2012 "Homestead" Goals... in the garden

Ok... so from time to time I mention our "homestead" dreams.  And though I don't spend much time talking about it here, it is something that we've been working on for a long time... and something that a bunch of time goes to each year.  Despite our lack of a real "homestead".

Oh, we have dreams.  But instead of just dreaming, we decided years ago to do the best we could with what we have.  We figure, whatever we learn now can only help later when we are really living that dream!

So we started a garden.

Sigh.

Oh, we love to do it.  Love to plan it. Love to start it.  Love to work in it together.  But in the end it's hard to say that it's actually worth the time, effort and money that goes into it every year.  Especially when one get's Lyme Disease and can't care for it. 

So this year we are making some changes.  Mainly, we plan to take down the green house and see exactly what we can do without it.  Our little garden area is wedged between a hill covered with tall trees and our house.  It gets approx 3-5 hours of direct sun daily (assuming no cloud cover!)  The greenhouse was built to protect our artificial light source.  This year... nothing.  We'll be planting only what can handle partial shade and hope we get enough sun to produce something!

Oh, I may put some tomato plants in pots in our front yard (assuming our land lord is ok with this) so we still have our tomatoes.  And My Beloved may try growing some things in his office at work (more room there than here), but overall, we're sticking with the low light veggies!

So... my goals for the garden???

1. to be realistic in our plantings (planting only a handful of different things so it's manageable!)
2. to actually care for our garden throughout the summer months
3. to keep records of what we plant and harvest so that we can begin comparing in future years based on what our family needs to eat for the year (our true end goal one of these years!)
4. to actually use up and put up what we harvest... instead of letting it all rot both outside and inside!

There you have it.  Simple?  I hope so.  It never seems to be though.

Now, these are my goals assuming all we have to use is this little plot out back in poor sun.  There is a small chance we will have access to a larger plot in wonderful sun a couple miles from here.  If that wish comes true, I'll share our updated plans, but the goals will pretty much remain the same!  The time commitment will just increase!

Oh, did I mention that baby number 4 is due right around the time many of our plants need to be started???  Yeah... My Beloved may be doing much of the early work on his own!  We'll see how it all turns out!


I'll try to share some of my other "homestead" goals for this year in coming weeks.  What is January for anyway?

Labels: Homesteading, In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 11:16 AM 0 Comments

Harvesting

Since I've been sick, our little garden has been sorely neglected. Read: not watered, tended, or otherwise visited more often than not. Being as that we're gardening in a greenhouse, not watering is a problem. We get no help from the rain.

Last night we spent a small amount of time down there "tending". Tying things up, ripping things out, etc. Oh, and harvesting. Mostly herbs, but we also pulled out close to 10 pounds of potatoes.

Yes, they are early. And therefore probably not going to store well. Like I said. We weren't watering much. And the plants were pretty dead earlier than they otherwise would have been. So we pulled them all out. And we did it wrong, so blight is a concern. So I'll be cooking lots of mashed potatoes for the freezer in the next day and a half before we leave town.

It also seem that there was a plant predator of some kind in our greenhouse in the last 48 hours since I'd been down to check on things. ALL the parsley was gone... well, except the green stems sticking up naked. We also found that several of our Echinacea blooms were bent over. Took a moment to figure that it's because just about all the leaves were gone off the plant! Ugh. They got most of the potato tops too. Not sure if we're talking mammal or insect, but we didn't see any evidence of one or the other.



We also did some blueberry picking this week at a semi-nearby local organic farm. We'll be going back tomorrow morning I hope (before the heat kicks in) but we started with 5 pounds in the freezer already!... well, minus what we ate. :)

Unfortunately, more of these guys will probably be waiting to startle me while picking. I could due without them!


You harvesting anything yet???

Labels: As it happens..., In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 11:45 AM 0 Comments

Garden Update... April

Time for another garden update! I can't tell you how thrilled I am with Homeschool Village's garden challenge. I so wanted to share my gardening with you last year... but I really need the accountability!!!

First off, I promised a shot of our grow light. My Beloved captured this for you one night while he had the light on after dark for something. Now you have a better picture in your mind of what we're working with! :)

Daylight now... you can see how our broccoli is growing. You'll also notice our spinach and carrots (not that you can really see the tiny carrots in this pic) and some radish. Under the straw is our potato area.

Better pics below.

Here's a closer up shot of our radishes squeezed under the broccoli plant. We're trying some succession planting this year. The radishes are supposed to be fast, so we thought we'd try to share the space. I'll let you know how it goes! :)


And this is a better shot of the potato area. The straw between the boxes is simply the bale waiting to be used.

