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Sprouts in the Garden
2 weeks since we sowed the garden and we’ve got sprouts. The beans and peas always seem to take off, however the corn is being more hit and miss. These boys were up at 6:00 to let the chickens out of the coop so since they were out there we did a little weeding.
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The new and improved Strawberry Patch
After 2 years of first planting the ever bearing strawberries we haven’t managed to get a decent harvest. This probably has more to do with my own inability to keep the strawberries weeded and the high clay consistency in the soil than the plants themselves. Therefore this year we are restarting the patch in a slightly raised bed with some Honeoye variety and a few ever bearing transplanted from the existing patch. We’re going to need to build up the soil with compost to allow them to thrive. Looks a little sparse now but as we’ve seen strawberries like to propagate. Hopefully I can keep the patch weeded, physical distancing…
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Planting Day – 2020, Garden Edition
The final frost of Spring “should” be over so today is planting day! The kids are all excited as they get their own garden bed to sow. We’re trying the traditional gardening method of indegenous people with the 3 sisters. Each box has a row of corn down the middle surrounded by peas/beans and then a squash. The concept is that the beans/peas will grow up the corn stalks and fixate nitrogen into the soil as fertilizer while the squash’s broad leaves will provide weed control and help retain moisture in the soil. The soil itself has a layer of compost (wood shavings, chicken poop and food/lawn scraps under the…
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Compost Harvest!!
The first frost of the year has struck, but luckily my little one was keeping an eye on it so we did a little harvesting the night before. Nothing but compost. There was some yams and other plants that sprang up but the tomatoes and spaghetti squash took over and gave us a nice little bounty. Time to get it all chopped down and turned for planting in the spring.
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Rampant Compost Growth
Compost is definitely the way to go. Look at this raised bed and random seeds. Dozens of tomato plants and squash/melons. Really interested to see what this one turns out to be.
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Garden Planning – Conundrums
We succeeded in building the raised beds and the new to-be strawberry patch. The question is what to do with the extra space that has filled in nicely with clovers. I’m thinking 2020 will be focused on just maintaining the raised beds to hopefully have a successful garden. If all goes well then we’ll do some traditional rows. With the grape arbor in place for an entrance we’ll have to build out the fence to match, definitely.
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Summer Compost Garden
While in the process of building the new raised beds, or laying them out as there isn’t any actual “building”, I needed to remove our pallet compost bin. What to do with all our great compost? Why move it into the new bed of course. The greatest part is that not even a week later we already had tomato and melon seedlings growing. Of course these little ones have quite a late start but with continual global warming who knows they may have time to produce. Don’t you just adore nature? Going to have fun watching these take off, Also raised beds are much easier to maintain you just pluck…
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Raising of the Grape Arbor
This year’s big project was building a Grape Arbor that would also serve as the future entrance to our garden. Last year I found these plans while searching around and thought to myself you know two of these would span the entire width of our garden. If you are going to do something might as well go all out. Step 1 – Preparing the Foundation As with most projects it isn’t as simple as cutting and nailing the wood. First is measuring the locations for the posts and digging some 2 feet deep holes for our cement footers. Doesn’t help that it is April so the ground is still a…
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Water + Sunshine => Growth
It’s really enjoyable watching your plantings grow. Although beyond putting the seeds where they lay, Mother Nature takes care of the rest. Beyond a little weeding and irrigation. Take a stroll with me and enjoy the garden. We planted the sugar baby watermelon last so they are still catching up with everything else. However the Potato plants and Melons we planted from seeds saved from last year are really taking off. One of the raised garden beds is being taken over by unknown seedlings so we’ve officially got a mystery box this year mixed in with the parsley, chives and Pepper Plants we were planning.
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August expanding the Strawberry Patch
The best part of working on the garden is spending time with the kids. August acts all grown up and there isn’t anything he can’t do. We expanded the patch to 3 rows last week but today we increased it to 4 rows. All in total we have 55 Strawberry Plants in the Garden. I was wandering the yard and there are several more up by the patio as well. Those squirrels sure get around. I’m quite content with increasing the patch from 20 to 55 plants over 1 year. So no more transplants this year. We’ll see how much yield we get and if we’ll keep the patch this…
