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~

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~

baby Chickens!!

How I managed to go since the 31st of March without mention number one of the fact that we've had "house guests" I'll never know? And of course, by house guests I mean we've got 8 new chicks in a Chicken Condo in the living room!

The current chickens that we have are just over two now and their egg production is slowing and becoming less regular. They've been keeping up their end of the bargain for sure, but rotating hens and how to deal with "end of life" issues is one of those pragmatic things that I think any keeper of livestock needs to take into consideration. It's also a place where there is a lot of difference of opinion to be found. I believe that as a steward of my hens I owe it to them to make sure that they are well taken care of. I don't spoil them mind you, but I make sure they have fresh water every day, constant access to food and grit and that I keep their coop clean and sanitary. That's my end of the bargain. I decided to add chickens to our nano-farm to do a couple of things. The first one, of course, was to provide eggs to our family. They've done that very well. The other was to help me close the loop so to speak. Chickens are great at turning scraps, trimmings and leftovers into two things, I already mentioned the eggs, but their excellent fertilizer factories too! By giving my hens a constant diet of trimmings, greens and grass they provide me with wonderful organic soil amendments that help me to further provide food for them and my family. A closed loop. At some point, the ratio of their inputs to outputs will get skewed to the point that they will need to be replaced. I anticipate that will be towards the end of this summer. Hence the second stringers in the living room.

Of course there are those that keep hens as "pets with benefits". They will keep them for companionship and eggs and let them run their natural lives before they replace them. This is of course totally valid ideology as well, it's just not the one I subscribe to.

So then, with that out out of the way, how about some cute and cuddly pics of our little ladies???Here's the lot of them. I thought it was the cutest thing ever! All eight were laying with their heads on another ones butt. Strangely almost completely in matching pairs by breed.
If you can tell breeds you'll notice that I have two each of white and brown leghorns, buff orpingtons and Rhode Island reds. This year we decided to include a couple of brown egg layers to see how that goes over. I had really really wanted to get some barred rocks but there were none to be had.This is a brown leghorn chick. They really are the coolest looking chicks I think. Particularly when they're compared to their very plain Jane white leghorn cousins. While I'm on the subject of leghorns; they really are the most flighty and easily spooked of the breeds that I've had before.And on the other side of the coin is the mellowest and friendliest breed so far... the Buff Orpington. I really look forward to this hen being a part of our flock.

But then... there's the Ugly duckling phase. Here's the ladies when they're having a "bad hair day" so to speak!It's amazing the difference in just under two weeks isn't it?
And here they are taking a little nap. I love how they just flop out, heads sideways, looking like they just came back from a long night out with the girls or something. I think they're about ready for a training roost.

So there they are. Cute, cuddly and fun but future hard working garden buddies!
Anyone out there starting their own flocks this year? Maybe you're working to change the laws where you live so you can have them. If so Check out Backyard Farming Blog for a really good article on how to get started with doing just that. Of course, I'm not biased because I was one of the main subjects of the article. :)

Till next time... best to you all!

Planting fall garlic.

Garlic is one of those things that I've never really put any effort into growing. I've planted them in the spring before and got from them a few heads that were smallish and not too impressive . However, I literally only planted some 8 or 10 cloves and it was in my first year of growing so I'm not too worried that I'm garlic growing impaired or anything. Finally this fall I've put a little effort into it and I'm hopeful for next summers harvest. At the $8.49-lb that it cost to buy the other day I sure hope so!

I decided that for this first serious attempt at garlic growing on my little urban farm I'm going to try to use a part of my potato patch that last year was the least producing and at the same time hopefully I'll be able to deter some nuisance pests at the same time. The potato garden at the front of the house is essentially one large raised bed. The area at the outside edge of that bed was not easy to mound up to help the potatoes produce to their best capacity and also made it harder to irrigate. That's where I'm planting the garlic. It doesn't need to be mounded and will make a nice "stinky" border around the bed too.

