March 2012 Seedlings

What an amazing day today is!  I was able to work a couple more sections of the garden.  I have to be really careful as it's full of poison ivy.  That is what happens when you clear a wooded area. 
I've planted a bunch of seeds in starter containers. 
I have a slew of seedlings at my mother's house.  I, unfortunately, don't make it there enough and they're not faring too well.  I should really get there more often to water them.  I used egg cartons, which is economical and easy.  But, when you forget about them...

For our home, since we don't have a suitable place for a lot of seedlings to sprout, I bought a tray (yes, by the hated Burpee) with a pad to hold in moisture so watering isn't a priority.  And there's a cover, so it acts like a greenhouse.  I have to admit...it's pretty awesome.  My seeds sprouted in less than a week.  I have a bazillion kale seedlings and about 25 tomato seedlings.  I can't wait to transplant them into bigger containers and then into our community garden. 



Tomatoes up front.




Reaching for the sun...




Pretty Kale.




First round of poison ivy from the other day. 



Grape Arbor

We've expanded our garden.  Well, we've cleared a whole other area on our land that measures probably 30 x 40.  I'm just guessing, though. 

We're teaming up with some friends and starting a little community garden of sorts.  As long as they come and help weed, they can take home part of the result. 

We've got grape vines galore over here.  I don't know what kind of grapes they are.  They had attached themselves to trees and grew upwards of 30 feet in the air.  The husband built an arbor for them upon my request.  I love it.  He originally suggested using store-bought wood.  I wanted a more rustic look.  We've got tons of wood from fallen trees...why not use those?  Here is the finished product...

I had to yank down the vines from the tree.  There is still one left that won't budge...and I'm not climbing up there to unhook it.  While pulling them down I hit my face with a vine.  I've got a nice scab on my nose now.  It also busted my glasses...  I need to start wearing protective goggles when I go outside. 
From the vines and from pulling up saplings and roots and such, I've now got poison ivy on my face.  Saw that one coming.  I'm thinking I'll have poison ivy on my face from now until November. 

On the Putting Up Bandwagon and other ramblings

If my husband were to turn to me on our wedding day and said, "7 years from now we'll have 3 boys whom we homeschool, chickens, a rooster and we'll be farming land so we have enough crops to put up for the winter" I'd have laughed in his face. 

Here we are.  Homeschooling 3 boys, chicken farmers with a harmless and skittish rooster, and clearing out another plot of land so we can fill it with enough veggie seeds so we can hopefully live through the non-growing seasons without spending a fortune in the grocery store.  Huh.

We've been having crazy weather in New England.  Today was about 40 degrees, but two days ago it hit 60 degrees.  In February.  In NEW ENGLAND.  I had that itch to start doing yard work.  I started clearing out another plot of land for gardening.  We're going to turn this into our community garden of sorts.  There are two other families that don't have the space to garden who will help keep the garden and in turn will reap it's benefits. 

Eli and I began clearing it out.  Cutting down saplings and thorny vines.  Mowing over dead leaves and finding sprigs of green underneath...waiting for Spring.  My daffodils are starting to come up.  There's about 2 inches of daffodil shoots showing.  Upon mowing over one area, however, we came across something very disheartening - rubbish.  Our house is in the woodsier part of town.  Our home is old.  They buried their trash.  Sunbeam bread bags.  Nissen bread bags.  Chip bags.  Foam meat trays.  Leather shoes.  Plastic and glass medicine bottles.  It's disgusting.  I can't even use a shovel to dig it out because there's no give: just layers of rubbish.  In twenty minutes, the boy and I filled a tall kitchen bag full of trash.  It didn't even come close to being all that's there.  I'm going to have to put in a barrier separating that part of the area from the others, I think.  I have to do some research.  I'm sure all the chemicals leeched out of the plastics 20 years ago.  This stuff was clearly at least 25 years old. 

I'd like to move towards no shopping for 2-3 months, aside from milk and the occasional dinner party necessities.  I thought I canned and froze a lot this past Summer.  It's almost gone.  We ate our last chicken last month.  Our berries and tomatoes were gone in November.  I have one bag of frozen peaches I keep saving for who knows what.  I have another small bag of frozen wax beans.  I do have plenty of peppers though.  We don't eat a lot of peppers. 

