This and that

Just a little bit of this and that today.

Check out the girls at the buffet...

This is a backyard lawn view of the Chicken tractor moving along the lawn. It's amazing how well they will scratch up the dead grass and thatch, and will spread their manure. Our back lawn has loved it this summer!


This years trial plant was a little different. We usually try a new veggie, but this year, a new melon made the list.
It was the "melon charentais". An heirloom french melon that gets great reviews and for good reason; this is a great cantaloupe and it's a actual cantaloupe too, not a musk melon being "called" a cantaloupe like the things we here in the US get in the market. I made sure to save a good bit of seed too. This one's a keeper!

And thought some of you out there from back east, or from abroad may enjoy a look at the fall in the Rockies.
I was out hiking this weekend, scouting for the upcoming Deer and Elk season.
These pictures are from about 2.5 to 3 miles into the back country and after climbing from about 5200' elevation to 7200 feet. It was NOT an easy hike, but I'm happy to say that I've fared alright for as bad of shape as I expected to be in.
I'm thinking that this year, I'm going to camp under stars in the back country for a couple of days during the hunt. I've never pack hunted that far in before, but I've always wanted to. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Hope all's well with you.
Till next time.
Paul~

For all my troubles....

At least there are still the simple pleasures.

Like a basket (Or three) of fresh tomatoes and peppers and such from our backyard. By the way, that's a 3/4 lb tomato sitting there... 12 oz! Not too shabby...

This year has not been our most productive, nor our least frustrating (Did I mention that we had yet ANOTHER broken bone on second boy, and then the third one, C~, has been in and out of the Dr. with some frustratingly elusive mystery ailment that causes lethargy, 101+ fevers and head & belly aches???) but to still be able to walk out back, harvest fresh food and enjoy it...
Well, I guess when all else fails you, you relish in the simple things.
Be well all!
P~

Around the 'Stead

It's getting to be that time of the year around here.
Some things have been a surprise, others a little slow to get going, but over all, I've been pretty happy so far. I guess I just have to keep in mind that after all, it is only June 23rd.

I could go into more detail, but in the interest of my just getting caught up, I think I'll just give you all a little over view.
Enjoy.

These are my Hamson Tomatoes. A very good producing, heirloom, determinate canning tomato.

Peppers. Two varieties of Green Bells, some Reds, and Jalapenos.

This corner is harder to get to because of the fountain, so we filled it with Beets and Turnips.
This is the first year that we're trying out Turnips. So far they seem to be doing well!
Here's a new tomato trellising method that I'm trying. I needed to find a way to effectively trellis along my back wall. Hopefully this will hold up well. This trellis is holding 14 plants (7 heirloom San Marzanos, and 7 Roma Tomato plants that I saved seed from.). At the end of the row is some Eggplants too. The front is my spinach beds. They've been producing really well too.
One of my three cut and come again lettuce beds. These will be getting trimmed this weekend. Mmmm Salad time...
A perennial family favorite, Kohlrabi. I never seem to plant enough of these.
Early Girls setting tomatoes should be reddening soon.
Peas... filling out and nearly ready to harvest the bulk of them.
One of this years biggest surprises. Our Artichokes.
You can't see it very well from here, but there were 13 artichokes on the plants at the time I took this. I've harvested a few already too. These were the Artichokes that I over wintered in the greenhouse.

Like so many things, I sometimes have higher expectations of myself and my garden than are realistic, but it seems every year I feel behind. I can only assume that it's because the season seems so much longer as I work on my off season growing and preparing.

The biggest thing I can say was successful so far this year, is this. With the exception of the Artichokes. Every plant I just showcased for you was started from seed. This is a first for us. Some did better than others, and lessons still come with every year, but I have to admit I am proud.

Hope you enjoy the tour. More to come soon!

All the best to you all.
P~

Catching up after a long long spring

This Spring has been a bear!
Last years spring was wet. I thought it odd, but hey, it's spring in Utah. That stuff happens. This Spring however makes last years look timid.

Looking at the local weather station stats I found that the temperature was below average for 26 of the 31 days in May by an average of over 7 degrees lower. Eleven days were lower by 10 or more degrees and a few of those were nearly or even at 20 degrees below normal!!

It was wet too. having rained or snowed on 14 of the days. Nearly half the month. Now, this is the normal time of year for us to get a good bit of wetness, so that's not a big deal. The odd part is the number of rain storms this year that have hammered the crap out of everthing. The wind gusts have been far higher and nearly every storm of any kind, results in hail. That is not cool for leafy veggies!

