July
Harvesting and harvesting! Maybe we get to the weeding. But it never fails that some sort of critter gets into things. Some monster is eating the tops and flowers off of things. Even the ones inside the fence. Hoping that "Elmer Fudd" got the raaabbbittt! But it really was a groundhog. I had decided that when I get to heaven I am going to ask God "why did he create groundhogs?" To plague us?
Then I did some reading on those lovely creatures. They only live about 4 years and they love digging tunnels! When one becomes vacant, in moves other animals like foxes! So they do have a purpose. I just happen to not have a big dog to keep some sort of control over their population!
Such is the life of a gardener! Having Bethlem Myopathy, a form of Muscular Dystrophy, gardening is one of the ways I live unlimited.
Yesterday, Adam and Anouska, our kids, picked in the garden and we had a feast of vegetables but they missed something that is very large and not sure how they missed it.
Now I get to make something with it. There are so many wonderful choices! Please send me your recipe ideas (no deserts please). I can then post them on our recipe page!
June, 2016
I love May and June. Mainly because the garden work feels so good. My hands are either in the dirt planting or weeding. Because I have Muscular Dystrophy it has become difficult to do a lot of my gardening on my own. My Randy is my right hand man of muscle! I am so happy that he loves it too. And true to all gardeners, we do not always agree. So we do argue about how close you can plant the bean seeds. He wants to be able to find the beans. At this point all is planted. Here are some pictures to enjoy.
Randy and I have some great helpers. Our main one is Ginger Ratsep who now has a share in the garden and can put lots of time and effort in with us. We really appreciate her help. Flowers, herbs, water feature and a very large vegetable garden. Still have lots of mulching to do to keep out the weeds. You are welcome to visit. Just give us a call.
Spring!
It is early this year! Peach trees are starting to bloom. Peaches love to have their "feet" covered in snow all winter. It keeps them warm and keeps the frost from going deep into the trees. This year has been different. Not enough snow for that and extreme temperatures that has brought an early spring. Being over 65 I do not mind an early spring but when these delicate trees bloom too early frost gets their blossoms and peaches are few if at all. Love peaches straight from the tree.
We have become a world of buying food that we have no idea where it came from and when it was picked. The only clue is the difference in taste. The sweetest fruits are grown organically and vine ripened or in this case tree ripened. This is why I grow so much myself.
Seedlings are up and looking beautiful in the sunroom. Peas, kale and chard are planted in the garden. The first digging is done. It just needs to be reworked before planting. Spring planting is here.
Prep of the soil:
1. Dig the beds
2. Put on a layer of manure, horse manure for me is right next door.
3. Work that into soil
4. Attach a sprayer to a garden hose and set dial to 1 TBS per gallon. Add Basic H Classic to the sprayer. Spray all of the garden beds to treat the soil.
5. Rework beds if needed before planting...a finer digging and breaking up of clumps
6. Using a hoe create your rows. Sprinkle in the rows Fertrell feed from Fedco Seed company.
7. Water row gently
8. Plant seeds about twice as deep as the size of the seed.
9. Water gently again until it starts to sink in.
10. You can plant all root crops and peas, swiss chard, kale, radishes, and spinach now and be safe.
June 14th
Fantastic Sunday morning. The flowers are beautiful and I am so pleased with all of the colors. We have started the process of thinning to eat! Yes, I hate to kill those baby seedlings but when you don't plant a little thick that sparseness always feels like your wasting space. Since we plant in beds with close rows and do not walk between those rows but stretch across the beds, everything can grow closer together. But I am afraid you still have to thin. But why not thin to eat the thinning. So we have started the process. So what do we end up eating? Beet greens, lettuces, kale and chard, all from thinning. All the gardens during these long days are beautiful. Yarrow is blooming. So I pick it in full blossom, strip the leaves, put in a vase in the house with water and slowly over time as the water disappears the yellow yarrow leaves me with beautiful dried flowers that can last all winter. We did that yesterday. I do the same with my eucalyptus plants. They are not ready yet but the yarrow is beautiful!