My Garden Goals:
1.  Grow broccoli.  It never seems to work out very well.  I'm starting my seedlings tomorrow. 
2.  Increase tomato plants to 60.  We only had 4 this year, and we had tomatoes from the csa.
3.  Buy 2 apple trees.
4.  Build an arbor for the grape vines growing wildly everywhere.
5.  Build a chicken wire cage of sorts and plant 4 blueberry bushes in it.
6.  Go to Bee school.  I want bees and honey.

Meat Goals:

1.  Increase meat birds to 75.  We had 31 when it was all said and done last year.  Clearly, we need more.
2.  Get 1/4 cow.
3.  Find out more about 1/2 a hog.
4.  Hmmm...we'll need a new freezer.
5.  We'll also need our electrician to come and update the electrical box to hold 220. 

House Goals:  (may as well throw those in)

1.  Mudroom addition. 
2.  Think about fixing the bulkhead.

I don't have any related pictures so I'll leave you with these because every blog post needs pictures:

My yummy green smoothie



The tiniest egg...not sure why...our chickens have been laying for months.  My kids think there's something different inside...like a tiny chicken or something.  I'm a little afraid to crack it open, I have to admit.



Garden, July 2011

Lots of posts today, I know.  I have some free time. 
I love my garden.  I love working in the dirt and caring for plants I know will yield beautifully delicious and nourishing food for my family within a short amount of time.  I love watching these lovelies flower and grow and produce. 

I also enjoy finding strange wonders.  This year we have sunflowers we did not intentionally plant.  I can only assume that the kids, or the husband, spit out sunflower seeds in the garden and the right conditions produced an amazing life form.  I would guess it's over eight feet tall right now. 

My compost started sprouting various plants.  I'm pretty sure at one time it was sprouting beans that I had thrown in there.  This compost pile (I have 4 small piles) started showing signs of life back in May.  Today, it's showing signs of being a pumpkin.  I can only assume it's from the seeds I discarded after actually planting pumpkin seeds in an area of the yard I thought would yield something...nope.  They sprouted and promptly died.  These ones are doing very well. 

I can only assume this will be a pumpkin. 

This year Odin wanted me to plant corn.  So, as a good mother would, I did.  I also planted pole beans and squashes, as per the native americans' three sisters plan.  And, a sunflower, as the four sisters, some talk about.  I did this purely by accident, though.  Well, I planted the pole beans in between the rows of corn, as per my mother's instructions.  The rest is definitely by accident. 

Pole bean and flower amongst the corn stalks.

I planted lettuce last year.  I let it flower because I just couldn't consume that much lettuce.  It came back this year.  How beautiful.

Lettuce amongst the sugar snap peas and carrots.

Every year we plant sugar snap peas.  We don't actually store them or eat them at meals.  My kids just like to pick them, while playing outside, and snack on them.  Perfect.

Another thing I chose to do, as you can see, is use newspaper and cardboard boxes for weed prevention.  It works fabulously.  When the growing season ends, I will till the naturally decomposing paper into the soil, mixed with composted chicken poop and some veggie compost.  Yumma.
In certain areas I have used composted pine shavings and chicken poop to give my veggies an extra boost.  Around my carrots, some corn and a cucumber plant that wasn't doing so well.  They are all doing brilliantly now...in case you're wondering.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Crops 2011

Well, these are our first beets.  That's pizza crust in Eli's mouth;  leftover pizza from the birthday extravaganza we had today.  What better way to end it by eating pizza and picking veggies in the garden?  I tried pulling up a carrot, but it was waaaay too tiny. 
We've already been harvesting our sugar snap peas for about a month now.  We picked our first zucchini last week, but I forgot that I had picked it and left it outside for a couple of days before I realized it. 
There has been this gigantic thing growing in the garden.  At first I thought it was broccoli or cauliflower because it was growing where I had planted those crops.  Then, I realized it wasn't.  This was after it was over a foot tall.  Now it's about six and a half feet tall.  Just a thick stalk and leaves.  A delightful friend informed me today that it's a sunflower.  Interesting, since I didn't plant sunflowers!  I'm excited about this because I had started sunflowers inside, then transplanted seedlings outside on the opposite end of the garden after this mystery plant had sprouted.  All the seedlings died.  Last year, I tried planting sunflowers outside.  They were promptly eaten by either my chickens or bunnies.  We covered the gate with hardware cloth, which took care of the chickens.  We got cats, which I'm assuming took care of the bunnies.  And now we have sunflowers!  My husband eats sunflower seeds, and so do two out of three kids, so I'm thinking that maybe a seed got left behind or spit out...I'm just hoping it blooms.
I have 3 large plants growing in my compost pile.  I'm thinking they are some sort of squash or cucumber.  They have not flowered, but keep getting larger and larger.  I've read that overly rich soil can just encourage growth sans blooms.  It sure is interesting to watch, though. 
And side note...I forgot to take pictures of the finished product of the pinatas.  Or any birthday pictures at all.  Bad Momma.