The cool wet spring has been good for peas though. The annual favorite of the wet spring weather has not yet let us down. We planted three beds of peas this year and all are doing fairly well. Here's one of them all tied up to the "square in the air" that I like to use. And here's another in one of the few beds that doesn't yet have a trellis set up. No worries though, a few bamboo stakes a little creativity and the peas have been supported.
And here's another big surprise of the season. I never would have guessed when I over-wintered theses babies in the greenhouse that they were so cold tollerant. My first harvest of the year has been an artichoke!
And there's another on the way...
Last weekend was one of the first weekends that we've had in some time that were worth getting out and getting much done. I took advantage of that weather to get some of the plants from the G-house out and transplanted.
Here's the Meyer Lemon tree all pruned up and re-potted. Looks good eh?
And here's an experiment for this year. Potted Tomatoes. In these pots I planted the three cloned Heartland tomatoes from last year, Two Rutgers Tomatoes and a San Marzano.

And speaking of the cloned Heartland tomatoes... how about this.
They're fruiting!

One...

Two...

And yes, all three cloned tomatoes are fruiting!
The plants are a bit stunted looking, but I think they'll come along. The point is. These plants are fruiting and that means they are a success in my book!

This year I'll make it a point to also save some seed from them, but at least I'll have the opportunity.

Today I'll leave you with a picture of the summer iteration of the greenhouse. Shade cloth included.
The weather man says it's supposed to get into the 80's this week, so some adaptation was in order. We'll see how this does for me.
Hopefully the bad weather's behind us for now and we can move on into the growing season. This weekend I'll be getting beans started so it better!
P~

Growing Raspberries

I teach quite a few classes every year as a Master Gardener through our local extension service. Every time I teach one of the classes it seems that I get the same questions over and over again.

One of the questions I will get almost invariably, is about raspberries. There's few berries, I think, that are more coveted than fresh sweet raspberries so it doesn't surprise me. That being the case, I thought I'd go over a couple of the basics and take it from there.Here's half of my raspberry patch. I'm standing right where my other half is "supposed" to be growing. Last year it was overtaken by a really bad infestation of field bindweed and needed to be clipped to the ground to let me get a hold of it.

Here are a few basics of raspberries:
1. There are two main types of raspberries, Summer bearing and double or "ever" bearing. The names may sound a lot like the names given to the different strawberry type, but they aren't really the same. I'll get to the reason why in just a minute but suffice it to say that with summer bearing varieties you will get one crop per year from them and with ever bearing you will get two.

2. Raspberry plants are made up of two different types of canes. Primocanes and Floricanes. The primocanes are the fast growing soft skinned canes that grow up to 4- 6 feet tall in one year. You can see one below... You can see the very green tissue of the plant and the healthy flush of new growth coming up from the center of the plant. This is a new cane and it will grow very quickly throughout the summer. At the end of summer this cane should NOT be pruned out. Raspberries, at least the traditional summer bearing ones, will form on these canes the next summer. At that time, when the dry and dormant canes begin to grow, the canes are known as floricanes. These floricanes will fruit heavily in the summer and then will be finished. At this point, the canes can be pruned out.
EXCEPTION to the rule is made for double or ever-bearing varieties. For these varieties the same thing applies to the primocanes growing rapidly throughout the summer months. They will look the same but towards the end of the first year they will grow fruit. The harvest from this fruiting won't be as big as the summer harvests, but it's kind of a bonus one. The next year, as a floricane, it will bear fruit in the summer. Again, this is the last harvest for this cane and it can be pruned out to leave room for new primocanes to grow for next year.

Here's a picture of one of my patches floricanes from this year...Like I was saying, it looks like a dead dry stick. It will be tempting to prune these out at the end of the previous year, or to do so in the early spring but hold off.

As I was saying, after the floricanes have fruited in the summer of their second year, they are expired. They don't fruit anymore after that. At least not enough to warrant keeping them. My hardest thing to keep track of at the end of the summer when I get around to pruning them is which canes to thin out. That explains my little red yard pieces.I decided that this year I was going to mark the canes that are already growing and that I expect to harvest from this year. After the harvest is complete and I have time to prune, I will just go along the bottoms of the canes and thin out all of them that have red yarn on them.
Now, mind you, this isn't a technique that is practical for any sort of larger production. However, it is one of the perks of running a little nano-farm with a small patch. I can do things like this to help manage the patch. I'd like to perhaps find some sort of organic, or plant based paint that I could slap on the bottoms of the canes instead, but for now, this will do the trick.

Hope this clears up a few of the questions that you may have had regarding raspberries. I know it just skims the surface, but that was kind of the point. For more references about raspberries in your area, try checking online to your local extension service.

Best to you all, hope all's growing well!
P~

When life gives you lemons...