I'd already "amended" this bed by turning in all the grass clippings that I had used to mound the potatoes with as well as some straw to help break the soil up. I've had good results with this in the past. To further amend the beds now, before planting, I also turned in a good helping of coffee grounds gotten from our local Starbucks "Grounds for the garden" program. They are high in nitrogen and slow to release into the soil so they should really help out next year. Here's what it looked like before turning-in and planting.After turning in the clippings and grounds, I laid out the spacing (around 5" apart) of the cloves. These were specially purchased certified seed cloves, not just garlic purchased at the grocery. Those will grow too, but may not be disease free and if they're hybridized varieties you may not know exactly what you'll get from them.If you've never planted garlic here's the quick and dirty of it. When you buy them you get a full head just like you do in the store more often than not. Just like you would break off a single clove from the head to cook with, you break the head into individual cloves to plant as well. When planting them, the pointed end points up, and the flat part (from where the cloves were all connected) goes down. The cloves get pushed in far enough that the pointed tip is about 2" under the soil.After planting, whether in spring or fall, a good 3-4 inch cover of mulch, you can see here that I used straw, is needed. This will insulate the bulbs over the winter, and will help maintain even soil moisture through the early growth and summer.

It may not be too late to plant where your located. My research tells me that after a first hard freeze but before permafrost sets in is the best time to plant the fall bulbs. I got these in just before Thanksgiving.

Wish me luck! All the best.
P~

Chicken problems, any ideas?

I've got a bad girl or two. I don't know which one it is, or if it's all of them for that matter, but somehow my chickens discovered that they like eggs. Yep, that's right, they found out that those things that they keep making and I keep taking are actually pretty tasty.

So I'm going to my master resource...you all. What's a farmer to do? Any ideas on how to curtail this problem? Or for that matter any ideas on causes?

I've read, and believe, that it's not normal behavior for chickens to eat their eggs. Some of the possible causes I've found are too little calcium in their diets, poor living conditions, infrequent checking for eggs and inadequate nesting space. These all make sense to some degree. If a chicken is calcium deficient then yeah, they may realize that they can get it from the shells, if they are in poor living conditions then they may not develop their natural nesting instincts and the longer the eggs lay around, the more likely one is to get broken and the birds will have a chance to develop a "taste" for them.

Here's the thing. I feel like we've been pretty responsible in providing adequate housing for the birds, they get fed a 20% layer feed every day that is mixed with oyster shells for calcium (and grit) and we check the coop for eggs at least twice a day. So what's left... the nesting area. This is really the only area of the coop that I've not been completely happy with. I didn't build it as separate individual boxes, more like a separate open area that fits a couple of birds where they tend to lay their eggs, or did anyway. Lately I've been finding them all over the coop area. On the grate in the middle of the coop, on the ground and some in the nesting area. I also can't get them to keep any straw in the beds. Every time I put some in, they scratch at it, and spread it all over the place. So, that's where I guess I'll work to try to solve the problem in the short term.

I'm really interested in hearing from any of you that either have or are raising chickens with any experiences that you've had with this. A lot of the places that I researched said that this is a habit that can't be broken and that the birds have to be culled from the flock. I don't mind culling a bird that needs to be, but I don't want to blame them for something that I'm not doing correctly.

Thanks in advance.

P~

You're still here??

Or at least that's what the statcounter says.
Glad you hung in there. Everything gets a little out of kilter when A~'s not here, but as I said before, we survived. Tell you the truth, I'm just glad she decided to come back at all. I mean West Virginia is "Almost Heaven" after all.
This is one of her favorite places to visit when she's back there. She's got good taste dontcha think? I wish we could build us a little homestead up there. Oh well... Dreams huh?

