, Author at Summers Acres

Winter Chores: Preparing The Garden Soil

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After last year, our first year having a garden, we determined to do things much better this year. We kind of threw our garden together at the last minute last year. On the bright side we did learn a lot out of our failures. Not everything was a failure. We did get a better harvest than we expected from the haphazard way we threw our garden together. But this year is going to be different, we hope.

We have done a lot of things to fix our pH, which we believe to have been a major problem with our garden last year. In the fall, we burned a large pile of brush we had collected and spread the ash over the garden. We also tilled in a bag of lime. At last check, our pH was between 6.0 and 6.5. A huge improvement over the 5.0 we had in the fall.

Next, we decided that we needed more organic matter. Lots of compost. We built a compost bin last summer and have done a good job of throwing in our waste in the bin. Unfortunately, we had a lot more grass clippings and not enough leaves and vegetable waste to make a good balance for composting. It also did not get turned as regularly as it should have, and the biggest problem I think was that it was not wet enough most of the year. So, due to those factors, we have not gotten very much home made compost to add to the garden.
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Battery Organization

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As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently created an extensive First Aid Kit. Then I was in a quandary trying to figure out just where to put this large tackle box and it still be readily accessible. This prompted me to do a little organizing before my vacation ended and I headed back to work after the New Year. I found a few items that were not used, old, expired, etc that I just threw out. This cleared up a little room in various areas under the sink and in medicine cabinets, but still I needed more room for this large First Aid Kit. My only other viable alternative was to put it in our spare closet that we recently revamped into a pantry.

Our new pantry is filling up quickly and has become a pantry/DP closet. Many of the items like canned and boxed food I really couldn’t do much with as they are already pretty tidy. However, there was this one area of the shelf that constantly irritated me…..the batteries! I had originally stacked them the best I could, but some of the packaging is not in simple square easily stackable boxes. I have attempted to buy batteries in semi-bulk sizes so they are not so expensive per battery. But sometimes we just don’t have the extra money to buy the bulk or I could not find the sizes I needed (AAA and D) in bulk sizes for long lasting shelf life. So, we had several packages of batteries in that normal every day battery packing. You know the kind you see them hanging in on the aisle near a register in a store? They just don’t stack well.

During this same time frame I came across this pin on pinterest on battery storage.

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Garden Lime

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We have a serious issue with the acidity of our soil. All the pine trees we have do not help this fact one bit. We did not even know we had a problem until after the growing season when we purchased a soil tester from Lowe’s (I think Lowe’s should sponsor our blog as we seem to mention it a lot).

While last year’s crop wasn’t a failure, I believed it should have been better. So I set out researching to identify ways to make it more abundant. During my research, I came across soil pH. This had never crossed my mind. While reading as much information I could find on the internet about soil pH, I read an article that said dandelions liked acidic soil. We have a lot of dandelions. Also, pine needles are acidic, and we have an abundance of pine trees. This lead me to wonder if that had been part of the problem.

Upon testing the soil in the garden, I found our pH to be around 5.0. Way too low for most of our crops. Now, with a problem I set out on a solution

Most everything I read said use lime to raise your pH. Everywhere I looked it said lime. Than I came across a little tidbit of very useful information. Wood ash also increases pH, and adds vital nutrients to the soil most fertilizers don’t. Since we had a large brush pile from all the fallen limbs, tree trimming, and bush removal for the year, we just set it on fire right on top of the garden. There is a post, Fire! Fire! Fire!, about that on our blog.

After the bonfire and the spreading of the ash around the garden, I tilled the ash in and retested the soil. It had raised the pH from 5.0-5.5 up to 5.5-6.0. I tested several spots on the garden so that is why there is a range of numbers. That still left another half a point to go in places. Our goal was to get the pH to 6.0-6.5. Every vegetable we intended to grow was happy in this range. According to the chart on the bag of lime and the approximate size of our garden, we needed 1.5 bags of lime to get that last little bump to the pH. We figured it was better to be slightly under than slightly over, and we are cheap, so one bag of lime for the garden.

We bought plain old powdered garden lime. The pelletized lime was just a touch more expensive and we are on a budget (read: cheap). Next year we will spring the extra 40 cents a bag for pelletized lime. At first the lime spread easily from our spreader. After a short period of time it would cake up leaving a hole where the lime had gone out of the spreader. A quick shake and everything would be working again. The farther down the level of lime in the spreader would go, the worst the caking got, and the harder it had to be shaken.

And then there was the dust cloud I was creating. Regular garden lime is very fine, so the dust cloud was expected. To be honest, the cloud wasn’t that bad but my shoes may disagree.

All in all, it would have been well worth the extra 40 cents to go with the pelletized lime. I think it would have made spreading much easier and I wouldn’t have spent five minutes trying to get the dust off of my pants and shoes.