Well, maybe it's because you have a new Meyer lemon tree??

Alright, I admit it, I'm cheesy. But I did get a new Improved Meyer Lemon Tree last weekend.

I've been wanting one of these for a couple of years now. Then, last year when I got some of my mom's lemons I was sold. They are soooo good! So Saturday afternoon, my gift for my (gulp) thirty ninth birthday, was a lemon tree.
And here she is. My little limoncello machine! right there in her current home in the greenhouse. We've been having some really off again on again cold spells punctuated by hot days so I think I;'ll keep her in there for another couple of weeks to be safe. Later she'll be in a nice pot that I inherited from my uncle and will be kept outdoors for the summer.

And there's lots going on in that thar greenhouse too. As you can see below. I can hardly move around in there any more.There's lots of tomatoes, a lemon tree, peppers, cantaloupes cucumbers, tomatillos, marigolds, herbs...
Even some pumpkin starts that are doing really well.
And I found this on one of the little heartland tomato clones that I was able to hold over the winter. Guess there's no better testament to a healthy plant than that huh?

But Wait! There's more... There's life outside too!
Our onions are coming along well, and just about ready for a good mulching with some straw. I would love to do it earlier in the season, but our winds here just undo all my hard work.
It may be hard to see, but this bed has one of our first carrot plantings of the year growing up in it. There's five rows with a couple of extra wide spaces in the middle section. On either side of the bamboo stakes that are laying there will be planted beans for this year. The carrots will grow right along with them in the shaded area.
Here's a closer look.

And some peas. These are not doing too well. Late winter storms beat them up. Not the cold mind you but the winds. They broke a lot of them off right at ground level.

The first Kohlrabi plantings had trouble too. notice the front (windward) side of both beds were hit the hardest?
This bed has my bok Choi Chinese cabbage and is surrounded by carrots. Later in the season I'll fill the bed in with pumpkins and squash.

Not much to say... more peas!
And last but not least, the potato garden. Lots of green popping up here too!

So there you go, all caught up right? well, kind of... still have a couple more posts that I'll try to get up soon. Too much to do, not enough time!

hope all's growing well with you all
P~

a question answered (Plant Propagation)

I had a question posed to me today from a new(ish) reader. I thought I'd take a minute to give a quick answer.

Jasonbx asked...
Started reading through your blog earlier this spring. (I tried starting tomatoes from seed this year, and was looking for any info I could find.) I'm curious if your thinning cuttings dipped in rooting hormone made it? Also would this potentially work with larger tomato "branches" or only main stems?


Well Jason, Yeah... They did great!
As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say that they did even better than I would have hoped. I kept them very wet for the first week and a half, sort of to mimic the way that I had had them in water like I had done in a previous test. That trial ended up rooting them pretty well even though I hadn't used any rooting hormone at all. This time I was putting them into a soil-less medium so I thought a little hormone wouldn't hurt any.
Tomatoes tend to do very well as it is for setting new roots. You can see above that the roots have easily established themselves in the cell pack that I placed them in. Below is a picture of another tray of cuttings that I just did the same thing with last weekend.This tray has the extra cuttings from some bell papers, jalapenos, a few more tomatoes and even some eggplant.

That leads me into the answer to the second part of Jason's question. Can you do the same thing from regular "branches"? Yes, absolutely. In fact, if you've ever had a large tomato plant droop till it touches ground, you may have found that it will readily throw down roots mid-branch and start a new plant. As long as you don't cut too large a piece of new growth (it needs to be able to support itself easily) it will root fairly easily.

I hope to do some more interesting propagation trials as the season progresses. I'm glad to know that they've helped a little, or at the very least piqued some interest!

Happy propagating!
P~

Greenhouse work - transplanting

A couple days ago, when talking about the greenhouse and the work I've been doing in it, I mentioned how I had thinned out and transplanted the majority of my tomato seedlings. I also promised to go into a little more detail about that later on.

Well I can do you one better. VIDEO! I've been talking about starting to do more video stuff - well, talking to myself, but still talking about it - and I finally got around to it and of course your the first to know! I've just started a new YouTube channel where I'll be posting walk-throughs, how-to's and well, I guess just about whatever comes to mind. I'll be putting up new videos there as I make them and some will be posted here if they apply to what I'm talking about, but I hope you'll check it out from time to time and let me know what you think. Also, if ideas come to mind or I talk about something that you just need a visual of, let me know and I'll do what I can to get it online!

For now, here's one of the first new videos I've put up. I hope to make the "production quality" a little better as I go along, but it does get the point across.

