2010 Garden Changes

Every year I keep a running list of what I want to change for the next years garden. Here is what I have compiled to far.

Need to grow more potatoes, corn and garlic
Grow less tomatoes
Try pickles again
Keep the amount of carrots about the same
Get a few more raspberry and blueberry plants started
Fill in the dead spots of the strawberry patch
No popcorn
Keep the amount of greenbeans the same
No peas needed
Do more herbs: mints, bay, cumin, echinacea
See if we can start some grapes or apples
Keep onions about the same
Do some landscaping in the front yard
Do less canning this year - I hate to do that, but with a newborn and a 2 year old in tow, I don't know how much I will be able to do this year. Thank goodness for the bumper crop of tomatoes last year!

Edited to add: We will not be doing potatoes in tires this year. They do grow well that way if they are kept well watered. We won't be doing it that way because I need to be able to handle the harvesting by myself. The tires are too large and heavy for my 5'1" petite frame to handle without injuring myself! I can't always count on my husband to be able to help me. Afterall, he works full time plus helps run his family's farm.

Today around the farm

Snapped a few pictures this afternoon while my little girl was playing outdoors.


The soybean field across the road is beginning to turn yellow.


The trees in our woods are starting to turn also.


View of the garden.


The pole beans have blossomed and set beans now.


Tater tires are about done. Crossing fingers for a good harvest!

Back to work in the garden

Since we have been back home, there has been quite a bit of harvesting going on. I picked 1 gallon of jalapenos and froze them until I start making salsa.


Picked enough greenbeans to can up 11 pints. The greenbeans are grown in raised beds done in the square foot garden method.


Fours ears of sweetcorn have made their way into our bellies.

One lonely Roma tomato has turned red.


Yesterday we dug up about a 10' row of potatoes. This is what we got:


Here is the big-daddy of all the taters we dug up. I sat it up against a quart canning jar to show it's size.


Then we hit up the one tater tire. We were anticipating quite a harvest from this finally this year. Last year the soil was so dry inside the tires, so this year we stuck a pvc pipe down the middle of the stack and watered down inside the pipe. The soil was nice and moist all the way through as we dug it up. Guess what we found...not many taters...again. So dissappointing! If the other 2 stacks that are still green don't do any better, we won't try this method again. Here is what we got out of the one tater tire stack. They are in a 1 gallon bucket.


Last night I got ambitious and started pulling the onions that were ready. I grow them in raised beds done the square foot method. Here they are sitting on the porch curing.


Here's the biggest onion so far:

Garden Progress

July has nearly blown by us already! One more week and it will be August, where has the summer gone to? Soon I will be knee-deep into canning tomatoes and other goodies from the garden. Have you gotten your canning lids yet? I have!

Here is the thing that my hubby rigged up to water our garden easier.

All he did was put our sprinkler on top of a metal stool that was just sitting in the barn. He had to put a board on top of the seat in order for the sprinkler to sit straight.

The sweet corn is tasseling and setting its silk.


The tomatoes are really starting to put out the fruit! It is all still green, but it won't be long and I will be turning them into paste, sauce, juice, salsa...


I've been canning greanbeans for a bit now. They have slowed up, but we planted more so that we will have a later harvest too. This is my daughter helping me snap them. She is not quite 2, and I really didn't think she would be able to help me like this already! She didn't do it for very long, but I was thrilled to have her help!


I pulled some carrots last week. They aren't all ready yet. We also planted some a few weeks ago for a late harvest.


Some more onions that I planted.


My daughter looking for some raspberries to snack on. They are just about done.


That's all the garden photos I have taken recently. I will add that we also planted some cucumbers to harvest late. All the stuff we planted for a late harvest should make it to maturity by our first freeze. At least we hope it all does!

Things are a bit slow as far as gardening and canning go. Mostly been weeding and watering the garden. We really need some rain. We just received 1/2" yesterday. Until that amount, we have only received 1" this month. Prior to that, we have had very little rain also. Not fun to have to worry about watering the garden every couple of days.

What is everyone else doing in their gardens (flower or veggie)?

Gardening Away!

