Four Season Gardening

I shared recently on my Facebook page how envious I am of Mother of a Hubbard. Her winter garden is drool worthy! She's in KY in a similar zone to me, so it was encouraging to see her having such success. And it made my tummy rumble at the thought of harvesting delicious greens year round.

I ordered Eliot Coleman's books, Four Season Harvest, and I can't wait to read it cover to cover. I read through the first chapter and I love how down to earth it is. And how encouraging!

We have big goals for next year and I'd love to try our hand at four season harvests!  How about you? Are you a year round gardener?

The Case of the Missing Chicken

On Monday evening, Emma didn't return to the coop. She's our big white dominant hen. Normally she takes off on her own when they hop out of the coop in the morning. Monday morning she took off toward the woods. When she didn't return, we assumed something snagged her during the day. We couldn't find any sign of her, so it was really an enigma.

I just went out to gather eggs and check on the garden. As I was walking toward the coop, I saw 2 white chickens. As I got closer, I realized it was Emma! She's returned. She's a bit dirty, but otherwise fine. She ate and drank and promptly went for a dust bath. While it will forever remain a mystery of where she was, she's home and safe. We are thrilled!

Speaking of the garden, I harvested 2 Stupice tomatoes, some green beans, and a cucumber. Our cucumbers are loaded with blossoms, so in a week or two the kids will be happy campers! We dug our potatoes on Friday night. We still have to dig the reds and then I'll report back on the final harvest weight. We are anxious to see how we did. We also have a bunch of volunteer cantaloupe vines and a watermelon vine, which is great since the chickens annihilated the ones we planted. We also have 2 cherry tomato volunteers. We didn't plant any cherry tomato plants in the main garden, so it's a nice surprise! How's YOUR garden coming along?

Monster Potato

I had a hankering for French fries today for lunch. Convenient that we have potatoes ready in the garden! After I dug this beauty, I had to weigh it. 9.6 ounces! I have a feeling we will have a good harvest this year!

Future Food

Last year, Dan built us a small seed starting table out of scrap lumber. It sat in the corner of our dining area and looked like a jungle. We moved it to the basement and we now have our plants down there. The temperature is slightly cooler, so the germination has been a little slow. But, there is green and that makes me happy on this snowy (*!&!^snowy*&^!) April day.

The year we built our house, a turkey hen had a nest behind it. She returned last year. And lo and behold,  she's back again this year. We see her come out a few times a day to eat.  And we're looking forward to seeing her showing her babies around in a few weeks!

Kellogg's Breakfast

And no, I don't mean Frosted Flakes! Our seeds arrived today. Hopes are always high in the winter for the summer garden. I picked a few more varieties of dried beans (they are really 'da bomb!), beets, some popcorn for Kole, tomatoes, and flowers to start our small flower test garden.

I was drawn to the Kellogg's tomato as the description indicated it came from West Virginia! It looks quite scrumptious and the packet claims it has a delicious, rich flavor.

Kole will be having a small table at our local Farmers Market this summer so I picked some miniature bell peppers and small popcorn to accompany whatever else he chooses to grow. He has his overalls, gardening tools, and an eagerness to learn. I consider it home schooling at its finest :-)

What seeds have you ordered?

A Welcome Sight

The weather today made me long for spring as afternoon temps neared 60°. The kids and I spent time outside, bike riding and getting a good dose of vitamin D. Needless to say, bedtime wasn't a struggle tonight!

Seed catalogs don't generally arrive until the bitter winds are howling in early January, but we received Seed Savers today. Our garden this past year was filled with about 90% of Seed Savers seeds. Everything did quite well (as is evidence by our over 2 dozen butternut squash!).

We are contemplating joining Seed Savers as it would give us the ability to obtain more rare varieties of seeds. Perhaps a Christmas present for ourselves?

Turnips, anyone?

Our fall harvest of turnips included some monsters! They are a variety called purple top white globe. They'll make a lovely addition to soups and roasted vegetables this winter!

Drywall!!

We have drywall!  The crew that 84 Lumber contracts out is nothing short of amazing, really - 2 guys hung all of the drywall in our entire house in ONE day!  Ca-razy!  It was put up Wednesday and the finishing crew was there Thursday morning.  We hope to be ready for paint by this weekend.

Our tractor was delivered Saturday, as well.  Kole and I played around with it mowing some grass.  I love, love, love to mow.  It is so relaxing to me.  It was really nice to mow around where we plan to put our garden beds.  Dan went to work with it trenching for the electric to be run to the house.  It was absolutely a great investment and we can foresee many things it will be really useful for!

We spent the night Saturday.  It was wonderful.  It was SO hard to come back to the apartment last night, but at least now we know we only have a few short weeks until it is home :-)

Gardening progress

This weekend we made some progress on our garden!  Since we are using the square foot gardening method, we needed to build some beds.  I bought some 1x8x8 cedar boards at Home Depot and had them cut in half.  I chose cedar because it is weather resistant and it looks pretty :-)

We, or more appropriately Dan, put 2 deck screws in each corner of the bed to connect the pieces together.  The beds are 4x4 feet.  We have three of them!

The spot where we are putting them for this growing season is where we eventually want to put our barn, so we are modifying things slightly so that they can be moved for next year.  We will be putting 3/4" plywood on the bottom of each bed, with drainage holes.  This way we won't lose any of the fertile soil when we move them!  We had initially planned to lay down cardboard to kill off the grass and then put a layer of chicken wire down to deter rodents, but we will go the plywood route so we can conserve as much soil as possible.

