) But you know, we’ve learned to enjoy ‘the process’. The RIDE, as they say. After all, we may be too old to ever really DO the end. But having hopes and dreams are half the fun!… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, Home Projects, The Homestead Tagged With: cucumbers, flower photos, flowers, gardeing, gardeing beds, garden beds, garden photography, garden photos, home, honestead, peppers, photography, photos, projects, squash, strawberries, tomatoes, vegetable photos, vegetables, yard, yard projects, yardwork, zucchini

We Picked Our 1st Garden Strawberry!

June 29, 2009 By Laura Leave a Comment

first

Back on June 11, {O} came running in the house all excited, because Daddy had let her pick the first strawberry from our garden. It’s was a BEAUTY, don’t you think? Thank goodness it was a good size berry, because every one of us were so excited, we had to split it 6 ways! My bit was just a tad bitter, I think. It was kind of hard to tell because it was so small.

Second

There were a few other of the June-bearing berries here and there, that were almost ready for picking, too.

Third

Some were in earlier stages than other, but they still looked like they were going to be good ones!… Read More

Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: garden beds, Gardening, strawberries, strawberry, strawberry bed, strawberry garden