Already we've had to stop piling on the potatoes because we're starting to overwhelm the broccoli plants. This is another experiment with succession/plot sharing planting. We'll see if it works out for both plants or not! When the broccoli is harvested, the potatoes will have the space to themselves.


I brought the kids in (from their playing) to see these radishes. We talked a bit about the books we were reading a couple weeks ago, and about root crops and the colors of these. Sweet Pea loves that they are "pink".


And here is our spinach. I'm hoping we got them in the ground early enough to get a good harvest before it gets too warm!!! Like every. other. year!

You can also see our borage toward the back. It's supposed to be helpful to tomato plants... which will live where that back row of broccoli is now when the broccoli is done.


Speaking of those tomatoes... we decided it was time to bring them out of our bathroom (where the grow light lives inside) and bring them out here. They are plenty ready to go in the ground... but their home is occupied by broccoli, so we'll be transplanting them into bigger containers in the next week or so. They'll be living in pots longer than past years... another experiment to get the most out of our little plot of raised ground. Again... we'll see if it works out! :)


And this is our "left" box (or bed). In the back are strawberries. Then you see some garlic (that surprised us by growing up from last year... we didn't know it was there until we came down a month or so ago). Then there's a spot for the peppers... and our herbs.


This is where the peppers will be when we put them in (we could now... just haven't yet.) These are some more radishes. We're figuring they'll be out of the way before the peppers are too big. Another experiment.


One of our pretty strawberry plants. Not all of them look this good. Or have this many flowers... but hopefully we'll get lots!


And this is our herb garden. Some of them are from seed... others we planted from the nursery in town.

Pretty much the ones you can see well we bought already growing... the rest aren't in this picture yet... Tornado and I transplanted them yesterday...after pictures.


And this is a little mini harvest of Horehound. It is a perennial and was already taking over other squares... so I cut it back. It's now hanging in the kitchen! :)


While I was doing some of the more sensitive gardening, the kids were "planting" outside in the tree containers. They pick weeds from the ground and re-plant them here. :)


And one of the most exciting parts of our garden this year... we actually have flowers on our apple trees this year! YEY!


Things are going pretty well this year... so far. We're still organized. Weeds aren't too bad yet. There hasn't been much sun this month as we've had lots of rain. The greenhouse has been great for protecting our little plants from huge rain storms... and the light has been running extra to make up for the darkness!

Something has been nibbling on our broccoli too... don't know what yet, so hopefully we'll figure it out before it really takes over!

Also linking up at:

Do you have a garden? How is it going so far? Join Homeschool Village in sharing how things are going!

Labels: In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 9:35 AM 4 Comments

This year's Garden

I'm sure I'll mention this again sometime... but I have my hands in WAY too many things. And since I don't see that changing anytime too soon, I might as well share one more with you.

We garden.

There, I said it.

And we do. Now... I didn't say we ever harvest much, but we do all the planting and more. We are determined that this year will be different.

The problem is that we don't have much space of our own (any space of our own if you want to be really technical). We talked our landlord into some of the space out back between our mobile home and the creek. And, problem number 2, since we have very little natural light anywhere on our property (because of trees and hills on both sides of us), we built a green house to house our artificial light. I'll have to snap a picture of that sometime.


Basically, we started in January (we can because we have the greenhouse!)

No... we don't put them outside that early. The greenhouse was kinda beat up after the winter anyway.

We put them in our bathroom.

Yep.

Our bathroom.

Let's just say it's the warmest room in the house in the winter and there's counter space. At least there was before we filled it with a couple trays of dirt and a grow light.


A couple weeks ago it was finally nice outside so we headed out to get some work done.

My Beloved worked on the actual structure of the greenhouse and I worked on this... our strawberry patch. Notice our "Squarefoot Gardening" boxes. They aren't great in the greenhouse... not enough air circulating I think. So this year we're tweeking it a little.

One thing we knew we needed to do is to space out our strawberries. They were all moldy and such last year. This year I made a point of digging them all up and thinning them to one per square (I think we had 4 to a square before... but really what we had was a big mess!) Hopefully this will help... it took me a whole afternoon to get it looking this pretty! Some of them are starting to show some green now that we're watering again.

Amazing stuff that water!


Oh... and what a fun surprise to find these down there popping up their little shoots from last year. We really didn't get much garlic (and what we got was not that great) last year, so these were a treat to find. Hopefully we'll get some good stuff!


And our trees were starting to think about waking up too. I don't know if we'll get anything on them, but this is their third year with us. They live in half wine casks. Sure would be nice to get some apples and pears this year (the peach tree didn't make it.)