The gardening is being done in full force now. I have updated the sidebar to show our progress. We spent the holiday weekend getting most of the garden in. It feels good to have it this far! We are already making plans and changes for next year!
Here is a pic of the garden at the north end. I tried to get in most of the garden so everyone can see how big it is.


Here is the tomato area.

There are 25 Romas. Romas are perfect for sauces and soups. That's my main use for tomatoes. I will also be canning ketchup and salsa with these. I bought 16 plants from the local greenhouse. Only 9 of mine survived out of the 30 that I started from seed. Not too happy about that.

Here's some sweet corn that has come up. I planted 120'of Golden Bantam this year.


Planted 4 jalapeno pepper plants for salsa making.


This is the contraption I made to keep the birds from pecking away at my seeds. I took some tomato cages and tied some old cd's to them. I used those ones that companies send me to sign up for AOL, etc. I don't use them anyways, might as well do me some good! And it's working so far!


Peas starting to bloom. These are Early Frosty variety. I filled one of my raised beds with them. Done square foot method.


The onion and pea bed. All done square foot method.


The bush bean and carrot bed. Beans are Contender. Carrots are Danvers Half Long. Done square foot method. There are 3 green pepper plants in the front.


The tater tires. The middle one didn't get put in as early as the other two. That's why it doesn't have the second tire on it.


Planted 3 blueberry bushes this year. They were from last years crop, so they are fruiting this year for us. Yay!!


Mixed lettuce varieties and some Cherry Belle radishes. Not much here. but dh won't eat radishes and is not a big fan of lettuce. So no need to do much of these.

Now, just praying for some rain!! This hard clay is starting to crack from the lack of moisture.
I will post more pics later, gotta make some supper!

Weekend Gardening

We had a beautiful weekend despite the wind. I got another box planted, this time with carrots. I planted an entire 4x8 box, so that makes approximately 512 carrots. I say "approximately" because for one thing those seeds are so tiny, it's hard to just drop one at a time. And also it was quite windy, so some may have blown away or extras blown where I didn't intend for them to be. All in all, I think the box will be ok.
The peas are coming up nicely, here they are:


The onions look marvelous, although windblown:



The potato tires are looking good:






The strawberries are filling out nicely. I bought 4 plants to fill in some empty spots.


I also bought some berries to plant. I got grapes, raspberries and blueberries. Can't wait until those are producing well in a few years! We all love berries.
In a large container, I also planted some mixed lettuce and radish.
It feels so good to grow my own food!

The garden is growing

The gardening is underway here! Despite the sleet, wind and cold of yesterday, there are veggies popping up in the garden. The onion tops are about 3" tall, the peas are just breaking through the soil and the potato leaves are making their appearance also! Indoors, the tomatoes are setting their third set of leaves and a watermelon seedling decided to show up. None of the other watermelon, squash or herbs germinated. Time to replant those. As soon as the ground dries some, we will be planting carrots and tilling the new garden plot. In about a week or two, I will start the bush beans. Hopefully this weekend I will make it to the nursery to get my berries and fruit. It is supposed to get into the lower 80's this weekend - good time to garden! The ground should be ready for the carrots then too! Spring gardening is always exciting for me!

Getting ready for spring gardening

Past several days have felt like winter is back. The few weeks preceding winters return, it was beautiful and we took advantage of it.
Got 2 tater tires started...



Moved the garden boxes and marked off an area for the corn, tomatoes and vining plants...



Started seeds indoors (sorry no pics yet), burned garden waste that couldn't be composted due to disease, pruning and just general cleaning up of the garden/herb/flower beds.
Here are some signs of spring around our farm...







Last 4 pictures from top to bottom: garlic, oregano, daffodils, hyacinth.