Letting things bloom...

As a relatively new homeowner, I have decided to let more of the unknown grow and bloom. I learned my lesson after ripping up peonies without knowing what amazingly beautiful flowers would bloom. I simply cleared a plot and started a garden. This year I am enjoying the peonies. And some strange little purple flowers. I have no idea what these little lovelies are.

One single stalk of a pink flower rose up, bloomed and remained. I keep looking for some more, but there aren't any. Strange.


I took an herb class the other day. It was amazing. I've known that dandelions are edible, but I was not aware of how nutritious they are! After the class I ran home and started walking around the yard in search of yummy weeds/herbs. I found Wood Sorrel, Dandelion and Stinging Nettle. Wood Sorrel looks a little like clover. It has groups of three leaves in a shamrockish shape. The leaves are a much lighter green. And they are accompanied by dainty yellow flowers. And they taste like lemon. My sons keep calling them "the lemon". The dandelion in my yard has been left open to be defecated upon by our goats. I will not be harvesting those. However, I will be on the lookout for friends with untreated lawns with dandelions that I can dig up and plant in the fabulous weed garden bed I have plans for. Dandelion, as stated by Deborah Fate-Mental, is the one weed that you should eat, if you were to only eat one. "They have a ton of vitamins and minerals. They are safe to use as a diuretic because of the amount of potassium in them. Dandelions are good for eczema, adult acne and very dry skin. It is also an excellent liver tonic. A toned liver can clear toxins out of your body much more efficiently, making you feel better and have more energy." (Spring Tonics, Weeds to Nourish Your Body by Deborah Fate-Mental, 2009) It is also reported that Dandelion may encourage good cholesterol and lower bad cholesterol levels. It also may aid in normalizing blood sugar levels. Studies need to be further continued and studied.

Stinging Nettle is an interesting plant. There are these little burrs on the leaves and stem. It is also a diuretic, but does not contain as much potassium as Dandelion. The Stinging Nettle can cause an allergic reaction, or rash, if stung by the burrs. Once cooked, the burrs do not pose a problem. Leaves should be harvested while the plant is young. Stinging Nettle has been used to reduce joint pain. Pregnant women, it is advised, should not take Stinging Nettle prior to 37 weeks.

I love that I can just walk out into my garden and show my children the wonders of food. I love even more that they'll learn the amazing qualities and flavors of naturally occurring plants. Hopefully, they'll come to understand that even the most seemingly unsightly blemish in a manicured lawn could be a delightful accompaniment in a salad or the medicinal remedy to a boo boo.

Ants on My Peonies

When we moved in and decided we wanted a garden, I tilled the area. I did this without knowing what was underfoot. I did it before anything was discernible. Turns out I had mowed over a bunch of beautiful peonies. This year, I let them come up...seeing as they are perennial. However, they are now covered in ants. I was speaking to a friend about this and she recommended putting coffee grinds at the base to deter ants. Hmmm. So, not knowing much about peonies or ants, I did. Success! After doing some research, however, I have found conflicting conversation regarding the ants' presence on a peony. www.peonies.org makes note that the ants could be beneficial in helping the buds to open. www.gardenopus.com says that the buds will open whether in the presence of ants or not. No one seems to really know.

What have I learned? Coffee grounds deter ants. I should use them around the base of the house, perhaps. I should leave the peonies alone and let nature do it's thing. At least the ants might leave my kitchen alone while eating the sweet resin from the peonies.

I Love Spring, Even in The Rain

I do. I absolutely love Spring. The first signs still make me smile every year. The buds on trees. The first signs of the Crocus and Daffodils in my yard. I love planting seeds and watching them grow. I'm always amazed at how quickly they pop up, or how they never show up at all! I used a little "greenhouse" bought at Home Depot, with the peat discs in them. Eli was amazed at the expansion once the water was poured in. The sunflower seeds he planted began to sprout almost immediately. Well, at day five I had to remove the cover of the greenhouse because they were so large, but then I decided to put them some place else because the rest of the seeds hadn't sprouted yet. On day seven, yesterday, they were even taller. Today, at eight days old, they are 8" tall. It's amazing to me that they are growing so fast. If I don't watch out, I'm going to have full-grown sunflowers indoors! The broccoli, which never sprouted in the garden last year (or did and I just thought it was a weed...) has sprouted, too. They are half the size of the sunflowers. The tomatoes sprouted 2 days ago and are half the size of the broccoli. The peppers, I am sad to say, are still underground. Or, under peat. My fingers are crossed.