The next weekend we added a bunch of top soil (our old "dirt" was entirely compost and we're thinking it was too rich for many of our plants so this year we added plain old top soil to help) to this box and then brought our 16 broccoli plants outside.

Don't they look so healthy!?!

We may loose one... but we're hoping not.


So here it is... part of it anyway.

The strawberries are in the left box and the broccoli is there in the right one.

We've already added some potatoes, radishes, spinach and lettuce around the broccoli to grow while it's still small. Some of it (like the potatoes) will remain when we harvest the broccoli. And once we do that, the tomatoes will take the place along the right side.

Oh, and My Beloved has worked to put in more soaker hoses. There were already a couple in the right box from last year. Now the strawberries and peppers have them in the left box! That is going to make watering soooo much easier!


Here's a map of the whole garden. The boxes are 4 by 16 each. Each little box is a foot squared. The color code is for seeing the water requirements at a glance. Sorry you can't read the tiny print. Maybe I can get a legible one for a future report.

I don't know if you can read it or not, but this one shows the tomatoes in the top box (the right box in the pics above... the entrance door is on the right of the map) in place of the broccoli.

Already there are tomatoes, peppers and a handful of herbs sitting under a light on the bathroom counter where the onions and broccoli used to be.

Wow... I'm tired just telling you about it all. I had no idea we'd done so much already. We always start with gusto... now I just hope we can finish so excited. Last year I had a baby just when harvest season started... made it tricky!

Now... what are the kids doing??? We're working through a garden unit right now. So fun! We're using Jolanthe's Preschool Pack and just getting started! More info on that to come. We're also spending time learning the Parable of the Sower and we're going to try planting seeds in a cup of sand, rocks and good soil (one each) to see what happens. Kids are excited about that!


Are you gardening this year??? Many of you are probably just starting... that's ok! I'd love to know what you're doing! Share it in the comments.


OR... join me over at Homeschool Village today and link up with their Garden Challenge. I am!

Oh... and it's a challenge to garden... not to garden well! ;)

Labels: In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 9:44 AM 9 Comments

Crazy, I know!

I could post about a number of things with that title... but today, it's about the broccoli plants started in our bathroom.

Yep, you read that right. They are in the bathroom.

Oh, and the crazy part? We have baby broccoli growing already. In January.


That's right.

January.

Our hope is that the greenhouse will enable us to put plants in the ground even earlier than we've ever tried.


So for now... we have broccoli in the bathroom. And many of them have their first true leaves. I'm not so sure exactly when we'll be putting these outside, but weeks from now for sure. I believe we're planning to put them in bigger pots soon too. But one day there will be 16 broccoli plants in the greenhouse. And we're hoping that by starting them so early, we can use the space for growing something else through the summer... and that we can actually harvest some broccoli before it gets too hot.

And you all thought you were crazy for thinking about gardening already! Didn't you?

Labels: Homesteading, In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 1:20 PM 0 Comments

Well... I tried it again

... and it might or might not have worked. The first kid I tried to help said it stung when he applied it. We thought maybe it was because I used a less pure Aloe Vera (maybe with alcohol in it or something) or because he'd had it a while and had been scratching at it. Hmmm... maybe.

Then this week a lady My Beloved works with (and friend of ours) got it and said she was willing to try. So I mixed up another batch (they only last a week in the fridge) but used Aloe gel straight from the plant (we have one that is trying to live in our greenhouse). The report I got from My Beloved was that after 48 hours, she had gone on steroids to get rid of it.

I was so disappointed! I had drafted this post with that report and have sent an email out asking, "what am I doing wrong?" to someone who knows what she'd doing.

Another day later, I got a more complete story from My Beloved (because he got the more complete story from her). And maybe, just maybe, all hope is not lost on this one. Apparently, though she did end up needing the steroids, my little recipe did work. It cleared up the rash nicely (I'd love to actually talk to here and hear how exactly it worked). Unfortunately for her, she is so allergic to poison ivy, that it enters the blood and begins popping up all over her body in random spots.

So where does this leave me in my quest??? Ready to try it again I suppose! And way more encouraged than I was when I just thought it didn't work!

Labels: In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 7:06 AM 0 Comments

Our first herb harvest this summer

I've mentioned recently that we've been studying herbs. Even before knowing exactly what to do with them all (we still don't), we sowed them in our garden. The rest is forced learning. When harvest time came, we learned the "how to harvest and store" step.

Step one: herbs are best harvested in the morning. They are at there most potent at this time.