May 25th, 2015
The garden is almost planted. It has been a slow start but I am very pleased with our success so far this year without a lot of help. Our chicks are almost full grown and it will not be long before we start having eggs. Randy is working hard on a great home for them to really run and enjoy life. We will let them roam the yard when all garden plants are grown and we can watch to make sure they do not decide to dig them all up looking for BUGS!
However, even though I have been gardening for 36 years, last year we got a blight on our tomatoes but not anything else. Well, it has returned with a vengeance and not only the tomatoes but the peppers too. I just went out and cut off all the infected leaves and made sure the hay was covering up the ground to eliminate a lot of splashing from the soil. As a way of prevention some people mix baking soda in water and spray the plants. I am patiently waiting to hear from others if Basic H in water will do the same thing. If it does I will let you know.
I remember other times when I lost plants and I had to really look hard to find organic solutions. Today it is much easier because you go online and search. Then you go on FB and ask your friends who are also organic gardeners. I am sure long before the chemical companies were here people had simple solutions in their kitchens or from their herbs to solve these problems.
In the meantime I have extra plants in my sunroom to plant in case I have to start over with my tomatoes and peppers. In hind sight, I think I planted them when the temperature had gotten cooler, maybe too cool and it was extremely dry and then we had a hard rain before I covered the ground with hay to stop the splashing from the soil where funguses live. I guess you could say even our garden soil needs enough acidophilus and right balance of good bacteria to combat the bad, just like our bodies do.
Happy gardening!
Update for the staring of Spring 2015
April 19th, 2015
Amazing, a very warm weekend that has had temperatures above the norm! In my youth I would have done a garden frenzy of stuff. I remember that I had read about how much peas love it cool and that some people put them in the ground at the end of February or beginning of March so like everyone, I tried it. It helped to space out the gardening over a much longer time but then again the peas came at the beginning of July the same as what they had when I planted them in April. The past couple of winters have been long, cold and full of snow. So for two years now and I will again this year plant those peas at the beginning of May! Well I got those peas at the same time as I had when I planted them early. There is obviously no need to do things early, early, because it is all about ground temperatures on how fast those seeds germinate.
So what did my sweet husband do today, seeing that I am no longer capable of doing the digging, he started the routine digging of our beds and clean up. My observation that the best thing that we did in our younger years was double dug all of the original beds. Double digging is a form of "French Intensive" gardening. Both of us could see the difference, fewer stones, different color of the earth and easy digging compared to the couple of new beds that did not get that double digging. Of course now that we are in our 60's we really do not want to work that hard. I would love to hire someone who would not argue with me about the intensive digging and just follow my instructions to the T! Awe! Se la ve!
Last fall we did not get to pull all of the carrots and parsnips before the snows so every time we go out to the garden now that the snow is gone we keep finding these beautiful roots! Parsnips having wintered in the garden actually taste like candy. Their sugar content increases when they winter in the garden and it sweetens any dish that you put them in.
If you are starting your own garden this spring, the soil preparation is the most important part, PH checking, lots of proper digging, lots of manure, some organic fertilizer from FEDCO and of course inoculent for peas and beans, it helps to fix nitrogen in the soil. Hay for mulching when the time comes. Then you will need those organic seeds and seedlings. FEDCO!
Start small and then each year expand by doing some bed preparation in the fall. Have a great garden!
The Beginning of Spring 2015
(not quite!)
It is March 15th, "Beware the ides of March", for me that means watch out for erratic weather! For this year it is incredible. But in spite of all of that, I did start my seeds. I order my organic seeds from Fedco Seed Company and also I order seed starter soil. The shipping on that 50 pound bag of soil is almost the same as the cost of the soil but I feel it is worth it. It takes about 3 weeks for pepper seeds to sprout. I put the soil into used plastic containers that I get my organic greens in all winter and then plant the seeds, gently water and put the whole thing in a plastic bag and seal it. When I see the seeds have started growing I transfer them to a grow tray with a clear plastic lid. I keep them in a warm sunny south facing window for a week or two and then move the tray into my sunroom.
Once the peppers are up I plant tomatoes the same way. After a few more weeks I do the same with cabbage, leeks, Chinese cabbage, and cauliflower. The last seeds I plant are my giant zinnias! I love those flowers! They really make the flower garden all summer. The more you pick them, the more you get!
