The Big Dig

So I mentioned a few weeks ago about how we expanded the garden...

I thought I'd provide a little visual evidence. As you can tell by the different colors of wood, the six boxes in the center were the original, and the five (soon to be six) boxes on the perimeter are new. It's  a little hard to see, but behind the original six boxes ( heretofore known as O6, boi) is a long row that was put in last year. This year we also added two more rows along the far side. Plus, the fence, while still temporary, is much prettier and more pest resistant than last year. We've covered the grass in between the boxes and are planning to mulch all along those pathways to help keep mowing and weeds to a minimum. Everything looks great, but because of the cold spring we've had, all of the plants are puny. Most of the things I planted stayed the same size for weeks, and didn't start growing much until recently. At this time last year my peas and beans were twice the size they are now. Luckily, I had a huge number of volunteer tomato and tomatillo plants, and those are doing great! I had to replace most of my pepper plants with store bought ones, because my seedlings were seriously weak. My cucumbers, too. At this rate, I doubt I'll be getting much in the way of produce until August.

If we have an early fall, I'm going to be so pissed.

Urban Farm Living

It isn't even May yet and already my garden is eating up most of my free time! Last year was great, but this year we decided to expand operations a little more. I was cramped, needing more beds in the plot, and more space to walk around. Last year we had six 4x4 foot beds and one 1.5x10 foot row. This year we've almost doubled that. And we added a chicken coop. Because we weren't crazy enough with our giant front yard garden.

These are some of our silkies. We currently have more chickens than we will ultimately want, but since we got them unsexed, we bought extra. We are only keeping ladies, and probably only about 5 of them. But there are more than that right now, so, yeah, we're going to be eating some really fresh chicken dinners some time this summer. 

These are some of the second run of chicks we got to replace the fellas from the first run. Plus, somehow we ended up with all one breed in the first run, even though they were supposed to be assorted. The second run has three different breeds, so we will have a little more variety.

Speaking of variety, the vegetable varieties have increased dramatically this year. Since we'll have more room, I let each kid pick something new to try and grow. Sam chose brussel sprouts, Lucy chose purple cauliflower, Maggs chose watermelon, and Fred chose peppers. We already grow those, but he didn't really understand that. Plus we have five tomato varieties, tomatillos, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, corn, zucchini, pumpkins, two hot pepper varieties, two sweet pepper varieties, and blueberries. I saved seeds from all of last year's tomatoes, and luckily everything sprouted! If everything goes well, we should be getting fresh eggs sometime in August. It should make for a tasty summer! 

You Say Tomato, I Say PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!

If I made a conservative estimate, I'd say that it's likely I've pulled 150 pounds of tomatoes from our garden so far this year, with August bearing the brunt of that harvest. I was picking 10-15 pounds every 2 to 3 days for a while there, but now we've slowed down a little bit. I still have a big pile of San Marzanos sitting on my counter waiting to be processed into sauce tomorrow, however. And there are still fruits coming in from all four types of tomatoes I planted. The little sweeties and hillbilly tomatoes have so far simply been eaten, some while we pick in order to keep us going. The black krims and previously mentioned San Marzanos have been made into sauces and salsas, or halved and canned. Not to mention all of the other ones we've eaten or given away. I just took a bag over to the neighbors, my folks take a big bag every week and SOB is taking them to work.

One day's harvest in August...

And I didn't even take a photo of the 16 pints of salsa verde I have sitting in my pantry right now. Or any of the pickles, pickled peppers or candied peppers. Or jam. Or peaches in syrup. Or the bags and bags of frozen beans and peas. There was a stretch of about 10 days in there when I canned something each and every morning. At least I know we'll be eating well come winter!

The funny thing is, we plan on making the garden even bigger next year in hopes of increasing both the variety of veggies and the amounts of each. We need way more peppers next year. And more carrots. And more tomatillos. Our cukes didn't fare well this year, so we want to give them a bigger bed to grow in. We are experimenting with eggplants this year, and if we like the results we'll need space for those. And we want to put in some rows of corn. And I offered some garden space to our neighbor.

All of this is offered as an apology. If you didn't hear from me much last month, this is the reason why. It's also the reason I didn't clean my house or buy my kids back to school shoes or do much in the way of anything except garden.

It was a yummy way to pass the time.

Sunflowers and Nieces

So I would have to say that these Russian Mammoth Sunflowers really lived up to their name. My brother is 6'2" and the biggest one it definitely taller than he is. In other news...

MY NIECES ARE IN THE HOUSE!

My apologies in advance, but I might break the internet with all the photos of these little darlings that I'll be posting this week. Stay tuned!

Nature Talent Fairy

Because there are days when dressing up like a fairy and eating veggies raw from the garden are just par for the course.

Homesteading

The past few weeks have been a little quiet around here, but now that school is out for the girls, I should be able to get back to posting more regularly. The problem is that I spend the few precious hours I have while Fred is napping tending to my green babies.

