Although, it's not without it's work, the Lord's touch of abundance has filled out the Kitchen Garden rather nicely! As we no longer have the ducks to munch down all our slugs, and we did NOT get truly dry weather until mid-July, it has been a challenge to keep those munching mollusks at bay!

We were gifted Sunflower starts from Miss Judy,  bought some local sunflower mixed seeds from 'Chipping Twigs Farm' (acclimated better for growing) and we got some started from our own seeds.... I was determined to have some Sunflowers!
We had to wait to get all the starts in, but when it was warm and dry enough we planted them just in front of the wood chip border mounds. They are coming in well as a living privacy screen.  The slugs were able to get to some of them creating some gaps, (grrr!) so, I used some Jerusalem Artichoke (also from 'Chipping Twigs') to fill them in as they also do much better with soggy weather... They are getting quite tall, but have yet to flower....The bonus, these produce a high fiber root crop that will expand and produce even more next year!

We have also struggled with greedy, hungry MOLES!!! These guys have found the areas we topped with rabbit manure, or where we put it into the holes before we planted (I recommend this to everyone) and they love all the worms that gravitate to those nutrient rich spots. Unfortunately, as they tunnel, they tear up root systems and we go out to the gardens only to find giant sunflowers tipping because their roots have been seared. In the case of our raspberry patch (on the other side of the house), we've lost over a third because a mole tunneled through and we didn't know until the poor raspberries had baked in the heavy sun and were drying out so quickly! Because we mulched heavy with wood shavings in that area, it is much harder to see the digging and harder to get soil back into those roots.

We work diligently to make the soil rich for the plants and those moles want to fill their bellies on the goodness as well! We have tried a number of measures and have only trapped one mole so far... One thing we've noticed in our raspberry patch, the row we made a hugel kultur in was not affected. The wood chunks make it very hard for the moles to dig - so YaY! We're learning!
Making more of our beds hugel kultur will require quite a bit of forethought and work. But will be work for the winter, not now...

We are now harvesting HUGE heads of delicious broccoli that Jr. Farmer is showing off! They are 'the best broccoli' Dad says he's ever tasted. I was pleased they had solid, strong stems. I learned years ago that a local, large farm was having problems with hollow shafts on their broccoli. I researched it and learned it was due to low levels of boron. I believe the Lord has directed our efforts to avoid that with our soil amending & compost tea treatments and that is something many don't consider, but another aspect we're thankful for! Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ has poured out a fruitful garden for us!

After several months of productive composting, soils heaving with the freeze and settling again, I wondered if we'd have little to do but work what would be great garden loam for spring planting. After all, I'd found putting my rabbit litter in one area over winter resulted in beautifully rich soil in just a few months, years ago...but alas, this time -Not so much! 

This was not my previous rabbit manure mix and as it had sat in the weather before we 'harvested' it, it was a more soggy form when it was put into the original rows. I realized it had been distributed far too heavy in the limited areas and didn't get enough air to break down correctly. I went through with the pitch fork and tried to transfer it more equally amongst the entire garden patch but realized it was going to take more work to open up the clumps and allow them to break down. The challenge is, our soils stay wet a REALLY long time here in Washington; in particular, our property has a lot of evergreen trees (extra shade) and in some areas, quite a high water table and clay soils. For us this means we HAVE to wait until it's been dry for several days before we can even attempt to till, otherwise we'd have more chunks with a severely compacted soil base only a few inches down. Jr. Farmer and I tilled it once in April and we still had a lot of heavy manure chunks. Jr. Farmer tilled it again, going a different direction a while later - mind you, these dry day streaks aren't so common here... still a LOT of chunks! In between I was going out with the pitch fork breaking up pieces as best I could. Finally, in May, Lil' Miss was able to help us out and she went yet another direction. I was thankful for the help and grateful we had reached something I could work a bit better in...