The beds will be situated north to south.  This will be easy since our house is oriented to the south!  Tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers will be grown on the north side of the beds so that they don't block the sunshine from the other squares in the garden.  We will be putting together a trellis system to train the tomatoes and other vines to grow on.  More on that when we get there!

This weekend we will be getting our tractor.  I plan to mow underneath where the beds will go and get them set up.  Next week, Kole and I will go to the local greenhouse for our soil mixture as well as some onion sets and get started!  Kole get a set of gardening tools for Easter, so he is set to help Mommy out :-)

Up tomorrow - drywall!

Future food

Seeds for our square foot garden

I adore seed catalogs.  When we lived in Morgantown, I would sit and highlight, mark up pages, and daydream over the possibilities for our future gardens.  It didn't take long for us to realize that we wanted to grow heirloom varieties of our favorite vegetables.  From beans to tomatoes, there is such variety in heirloom seeds!  The catalogs often times read like a book as each variety tells a story from the past.

This year our garden will be small, including the seeds above as well as tomato plants, pepper plants, potatoes, flowers, and herbs.  I have ordered all of our seeds and tomato and pepper plants from Seed Savers Exchange.  From seed we are growing cucumbers, melons, squash, spinach, lettuce and carrots.  The Lemon Cucumber have a delightfully sweet crunch that pairs lovely with tomatoes for a light summer salad.  The Paris Market carrots are described to be highly desirable at Farmer's Markets.  We love fall squash, so decided to try the Long Island Cheese this year.  And some little boy I know loves melons in the summer. 

We will also be growing potatoes.  We ordered a variety that is good for storage since we have a root cellar and hope to put up as much as possible for the winter.  I ordered a variety pack of tomato and pepper plants, so it will be exciting to see what we get!

The herbs and flowers we will more than likely get at the local greenhouse.  The flowers will be there not only for color, but also to attract beneficial insects to our garden.  We plan to garden naturally, without the use of pesticides or insecticides.  Using flowers and herbs, as well as companion planting, helps to naturally control pests.  

If you get a chance, check out the Seed Savers Exchange website.  You will be amazed at the varieties of vegetables that are available!

P.S.  The numbers on the seed packets refer to how many seeds can be planted in each square of our garden.

Gardening plans

This lovely spring weather has me itching to get started on our garden!  I have put a good deal of thought into what the best route for us to take this year.  As we have found, we have a lot of clay on our hill.  I am not the biggest fan of plowing and tilling for garden space as we want to preserve as much beneficial worm activity as possible!  While I grew up with a traditional large row garden, I knew that weeding was something I wanted to spend a lot of time doing.  So, what options am I left with?  I want something that is low maintenance because having a toddler and 53 acres to maintain will keep us busy!

{ lasagna gardening }

No, it's not necessarily just like it sounds.  One might be led to believe that it is a garden where only veggies that are useful for making lasagna are grown.  The basic idea is to layer organic materials such as compost, peat moss, composted manure, and other things you can get your hands on.  A layer of newspaper or cardboard is laid down underneath the "bed" to kill off the grass and provide a yummy lunch for earth worms to start munching on.  Over time, the earthworm activity, combined with actively adding more compost to the bed helps to remediate poor soil. The beds can be planted in immediately, but do best when started in the fall and allowed to "cook" all winter.  I really like this idea and have saved the cardboard from our windows to use under the beds.

{ square foot gardening } 

This method really appeals to the analytical side of me!  The basic premise is building a raised bed of whatever dimension you choose, as long as it is a whole number.  Inside the bed, you put in a mix of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost.  You can plant immediately and since there is no remediation of the existing soil, you can have an abundant garden.  You plant in each "square" and can plant up to three times each year in one square, so crop rotation is automatic.  I have purchased the "All New Square Foot Gardening" book and have made a shopping list for materials to go this route.  I plan to lay cardboard underneath the beds to help kill off the grass.  I have some chicken wire to put on the bottom as well to discourage any rodents from a free lunch.  There is also a treillis system I plan to build for tomatoes, squash, melons, and cucumbers.  I will be updating with my progress once we get started!

Tomorrow I will share our choice of seeds and garden layout!

New Years Goals

Goals.  Resolutions.  Winning outcomes (fancy pants Weight Watchers term).  Hopes.  Dreams.

Our number one goal for the year is to finish our new house and move in!  We hope to move in by the end of May so that we don't have to renew our lease.  And well, spending time out at the new house constantly reaffirms to us that we are indeed doing the right thing :-)  Kole absolutely loves being out there.  And we have some pretty kick butt views from all of our windows!

All other goals pale in comparison to the first, really.  But, here goes:

-- Start a small garden. 
   I already ordered seed from Seed Savers Exchange.  I plan to utilize the lasagna gardening technique (ooohhh...I see a potential blog post!).  I had a list a mile long of seeds and garden ideas, but Dan reined me in a bit.  What we don't grow ourselves we hope to get at the Farmer's Market. 

-- Can and freeze as much as we can.
   Well, we have a walk in pantry, a root cellar, and plan to get another freezer for the basement.  While our eventual goal is to preserve most, if not all, of our food, we have to start somewhere.  I got some canning resources for Christmas and am already making lists of what I want to try.

-- Get some chickens.
   This will probably be a late summer project.  We would love to get some chicks, but for starters we might look into some pullets locally.  We could get chicks next year to start!

We have sooo many ideas for what we are going to do with the place when we get more established out there.  I hope to tell you all about them, but that is for another post. 

I should add in one more goal: start blogging more!  While this blog is to document our progress on the house, I want to develop my skills as a blogger.  I hope to start writing about all kinds of things.  Stay tuned - 2012 is going to be G R E A T!