Meanwhile, I was thinking that since I haven't posted anything, let alone a good update to the garden progress for the fall, that you might be interested in what's been going on. Oh yeah, and NOT going on this fall.
Beets are doing great! I figure I'll probably let these grow for another week or so, and then thin them for the greens. If you've not tried beet greens sauteed with some butter and garlic you are missing out. This has been the first year that I've grown them, and I've been really happy with them. They germinate well, grow quickly and are useful from their small leafy stage through their mature root form.
The other Rock-Star of spring/fall gardening is doing great too. Spinach! I planted a bunch more for the fall than I did in the spring. The idea being that, since spinach is so cold tolerant, I will be able to get good greens clear through Thanksgiving (that's the goal anyway.) and hopefully put some up for the winter until I can start again in the spring.
And finally, the Kohlrabi. This is the second planting of the year. Planted for a fall harvest. This is also the first year that we've grown this plant, but we all loved it! I don't know how it will do as fall gets on, as it's rated as the least cold tolerant of the brassicas, but hey, it's worth a try right? Besides, I have a few tricks I haven't pulled out yet too.

As for the NOT so goods, there are a few. Broccolli and carrots to name a few. My broccoli just never germinated, and the carrots...I think that some birds got to the sprouts. They were there and healthy one day, gone the next. I do have some back up's on those though. Remember I planted some under the cucumbers? I won't be storing tons of them or anything, but I should get a good ten pounds or so.

We're looking to have a slow weekend coming up. Rain and cold, snow in the mountains. I was hoping to get caught up on some yard work, but we'll see I guess.
Hope your weeks been great.
Til tomorrow.
P~

The "Big weigh-in" Update.

Just an FYI. I finally updated the "Big weigh-in" tonight. total this year we have harvested 262 lbs of veggies and 233 eggs from the chickens.
I think realistically we're shooting for about 350-400 lbs for this year total. Not to bad if I do say so. I'll try to keep it posted more often.
P~

The dark ugly underbelly.

It has been brought to my attention that perhaps I have been hanging around the garden with my rose colored lenses on. I have, from time to time, mentioned how the garden has been a bit off this year, and how some things I just was not happy with. But what? I guess I owe it to you to show you the dark seedy underbelly of my garden.

Exhibit A: The gardens poorest performing zucchini plants. These guys had such a hard time even getting started this year, that I had to go out and manually pollinate them daily for the first 3 weeks. Even after the bees showed up, I've never really gotten a lot of fruit from them. Put it like this, I haven't had enough to get sick of zucchini... get the point? And now, they have begun dying early on me. But I have found the culprits...all of them!
Squash bugs. Yep, I have more bugs than just praying manti. When I uncovered these this evening I realized it was worse than I even thought, nearly an infestation. Time to get out the soap! The chickens won't even eat them. What's up with that?
Exhibit B: The cucumber vines. Look at that pathetic pale drying. (no the squash bugs aren't getting them.) They just aren't healthy. I did notice some new growth tonight, but they've just not performed nearly like in years past.
And this is what I've gotten from them for the most part all season. Softballs. The funky shape is from incomplete pollination. Oh, they taste fine, and we've still been able to put up pickles, but not nearly like we had hoped. Any suggestions? Anyone else had this problem?
Exhibit C: Miniature bell peppers. Yep, that babies mature, all 2 and a half inches of her. Peppers are another crop that I really had good hopes for this year but is probably the worst producing of all of them. These are the first peppers from these plants ( I've picked one off another plant.) and I fear it is all my fault. Despite my best planning, I planted them in the same bed that I've had peppers in for the last three years...Crop rotation, crop rotation, crop rotation!!!
Exhibit D: Broccoli. Do you see there in the distance... the vigorous sprouts??? No? Me neither, but I should. Everything else has come up for the fall garden, that's a little kohlrabi sprout in front, but not broccoli. Add to that the fact that the spring broccoli that I planted never headed up at all, and just went leggy and flowered, and It's been a total bust this year.
And last but not least, the pests. Found this little bugger tonight. They've just started getting to my beans. This weekend, I'll hit em with a little diotamaceous earth and water mixture. That'll show em!
So there you go Mike. My little garden of eatin' has been uncovered for the mess it is. Well OK, it's not a mess and we've been really pleased by most of it, but by no means is it perfect and everything is NOT going the way I planned. But guess what, that's what gardening is about. I get better and more productive every year. And every year, I love it more and more.
Be well all...tomorrow is another Harvest Keepers update. (oh yeah, and Dilly bean recipe by request!)
P~

A little progress, and a failure.