It has been a wonderful treat to see the growth and progress in all areas of the garden.
Last year, as we were working on getting a new house in, we didn't get to work much in the garden. In fact, we did a LOT of dirt work, but the heavy equipment kind, taking out stumps, leveling the ground, bringing in big gravel, repairing the garden beds and getting branches and lots and lots of tree parts out. This year we are also having to use heavy equipment to move dirt away from the foundation making sure we are allowing for the 5% grade we were informed we're required to do. Beyond all that, we finally, finally got to dig into the gardens again.
This January we decided to add a new 'Kitchen Garden' to the other side of the house because the new kitchen window faces the opposite side of the house it used to. I enjoy being able to see the beauty of a garden as I'm working in the kitchen and while preparing meals and it's especially lovely to catch glimpses of easily accessible food we can add to what we're making! The previously existing weeds and grass were already gone because we had to clear out trees in that area and we finished fall 2016 by mulching it all with straw and keeping the remaining Maple tree's leaf litter in place.
So, I found an ad for someone needing their excess rabbit manure picked up  (woohoo!- top quality garden & worm food there) and we got the farm truck, pitch forks & shovels and filled it up not once, but twice! Each time we got it home the boys spread it in nice rows to prepare for a potential garden layout. I also put free, raw sawdust from a fine furniture maker in between those rows as a great mulch and to better define the planting areas. The rabbit folks were happy, the furniture store is happy, we are happy, and I'm dreaming of explosions of greens, pinks, and tall yellow and orange Sunflowers....aaahhh.....

Yes, that is our tiny farm guard we got from Grandma and Grandpa surveying our work and the giant stump (on the far left) is what's left of the huge tree that destroyed our old house. After the length was cut off, it ended up slowly righting itself over a period of weeks and looking like it never fell! I plan to mulch heavy around it and use it as a 'nurse tree' to grow goodies in the future!

Additional Note: Later, we were able to get some free local wood chips from a service doing work along our road. We used this to make a mounded border around the entire garden making a nice walking area and definitive line dividing it from the grass. This also acts as a nutrient hold capturing excess water or potential runoff and filtering it before it heads down the hill to filter again through the grasses toward the creek.

Cold!!! Wet!!! Not much fun to work in...

Okay, so really, it's typical Washington weather but interestingly enough, things in the garden kept going for quite some time...I still had strawberries growing in November! That's unusual for us, but our first true, cold freeze didn't happen until pretty late this month. Typically we have our tomatillo plants growing late into October, and they were, but because we decided this summer to put a lot of effort into our 2017 garden, the plants were excelling from our extra effort.

Our garden has been the biggest project this year by far. Even as we work into October we have been enjoying a few strawberries while harvesting herbs and veggies from the garden. The rabbits continue to eat plenty of kale but as the moisture levels increase we have been harvesting, dehydrating and storing herbs by the arm loads to beat the mold. (Thank you, Lord for the abundance!)
We have been using the herbs in a number of oils, enjoyed plenty of tea, made some supplement capsules, Lil Miss made herself some special hair oil, and we are planning more tincture combinations.  Additionally, we are harvesting enough to add to animal feeds throughout the winter months.
We have also taken down our hoop house (mold city-my poor tomatoes!) and will be relegating it's use (in a dryer area of the property) to hay storage, while it's former home becomes the new berry patch. Raspberries and Marion berries will be filling in a substantial area, creating an edible garden hedge, while our expanding strawberry bed will be moving to their past location. We are so pleased that the strawberries have produced many runners for our expansion and Miss Judy, also needing to thin her plot, is generously passing more our way. What a blessing!
Additionally, we have been extending our hugelkultur to completely run the dry paddock and nearly connect with our first h.k. This will be the new home for our fruit trees and squash for next year - a beginning food forest! It will hopefully be a far better area for the trees to actually get enough sun to fruit! Certainly the abundance of mineral rich compost and continual moisture from rotten logs will add to the growth potential. We sincerely hope next year will be our best harvest yet!

Hopefully this will give you a general idea for making your own hugelkultur beds! They are a superior sustainable approach and with the wacky weather, will make it much easier to ensure our berries have plenty of moisture during the trying months of summer. Those dead wood chunks act as sponges, slowly releasing minerals and water into the soil only the searching roots will find tucked underneath the soil.

