For Sale...

Since we are all about experimenting, I think we'll need to experiment with growing plants for sales. Last summer I order 100 four inch plastic pots with the intent to use for selling plants. As the seeds catalogs come in I'm looking forward to ordering seeds for the veggies/flowers/herbs that I'll be planting in our kitchen garden. I like to start more seeds than I need so why not try to sell the extras?!

Different stages of seedlings.

Along with the plastic pots I ordered a soil blocker - as per the example by Justin Rhodes and Eliot Coleman. Eliot Coleman is the Four Season Gardening guru as well as the host of a show that was on years ago called Gardening Naturally. Even back then, I could not have imagined that I would want to dive into market gardening as a way of life. I better slow down, I'm getting ahead of the plan here. 

If I do this right I can get at least 8 rows of 6 blocks into the plastic trays, maybe even 9 rows. Anyway, I can count on at just shy of 100 blocks and let's say that all of the blocks germinate and are healthy. After a few weeks those could be transplanted into the larger pots and we would have -

THEN after a few more weeks we might have some nice looking plants ready to peddle to people who want nice looking plants. 

Instead of transplanting to the garden, these could be transplanted to customer's hands!

Check them out HERE

I'm not a fan of using funky stuff in my soil mix so I wanted to choose my plant food carefully. We were tripping through Home Depot one afternoon and I knew that I needed some sort of plant food. I looked at all the different brands out there, all of the different forms of Miracle Grow, Preen, Alaska Fish Fertilizer, Jobes and more. I knew that I didn't want anything too chemical-like, so I decided to try out ecoscraps. After opening the package, I liked what I saw and it definitely didn't smell like chemicals and it wasn't blue in color. It was easy to use and even though the instruction was to dig into the soil around the plant, I was just too lazy to do that and end up just sprinkling the base of each plant. It worked out pretty well and all of my plants were very healthy! ecoscraps will definitely be my plant food of choice from now on! 

The shared garden space...

January 14, 2017

Most people that I have encountered are saying the same thing as I am - the snow must go. Seriously, I have lived in Clark County my whole life and snow like this just doesn't happen that often. When it does, winter settles in and stays for awhile. I'm cold and ready for a thaw to happen.

For once I miss the rain.

OH NO....SNOW

Winter arrived this week - in a big way!

Looking to the West - our field is all covered!

Tuesday night it snowed...and snowed and snowed and hey...look it's SNOWING.

Woke up to at least a foot of snow in our driveway. Here's the deal, we don't get snow like this that often, if at all. In fact, we can't really remember the last time it snowed so much! Also, snow in our area stays for a day maybe two days then melts. This time the snow is still here and I think it will be around for a few more days. The weather forecast doesn't seem to be improving much, the temps are still going to be low and there is a chance of rain (oh how I miss the rain) and oh hey, let's talk about FREEZING rain...No Thank You!

So, while the weather outside is frightful, I am going to hunker down with my seed catalogs and my homesteading book, Four Season Harvest book and my Market Gardener book (when it comes back home from Mary's house).

I've been thinking about "the next season" for a few weeks now and this snow is not going to deter me from my planning!

The last time I checked, my little plants under the low tunnel were doing fine. I guess we'll see how things look after the snow...and freezing rain.

What have I been up to for the last couple of months?

The reality is that the last month was totally crazy with Christmas and New Years and all the crazy that goes along with the holidays.

I have been watching a lot of...

Homesteaders on YouTube 

In the last couple of weeks I have been following more homesteader YouTube Channels - mostly in North Carolina. My favorite would be Justin Rhodes. He and his family are getting ready to embark on a very big project this year - The Great American Farm Tour. You can find out all about this on his You Tube channel which I have linked above.

Other channels that are becoming favorites, Art & Bri, Wild Roots and Sounds Like Reign - these are all in North Carolina...Oh, the other I am LOV-ING is Jameson Adventure. They are the bus conversion people that the Rhodes chose to convert their school bus. Super cool family! They are all very unique families with different types of homesteads. Check them out!

I've also been thinking about...

Raising A Pig

Because of Jeff & Stacy of Jameson Adventure and their two swine, I've been thinking about raising ONE. After a little research I learned that pigs don't get lonely so one would be just fine. Alright! More research also got me thinking that we'll need to build some sort of shelter for our future friend. It can be pretty simple like:

photo from ricelandmeadows.com

I suppose it could be elaborate too, but for the sake of experiments, I think we'll keep it on the simple side until we have raised the first pig and then go from there.

Now, what breed of pig to choose, there are so many to consider! The girl in me wants a cute pig. Let's face it, most baby animals are CUTE. So, maybe one that will be a nice looking as an adult, but not so much that I lose my desire to have he or she processed for meat. A good personality is a must - we want feeding time to be a more enjoyable time rather than a throw the food in and go away! I don't want to get too attached, but at the same time I don't want to be neglectful. It will be a fine line.

