More Rain...

Finally a day I am home with lots of time to garden and it rains, again!  Because it is raining I am finally going to finish up my herb box.  When I am done it will probably become my potato/pepper/carrot box instead.  I really don’t use herbs that much and I can always grow more than enough in pots…..

The box was made using all repurposed wood, 2x4’s were used for the frame, and ¾ inch strapping was used for the outside walls and bottom, 2 ½ nails and wood screws were used to fasten the frame with 1 ½ nails used in the nail gun.  I am also going to use some 5/8 inch plywood to separate the box into a couple sections. 

This is a picture of the frame.  It is 5’x 4’x 16”. I started by building the 2 long outside pieces. I built them just like a ladder and nailed them all together, they are spaced on 16” centers.  Then I added the 6 crossers to connect the 2 sides together. Because it is more difficult to be as accurate while toe nailing I screwed these to the sides.

 

This is after I have added the outer layer of strapping.  I used the nail gun to tag these onto the sides and ends of the box. It still needs a bottom and a divider in the middle, some point this week I will tear apart a couple more skids to make that happen. It also needs dirt which I will get this week after the bottom is put in place.

The rest of the garden is looking good, beans are just poking up, and all of the peas are up, lettuce and spinach looking great, the kale has really taken off and I should be able to harvest some of it soon.  My asparagus looks great, I am harvesting on a regular basis from the top bed, but I am not cutting any of the stuff I transplanted or anything that is too small.

Today I also planted the rest of the cucumbers, 2 more banana pepper plants, the zucchini both dark green and golden and another row of purple dragon carrots.  That completely filled up my top garden bed; nothing else is going to be planted there unless some of my plants happen to die.  In front of the house in the small flower bed I planted some blue Russian potatoes.  This is because of my inpatients with not being able to plant them in the field.  Flowers are nice to look at, but I can eat the potatoes!

These are the pictures of the garden beds not that they are actually green.

You can see the potaoes in the front , on hte left half carrots just coming up, and on the right shallots and you can't see them really but the garlic.

This is the raised flowerbed, no vegetables in it  but wanted to put up a picture of what it looks like green.  As you can see on the left the lila is blooming and that it hasn't been fully weeded yet.

Long Weekend

It has been a while since I managed to get a post up but it has just been very busy.  So weekend plans changed slightly so I decided that even though my plants hadn’t been fully hardened off to plant them anyways.  On Friday night I set up 2 of the 4 trellis and the following morning set up another.  There is still one more to go up for the pole beans. 

On Saturday morning I planted another tomato plant (Yellow Pear), the Bok Choy, Cucumbers (Lemon, Straight Eight), some of my pepper plants (Sweet Banana), and some bush and climbing beans (Yellow and Green Wonder Wax, and Improved Tendergreen).   I also planted some asparagus in pots outside to start crowns this year for fall planting in a permanent site.

Well I have been out in the garden and almost everything is looking good, the peppers tomato plants and bok choy transplanted very well.  The cucumbers on the other hand not so much, they are still alive but are probably not going to do very much, not that I expected them too but hoped they might live.  All of the lettuce, musclun mix and spinach that I planted all sprouted, as well as the green onions and the second planting of peas.  I am still waiting for some of the garlic to sprout in the bottom bed but it is now getting much more shade than it was a couple weeks ago so might take a little longer.  The garlic in the top bed the bulbils, have all sprouted.  Also my potatoes are up!  I only have 7 plants in my garden here but am glad they have sprouted.  

These pictures are from May 15th, i just havn't had a chance to get them up.  The one below is of the peas first coming up.

This one above is of the garlic bulbils sprouting up.

About half of the planting is done so far, I have planted my entire garden except for 1 row that was going to be peppers, but I might turn it into carrots or potatoes, gong to hold off a little bit while I decide. There is still the field garden to plant but I am waiting until it has been finished being worked up.  It has been plowed but still needs to be disked and harrowed.  It has been very wet and it is a heavier clay based soil so it might still be a couple more weeks.  Pumpkins, Squash, Carrots, Potatoes, Onions, Watermelon and probably extra Cucumbers and Tomatoes will be planted there.  I am an impatient person so because I can’t do anything to speed it up (damn weather),   I am thinking more about container gardening to increase my garden output. I do currently have 4 large pots and a long wooden box with lettuce, spinach, musclun mix and green onions in them but will probably add more.

Long Weekend

The garden is looking good, did a little weeding but still waiting for my plants to get bigger so I don’t accidently weed any of them out.  I am impatiently waiting for the weather to get better so I can plant the rest of the garden.  All the plants that were started in the basement are being hardened off slowly.  I am not going to be around on the long weekend so hope to plant everything mid next week.

