Gardening Archives - Page 5 of 6

Gardening with Heirloom Seeds

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Yes, it is the end of January. Since I cannot get out there and plant the garden, and I have the soil all ready to go, I am starting to get cabin fever waiting to get my seeds in the ground. So, all I can do right now is talk about the seeds I have for this year’s garden.

Last year, we kind of threw the garden together in a quick hap-hazard fashion. We used whatever seeds we found. We used good seeds, purchased from local stores mind you, but we did not take into account any properties of the seeds, mostly because we did not know there was much of a difference.

We had decent success from our garden in the first year, all things considered. The onions were a complete failure. The corn produced little ears, tasty but small. We did get enough carrots to can half a dozen pint jars. The beans did good, except for the one row that never germinated (bad seeds). The zucchini went nuts, we still have a lot of zucchini in our freezer. The leaf lettuce did good, and the broccoli was almost a total failure, we got enough for one side dish at one dinner. The crowder peas did very good, and thanks to my wonderful wife’s advice, I now absolutely love crowder peas. We will be planting a lot more of them this year.

The majority of our problems were from low soil pH, and generally poor soil preparation. This year we believe we have done a much better job. We have raised our soil pH from around 5.0 to 6.5 which should be pretty close to where we need it to be for all of the plants we intend to grow. The soil has been tilled much, much better, so the weeds should be a lot easier to deal with this year. We have also added what we hope to be enough organic matter (horse manure compost) to the soil. We also have a fair amount of partially composted leaves and dry leaves to use as mulch. So, we feel ready for a successful garden this year.

Only one thing left to do. Get some seeds. We have been constantly researching any and everything we could think of for our garden. During our research we learned a lot about seeds. Genetically altered seeds seems to be rather prevalent in retail stores. I am not going to spend my time judging the use of these seeds. The advancements in seed technology has helped produce more produce to help feed the worlds expanding population, and has also allowed things to be grown in area that they could never have been grown naturally. But as for me and my house, we will use heirloom seeds.

Heirloom seeds are natural seeds passed down from natural plants. When you save a seed from a plant grown by heirloom seeds, the plant that will grow from that seed will be the same as the plant the seed came from. This is not the case with a lot of hybrid seeds. We did retrieve some seeds from our crowder peas this last year, and we are planning on trying them out. We have no idea if they will grow properly, but they are very hard to find and we are gonna take that chance.

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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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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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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/

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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Where to Begin?

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When we first began to seriously consider becoming more self-sufficient, it became obvious that it was going to be a huge undertaking. The process of going from a typical suburban family to a self-sustaining, well prepared family seemed very daunting to say the least.

First of all, let me say that neither my wife or myself are what you would call patient people. We do like to get things done right now and do not do very good at waiting. I for one have been very bad at working long term plans. So this little personality quirk could have easily ended our homesteading before it began. Once we came to terms with the fact that this was going to be a very lengthy process, we determined to break it down into small, more manageable chunks.

When it comes to disaster prepping, there are three critical necessities that have to come into play. Food, water, and shelter are the three basic necessities needed to sustain life. Without these three things, there is no chance of surviving and sustaining through any disaster.

So there you have it. You just need a plan with an unlimited supply of water, food, and a concrete bunker. No problem at all. Just go online, point and click, it will all show up UPS tomorrow, right? If only it were that simple.

We determined that our house would suffice for shelter for the time being. While it does need some modifications, those can come later. Leaving us to focus on food and water. For our family, the amount of food and water needed is a rather large amount,

To make this huge change happen, we had to break it down into smaller, more do-able chunks. The wife created a spread sheet (she likes spread sheets) to track supplies we need for two weeks and the amount we have on hand. Supplies such as food, water, candles, medical supplies, batteries, etc. We basically made an educated guess about what we would need to survive reasonable well for two weeks with no electricity in case of an emergency.

We realized rather quickly that the cost to fill up even this small two week supply list was out of our budget. Our easy answer? Every time my wife would go grocery shopping she would buy a few extra things to fill out the list. So given enough time we will get our two week list filled. Once there, we will expand the list to a month and so on.

The necessary storage space to keep the amount of supplies needed to survive for long periods of time is rather large. This makes it necessary to develople a plan for replenishment of the staples of life, food and water. Water is still in the planning stage, but food was a simple fix, start a garden. Starting a garden would give us a way of replenishing our food supplies and help lower our food budget. A win-win situation.

The only problem was that this was more of a long term plan. It would take a few months at the least to see any produce from our garden, and most likely a couple of growing seasons to get all the kinks worked out. So starting the garden became one the most important things on the list. We can’t make it to a point where we can grow enough food to provide for our family without getting it started.

We worked out a list of what we would need for a short term supply of two weeks and began filling it. This would make us much more comfortable in any short term emergency, and give us something to build on. Also, with our lack of patience, this gave us a goal we could achieve in a reasonable amount of time. At the same time, we started our garden which will, hopefully, lead us to being much more self-sufficient.

Location, Location, Location

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Location is important not just in business, but also in gardening. Hopefully some of my mistakes will help someone.

It wasn’t until fall, after “the great harvest of 2012” did I test the pH of my soil. As it turns out, at least some of my problems stem from acidic soil, or a very low pH. Yes, if I would have followed the advice I had read I would have known this before I planted, but people only learn from their own mistakes, most of the time.

Pine trees, it seems, drop lots of pine needles. Pine needles are useful as mulch, and in compost, but do tend to be a little on the acidic side. So I guess, it wasn’t the best idea to plant a garden surrounded on two sides by very tall pine trees.

Why did we decide to put the garden there in the first place?

Before I explain that to you, I must go back to last year around Thanksgiving. We were trying to decide where to put the Christmas tree. After exhausting any option that did not require completely rearranging the living room (not even sure there was one) I suggested the front porch. Naturally, she didn’t find this as amusing as I did, but since then it has become an inside joke.

So, back to why we put our garden in a spot half surrounded by pine trees. Well, it was the most remote corner of the backyard, and we wanted to keep as much of our back yard as possible. When I suggested putting in the front yard (I am a bit of a smart-alack) the wife said that was too redneck. I suggested we could put a fridge on the front porch to make it match. “Right next to Christmas tree?” followed by something I will translate into, “We are not putting anything on the front porch but rocking chairs”.

So the garden went in the back yard. Surrounded on two sides by rather tall pine trees that make our soil rather acidic.

How Not to Build a Compost Bin

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A compost bin is a wonderful idea. Taking things you do not have any use for and turning it into valuable fertilizer for the garden is a perfect win-win situation. Using grass clippings, fallen leaves, and table scraps to help produce better produce.

I did not want to spend a lot of money on our bin, because I am cheap. I also did not have enough scrap wood to build one. We can get free wood out of used wooden pallets! Ann’s father is a truck driver, so he has access to free wooden pallets. On one of her trips to visit family, she returned with 5 old wooden pallets. So now I have my free wood to make our compost bin and make our free compost. Great idea, huh?

Now, I have broken down pallets in the past. Wood always comes in handy, and I like to get as much use out of things as I can. These pallets must have been built to ship tanks! Getting them apart was much more difficult than I had expected. But after several hours of prying the planks apart, I had finally gotten them all apart. In hindsight, I should have just sprung for some wood and had this entire project done in less time than it took me to break the pallets down.

I planned for a simple two compartment box construction with an open bottom.