The Greenhouse!!

Fall is here and so is the greenhouse!!! Just in a nick of time to huh?
I'll let the pictures tell the story...







When I opened the box and saw all the pieces I have to admit I was a little taken aback. "What did I get myself into??" I thought. As it turns out though, it was actually pretty easy to put together. Oh yeah, and man was I lucky too. You can see the original floor that was in the pergola that previously sat in this spot. I literally did not have to change a single piece of the "urbanite" that was used as a floor. The greenhouse fit perfectly around it.
You can see in this photo that the roof windows are being held up by a special window hinge. These are special pieces that I picked up extra. They are wax piston hinges that expand when they heat up and contract when they cool. hopefully they'll help me regulate the temperature inside.

I'm hoping to be able to build some kind of a solar heat sink inside to hold heat naturally over the cool evenings here. I may need extra heat, I'm not sure yet, but either way it will be fun to play around in here this winter.

Till next time!
P~

Put'n it up!

A big part, and to be honest it's a really big part, of the idea of a sub-urban farm or urban homestead or whatever you'd like to call it, is deciding what to do with all the stuff you've grown after you've grown it.

With the economy as it is, we'e been happy to be able to help out friends and neighbors with some extra produce from time to time and we've eaten a ton of really good fresh meals, but at some point, you just have to either put up or shut up. By put up I of course mean putting up food for later. We've done a good bit of that this year. We've dried, frozen, pickled, jellied, juiced and canned much more this year that in any year past. It is by no means enough to feed us all winter, but it helps me to justify to myself the effort, time and let's be honest here, money, that we put into our garden. I wish I'd had a chance to get good pictures of everthing we did, but alas the technical difficulties raised they're stupid heads more than once for me.
Here's some pickles, potatoes, plum jam and salsa that we put up one weekend. It was a busy one for sure.

I also tried my hand at making sour brined pickles this year. I can't take credit, as much as I'd like to, for the beautiful pickle cukes. I can't grow them to save my life! But I did find a local grower that had a great deal on these and they worked great.
After seasoning and brineing them and letting them ferment for three weeks they developed a great kosher dill sour pickle taste. I really really like them. This will be a definite do again project.
This year we also tried our hand at dried tomatoes. Believe me, we have much more than this. After they're dried we can re-hydrate them in a little basamic vinager and then store in the fridge in some olive oil. Very very good!
And of course we canned tomatoes. These are some of our chopped tom's. We also have done whole romas, tomato sauce and even tried ketchup.

Slowly but surely we're building a good food storage in the basement. It would be easier to freeze a lot of stuff, but that won't help me if the power goes out.

There's still more to go, but soon these jars will be regular guests on our dinner table.

Few things taste better than something you planted from seed, picked at the peak of ripeness with your own hands and put up for later.

It's a good life, eh?
Till next time.
P~

On the garden front

All is well.
Some things are starting to show some signs of slowing, while others are really just kicking in. Some of the tomatoes for instance, while still giving prodigious harvests, ( I'll go into that later ) are starting to show signs of stress. The long hot summers do take their toll on things by this time of the year. But hey, They take their toll on me too so I can't blame them.

on the other hand, our green pole beans are really just coming on strong now. I thought that we wouldn't get a good harvest of them this year, and it still won't be as good as last years, but after consulting that garden journal from last year (can I tell you what a blessing that thing has been!) we found that our first substantial harvest of green beans last year wasn't until mid September either. We figure we're about 2 weeks behind. That will catch up to us on the back end, but honestly I couldn't have handled more if they'd have come any earlier!

A couple of other things that have been fun this year have been our green peppers and eggplants.
I don't know if it was a product of the long cool spring that we had giving them a chance to root well, or if the new Lasagna garden that I planted them in just acted like rocket fuel to them, but we got a better crop of both of them this year than we've ever gotten. And of course this years new crop for us was Okra. I followed the instructions of a woman that I met in our Master Gardener program that had learned to grow them in the south and they've done great! To think that last year I never even managed to get them to germinate and this year I'm harvesting bunches at a time. It's all about planing the seed direct well after any chance of cool weather. They like it hot.
I mentioned that we pulled our Mid season potatoes a while back. I never did manage to get a photo of that harvest up though. It was a good one so I thought I'd share.