My other favorite sign of Spring is the appearance of the tree frogs. Every year they come and hang out on my door. It's a hilarious and lovely surprise. Frogs are attracted to bugs. Bugs are attracted to light...so are the frogs attracted to light in hoping that there may be a bug or two hanging out? I love that the tree frogs have chosen my well-lit glass door to chill out on. Sometimes there will be a tree frog on my door for days in a row. We also have toads, but we don't see them until the Summer, hopping around. Last year the boys caught some baby ones. Oh, and that reminds me of the snakes...garter and milk varieties. Can't wait.

Another Year in Gardening

It's almost time for tilling the garden again! I plan on calling my father-in-law to come and do it. I could do it by hand, but I would rather not.

My plan is to plan pumpkins out in front - far, far away from my garden. Last year the darned things took over and drowned my watermelon, cantaloupe and pickling cukes. I also plan on placing my zucchini in another area of the yard, too. Nothing seems to want to eat them, so I think they'll be safe. I might put a wire fence around, but nothing too serious. I bought some organic soil, seed starter pots and a soil tester kit. I just this second thought of using an old Rubbermaid trash can to house potatoes. Maybe I'll do that for carrots, too. Hmmm.

I have some thinking to do...I'll be back when I have it all figured out.

My father-in-law tilled and I planted peas!

March 26 - I found my camera! It had fallen between the filing cabinet and wall. I have uploaded some lovely garden pictures...I heart Spring.

My Daffodils are up!

Grapes!

We have grapes. I have no idea what kind. I assumed table grapes, but they are a little seedy. So, are they wine grapes? I don't know. They are very tart. The wonderful husband climbed a ladder and picked bunches and bunches from where they hung. I brought the grapes to my mother's house, fully prepared to make grape jelly there while she corralled the children. She, of course, took over and made the jelly herself. Five cups of prepared juice, seven cups of sugar and one box of pectin later, we've got jelly. The boys and I had soynut butter and grape jelly sandwiches today. We loved it. It tasted nothing like store bought grape jelly. It tasted nothing like grapes. It was still tart and reminded me of cranberry sauce from a can. I don't really know what to think about that...

The husband mentioned something about taming the vines, creating a trellis or something and harvesting them. So, of course, off I go on the world wide web. Search, search, search. All the pictures of grapes were professional photos or photos of beautiful grapes. For some reason I was unable to find pictures of "wild" grapes that were poorly taken care of because someone just moved in and didn't really know much about them. Well, I became informed. Sort of. I found out that I should "Prune the vine so you will maintain a balance between vegetative growth and fruit productions. Where a vine is underpruned, (too many buds left) the vine will produce many small clusters of small grapes that may fail to ripen properly. If the vine is overpruned, (too few buds left) the yield will be low and the vegetative growth excessive. To "balance prune" a vine, the number or buds left is adjusted according to the amount of one-year-old wood removed in pruning." This is probably why the grapes are so small. This site also says to prune in the dormant season - March. But, in my eagerness to have bountiful grapes, I went out today and cut back all the pricky bushes surrounding the vines, cut back all the dead leaves, vines, branches and grapes and I'm pretty sure I annoyed the husband. "It's for the vineyard", I said. I got a raised eyebrow and then watched the back of his head shake.

He'll see next year when I'm selling jugs of wine by the side of the road, making my millions...

Yay! Pumpkins!

I love Autumn. It's my favorite season. When we planted our pumpkin seeds, I did not expect the pumpkins to take over the garden and spread out into the yard. The most amazing part is getting to watch the pumpkins grow, which I had never seen before. I always bought pumpkins from a stand or apple orchard. This has been truly fabulous and I will never buy pumpkins again. I love seeing the look on my children's faces as they witness the growth and changes of the pumpkin. We picked the first of the orange pumpkins the other day. My son was so excited. I let him pick the pumpkin, but he needed help because the stem is all prickly. The lone pumpkin is sitting in our front yard. The first great sign of Fall.

The Demise of the Tomato...