Pruning out the excess seedlings from the tray...
The rooting hormone... Tomatoes are really good root starters, but I wanted to make sure they set root early to give them the best chance of survival.
The new cuttings set in the damp potting medium. This is a very vermiculite/peat rich medium that will hold a lot of water to keep the stems damp.

Coming soon, an update on the cuttings progress.

!! IMPORTANT GARDEN ADVISORY !!

I received a surprising and significant email yesterday from a representative of MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine. I felt obliged to post and share the body of it with you as it contains important and relative information to consider as our garden seasons (In the Northern Hemisphere) begin to ramp up.

As the garden season ramps up, we at Mother Earth News want to let you and A Posse Ad Esse readers know that you may want to screen any hay, grass clippings or compost you bring into your gardens, to assure the materials are not contaminated with persistent herbicide residues (most often clopyralid and aminopyralid). As our reports included below indicate, these chemical residues can kill plants or severely stunt their production, costing gardeners money and time.

What do you need to know about contaminated compost?
•Affected plants show signs of curled, cupped leaves, wilting new growth and poor germination in tomatoes, peas, beans, lettuce and other garden crops.

•The chemical residues causing the problem can be present in grass clippings, in manure of livestock that has eaten sprayed plant matter or in compost made from contaminated materials. These herbicides do not biodegrade during composting and can persist in your soil for several years.

•Contaminated materials have been found in municipal, organic and conventional bagged compost.

•To prevent contamination, ask questions before buying manure or compost that contains manure. If the seller doesn’t know if it’s safe, don’t buy it, or use this cheap and easy home test to be sure it’s safe.

•Anyone who suspects they have detected contaminated material should notify their local Extension agent and news media, as well as Richard Keigwin at the EPA and the product manufacturer (if purchased).

This information isn't new, as you can tell from the dates of the linked articles. However, it is still very relevant. I can't help to think how much of an argument this makes for continuing to make any little steps that we can towards becoming more and more "closed loop" in our own gardens. By learning to make our own compost or building lasagna gardens and growing polyculture gardens with attention to the natural world we can go a long way towards that.

A few of my related Links:
Cooking in the garden
New Additions (Worms and kitchen scraps)
Compost Day IV
Compost Day III
Compost Day II
Compost Day I
Starting a Lasagna Garden

Hope something in there is of some small help!

Thank you Brandy, I appreciate your concern for my garden and my readers as well!

Keeping up with stuff

Sorry for the absence, so much to do so little time. It's amazing how fast time slips away from me. So much to do so little time, you know. I guess after a week I'm about due for an update though. Some of you may remember I mentioned a while back that I have a test I need to take for work - Security Plus. It's honestly about as boring a thing as I can imagine having to put myself through, but it's required so I've been working on that. Of course there have been taxes to file, storms and other projects that, while I won't mention them quite yet, are pretty exciting but have taken some time! Excuses, Excuses... right?

In my last post I mentioned the big Spring storm that swooped in on my honey and I's date night. We ended up getting somewhere in the area of 3-4 inches of snow in our neighborhood - where we live in northern Utah the amount of rain or snow you get can vary greatly within a small area - but the next day, as is typical of spring storms, it was warm and sunny. In the picture below you can see how I covered over my cloches at the last minute with a couple of the recycled window frame cold frames that I put together. They were there mostly just to keep the snow from piling too deep over the cloches and making them like little freezers.
Luckily, it worked great as you can see from the healthy little napa cabbages under their individual greenhouses.

Thursday evening (Last Thursday), with a good weather forecast in mind (The lows have been between 36 and 40 and highs well above 50 - 60F for the last week.) I took the plunge and moved my plants to the greenhouse. It was not without reservation and some precautions of course, but they're there, transplanted and ready to really get going!

The main thing I transplanted was my, by now quite leggy, tomatoes. I took care too to try to maximize my work by attempting to root the cuttings that were trimmed out. I'll talk a lot more about that in another post in case you were interested.
Above you can see most of the plants that I brought into the greenhouse. Artichokes are in there at the back of course, in front of them are some mixed flats with early cucumber and squash starts and in the foreground are a whole bunch of tomatoes in 6 pack cells ready to get a new home.

********* F - L - A - S - H **********

And by using the magic of the blogosphere, here's a shot of a part of the tomatoes that I put in to plastic cup "pots". These should hold most of them over until they're ready to go into the ground.And here's a shot of a few of the larger ones that I put into 1 gallon nursery pots. I was able to pick these up a the local nursery used for .30 a piece.And in case you were wondering about my little heartland tomato plant that I cloned last year and held over... well, now there are three.
They're all doing great. All are about 6-8 inches tall at this point and just getting ready to take off I think.

I've more to share, but I'll have to get that up over the weekend. Till then, all the best to you all and Grow On!!
P~