2016 Garden Update

As I mentioned, I have done a horrible job updating.  The 2016 garden is well under way.  We started mid-spring by planting some cold weather crops (lettuce, cabbage, spinach), so we have been eating that for about 8 weeks!  As usual we started many plants indoors in January, February and March.  On a side note the squirrels and birds had fun at the end of last year, spreading random seeds, berries, and garlic we planted to various other parts of the yard!

 Let’s start with the berry box.  Since we didn’t have any luck with seeds or bare root strawberries growing, we just sucked it up and bought about 8 strawberry plants.  We also added 2 blueberry plants, a goji berry bush and a blackberry bush.  Plus we have wild huckleberry plants growing this year.  And come to find out the cranberry bush is sprouting everywhere too.  I need to do more research when I plant these things. Because we have huckleberry and cranberry everywhere!  Oh and we have some wild sunflowers that are growing in this box as well. 

The herb box…..everything I planted last year (the Echinacea, Comfrey, Peppermint, and Feverfew) came back!  Originally I meant for this box to be medicinal herbs only.  This year I decided to add cooking herbs too.  I have added lemon balm this year, as well as oregano, basil, thyme, cilantro, dill, and chives.   We also have a random clove of garlic growing in this box that we did not plant there.  We are also finding huckleberry in this box too.  And a sunflower or two.

The random garden box….We planted 2 different kinds of garlic in this box last fall, and it came up fairly well!  It has been harvested and its currently hanging up to cure.  We also decided to try the broccoli out in the box this year too, since we haven’t had luck with it anywhere else.  We also planted more lettuce, cabbage, celery, kale, arugula, carrots, and a few tomatillo plants. 

The big thing we did this year was change the fence around so the small random garden now meets up with the big garden.  It just made sense to do this. In the small garden area, we just randomly threw down some rhubarb seed, just to see what will happen, with the expectation, likely nothing will happen.  We also planted onions there last fall that are coming up very well.

The big garden took a bit more methodical thinking this year, and the rain kept putting us behind in planting it, so it got into the ground about a week later than I would have liked.  We learned last year that things cross pollinate, of course I knew this, but didn’t expect it to happen with the different types of cucumber we planted.  We had some strange varieties last year!  In the big garden this year are:  3 different kinds of cucumber, 2 kinds of pumpkins, gourds, winter squash, 2 different kinds of corn, radishes, zucchini, green beans, peas, kale, swiss chard, and some sunflowers. I also just made a large spot next to the spearmint and rosemary, and added just some random other herbs.  Now for our random surprise here-We have one random little asparagus stalk.  We tried 2 different ways in the past to grow asparagus and neither worked, so I wasn’t going to attempt it this year.  But growing, of course, where we didn’t plant it, is a random asparagus stalk.  Now if only I could find the map of where I planted what, we would be golden! 

We are trying something different this year with the tomatoes and peppers.  Container gardening.  Thanks to our friend who works in the restaurant industry, we got about 20, 5-gallon buckets.  So I thought, let’s try it.  We have 7 kind of tomatoes, 7 kinds of peppers, and tomatillos in these buckets.  I am hoping for great things, at least from the tomatoes. 

As for other stuffs, the red grape plant we planted last year is growing great!  I do not think we will get grapes from it this year, but I bet next year we will.  The Concord grape is going to produce lots of grapes this year, more than it ever has in the past.  Enough that I am hoping I will be able to get a year’s supply of just grape jelly!  Which is good because, unfortunately I think we are losing our plum tree.  At a minimum, we are going to have to give it a big trim! 

Finally, our basil that keeps coming back every year, it coming back this year too!  Somehow added to the pot is some dill that we have never planted in that pot.  But we will take it!  And thanks to the birds and the squirrels we also have random sunflowers everywhere.  We also left a pumpkin on the table last year accidentally, and the squirrels or coons opened it up and seeds were everywhere, so we may eventually have random pumpkins popping up as well. 