We got a few tomatoes, cukes, a watermelon and such then too. We've eaten a lot of potatoes, but they're mostly a fall/winter thing for us so many of these are in the cold storage waiting for Thanksgiving.

I guess while I'm on the topic of harvests I can meander off in that direction with you. We've done well this year. We set a goal of 1500 pounds during the winter while we were working up our garden plan for this year. It was ambitious to say the least, but we figured what could it hurt to shoot for the moon. Well, we lost our entire pumpkin crop as well as a few zucchini plants and our watermelons to squash bugs this year. They were TERRIBLE. That's set us back quite a bit I think but as of tonight we have a running total of 745.25 pounds (Not counting eggs of course.) so I think we're doing pretty darn good. We'll hit 1000 lbs this year I'm sure or at least come pretty darn close. Last year for the entire year we got a total of 521 pounds so if nothing else we can be glad to have well beaten our own best.

We also set a one day harvest record for ourselves a couple of weeks ago. Remember
I said I'd get back to the prodigious tomatoes? Well, thanks in no small part to a one day harvest of 140 pounds, we brought in just over 166 pounds in one day. Curious what 140 pounds of tomatoes looks like?

For perspective, they're covering the top of our full-sized chest freezer. Suffice it to say we had a lot of tomatoes!

So then what's a family to do with all this stuff? Well, besides eat it of course. We gave a good bit of it away to friends and like the old saying we're so fond of...

"Eat what you can and CAN what you can't" we put up a bunch of jars this year. more to come on that.

P~

Hi again.

I won't bother to go into the who's what's where's and such regarding my conspicuous absence this summer. I've tried to excuse myself the best I could, but in all honesty, I just had too much to do and compounded it with tech problems (That are still slowing me down) and you get the picture. The blog has suffered it's biggest dry spell since... well, since ever really. I'll skip the appologies too, because honestly it's been kind of nice to not have the self inflicted pressure to keep it up on top of everything.

That said, I 'm currently working on a couple of posts that I hope will wrap up some things. The basics really, how grows the garden? What happened to the greenhouse? You know the "burning issues."

With any luck here in the next couple of weeks things will be slowing to the point that I can get back to normal, or some variant thereof.

All the best to those of you still dropping by or checking the reader. Looking forward to reconnecting with you!

P~

update

Been a while again, but I managed to get a computer online so that I can at least update you with everything that we've been up to.
The back yard is changing again. You may remember the pergola that I built a few years back, well, it's a goner! I purchased a polycarbonate walled 10'x12' 10" tall greenhouse and it will (read: should) fit exactly on top of the old pergolas footprint. I have to say I was a little, very little mind you, sorry to see it go, but oh the plans that have been dancing in my little mind. Dreams of early vegetable starts, abundant yields and starting my own annual flowers. Honestly you'd think I'd bought a 100 x 120 footer if you heard me talking about it all.

This weekend past A~ and I spent a couple of shifts, one on Friday and one on Saturday, at the local county fair. I haven't been in years and it was a good time. The last time we went the kids were still at the can you get me this, can you get me that phase and it was a pain. This time A~ and I snuck away for a few hours to tend to the USU Extension Master Gardener booth and talk veggies with anyone who'd stand still. I loved it of course. Saturday, we took the boys, gave them their allowances and turned em loose. So what do they do... they hang out with us and talk us and our partners ears off. Gotta love kids who are old enough to go out on their own a little, but not too old to still want mom and dad.

On the garden front all is going well. The last couple of weekend have really given us a great blessing of harvests. Last weekend, not this last one but the one before that, we brought in 100.5 lbs of veggies. 65+ pounds of that were mid season potatoes like red norkota and Yukon golds. They were so fun to pull. We actually had one Yukon Gold that was 1 lb 5 oz!! We did learn a lesson though. This year we planted two rows of early potatoes, four rows of mid season ones and two rows of late russets. Next year it will be one row of early, one/two rows of mid season ones and 5/6 rows of late season storage potatoes. It's hard to eat a lot of 'taters in the summer when you don't feel like heating up the house with "comfort food". My kids have, however, learned that they like to have fresh potatoes, with peppers, onions and backyard eggs in a skillet for breakfast. It's been great.