Since I think that we'll just go with ONE pig we'll have to make sure that the end weight is no more than 250 pounds. A pig of this size could possibly produce anywhere from 160 to 180 pounds of meat. That is way more meat that we could possible consume in a year, so we'll have to share the wealth with friends and neighbors. As much as I like beef, I think that raising a pig would be a more cost effective project and would require less space in the process. This project may or may not happen this year - we will revisit this topic later.

What we are planning...

Chickens for eggs and meat!

I know, I know...I've said it before, but this year the chickens will happen! We have a spot all picked out. Once the weather improves and the snow is gone we'll have to go and check out what supplies we have for a coop and what sort of coop we want to build. Still unsure of what the housing situation will be for the chickies...there are so many options. Chickshaw, chicken tractor, A-frame, hoop house. If you can imagine it, build it right? So, the laying hens will be the first thing we get. I've found a place in Woodland that sells laying hens that are less than a year old and would be close to laying eggs sooner than later. That will be nice - let someone else raise the chicks and we get to benefit from that.

The meat chickens will be from a hatchery in Tangent called Jenks Hatchery check out the site it's a pretty cool family operation not terribly far from where we live. I haven't totally decided on whether we should go with Cornish Cross or Freedom Rangers. It will be time to research more I guess. The amazing thing is that within 3 months we will be able to process the chickens and we'll have meat in the freezer! The first year will definitely be a learning experience, so I won't go into a chicken growing frenzy and get more chicks after a month or so. I may want to do two rounds of chickens though, so we'll see.

Whatever we decide on the chickens will happen for sure!

It's never to early...

To Plan A Garden!

I've been thinking about kitchen gardening for a little while. THEN my first seed catalogs arrived -

Oh yeah, my favorite thing ever...Seed Catalogs! There is one more that arrived this week, but it got a little beat up in the mail and may have been tossed into the recycling bin. I better check on that...Tom pulled it out of the bin...I can see how it might be mistaken for trash.

Can't trust the USPS!

Where to start? Well, favorites is always a good idea - tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, potatoes and a variety of leafy greens, which are also the things that work out REALLY well. Things that we experimented with last year - ground cherries, cabbage and shelling beans. New stuff that we planted in late fall - purple broccoli, flower sprouts and Chinese cabbage. If those items survive the cold snap that we experienced this week we'll have some super early stuff in a couple of months. I peeked at my low tunnels and the snow collapsed them, but I am hopeful that the plants underneath are okay.

We'll see. Everything for the next few years will be an experiment. Planting, observing and harvesting. As well as taking notes along the way to record what went well and what we can improve on.

There have been a lot of things on my mind...

Why Not Become a Master Gardener?

This last week I thought I could enroll in the Master Gardener program at WSU - Vancouver. It's an 11 week program which takes place one day a week and includes other online projects and assignments. Then once the classroom work is done 50 hours of community service providing gardening related information, assistance, problem solving etc. to the public is required to become certified. Afterwards, you commit to 35 hours a year to maintain your Master Gardener status.

We'll see, I haven't made a decision on doing this just yet, but it's something that I could easily commit my energy toward if I want to make a home business a reality. It just might not happen this year - possibly closer to when I think I want to leave my current job behind. Which doesn't bring me the kind of joy and contentment as working on our farm.

One more thing...

It's hard to tell how far the tunnels are hanging as there is a lot of snow in front of them!
I cannot believe that it is 42 in the hoop house!!

I promise to do better at posting here. When life gets busy, you kinda gotta go with it! 

November 13, 2016 - There's a Shift

Daylight Saving Time ended. 

So, it's pretty dark in the morning and the evening so there isn't a lot happening out in the garden. This is not a surprise as I had already anticipated this happening. It just means that we are now shifting attention to things that we have been neglecting until now. Inside projects which really means getting ready for the holiday season to arrive. 

However, there is one outdoor project that needed to be done (or a couple). The low tunnel has been flapping all over the place since we first got it set up. Today was the one day that we didn't have a lot going on and a little time to get out there and secure the hoops and get the cover reattached, in a what I can only hope, is a better way.

Everything at this point is an experiment and the plants seem to be fairly happy...

purple broccoli in the front and the flower sprouts in the back

Chinese Cabbage & Pac Choi are hanging in there

The low tunnel should look good for about 5 minutes...hahaha. The wind can whip around the back side of the shop, so we'll see how long this stays looking nice and secure.

We are hopeful that this experiment will turn out well and at some point we'll be harvesting something more than just the kale - which we have a TON of.

The remainder of the items that I started for fall is in one of Mary's boxes and we had to kind of slap something together to protect the plants from the four-legged critters that came around and topped of every single romaine lettuce in the garden. They also included the spinach. Fortunately those are growing back and now that we have this not so great looking cover on them, they might actually thrive just a little more.

We'll see happens. I'm pretty sure that we'll need to come up with another set-up, but this hopefully will deter the deer from walking across the plants and leaving their prints behind.