Since we have so much randomness growing this year, I thought I would touch on why it is happening. It’s simply the seeds we buy. First and foremost all seeds we buy are GMO free, or non-GMO. Whenever possible we buy heirloom seeds.  Heirloom seeds are seeds that have been handed down for generations and basically never altered in anyway.  Simply, the fruits or vegetables from an heirloom seed remain the same year over year. Heirloom seeds are open pollinated as well.  So basically if we drop a seed or let anything we grow “go to seed”, or if the animals carry seeds off and drop them, it could potentially grow the next year wherever it was dropped.  Now there is also hybrid varieties, and we will purchase those seeds as well.  Hybrid is not to be confused with GMO.  GMO means, that those fruits or vegetables have had their DNA genetically altered for some reason, most commonly used to alter them to be able to withstand certain pesticides. Hybrid means that compatible plant types are cross bred to make a new variety, or a better hardier variety.  For example, I accidently created a hybrid cucumber last year by planting two different types of cucumber plants to close together. Hybrid seeds typically cannot be used year over year like heirlooms can.  Although we use natural fertilizers and pesticides on our food (we use only organic type pesticides) we cannot claim to have purely “organic” food.  There are a lot of steps one would have to do to make the claim of “certified organic” if I were to ever sell any of the good we grow.  Since it’s mainly us that eats the food it doesn’t matter if we can truly have that “label”. 

So there is the update on the garden thus far!  I will provide pictures soon!

Seed Obsession

32,467……Small confession here.  I have a slight obsession with seeds. That number happens to be approximate number of seeds in my possession.  One of the things with this homesteading thing I HAVE gotten the hang of to the point of a slight obsession almost.  I used to keep the inventory in a notebook. But a good ol’ piece of paper just wasn’t cutting it anymore.  So in my copious spare time (NOT! LOL), I have been working on creating a spreadsheet inventory of the seeds we have. The totals are in……….Let’s just say that if we had a disaster tomorrow and we had to bug out we would have enough veggie seeds to last 2-3 years, enough herb seeds to sustain us in cooking and medicine for a long time and we would have a very pretty yard in the process!   We have:

·         47 different types of veggies totaling 9,997 seeds

·         26 different kinds of herbs (both for cooking and to use for teas and salves and such) totaling 5920 seeds

·         30 different kinds of flowers, both perennial and annual for a total of 16,550 seeds

Yep, a slight obsession.  In the 3 years I have been buying seed, I have learned what suppliers I like and the best way to order the seed.  In creating the spread sheet I realized when I first started buying seed, I was just excited to buy the seed and get started.  I didn’t care who the supplier was as long as they had the seed I was interested in for a decent price and they were GMO free.  Well, I learned the hard way that the best way to ensure good seeds is to buy from a reputable distributer.  I got some seeds from Amazon that turned out to be duds, not at all what we bought, and some just didn’t grow.  So through trial and error and lots of patience I have found two places that I regularly get seeds from.  They are both non-GMO and one also sells strictly heirloom seeds.  I have learned to shop their sales so I have been getting the seeds ton cheaper.  Most everything we grow with all supplies factored in will be less than .25 cents to .50 cents a plant.  Well worth it in my opinion.  You can find the two sites I mainly use below.

http://www.mypatriotsupply.com/Default.asp

http://parkseed.com/default.aspx

And onto the rest of the garden!

Just some pictures to snapshot how the rest of the homestead is doing about half way through growing season.  Apparently I was so excited over the Giant Pumpkins, I forgot to get pictures of the regular pie pumpkins and jack o lanterns! I also forgot the carrots and onions! They are there though, I promise!

This is the berry box....

The garden huckleberry's.  2 plants survived.

 Raspberry bush, mini cherry tree, the cranberry plant and some sunflowers


This is the Herb Box

The giant head of cabbage and the Comfrey and the little gnome home for decoration.  Also hiding in there is the sage, peppermint, Calendula and Echinacea

The Overflow Box

 This is the Popcorn plants

 The Tomatoes are out of control.  Green Tomatoes, Big Boys, and Tomatillos are all combined here

 The Green Chili's.  And in the far right hand corner.......the giant pumpkin plants.


Everything else!

 This is the Peach tree we thought died.  It really didn't.  It gets bigger and bigger.

Big Garden!

 Green Beans!

 And more green beans. 