The kids and I headed down to harvest some herbs after breakfast one morning. There were a bunch! Some (eh, all) of this is still trial and error. I was hoping I didn't over harvest any of it like last year. That ended the plant's growth early = sad! (Note: it doesn't look like I did... I'm grateful to have learned that lesson last year!)

Step two: rinse and prep. Tornado was a big helper in pulling the leaves off the stalks and putting them on the dehydrator screens (only one of several ways I could have done it... I did it differently the second time... and may try something else next time... I could have left them on the stems too, and removed them after dehydrating... that would have been easier I think!)

Step three: dehydrate. I labeled each tray just in case I forgot. Then I set it to work. I don't have a pic of the finished product, but they all looked nice and dry when they were finally done! :)

They now each reside in a sealed glass jar. Someday they will be labeled in a cute way and will have a permanent home (not randomly taking up what little counter space I have.)

Labels: As it happens..., In our garden, In the Kitchen

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 7:40 AM 0 Comments

Harvesting: First Broccoli Head

I haven't done much talking about our garden/greenhouse. In a perfect world I'da blogged it in real time, but it took so much time and energy that I didn't blog about it at all. But you know what? We built a greenhouse this year... and planted a garden inside it.

Maybe someday I'll get pictures posted.

But that is not what this post is about... this post is to share about our first harvest!

And broccoli at that.

And don't think this is any small thing. Broccoli has proven very difficult to grow. After giving up on starting it from seed, we purchased a transplant from the natural food store we like to shop at. It doubled and tripled and more very quickly. Then before we knew it, there was a flower head growing in there. And now...

...this!

Can't wait to eat it!

Any tips on preparing and eating home grown broccoli?

Labels: In our garden, In the Kitchen

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 7:59 PM 1 Comments

Our Garden: Starting Seedlings

This past week/weekend we started our garden. Realistically, we've been planning for months and months, so I guess you could say we started in the fall. But for the sake of keeping you all with me here, we started... we planted seeds. I mentioned that we are brand new at this! And so as I share with you the things we are doing, feel free to leave comments such as "you're doing WHAT?" or "You know, you're doing it wrong!" But leave them nicely... I'm pretty sensitive. And though I am always working on my fear of man issues, I haven't arrived yet, so I'm pretty sensitive. In fact, perhaps the two examples I gave are better examples of what NOT to say. :) I will still welcome any advice or ideas or encouragement though... I love comments!

Ok, there... now that I've said all that. Where was I? Oh yeah, gardening. We really are so excited to be starting our first EVER garden. And yes, we are a bit overzealous. But it's what we are doing... so we are ok with that.
We started Wednesday or Thursday of last week with these... our broccoli and Brussels sprouts. (I think you are looking at the broccoli, but I could totally be wrong about that.) We saved and save through the fall to collect and cut in half all our milk containers so that we could use them. Then we actually did... and we've decided not to use the rest of them... just not as great as they were supposed to be. I'm sure we'll still use the tops later... maybe... for something else. Otherwise, we'll just get rid of them.

Saturday we went to the gardening store and found this actual plant starter thing. It holds 36 little baby plants. We got two of them, but only 27ish plants needed to be started over this last weekend, so we only have the one out so far.

(Just an aside: The green plant with pink around it is the flowerless daisy plant My Beloved brought home for me a couple weeks ago. It just happens to be in the picture. But I thought it added nice color.)

Have you ever tried soaking your seeds before? I'd never even heard of it until I read this book (the whole gardening strategy we are following this year!) So we got out all these little cups (sippy cups to the rescue!) to soak our seeds over night. the Oregano, Marjoram and Thyme had such little seeds that we just put them in the dirt right away.

Did I mention that we are planning to grow 7 different varieties of tomato? It's true. We want to be able to can a lot of them in salsa, tomato soup, diced, etc. It's my way around the BPA in canned foods from the store. Make your own. :)

Here is the overall list of what we have started so far... in alphabetical order if I can:

Basil
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Cayenne Pepper
Cumin
Jalapeno Pepper
Marjoram
Oregano
Tomato, Amish Paste (supposedly great for canning)
Tomato, Besser
Tomato, Big Red
Tomato, German Pink (also good for canning)
Tomato, Old Virginia
Tomato, Porter (another for canning)
Tomato, San Marzano
Thyme

I think that's it for now. We plan to do another grouping of starter seeds inside this weekend. My Beloved will also be clearing a flat spot of ground out behind the house and building our raised boxes this weekend. Turns out our source of soil won't be ready until the following weekend, but I'm pretty sure the work he has for this weekend will take all his time anyway. I'll try to get some pictures!

Blessed gardening!

Labels: Healthy Living, In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 2:39 PM 0 Comments