Late Blight on my tomato plants

Yesterday was the day I cut down my tomato plants. Such a sad day. All recommendations say to dig up and bag the plants. I haven't done that, yet. I did cut the plants down, though. I left a couple of hopefuls up...we'll see if they turn into something worth eating. One large tomato has started to turn...hopefully it will escape unscathed. I managed to salvage some more cherry tomatoes. My garden looks pretty bare now, but I think the space will give the pumpkins room to roam. After cutting down the tomatoes I noticed some holes in the ground. Could be the chipmunks. Could be the moles my husband found living under a box one day. Could be anything by this point.


Rotten tomatoes litter my garden floor. Tomorrow I'll head out to pick up the carnage and bag it appropriately. Maybe, just maybe, the large orange-ish tomato will be orange enough to pick and ripen on my kitchen counter. Crossing my fingers...

Large and In Charge

Sometimes I think I do a heck of a job harvesting until I suddenly find the biggest veggies ever. I obviously didn't see these in the previous days. I discovered a pickling cuke and a zucchini that have been enjoying the suns rays for at least a few days. They are both taller than a tube of Chapstick. Goodness gracious. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with the cucumber. It's probably too seedy for the relish I'm making tonight. I think I may just pickle it and have the world's biggest pickle. My kids will like it. I have a great recipe for refrigerator pickles, but it involves cutting the cuke. I'll have to do a little research for a good pickle recipe. I'll let you know how it comes out. I already shredded and froze the zucchini, along with the others I've had in my fridge. The zucchini doesn't look that large in the picture, but it was. Even my husband gasped.We can only consume so much zucchini in a week. I made the mistake of planting too many mounds. I'm a little thankful that two of the mounds didn't grow. I'll use the zucchini for zucchini parmesan, in a stir-fry or two and in zucchini bread. The boys love zucchini bread, even knowing that zucchini is in there. They just won't eat the actual vegetable. Maybe one day...

Oh! Tomatoes!

My first vegetable garden! I planned out the plot according to the almanac's guidelines for what vegetables are friendly with others and what are not. I drew out a picture on construction paper with cute little drawings of veggies and fruits. I wish I had saved it so I could scan it in...

I bought a truckload, literally, of cow post. I mulched some of the areas in hoping to keep in heat and curb weeds. I also used that black plastic stuff under the mulch. I did not want to have to weed all that often. We had a TON of rain and late blight took the four tomato plants I had. I was able to rescue about 30, or so, cherry tomatoes before everything was sucked into the evilness of the fungus. They started out so beautifully and were covered in green tomatoes, then one day they succumbed to the fungus. It just so happens we were on vacation for three days while our tomatoes were being overwrought. It figures, right? Something keeps eating my sugar snap peas and pepper plants. I managed to get 4 pea pods. Yes...4. It's probably the fat groundhog that likes to sunbathe on my stone steps. Yes, sunbathe. The rabbits and robins do, too. It's really funny to watch. On a much brighter note, I have bags of blanched zucchini in the freezer and 5 jars of refrigerator pickles. We have eaten zucchini like it's going out of style for the past couple of weeks. I have also given some to my parents and in-laws. My dad swears it's the best zucchini he's ever had. The basil flourished, to the liking of my 2-year-old. He loves to walk into the garden, grab a handful of basil and shove it into his little mouth. Considering the wonderful benefits of basil, I'm okay with it.

The pumpkins have taken over a third of the garden. I planted according to the directions on the seed packet, allowing 5ft in between rows. Next year, I'll plant the pumpkins in their own area in the front of the house. The carrots, cucumbers and broccoli never saw the light of day. Poor little guys. I was able to enjoy a bit of the lettuce I planted, before the pumpkin took over. This was my first garden. I have learned a lot in this experience. Vegetables are not as easy to grow as one may think. And they are not as hard, either. I have learned that I really like zucchini and that my kids don't. I learned that although they are cute, furry animals in my garden are not welcome at all, and the organic deterrent I sprinkled did not do a thing. I learned that I love watching my children walk around the garden, looking into the blossoms for pollinating bees. I love teaching them that food grows somewhere before it comes to our table, and that we can grow our own. I learned that I really like gardening. And that pumpkins need very little care and a LOT of room to grow. I will continue to enjoy the rest of the harvest my garden has to give and look forward to picking those pumpkins. Next year, my husband may have to build me an additional garden to accommodate my wants and needs.

Everything to the right of the tomato stakes and down in front is pumpkin.

If you look closely you can see a green pumpkin front and center.

One of the very few tomatoes....