Early Spring Gardening

It's Spring!

This year we decided to try and extend our growing season by creating low tunnels over our 4 raised beds. And because of the carrot stealing dogs and the chickens we had to put it all behind a fence with a gate. Although we did create two smaller beds infront of the garden and to the left of the garden that we will fill with flowers as 'scraficial lambs' to the chickens just incase.

I must say the chickens have done a great job of getting rid of the slugs. I didn't know it before but they actually eat slug eggs! Yeah!!

So far we have carrots, celery, cabbage, kale, swiss char, oriental greens, and a bunch more I can't remember, all planted in the two far right beds. We will try modified crop rotation this year, planting every two weeks and replanting as soon as the first sucession plantings are harvested.

Building Raised Garden Beds With Tunnels

Goal: to eat tomatoes off the vine before August and not have 30lbs of green tomatoes in late September. To have corn and perhpas some watermellon this year, and extend the growing season into early winter so we can continue to get good salads and goodies for hearty soups.

OK, I think you get it, the goal is to have raised beds that we can cover with plastic to keep in the heat and extend the growing season. We got the lunber at a discount by asking for the pieces no one would take and they gave it to us for $2 a board, then just said what the hell and gave us the rest of the stack since they were all cupped or twisted and no one was buying lumber anyway. We also purchased the hoops (pvc pipe), clamps, and 10x25 sheets of plastic.



We started with the 4 beds we made last year (which is when we used the back hoe to 'double dig' the hard pan and work in some composted barn cleanings, and other organic soil augmentations like limestone, bloodmeal, and bonemeal).

We dug in the cover crops (ok its really weeds but they compost well when turned into the soil), then built the boxes with the clamps for the PVC pipes and then filled them up with more composted barn cleanings and 2 year old compost mixed with soil and more of the soil augmentations that we put in last year.

In this shot you can see the inside of the board next to John's & Lindsey's feet has 4 pipes fitted to the board with clamps, these pipes are larger in diameter so we can easily slide the white pipes in them to form the tops of the plastic tunnels.

Next is to cover the hoops with plastic and start planting! The problem is that the following day we got snow!!! We went from sunny and warm to snowy! Crazy weather!

Our plan is to plant early spring crops that do well in cool weather, and as it warms up the tunnels will come off to let the sun do it's thing with out assistance.

Tomato & Pumpkin Fall Harvest - not exactly stellar!

Well, so much for growing tomatos this year!!
I only got one or two red ones out of the bunch,
I will say that the bushes were really healthy and there was no rust or other diseases on the plants for the first year in a long time.

Here is the largest pumpkin I've ever grown!!
It's yellow still, but it's a beaut!

This one has a lot more growing to do, don't know if it will make it as it's the middle of October already.

This one looks more like a striped watermellon, but it's a pumpkin.

Fall Gardening

I've felt crummy for days, just sick to my stomach and icky. My DD has a nasty cold and tonight DH said he's got it too. I suppose this is the beginning of the flu season already! But even when sick the chores must be done, like milking and feeding all the animals. In the middle of it all I am slowly clearing off the back deck and getting the vegitables harvested.

The beans are Red Lady, I've put them in soups but they are really too tough to eat that way now so I'm going to let the rest ripen on the vine and dry them for winter use.

Here you see some flowers and a nice tomato plant on the back deck. We were trying to see which would give us more tomatoes, pot on the deck or in the ground. They each have given us lots of tomatos but the weather this year was so lousy I only got one red tomato and that was from the one on the deck. I see lots of green salsa in my future!!

I'm going to be putting most of these in the greenhouse in another week, hopefully they'll make it through the winter and I"ll have some nice plants next spring.

I've got three tomato plants that have green tomatoes on them, just not sure how to proceed with that. I hear you can put them in newspaper and then in a box and in a cold place and they will slowly ripen so you can have fresh tomatoes through Thanks Giving! Sound great! Another told me to up root the plant and hang it upside down, all the fruit will ripen at once and then you have to figure out what to do with it from there. We love salsa so I'm sure canning some would be in order.

Here is a nice suprise in my garden, turnips!! I've already started using them in my soups!! Nothing like it to help make good for you soup.

I know these are considered 'weeds' by some, but I love to look at them! Scottish Thistle is what my mother used to call them and they are a volunteer on our property. I like their pretty pink flowers!

Strawberries in September

Today I went out late to feed the animals and milk
the goats, and on my way by the strawberry patch
I saw some color...yum! I brought them in and shared them with DH. A nice little September 20th end of Summer treat.

Now on to working the farm: feed all animals, get teenager up, milk 6 goats, clean house for party today, make large pot of bean soup and bread to feed the hoards, and then maybe I'll get to that pile of fiber waiting for me in the shadows calling my name!