Today as I was driving by the greenhouse I still needed one big tomato plant, and I couldn’t resist going in.  I did only end up getting one Purple Cherokee tomato plant but I really wanted to get a bunch more, even though I don’t have anywhere to put them.

There is a whole field that is available to plant in, and a local farmer was going to work up a patch of it for me, but he hasn’t been able to yet.  I am a somewhat patient person  but sometimes  my patients is really low.  If it can’t be worked in the next 5 days, after I plant my home garden, I will borrow my uncle’s roto tiller and just work up a smaller patch then planned.  I have almost 20lb of seed potatoes, approx 200 feet of carrot seeds, 100 onion bulbs, dozen tomato plants and all the cucumbers, gourds and pumpkins that I want but nowhere to put them.  So either I hope that the field gets worked up or that next week is nice so I can work it up.

Sprouts

Just a quick post to document what has sprouted up.  Today the landscaping fabric came off the carrots, as it looks like some of them have started to sprout.  The shallots have all come up and a couple of the garlic cloves.  The asparagus is stil looking good and there is much more of it coming up now, which is excellent.

I have started to harden off the Bok Choy, it has been in the basement for a while and is really too big to still be in the house but im not 100% of when exactly it should be planted outdoors so going to put it out sometime next week.  Half of the cucumber seeds and the Gold Rush summer squash has also sprouted in the basement,  just to give it about a week headstart.

Relaxing Day

Yesterday was a very long day, especially with the rain, so today not a lot happened.  The remaining peas were planted in a couple double rows. I also planted some more asparagus in pots, not sure where these will end up going, but I would rather have extra than regret not planting them in the fall.

I cut some more asparagus out of my garden and also went to cut some that grows wild in the ditch just down the road, unfortunetly someone already got there before me.  Not only did they cut all of it they cut it about 3 inches above grownd level instead of 1" below ground level, wasting a signifigant portion of the stalk.
This is part of why I have started more, to have an unlimited supply.

Raised Beds

So this year I have had a strong urge to garden.  A couple years ago I created a couple raised garden beds on the property.  One was made of fieldstone and filled with equal parts topsoil and horse manure.  This bed has grown successful vegetables in both years I have had it.

 The other bed was built with old cinderblocks and small rectangular paving stones.  It was filled with a mix of compost, some topsoil and a ton of well rotted cow manure.  It has also done well, but because of the high concentration of manure water would bead on top of it instead of being absorbed.  Last fall I changed the bed by making it slightly bigger and taller with more cinderblocks.  I also changed the soil composition by adding some coarse topsoil and a top dressing on the asparagus portion of the bed of manure/clay mixture.  This significantly improved the water retention of the bed.

This spring after my green thumb urge I decided to extend my top raised bed, so I would have more space dedicated to vegetables.  The bed was previously 9’x 6’ and I have expanded it to 33’ x 10’. 

As shown above you can see where I marked out the new garden boundaries and the materials set off to the side.

In order to extend the garden I used flat pieces of shale, some low grade limestone and used cinderblocks.  I actually got all of these materials from my uncle.  The cinderblocks are from a basement he had to tear a wall out of and repair, and the shale from an addition he put on a cottage.  The small paving stones have been removed from the construction for a couple reasons: due to their size they had to be stacked and were easily moved around when you stepped on them and the frost was heaving them making the wall uneven.

The first thing I did was lay the front stone wall. Cardboard was placed on top of the grass along the path where I was going to lay the walls, with the stone placed on top of it after.  Because of the wind I would lay down a piece of cardboard and them, stone on top and repeat.  The purpose of it is to prevent the grass from growing up amongst the stone wall and on the inside.

This is a side view of the front wall, behind it you can see the old wall, it was taken down after the new one was built, and more dirt was added to maintain the soil level.

 After the front wall was built I started to strip the sod from the inside of where the garden was going to be.  I actually used some of the sod to increase the height of the wall where the ground starts to slope downwards. I wasn’t sure if I would have enough stone so before laying the wall at the bottom I placed some of the cut sod on top of the current lawn to get an extra 3” of height.  I did the same thing at the point where the old bed ended and the new extended one began.  My using the sod I only needed one row of cinderblocks instead of two rows.

The front wall is on the right, back wall started on the left and the separator wall just needs to go on the grass in front of those cinderblocks.

The back wall was then put in place, with cardboard underneath the cinderblocks.  The separator wall between the old and extended bed was once again the same except I used newspaper instead of cardboard, because it was easier to bend around the sides of the sod.