Now is the time to plan out where to put all those seeds and seedlings from the sunroom. When that snow thaws and make sure you have the things you need. Never plant the same crop in the same place year after year! You will get nothing but pests and diseases! Rotating crops is essential! Beans and peas are nitrogen fixers, so they feed the soil. Tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and brussel sprouts are heavy feeders. Most of the rest that you might grow are light feeders. So when rotating go from heavy to either light or nitrogen fixers.
Fertilizers:
The best thing is cow manure or horse manure that is somewhat aged.
Inoculators help the nitrogen fixers to do their job.
Organic furrow feeders like Fertel that I get from Fedco is organic and helps with trace minerals and to give the new plants a good boost!
I also use cardboard boxes. Those boxes breakdown easily back to mother nature. What I find interesting is other brown boxes do not and never will. The ones that are white or have a shiny label on them also never breakdown. Some people use newspaper but I don't like it and worry about what is coming along for the ride.
More later!
Every year there is a new experience either with those lovely critters or that thing called weather!
Welcome to gardening tips from someone who started with knowing nothing
34 years ago!
April 25th, 2014
So we have decided to expand our gardens. Being content with not only gardens near the deck and one on the west side of the house we decided to use more of our land for food production by including another family who are willing to work the land with us and slowly add more families over time! It's the beginning of a new experience just before we enter into our golden years. Golden years are no longer the 60's and above but to me the 80's and above. I still have too much living to do in my head, wonder sometimes about the body!
I have a strong commitment to raised beds, double dug! Or some would call it "French Intensive Gardening"! It's intense all right! So what exactly does that mean? Well, it means broken backs when you are in your 60's and just don't want to stop doing the things you did in your 30's. Randy spent the afternoon at the chiropractors and his back is just full of knots! Wonder why! He and Jen double dug two beds. I had what I thought was the easy job. I was getting soil samples to test for arsenic. Did you realize that pressure treated lumber leaches arsenic forever? It can contaminate the soil around the deck and we have planted there! Poisoning ourselves! So rule number one never use pressure treated lumber. I knew that all these years but had no idea that it was a forever thing. So to test the sloping bank of gardens near the deck, I had to dig 5 deep holes. Take sampling's from every hole at different depths and mix them all together in a big bucket taking out all the stones, etc as I did it! Then I took a glass quart jar and filled it with the mixed soil. I did two beds, ten holes and mixing and sifting through buckets of soil for two quart jars. Now we shall see. Did it really leach that far or not?
The life of trying to be organic as possible! I buy organic seed every year and plant my seedlings in organic starter soil and then get a organic furrow feed and get in a supply of manure that I do not have much control over. I just try to get the free supply. Praise the Lord, the neighbors housed horses all winter, plenty of supply next door for this year! So we do the best we can. The sunroom is full of our great looking seedlings.
When we started gardening here and at our first house we had one major problem, SHALE! Lift the sod, pick ax through the shale, try to bury the sod in the crumbled shale, and put on a layer of local manure with hopes that something grows! Well, it always has and over the 28 years we have been gardening these double dug beds, we actually now have great looking soil. I feel very blessed! We double dug the beds for at least 10 or 15 of those years, over and over again. Today you can go out and toss the shovel and it goes in a couple of inches and stands up! The goal is to not allow the soil to get so compressed from the weight of us humans with our heavy duty work boots! Plus create fertile top soil that is very deep and we have it!
So a slow spring it has been this year but it has begun! Almond tree is blooming! Peach blossom buds on pink. Amazing, even though cold start to our spring, everything is blossoming about the same time it did last year! When we have lots of snow the peach crop is usually at its best. Cleaning up the garden we found more parsnips and cabbage! Delicious! It is time to plant, just need to stop complaining about the fact that it takes me longer to get around and just get out and get those peas in the ground tomorrow! All the greens too, especially kale and spinach!
Have a great gardening week everyone!
(ps. still making my Shaklee 180 smoothies with raspberries and peaches from last years crops!)
No comments:
Post a Comment