 And yet, more greenbeans! (We have 15 plants)

 One of about 7 Zucchini Plants!

 Our out of control Spearmint!

 Rosemary!

 And all of the cucumbers!  We have about 10 plants.

 Regular Sweet Corn!

The Greenhouse!

 The wild tomatoes that just randomly started growing!

 All of the peppers.  There is about 10 Bell Pepper plants, jalapeno's, sweet peppers and a habanero!

 Lettuce (round 2), arugula and radishes


And just because!

 Every year it seems, we have a wild something or another appear in the park by the house. I assume carried away by a bird from our yard.  One year it was a random stalk of corn.  Sometimes its an onion.  This year it happens to be a random sunflower.

And this is a Zinnia.  I am obsessed with its color.  I think its beautiful. 

GIANT PUMPKINS!!!! NOW WHAT?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am obsessed with Halloween.  Most of what I do is centered on the holiday.  We even have a permanent Halloween room in our home.  But we also equally love fall. When we started gardening years ago, it was mainly to grow pumpkins.  One of my favoritest fall activities that we enjoy doing is going to a pumpkin patch.  So I wanted to have my own.  So we planted them, and decided to add a few things along the way, like cucumbers and corn.  That’s how it all originally started……many moons ago.  

When I was really obsessed with having my own pumpkin patch, I wanted to grow every type of pumpkin out there.  Ghost pumpkins, jack o lanterns, pie pumpkins, big ones, small ones.  If there was an odd pumpkin at the patch the year before, I would save the seeds to try to grow it too.  There was a time when over half of our garden was pumpkins.  There was a few years that we would have so many we would hand them out to family.  On the list was also the Dill’s Giant Atlantic pumpkin, of course I had to add that one in, can’t forget about the BIG ones.  We tried for a few years and we were never successful.  In order the get the “BIG” one, there is a lot of steps you have to take.  We would always kill the plants.  

3 years ago when we decided to create a homestead with our backyard, we also decided that we really didn’t need half of the garden to be filled with a large variety of pumpkins.  We narrowed the list down to 2, a pumpkin jack o lantern mix and pie pumpkins, growing only what we need to decorate for Halloween and to freeze to make goodies throughout the year.   Well I have been having a hard time with this adjustment….LOL.  So at the very very last minute I decided to buy some Giant Pumpkin seeds and give it one last shot.  We had room in one of our brand new planters we built and something needed to go there.  So I started 3 plants indoors and planted them in this little itty bitty corner of the planter.  Well, what we didn’t expect was for the plants to take off and thrive. We just decided, what happens and happens. We now have a giant pumpkins everywhere. We decided to use 2 of the plants in an attempt to get the “one”.   Each of these plants have just one pumpkin on them. The other plant we decided to just grow as many pumpkins as it would like on it.  We give them water and we fertilize them.  We only sorta follow the instructions to get “the one”.  We prune the vines and take off any new pumpkins so the ONE gets all the nutrients.  And it’s working very well.  The two that we are attempting to get very large, well, they are really getting very large.  The smaller one, we named Lucy, is bigger than the average Jack o lantern already, and a very pretty orange color.  The GIANT one, his name is Charlie, and he growing at a very rapid rate.  He is gaining about 2-4 inches a day (and putting on about 10lbs a day).  Its working and we don’t know what to do now.  We have our very first GIANT pumpkin that could very well be 500lbs by October or more.  We have no plans to enter Charlie in a contest.  We are just growing for fun.  But now that we actually have a giant pumpkin we aren’t quite sure what do next.  So I figured we would just enjoy it and go with the flow. 

Here are the pictures of Charlie and Lucy and the rest of the pumpkins on these plants.  They are taking over the yard.  These span over the last 6 weeks or so.  

 This is Charlie, when he first started about 6 weeks ago.

 This is Lucy, when she first started about 6 weeks ago.

 The small patch at the corner of the planter.

 Charlie, about 2 weeks ago when he was just about bigger than a basketball

 This is Charlie last night.  He is about 50lbs.

 This is Lucy, last night.  She is a very pretty orange.

 Charlie and Lucy and all 3 plants.  Taking over the yard.