Remember the swarm of bees we brought home and an extracted hive Dad carefully removed from an abandoned church building; only to have them both swarm again and leave? Both bee families have settled high in two different very tall trees. The hive from town in our neighbor's tree bordering our garden and the other, in the woods - both with easy access to an abundance of flowering plants and several clean springs for water. They know how to pick the perfect location!
Although we cannot harvest the honey, we are blessed to have them happily pollinate all they want and it is a treat to hear their harmonious hum as they bumble about the gardens and native plants, even late into the season.

I couldn't capture, with Dad's phone, all the humming on this large Sedum as there were far more than each photo shows...How many bees can you find?

Mom was thrilled to harvest her first larger heirloom tomatoes that had ripened. We learned from Farmer Daryl (at the Black Diamond Farmer's Market)  that tomatoes will actually go dormant and not ripen as they are saving their energy during excessive heat cycles. We learned from Frankie (at the Orting Farmer's Market) that California growers all plant their tomatoes to grow along the ground (like indeterminate vines), rather than being staked, to keep them cooler in the high heat. Interesting! We love learning tidbits like this, just from talking 'shop' with other farmers in the region. So, this year our first BIG tomatoes didn't ripen until August 12th. Even though they are quiet large, their skin is soft and they are sweet and delicious! Oh, nothing from the store tastes like it does from the garden, trust us on that!
This pumpkin, and several others like it are coming up from an heirloom, organic pumpkin we had picked up at the store, but had rotted before we got to eat it. What we bought was not ripened (although we didn't know it at the time) and was a beautiful dark green and yellow speckled squash. This is how it should have looked, and will likely store better because it was able to complete it's growth cycle. The rotten squash was just tossed onto a bed that hadn't been used much along a path to the rabbitry. This year, we dug out the pathway, filled it with wood chips and piled up the extra dirt on these seeds and decaying shell. We are blessed with a large number of squash plants happily growing in this sandy soil we didn't even need to amend!

This is a great example of how we are blessed by the natural fertility of the Lord's creation but things can be very different  - here's another experience we had:

This summer we have been hard at work maintaining garden moisture while trying to keep up with our weeding and successive planting.  Successive planting essentially means that you are continually planting and adding to your garden as the season persists and/or while you harvest. For instance, when you pull up a delicious beet, put another seed in the ground - it could be another beet, a radish, or perhaps heirloom lettuce- and you'll be harvesting again soon enough! You must take care to consider when the plant will mature, how big it will get, if it will cast shadow on the crops, (sometimes you may want that- to shade a lettuce crop, for example) and ultimately, know what you want to eat.
This year we have done the best yet, but we've had help from our dear friend Miss Judy who started a few more plants in her cold frame (article 2) than she was able to use. Her generosity became a successive planting of cabbages, cucumber, kale and lettuces - what a treat!

The difference between the farmlands of Eastern and Washington State are significant. We learned how much we appreciate all the greenery of our side (western) and how very much this depth and variance of color affects our own perception of life around us! All of Washington state is experiencing record heat and drought, but vibrant color is still apparent in so many places.

You can see that Mt. Rainier does not have much snow left on it's glacial exterior and there is nothing on the hillsides surrounding; but there is still life in the trees and the grasses that are grazed by cattle. After all the days and hours of dry, brown hillsides and sparse vegetation (with few exceptions around the rivers), we were so happy to see the greenery again!

Lil Miss has taken several photos of her growing garden and we wanted to share them with you to inspire you in your own gardening endeavors. If you are concerned that you are too late for a garden, don't be discouraged...there is always something you can do! There is still plenty of time to plant and plan for an abundant harvest. In the past, Mom has direct seeded zucchini plants in July and still gotten more produce then purchased starts planted in June. You can do it!

We received a wonderful note from our friends at Milestone Books a rich resource of books the encourage and bless your entire family's studies...we want to share it with you!   "Take a moment to visit this scene from heaven:"