Here's what I started with. Yeah, it was that bad. Even worse actually, I had already started to clean up a little before I took this picture. Those old chicken feed bags are actually full of sawdust and chicken poo that needs to be composted. The old pallets, well, their gonna be the compost pile. At least I was able to work in the shade for a while. I couldn't breathe worth a damn, at least I didn't have to cook in the sun too!

And here, is the end of this afternoon. It shouldn't have taken so long mind you, but it did. I had to take some breaks and catch my breath, and kept getting side tracked. But I think it came out pretty good all in all. Should have good air-flow, and is made out of all recycled materials so it only cost about $1.50 in nails. It started raining pretty hard this afternoon so I got pushed inside, but hopefully I can get the compost piled in there tomorrow and get it "cooking" so it can get mostly done before winter.

The other thing that I did get done was my first attempt at homemade sauerkraut. A~ swears I tried it once before at our last house, but I don't recall it. Who knows? (honestly she's probably right!)
I sliced the cabbage and salted it with some of the homemade Salt Lake Local-Salt that I made not long ago and then packed it into a couple of containers. In total, I used 5 lbs of cabbage and followed a recipe that I found in "The Joy of Pickling". We'll see how it works.
So, two things I wanted to do got done, at least mostly. One however, was a failure. The sourdough no knead bread. I don't think it's the starter, I have great confidence in it. It's just hitting a year old this week as a matter of fact. Having been "born" to our family last September.
I mean take a look at that. Those bubbles are from yeast. Not wild, we tried that and weren't happy with the quality of it, but no doubt influenced by it through it's time exposed to the air during "feedings" such as this one. We generally have sourdough pancakes on Saturdays, and this one, I took an extra cup of starter out to use for the dough.
A close-up of the bubbly goodness that is our "pet", the sourdough start.

At any rate, the dough did leaven to a degree, but I think either I didn't use enough start, or the weather was a little to unsettled and the temperatures too low to really get it to mature as a dough. I didn't waste time with baking it, it would have been a brick, but I'll try again. That's just how it goes doesn't it. We try things, tweak them, learn from our failures and progress. What more could I ask for.
Till next time.
P~

100ft Diet, Garden Update 2008

The first harvest of the new Season is in!

Oh sure I pulled some carrots out that overwintered in the garden, but this is fresh 2008 vintage tastiness. Not only that but it's the first time that I've grown mesclun and I'm very happy with it so far. About half of the bag is pure mesclun mix from under the pea plant trellises, The other half is a mix of baby spinach and arugula. I also was able to harvest some radishes (not pictured) that were very tasty as well. The grand total for the weigh in... drum roll please...
A whopping 14oz. :)
Honestly though, we are planning on keeping a running total this year of the amounts of food that we are able to produce from our yard. IT will kick in quite a bit once the cukes and zucchinis start to mature, but for now, I'm pretty pleased.
In years passed I've had a tough time growing spinach in our climate. We tend to go from cold early spring to hot late spring very abruptly and it tends to send the spinach's, actually all greens, bolting. This year, I am trying Straw mulch to help keep the moisture in, and the soil cooler. So far so good. I actually have seen a significant increase in a couple of plants since I mulched them. I did however, notice a breakout of small mite-ish bugs on some lettuces that I transplanted with straw around them. I don't know if the straw caused it or what, but I hit them with a bit of Diatomaceous Earth and it seems to be keeping the plants healthy. In case your unfamiliar with D.E., it is a natural mined mineral made up of the dried shells of ancient sea creatures. It works as an effective organic pest control for small pests like aphids, spiders, mites, etc. It also contains many trace minerals that are beneficial to the soil so it's a win win situation.