Since the lettuce was taken all the way down I decided to start some more last week. When I first got them ready I didn't have a lot of confidence that they would actually germinate - it hasn't been terribly warm. I was wrong, after a few days I spied several of the seeds had sprouted - SUCCESS!! Then after a couple more days this is what the seedlings look like.

Amazing! Once these are good to go I'll be planting them in the hoop house where we will have a better chance of getting some decent greens.

Ashes from the fireplace, mushroom compost and blood meal have been added.

I'm pretty sure that the hoop house crops will do well. It might be our ticket to some fresh greens outside of the regular spring/summer season. 

Next week will be quite busy and I will have almost no time to do anything in the garden other than look at the plants in passing. The week of Thanksgiving will be my time to get out there and pay attention to the plants. 

I'm amazed at how quickly fall is passing us by, soon it will be winter and then shortly after it will be time to start planning the veggies that we plan to grow and the next big project that we want to accomplish. 

November 4, 2016

(Didn't finish this up yesterday - posting on Saturday the 5th.)

It's time to Fall Back! So hard to believe that the year has gone by so quickly!

My Top 5 this week will be the experiments that I tried out...

SEEDS OR PLANTS

Most of the veggies that we had in the garden were from seed.  However, I wanted to try out one thing that I have been able to grow well from seed in the past - pumpkins, specifically PIE pumpkins. There is a nice nursery in our area so I dropped by one afternoon and browsed some of the plants. I went away with some flowers and a couple of Pie Pumpkin plants. It took a while to get those in the garden, but I don't think that it would have mattered as they just didn't do that well. Granted it was a little on the later side when I finally got them in, but still. Pumpkins have always been the one thing that has done well. Even without trying. So I don't know what happened because the other plants seemed to be doing pretty well.

From the two plants I got 3 good sized pumpkins - but only one of them was orange when harvested. There was another orange one that was a little on the small side, so I might get enough to do a couple of pies with those. There are still two on the vine, but I don't think they will turn orange at this point. I have left them on the vine to see what happens. They are still VERY green, but nicely formed. That's the nice thing about pie pumpkins, the shapes are generally uniform.

So, what have I learned? I do MUCH better growing pumpkins from seed!

The other vegetable that I had to buy plants of would be the Shishito peppers. Those were at Freddy's of all places. Shishito peppers seems to be a newer variety. Anyway, I had already taken one trip through all of the veggie plants and didn't see them, but on my second trip through I found them!

As I mentioned last week, there were still quite a few peppers on them still and the plants were still quite hardy. I do believe that will be ending soon. They will go down because of frost or me pulling them up. I'll most likely be pulling them up!

FALL/WINTER CROPS

Something else that I have not done before - crops outside of the typical spring/summer season. Since I haven't been out to look at the plants all week - except to unfurl the row cover material on the low tunnel. At that time everything looked pretty good and I can only assume that the plants are still happy.

I think I'll have enough time to get the second cover over the back side of the frame before dinner tonight - which should have been done a few days ago, but oh well. As soon as I can get out of my work clothes I'm going to muck around in the yard.

COVER CROP

I've only planned and tried to do a cover crop one time. That was when we lived in our last house and I thought it couldn't hurt to try. Somehow it seemed to not really work. I'm not sure. So we will try again. I better see what I need to do to make that happen. It might be too late. I DO have the seeds that I plan to spread...RED CLOVER.

First...research!

HOOP HOUSE TOMATOES

Oh yeah! There were a total of 7 plants in the Hoop House and for a while I thought that we wouldn't have any tomatoes...I was so, so wrong -

The first day in the ground

From about 3 weeks ago

The plants exploded after a month or so and just kept going. This weekend I'll need to get out there to see what is happening and see if the green tomatoes are still okay so I can try another experiment - Fried Green Tomatoes!

PRESERVING

Up until this year I didn't have any thoughts of trying to pickle or process any of the veggies that we grew.  This year I decided to do the following...

Refrigerator Pickled Green Tomatoes!

Tomato Sauce :)

Sauerkraut

Being able to process some of the food that we grew was pretty fun! These worked out pretty well so I think next year I'll see about actually canning stuff. Like the whole get the big pan and sterilize everything like crazy and do that water bath thing. Sure, why no?! I don't have anything else to do in my day, why not add something that I have NEVER done!

Seriously though with the addition of the freezer that was FREE I think that next year we'll experiment with succession planting. Growing to preserve for the off season, oh yeah, I like that idea!

Overall, this gardening season has been successful and I learned a lot. I am giving myself a little time to learn more about growing food in the hopes that in the not so distant future I might be able to do this as a part-time job of sorts. My goal is to leave my regular 40-hour per week job within 5 years and pursue my dream of a part-time market gardener. I have to take to risk if I want to do something different with my life. So far, God hasn't shut the door on this dream...rather the door is being eased open with each passing season.