Category: garden

Too Early! Again!

On By stefrobrtsIn garden1 Comment

I should have listened to my friends who said don’t plant until the end of May! Or my husband, who said it was still too early! But my other friends who had already planted and didn’t know what I was waiting for were just too much peer pressure for me (I buckle easily), and that week of 70+ degree weather was too much, and I planted them. Well, for the last few days it has been windy, the kind that knocks over trees, driving rain, even hail, and brrrrrrr- COLD! It’s 46 out there right now! My heritage tomatoes are bucking up pretty well so far, but the tomatoes I started from seed were looking kind of sad. So I took action:

I put tomato cages around them, and put plastic bags over them. I’m hoping this will catch enough heat to help them recover a bit. Personal greenhouses. I think I will do the heritage tomatoes tonight after I go pick up some more tomato cages. The bags, luckily, are from our styro-peanuts we use for packing materials, so I have lots of those bags around. So it’s a cheap solution to hopefully keep my tomatoes going.

But next year, I’m waiting until June, no matter what!!!

🙂

My Day Off

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, garden3 Comments

Wednesdays are our Sunday. The store is closed Tuesday/Wednesday, so it’s time to catch up on all the stuff we fell behind on during the week. So today we started by working on the fence:

Last week we spent a good chunk of a day pulling all the fence boards off, putting up wire fencing, and replacing the fence boards. We did this to the whole front stretch of fence between the yard and the pasture in an effort to keep Barclay from going out there to eat sheep poo and chase the sheep. Within five minutes of letting him out, he had found a spot wide enough to crawl through and was back out eating poo! So today we fixed every possible spot he could squeeze through (I hope), mostly along the fence where the shelter/garden is.  There wasn’t enough wire in the roll to do that section, so we just have to put up more wood rails until he can’t slip through.

Then we worked out in the garden spreading bark chips on the paths. It has been a long process trying to get the garden finished. Although the cardboard and mulch is a no-dig method, it is certainly NOT a no-shovel method. I think my arms are permanently ‘rubber’ from all the shoveling I’ve been doing! Dave was a lot of help. He just whipped off his shirt and got to shoveling bark chips – why, I could watch that all day! 🙂 And look at the result, the garden looks beautiful, instead of walking around on cardboard covered paths!

Yesterday I planted five heritage tomato plants in the garden. That’s a total of 9 tomatoes planted, and lots of spinach, lettuce, beets, chard, and three types of squash. Also some herbs. Then today we got hit with a wind storm! Rain started just as we were getting wore out spreading bark chips, and then strong winds. I hope the plants are all ok out there!

Yesterday I used the proceeds from selling my chicks to buy a food dehydrator (yay!), so today I dried some apples and bananas. Later I’m going to dry some red bell peppers, but I’ll do it right before bed so they can dry overnight. We did peppers in food preservation class, and they come out so sweet you can snack on them like candy!

Then I did some laundry, went to the grocery store, bought a couple chickens from the ‘cheap meat’ (marked down for quick sale) section, came home and cut them up and put the pieces in the freezer, put the yucky pieces in the stockpot, took Barclay for a walk at BG Lake, came home and cooled off the stock and put 10 pints of chicken stock in the freezer (I need a bigger freezer), cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes, and got the meat marinating for tonight’s dinner, and took the dogs outside to play just as the sun was going down.

If I do my job right, Barclay will be like this for the rest of the evening!

Now time to take a rest and watch some Dr Who. That will make it a perfect day off 🙂

Gardening – potatoes and tomatoes

On By stefrobrtsIn garden1 Comment

It was beautiful today! 80, at least! I went right out in the morning and started having some fun with my chores 🙂

That row of straw is my potato row. I set down about 8 red seed potatoes and covered them with a foot of straw. When the plants start peeking above the straw I’m supposed to mound more straw on them. Supposedly this will result in the potatoes actually growing in the straw instead of under the dirt. First time for this technique for me.

