Homestead Flowering

I love seeing flowers blooming in the spring. I love even more knowing they are not just pretty flowers for viewing but they are good looking flowers that produce food. Don't get me wrong a nice looking rose bush is still really great for looking but a patch of black berry bushes has the same affect on me visually but also makes me excited knowing here come the berries. They both also make great boundary crops creating a natural fence of briars.

The greenhouse acts as my flower garden with okra plants growing and flowering along with other crops.

These are a few butternut squash that we have planted. Usually butternut squash is planted as a hill crop around 18 inch high and heavy feeders but with our worm castings we use in the buckets along with the regular spray down of worm tea that we brew these guys grow really well in these buckets and produce a dozen or more squash. Eventually we have to start caging parts of the vines or they will consume they entire green house floor with lots of flowers and fruiting. These are a little over 4 weeks old and growing very fast with nice green leaves and lots of flowers popping up.

Just because your gardens are for food and not just ornamental plants does not mean that they will not have lots of really nice large flowers that you can enjoy. The biggest difference is most of the flowers will be done and gone in a day or so but then when you go back out the next day you have more new flowers ready to bloom.

We have noticed a big difference in plant growth and harvest since we have been using aerated teas and casting mixes in more of our plants. Now with the teas we are starting to move out of the greenhouse and container gardens and setup larger gardens that cover more space and produce more crops. Biggest challenge of this is not our sandy soil that lacks everything you want to grow with since my fungal tea brews seems to have made a big difference in the way things grow here and also our unlimited supply of composting supplies on our homestead for making quality compost. The biggest challenge will be pest like armadillos and rats. The armadillos will be easier to deal with by putting out barriers but the rats are way harder to deal with. We have delt with them in the past by removing most the food supply and of course a pellet gun with a night vision scope really helped drop their numbers but anytime you reintroduce a food supply they will start to come around and we will just have to be ready to keep them in check.

What are your favorite edible plants to have flower?