Finally after laying all but the bottom wall I started to work on the soil.  My soil here is a mix of silt and clay.  This makes it a very heavy soil that doesn’t drain very well, and is subsequently difficult to work with in wet conditions.  It also packs down and stays hard packed.  I dug up the entire bed with a shovel, turning it over so that I could expose the maximum amount of soil surface area to the sun to dry out.  I them began adding vast quantities of composted horse manure to the soil.  I started with the areas where I was transplanting the asparagus and rhubarb as they were going to be planted the earliest.  The manure was laid on top of the soil and then I dug it all over again to mix it in.   In total I added approx 60 x 5 gallon buckets of manure. 

With the addition of the manure the soil level increased slightly but still on to the level of the original raised bed, thus the wall I have separating them.  Before leveling out the soil I covered the inside of the shale/limestone wall with newspaper.  This served a dual purpose; first it keeps the dirt and weeds from coming through the cracks in the wall and any grass on the inside that might poke out past the cardboard, will be smothered by the paper.

Finally the last thing to do was lay the bottom wall, once again with cardboard and cinderblocks.  Now all that is left for the weather to get warmer to plant the rest of it.

Rain

After a week of beautiful weather we are now getting some rain.  It is good for the garden and I don’t have anything to do in it anyways so really a win, win.  I did go out to take a look and saw that all of my lettuce and spinach is just poking through the soil.  There is also some more asparagus to cut, but I am going to hold off until tomorrow so that I can also harvest some stuff growing wild and have enough for dinner.

If the rain continues on tommorrow which it is supposed to I am possibility going to continue work on my Herb Box.  I started it in early spring and then abandoned it when I was able to work outside.  The box is going to be a 5’x 4’x 16” wooden box.  The frame is going to be made of leftover 2’x 4’ that was sitting around the property in the blacksmith shop.  The sides and bottom of the box are going to be made of 3/4” boards from leftover skids.  I happen to have a practically unlimited supply of used skids at work, so although I had to break them apart and pull out the nails, it is nice to be able to reuse old materials.  

First Spring Harvest!

So today I finally made it home at a decent time, and was able to do a little on the garden.  I planted 4 kinds of Potatoes (Banana Fingerlings, Black Macintosh, River John Blue and Blue Russian.  I only planted a couple hill of each, because next week after the portion of my uncles field has been tilled up I’m going to be planting the rest of them there, as well as about 20lb of Red potatoes (think they are red chieftains).  I am already a little unhappy about the Russian Blue because they were much more expensive then all the others but were the first blue potatoes I found, damn my impatience.

In my basement growing room I also planted some Zucchini (Dark Green, Gold Rush), Cucumbers (Straight Eight, Lemon), I also planted some Watermelon (Sugar Baby) and Cantaloupe (Delicious 51).  The melon seeds are from 2 years ago and my little cousin wanted me to try and grow some.  Last time I tried we had that cold wet summer and they didn’t do very well at all, I think the biggest one was the size of a baseball.

Today was also the first time I have been able to harvest my own asparagus from my garden!  I only had 3 spears that were tall enough to cut today but hope to get more in the next couple days.  There is also some growing wild in the ditches by my house, I also plan on cutting it too.

Also in the garden I noticed my garlic starting to sprout.  This garlic I planted approximately 2 weeks ago from bulbils.  This is a terrific website that explains all about garlic and garlic bulbils Garlic Farm.  They look like little pine needles poking through.  I will try to put up a picture tomorrow if it isn’t raining too hard to get one.  I will put up a more in depth post on garlic and the varieties I am growing when I have more time.

This all actually happened yesterday but due to the blogger being down I was unable to post.

Quick Post

This post is just to say that after checking out the garden this afternoon the kale and leeks looked just fine, with no ill affects from the night.  The weather forecast also doesn’t show frost in the next week, so I figure there is no point on waiting 3 days to plant the remaining plants and might as well do it now.  So today I planted the remaining plants in the garden and also planted some Green Onions (Southport White Globe) in a pot.  I watered them, but the soil was already wetter than I thought and the top inch instantly turned to mud.  It should hopefully dry out in the next few days.

Spring Planting Continued

Today I finished some more spring planting.  In the corner bed I planted spinach (Bloomsdale Long Standing), loose leaf lettuce (Mixed Red Leaves), Head Lettuce (Great Lakes), Leeks (Large Musselburg), and half of my Kale (Dwarf Curled Scotch) plants.  I am going to hold off for 3-4 days before I plant the other half of them just so I can see what the nights do to them, but I’m pretty sure they will be alright. However when I took the leeks out of the cells the dirt pretty much fell off the roots.  I hope that it doesn’t affect them too much but whatever happens happens.