I am planning to go in depth into a gardening topic this week spurred on by a regular reader and fellow blogger. She's having a bit of a time with the learning curve associated with the Square Foot Garden method. I initially started my garden using this method as well but, as with so many of the things I do, I took the things that I found to be useful, and left the rest; even of those that I kept I modified to suit my needs and available supplies/budget. So I thought I'd go into a couple of the cheap workarounds and generally outline my philosophy regarding this system. What I'd like to hear from you is this. If you have used the SFG method, or are currently, what are your opinions of it? What issues have you had and how have you solved them, or are they even solved? I know I'm not the only "freelance" square footer out there, come on, chime in.
P~

Garden Update (100 ft Diet)

Holy Crap, it's been a week since I posted last?? I'm so sorry for the intermission. I am almost done with the major stuff that I've had going on, but not quite. In the Next two days I will be installing the fence (I know now why people pay to set fence posts.) and wrapping that project up, Then on Saturday we're having some family and friends together for my three boys baptism. Faith is something we've always been open and honest about, but have never pushed on them and recently they made a joint decision that they all wanted to be baptised together. As if that weren't enough, all this will come together on A~'s birthday, and they will be confirmed as members of the church on our anniversary... go figure? What a blessing it will be.

Amidst all this chaos, I have been managing to keep relatively on top of the garden, and it has finally begun to really come into it's own. I didn't initially decide to participate in "The Growing Challenge" because, well honestly it's so hard to keep up with all the challenges, but I think I may participate in it after all since I really have a lot of new stuff going on this year, that applies to it. I thought I'd share some pics and updates.
My Cabbages that I planted early this year and had covered as a test did really well through the cold spring that we've had.
New crop this year. I tried Kale for the first time last year when it was too late in the season to grow it. I'll probably grow a late season crop too to see how long I can keep it bearing through the winter.
New crop this year. Grew up with pickled beets, and tried the greens for the first time from a farmer at the F-Market last year, very tasty.
New crop this year. I've never eaten it, but it looks so interesting and I have a co-worker that always had it growing up and loved it, so what the heck.
New(ish) crop this year. Bush beans. I've never grown a bush variety, but thought they would be a good determinant crop for our canning program this year.
New crop this year. Never grown onions, but we've planted approx. 150 starts this year. Some will be tested as storage onions, others will be chopped and frozen for quick recipes.
Rhubarb... what can I say, I love it. I'm trying out more companion planting this year, this is a good one. Broccoli, onions and rhubarb. They are all said to be complimentary, so again, what the heck.
Peas. Not a new crop but definitely a new method. I am using a sort of A-frame technique that I am trying out this year. It seems to be catching on too, three neighbors of mine going down the street have "adopted" my technique. (Hope it works.) I also have mesclun planted under the A-Frames. The idea is that the peas should shade the tender greens as the summer sun get progressively hotter.
This is my early, baby spinach, and radishes. Almost there, I should be eating this stuff this weekend.
Arugula (Rocket). This one took a little doing for me to like. It is definitely a "have with..." not a "have alone..." and gives a earthy, peppery flavor to salads and such, I want to try arugula pesto this year.
And of course the Apple blossom special... What can I say?
Finally, our dwarf cherry tree. This is the smallest tree we have, and last year it only yielded a couple of cherries. The big story here is that I think I have managed to beat a very high aphid infestation organically. Last year every time I walked by this tree, I inspected and removed any aphid heavy leaves and discarded. By the end of the summer it seemed to have beaten it. I hope for this year to be much better.

Well, That's about it folks. I have a bunch of pics of the front yard too. I'll try to get those up tomorrow night. I haven't even begun planting heavily in my main beds either so that ought to go on this week or weekend as well.
As for now, well, I'm beat! I'm going to bed. Hope your all well, and thanks for the patience.
P~
Tomorrow, AsparagusFest '08 begins!!