The pH of the soil tests right at 6.0 to just a touch over in places. Let’s hope that helps make a big improvement to our 2013 harvest. The next step for the garden this winter is add as much compost as we can get our hands on, then we are ready to plant.

Garden Fence/Grapevine Trellis

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Being on only one acre of land, we are always looking for ways to maximize the usage of our space. As we were needing a new fence around our expanded garden, we had a revelation that we could also use this as a trellis for our grapevines.

During the first year of our garden, we needed a fence to keep our family dog from digging up our plants. She is wonderful dog. A little hyper and friendly as can be, but she loves to dig.

We made a trip to Lowe’s. Luckily its only a 10 minute drive since we seem to go there quite a lot. We had the measurements of our garden but were unsure of just what type of fencing we were going to use. After much discussion we settled on rabbit wire. Smaller holes on the bottom to keep out small critters and it also happened to be the cheapest. We purchased some of the little green metal posts to support the fence.

The idea of this fence worked perfectly. It went up fast, kept the dog out, and was easily moved when we expanded our garden for this coming season.


The Arbor with the first year grapevines.

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First Aid Kit and Organization

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We have been following A Bowl Full of Lemons weekly blog series Emergency Preparedness in 8 Weeks. Each week we have tailored the tasks for our needs a bit. Additionally, there have been somethings that we had already done in our prior preparations that we simply just skipped. But I believe this is a nicely structured step by step process for someone who does not know where to start. This is not an extensive long term preparedness plan, but a short term (few days) emergency plan.

First Aid Kit Organization

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Farmageddon Documentary

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We have been really busy with our family, traveling, and the Christmas holiday. It has been wonderful and we have enjoyed it greatly. I hope each and everyone of you had as blessed a Christmas as we have.

I guess it is time to start getting back to a regular routine. Jon and I found this documentary, “Farmageddon”, on Netflix this evening.

Photo Credit

Everyone trying to have their own small farm whether for just their family or for a business should watch this. I am so disgusted by what we watched. I don’t know why I am surprised. Watch for yourself and form your own opinion.

View the Farmageddon Documentary Trailer

View the Farmageddon Full Length Documentary

http://farmageddonmovie.com/

Crab Apple Jelly – Take 1

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Wednesday I decided I was going to try my hand at making crab apple jelly. This recipe, Mary Wynnes Crabapple Jelly, looked simple enough. Surely, I could do this. Jon decided to help me after I got home from work that evening.

We had our son pick a 3 gallon bucket of crab apples before I got home. Jon had the day off and got started on the process of removing the stems before I arrived. Now, he understands what I meant by tedious. When I arrived home there he was in the kitchen still removing stems.

Crab Apples and Their Stubborn Stems!

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Crab Apple Juice

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We have a crab apple tree in our yard near the driveway. Every year it is loaded down with crab apples.

I do not know if it grew wild or if it was planted by the previous owners. It was here when we bought the house. It is beautiful tree in the spring when in bloom. I’ve never really known anyone to do anything with crab apples. I’ve seen them around, but always just assumed they were wild and had no use other than a home remedy for constipation.

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Wood Ash for the Garden to Raise pH Level and Add Nutrients

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We gathered brush all year and placed into a pile in the corner of the yard. We had no way to dispose of it, so we were planning to have a nice bonfire one cool fall evening. We have quite a few trees in our yard that need the periodic trimming, and we removed a few large bushes so this brush pile had become rather large.

The pH of the soil in our garden was very low. It was reading between 5.0 and 5.5. While some of our veggies and bushes would be ok in that range, getting the pH around 6.0 would be appropriate for all of the veggies we plan on planting next year. I had planned on getting a few bags of lime to spread on the garden to raise the pH.

I came across some information on the internet that said wood ash would also raise the pH of the soil as well as add some valuable nutrients that most fertilizers do not. I verified this as best I could, not being trusting of everything I read on the internet. I did find several sites that all seemed to agree on the usefulness of wood ash in garden soil. It is very important to mention that you should not burn pressure treated wood or any thing that may contaminate your garden soil. During a conversation with my brother-in-law it came up that a few years ago they had burned some brush on their garden and the next year things grew very well in the circle that they had burned.

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Winter Onions

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My Mother-in-law gave us a bag of a dozen small onion bulbs. She called them winter onions. We did not have any luck with our onions this past year, but that is another story. We had never heard of winter onions before, so we set out researching these things on the internet. What I read about these little gems make them seem to be rather amazing little plants.

As it turns out, the little bulbs she gave us are called bulbets. They grow out from the top of the little green onion stalks that grow up out of the ground from the onion bulb. From the looks of the ones we were given, you get one to four bulbets in little bunches.
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