The weather we've been having here has been bizarre, cold then hot and then cold again. We've had a few freeze warnings and we even have a frost warning tonight, on MAY 24TH! In the above photo you can only see my peas, beans and hops (in the pots) but there are 26 tomato plants, 3 cucumber plants, 3 zucchini plants, and a big thyme plant out there as well. Then down by the pool I have a bunch more in containers, including my tomatillos, hot peppers and a few more tomatoes.  Plus I still have a few trays of smallish plants still in peat pots, in case I need a replacement. Every time we have a cold snap I have to run out and cover everyone, or bring them inside. Then the next day I have to go out and uncover and look for damages. Plus, we didn't rig up any irrigation this year, so I have to water manually every non-rainy day, which takes the better part of an hour. Then I fret over my tomatillos, which aren't doing very well, and hope that I'll get at least enough to make one batch of salsa. Then I inspect every inch of fencing to make sure rabbits or deer aren't getting in. The I put away the hose and go take a shower, because by this time I'm filthy and sweaty. Then Fred wakes up and all of my blogging time is gone!

BUT! Now that the girls are finished with school and I won't be doing the drop-off-pick-up madness, I will have much more time during the day to tend to my green babies, so that nap time can still sometimes be blog time. Occasionally nap time will be painting time or swimming time, but I should be able to squeeze in a post here or there. 

Until harvest comes in, that is. Then I'll be busy canning and preserving!

Oh, and did I mention that next year we're getting chickens? 

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

Ah, springtime! You've only barely arrived and already my husband is squawking about turning the air conditioner on. Since we moved into this house in the fall, everything that is currently sprouting from the ground is pleasant surprise.

While these flowers are lovely and all, they don't quite satisfy my horticultural urges. Luckily for me, my husband does quite enjoy digging in the yard and constructing things for my gardening delight. 

Here you see most of what will be my new and amazing garden! Since we've been moving so much lately, I haven't really had what I would consider a good gardening season, and I intend to make up for it this year. There are six 4 x 4 raised beds in there, and I think we're going to add three more or one long row down the side. The fencing isn't entirely complete and isn't permanent, but may become more so in the future, depending on how we like the layout. We're going to add another smaller rabbit fence about three feet around the edge of this, because SOB read that deer get spooked by double fences. Plus we're going to plant basil, chili peppers and marigolds in that border, since they're all repellent to deer. Despite living within city limits and on a very busy road, we get lots of deer traffic in the yard. Or we have one deer who poops all over the place. Either way, HATE.

In the back yard we have a pool, therefore we have a nice, big fenced in area. We're going to be putting some potted veggies back there as well, as insurance against the one/many deer. But we know we have at least one rabbit back there, so everything is going to be up off of the ground. 

SO! What are we growing this year? 

Black Krim tomatoes

Hillbilly tomatoes (as a throwback to WV)

San Marzano tomatoes

Sugar Sweetie cherry tomatoes

Double yield cucumbers

Tomatillos

Purple tomatillos

Peas

Purple beans

Jalapenos

Purple jalapenos (are you sensing a trend here?)

California wonder bell peppers

Yellow banana peppers

Krimzon Lee peppers

Mammoth Russian sunflowers

And I have twin two year old blueberry bushes soaking in my kitchen right this very minute. 

I am very much looking forward to some purple salsa this summer!

The 2011 Garden Insanity

You may well remember that gardening is a pastime I enjoy thoroughly. Last year we were only able to put in some peas at the old house, and we planted some potted tomatoes once we moved in, but it was meager at best. This year, because of all of the horror stories I heard involving deer, we planted one garden in the yard and made an "insurance" garden on the deck. The deck garden consists/consisted of peas, beans, tomatoes and bell peppers. The yard garden has tomatoes, tomatillos, carrots, and six different varieties of the hottest chilies I could find. So far, we've had an abundance of peas, and then once they were finished we replaced them with beans. The beans are just finishing up now. I picked some jalapenos yesterday, which is the first thing I've harvested from the yard garden.

The tomatoes and peppers in our deck garden, which we planted in case the deer decimate everything outside, are doing horribly. The main issues, I believe, is the soil. We bough several large bags of potting soil at Big Blue Home Store, but we received garden soil instead. Neither one of us really thought about when we made the realization, and I went ahead with planting. I also bought those plants at Big Blue Home Store. Those plants haven't really grown much since the day I put them in. There are a few fruits, but most of them are rotting at the blossom ends. The peppers are only now flowering, and are quite small. I don't expect much from them.

The plants in the garden? Now that's another story. Everything out there, save for a few Thai peppers I picked up at the farmer's market, was grown from seed. Three tomato varieties, carrots, chilies and tomatillos all started in my dining room, and some of which I sowed directly as an experiment. We tilled organic soil and compost into the ground, made some raised beds, and planted away. The results?

I have never had plants grow this big in my life. I planted two of my tomato seedlings in a large pot on the front porch, and it keeps tipping over because the plants are so tall. The cages I bought are three feet tall, and most of my plants are more than double that size. There are green tomatoes everywhere, and tomatillo husks are rapidly filling with fruit. It's so dense I can barely see the interior plants.

Luckily, until recently the deer haven't noticed this lush smorgasbord. But last week I discovered this:

They found us. Luckily, it seems like they were in and out pretty quickly. They just ate the tips of a few branches and didn't touch any of the unripe fruits. I've been vigilant about spreading blood meal and spraying this revolting smelling liquid fence since then, and they haven't been back.

Now the only issue I have is that my cat is using one of the beds as a litter box. Any recommendations, other than driving the cat into the middle of nowhere and leaving him to poop in someone else's garden?