Finally, have to apologize for the acute lack of photographs. They have been taken, but I can't yet get them on line to share with you.
I'll bombard you with a big photo blitz again as soon as I can though.

Best to you all.
P~

Yes..yes...yes I really do have a garden.

Well I was starting to sense a coup, so I figured I had better do what I can to get some darn pictures up here. Call off the dogs Mike...I give!
I'm not going to write a bunch right now, but suffice it to say that A~ and I have been busy busy busy. I've been doing some more writing for GRIT magazine, meeting too many deadlines at work, urban-farming nearly double the space and still trying to make sure that I spend some good quality time with the family. Something had to give. We do have some great ideas brewing for later this summer or maybe this fall though, so don't drop me off the reader just yet OK?

And with that... let's take a walk... I guess that sign about sums it up huh?
You may notice along the way that sunflowers are a recurring theme this year. Let me just say that the bees and insect life have been having a hey day.
This area was one of the last ones in the yard that needed to be finished. It's nearly there...phew!
Remember that new lasagna garden that I tried out this year. It's been kicking some serious butt! My pepper plants and eggplants are a couple feet tall, healthy and I've gotten more peppers already this year than I've gotten any year past.
You can see the ichiban eggplants are getting ready to come on this week too.
This is A~'s favorite part of the garden this year I think. We found this fountain on clearance for over 50% off and had to pick it up. Those are Romas in the background by the way. I have a tone that are getting ready to start turning soon. I got a few this evening. they were nearly as big as my fist.
A new addition to the garden this year.
Artichokes are just coming on. I should get a couple yet this summer, but I'm hoping to over winter them in the forthcoming greenhouse. (more to come on that soon I hope.)
Here's the northside garden. The first five beds you see were the original garden. Beyond that was added this year. (yeah... I told you we've been busy.)
Okra is doing well. I hoped it would come faster but our cold spring didn't help. Oh well, my first year really trying it.
More tomatoes... They're coming on strong now.
Marcello...king of the garden.
The potato patch. The plants are starting to die off so I'll be pulling them soon.
Here's the view from the street. btw - all of those sunflowers are volunteers from last year.
we love these ones... they're called teddy bears.
These are some of my favorites too. they have the big heads like I like, but are only about four feet tall. The bees love em too.
Speaking of bees, check this picture close up. (click to enlarge.) there are at least three different species here I think.
And finally, the fruits of the labors. This was tonights harvest. 17lbs of cukes, zucchini and tomatoes. We're gonna be slicing and drying a bunch of those for sundried tomatoes. Can't wait.
So then, I guess that's a pretty good representation of what's been happening on the farm so far. Some things are behind a bit, others are going like crazy. You know, I guess thats just how it goes though.
Hope all's growing well for you all. Hope to be back soon.
P~

Hellooooo again - checking in

Summer's been kickin', the garden's been growing and we've been busy as bees. That's part of the reason you haven't heard a lot from me this Summer. I'm glad to see there's still been a few of you stopping by though, sorry to disappoint! The main reason that I've been so absent the last few months is because I can hardly get on the computer. We've had a problem with our power supply to out laptop and I can hardly use it without it randomly shutting off! I hope we'll be able to get this worked out and repaired soon, but for now I'll still be intermittent at best.

Let me tell you it sucks too, We've gone camping in the High Uintas and had dinner at around 10,000 feet overlooking a beautiful vista and an alpine lake, we've finished off the final couple of areas in the back yard farm/garden and it looks great! The garden is doing well, and we've already passed 200 lbs for the year, plus there's also been some great developments in the greenhouse front, but alas I'm waiting for the 'puter to crash on me again and don't want to get too into it until I have the time to do it right!

I hope you're all doing well and look forward to getting back in touch with you all soon!
Grow on~
P~