Stocking the pantry from the garden 2008

Canning, I love it and I hate it. I love the independence it gives my family. I love looking at the beautiful colored jars in my basement, just waiting to be ate. I love that I don't have to buy everything at the grocery as long as I can some foods. I hate the long hours standing and making my feet, legs and back hurt. I hate the time not spent with my daughter because she is too young to help me. I hate how tiring it can be. Thank goodness I don't do the harvest-type of canning year-round! All in all, I really do love to can my foods. Like I said, I love the independence it gives us! In 2008, I did more canning than I have ever done before. I had alot given to us, and we made our garden larger. Some other foods I froze, dried or kept in a dark cool place.
Here is what I did:

Canning-
11 qts green beans
42 qts tomato sauce
11 pts carrots
7 qt mater soup
5 pt apple butter
31 qt apple sauce
7 qt pear sauce

Dried-
28 apples
lots of parsley, oregano and lavender
all onions (189)
1 pt maters
1 head sunflower seeds

Froze-
4gal strawberries
12 bell peppers
1gal blackberries

Keeping fresh-
15# carrots
5 pumpkins
5# taters

Key to my abbreviations: qt=quart, pt=pint, gal=gallon, mater=tomato, tater=potato

Notes:
I did not personally grow the apples, pears or blackberries. The apples and pears were given to me. I bought the blackberries from a local farmer.
The peppers did very poorly this year, hence only 12. Then they ended up getting pitched because they had such a horrible taste to them. Don't know what happened there.

Not-So-Bountiful Harvest

Well, we dug up the taters from the one stack of tires and here is what we found:

Not what we had hoped for. We haven't tackled the second stack yet. Probably the same results. We think that they probably didn't get enough water. It's been real dry this summer, and with all that dirt, I guess I just didn't water them enough. I did water them every other day. I thought I was doing good. There were lots of roots, just not many taters. We are not going to give up on this method. We plan on trying again next year. We may cut the tires and run a soaker hose through them at the bottom.

The tomatoes are just as pitiful this year. Here is what I have picked to far.

These are supposed to be full sized Roma's. Not so big are they? Note they also have blossom end rot. From what I understand, that comes from a calcium deficiency and water uptake. Again, these were watered ever other day since they are in a raised bed. But it has been dry as I said. Sigh. These poor maters have had a rough year. Fungus (from when we got TOO much rain), tomato horn worms, drought conditions and I'm sure something else will occur yet! To the right of the maters, there is a well-aged over-ripe greenbean. I have let quite a few beans go to seed for saving for next year. I never did this before and I was curious to see how far along they were. Not far enough. They are still quite wet inside.

On the bright side, the carrots look well and I planted peas last week and they are sprouting. Also I have 4 good sized pumpkins. And I have 12 pints and 5 quarts of green beans canned, along with another 6 or so pints to can. So I really can't complain. Except we still need rain.

This is what showed up on my porch today!

I ordered an accessory kit for my Roma strainer, a 1-cup ladle and the catalog was thrown in for free all from Lehman's non-electric hardware store. I love this place. We went there a few years back and I fell in love with it. It is my kind of store! I would much rather shop at Lehman's than Macy's or JCPenneys! I really wanted this kit so I can process berries without all the seeds. Now I can can some blackberry jam! The ladle will help my canning go faster. I've been using a ladle that seems to only hold 1/4 cup. It took forever to fill jars.

Garden Pictures

As promised, pictures of my Square Foot Gardens...The boxes...sorry about the shadows!

Bell peppers in the foreground at left, onions behind(the winds we've had has blown the tops down) and the pole beans in the back. The empty spaces had broccoli in them. These spaces will hopefully soon be full of carrots!

The tomatoes. This is a mess. I will never do maters like this again! These are all different types of paste tomatoes. I thought they were all vining type and there would be plenty of room, but I was wrong! The good thing is that there are a bunch of green tomatoes right now, some just turning orange. I planted 24 tomatoes here. Can you see why maybe they would be prone to the fungus they had earlier? Live and learn!

Side view of the pole beans. We used a fence-like thing that dh found to trellis them. It worked out ok. Next year we will use string and dowels so they can climb easier. I have gotten quite a few pickings so far despite the many Japanese beetles that infested these a month ago.

View of the carrots.

And the tater tires! As you can see, the right side is dying off. I dug around yesterday and found 3 taters. One was nicely sized, the other two not so much. I'm anxious to take these a part and see how many taters we got! I got the idea from Stephanie at Stop The Ride!

The pumpkin vine is at the base of the tires.

South side of garage lives the tater stacks, pumpkin, sunflowers and herbs. Herbs include garlic, chives, oregano and hyssop. Baby girl likes to check out what she can pull on.