In a couple leftover containers from the trees that were planted on Canada day, I planted some more spinach (Tree Hybrid) and Mesclun Mixture mild. Also in a small wooden box from work, I planted more red lettuce and Great Lakes lettuce.

Over top of the carrot and parsnip rows I laid out a piece of landscaping fabric.  This was something I read about in the Tiny Farm Blog archive.  It is supposed to help them germinate quicker and it keeps the soil moist so that they don’t have to break through the crusty soil.  I have never had a problem with my carrots germinating in the past, but figured why not give it a try. 

With pretty much all of the early spring vegetables planted, now I’m just hoping for no major frosts.  I also finished of the construction of the top bed today and amending the soil inside it.  I will have a separate post for the construction of it.

This is a picture of the rhubarb that I transplanted yesterday.

Sunshine - Planting

Today we finally had a nice sunny day out after all of that rain this last week, so I took advantage of that by starting to plant the early spring vegetables.

In my bottom garden I planted Parsnips (Hollow Crown Improved), Carrots (Purple Haze, Danvers Half-Long and Purple Dragon), Purple Gourmet Shallots and Garlic.  It is just regular white garlic although I do have a couple of other varieties that I started about a week ago but I will leave that discussion for its own post.

In the top bed I planted the first sowing of Peas (Mammoth Melting Sugar and Oregon Sugar Pod II). They will be trellised so I can maximize my space.

Also in the top bed I transplanted the rhubarb that I dug up yesterday as well as the plant I already had.  There are 4 plants and they are situated in a 10x4 foot row, 2’ apart to give them room to expand.  I could have given them more room but felt that this would be sufficient for now and wanted to save that room for other vegetables.

This year I am growing a wide variety of vegetables and vegetable varieties in my garden, so that I can find out what does well and what I prefer(varieties).  So while I will not have mass quantities of anything I should hopefully have a nice selection of everything.

Spring Shoots

With spring in full swing all kinds of things are emerging from there winter slumber.  These pictures are from last Saturday that I just haven't had time to post yet. 

This picture is of my lilac bush just starting to bud.  Although there are two of them only thirty feet apart because of the difference in sun they get only one of the two has any buds.

This is a picture of the peony just breaking through.  I need to get some cages for them this weekend, something that is always left too late in prior years.

The hosta’s just starting, few days slower than the others.

This is the sedum, I can already tell I should have separated it in the fall, but I will separate it this fall if not sooner, so I can use some at the cottage.

The asparagus I transplanted, I probably should have buried it a little deeper than I did, but plan on top dressing with manure and didn’t want it to end up too deep.

Green onions that I left in the garden overwinter.  They look and taste great.  New ones are being planted in the next few days.

The rhubarb before being moved, it will be moved tomorrow to the new garden bed.  It will be in significantly better soil and will get the benefit of full sun. 

I would also like to recognize and thank my sister for taking these pictures.

Pre Planting

First I would like to welcome my 1st follower Meaghan!!


The garden is coming along it just needs to start to warm up a bit so I can plant some stuff.  I hope to plant the peas, garlic, shallots, green onions, might plant some carrots, parsnips and then near the end of the week/weekend plant the lettuce, spinach and I have some kale i started indoors. It still needs a little more hardening off.  there are also some leeks that I haven't started to harden off yet  and will try for the week end on those as well. 

On top of that on Thursday( if its nice out) I'm planning on digging up some rhubarb at a couple locations to add to the new garden extension I have been working on.


These are some old pictures from April 16, 2011 that Itook in anticipation of creating this blog

On the right half of the picture you can see the small raised bed that I had there the last couple years.  It is going to be extended from 6' x 9' to 10' x 33'.  I am using shale and low quality limestone on make the outer wall and reused cinder blocks for the back wall.

This is the front of the blacksmith shop and the flower bed I made 3 years ago.  It contains 3 kinds of hosta's, day lily's, seedum, black eyed Susan's and on either end there is a lilac bush.  On the far left of the picture is the small garden bed that will contain most of the greens and some tomatoes.

This is the bottom garden area, in past years i have planted pumpkin and gourd plants and just let them go wild out onto the lawn.  They did not do well last year, so I decided to dig up that portion of the lawn and plant something different to mix it up. On the right you can see the compost bin I added.  Compost has been in that location since before I was born but decided to try to build the bin to keep it in a more consolidated area.