And by afternoon I couldn’t control myself and planted four tomatoes. These are extras. If they don’t make it, I have backups of all these varieties. I have a feeling they’ll be fine. I planted them deep, covered them in straw, and put on a cold cap just to protect them the first few nights.

I can’t wait for warm tomatoes from my garden! All this work will be worth it!

🙂

Tomatoes go on an outing

On By stefrobrtsIn gardenLeave a comment

My tomatoes are on a field trip today

They are out enjoying the sun and getting a feel for the great outdoors. It’s beautiful today, and there is a huge temptation to plant them. I asked some of my friends, and some have tomatoes already planted, while others say to never plant your tomatoes until the end of May, because you could still get surprised by a frost. Historically, I have stunted a lot of tomatoes by putting them out too early! So this year I am waiting. Instead they can enjoy a little ‘hardening off’ time outside on nice days, and go back inside where they are protected for a couple more weeks.

Transplanting seedlings

On By stefrobrtsIn garden2 Comments

My little army of tomatoes moved from their peat cups into bigger digs today – milk cartons and salad boxes. I think the salad boxes make nice little greenhouses! Of course, if I play my cards right I won’t have to buy so much salad next winter.Three or four more weeks until the official last frost date. It’s been really nice lately, but I’m not letting it fake me out. I’ve lost too many plants that way in the past!

Planted in the garden

On By stefrobrtsIn gardenLeave a comment

No pictures, but I just wanted to update that I pretty much filled in the first row of the garden. Today I sowed radishes, lettuce, broccoli, and swiss chard. I tried to give things a good amount of room. I’m going to need to pick up some fresh spinach seed, I tried to sprout some and it didn’t sprout at all, but it was a couple years old. That will do it for the cold starting plants. Everything else needs to wait until the weather warms up – mid-May is usually our last frost.

Good exercise

On By stefrobrtsIn garden2 Comments

I am still working on removing the OLD compost pile. I removed all the sticks from it which still need to break down more, and then built a second compost area next to the current one.

I threw the sticks on the bottom and then turned over the compost in the current pile into the new pile. The compost should finish breaking down those sticks, and should finish breaking down the stuff that wasn’t done yet in the pile.

The compost looks really good – like dark soil. It was sure good exercise turning it over though! I think I need a nap now!

Removing the old compost pile

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens, garden2 Comments

Almost ten years ago I built this compost box, and have been throwing stuff in there ever since. But I never took any compost out or did anything with it, and it’s been a weedy mess. So today I unscrewed the ends (and discovered I’d nailed the sides together – oh my building skills have grown a lot in the years since then), and pulled the sides down – leaving a perfectly compost box shaped mound of dirt and weeds. Hmmm, now what?

Two of the upright posts were surrounded by a giant anthill. I pulled them out and tossed them into the wagon, and then realized that they were hollowed out and most of the ants were living IN the posts! So what to do with them? I know someone who would enjoy a couple of ant-filled logs…

Happy chickens!

My next challenge is to get all that old compost cleaned up enough to use (there are chunks of sticks and stuff in it), and move it to the garden, which is looking pretty good. I was able to spread peat moss over most of the beds – though I still need a couple more bales of it, mostly to fill my raised bed. I spread flakes of straw on the ground to start killing the grass where the potatoes are going to go. The cardboard is doing a good job on most of the grass, now I just need to take care of the places where the grass is pushing up under the edges of the cardboard, I pretty much need to lay down more cardboard anywhere I still see green. And I guess I could stand to get some PVC to make hoops for some row covers and start getting some lettuce and spinach growing before it gets too warm.

Future Potato Crop

On By stefrobrtsIn gardenLeave a comment

I don’t know much about potatoes, but last year I saved some of my potatoes I got from my CSA farmer friend, and set them aside for the winter. Now they have little sprouts started, and they are in the windowsill. They sure don’t look like much! I’m going to plant them under straw and see if I can get any potatoes out of them.