Onions and peppers have begun germination. BABIES!!! Here’s a tip: use popsicle sticks / craft sticks as plant markers. Much cheaper than “official” plant markers.
I’ve moved my light setup into the downstairs office, since it’s more cat-proof than any other part of the house. For more info on the light setup, see this post from last year. While reviewing old posts to find that one, I read another one where I mentioned that this same time last year, we were having trouble with the wood stove and the house was down to 50° in the morning and up to 60° in the evening. Thank goodness, we’re doing better than that this year. I’ve learned a thing or two about maintaining the stove, and it’s working at much higher efficiency! We seldom wake up with the house below 60°, and it gets up to the high 60′s or low 70′s by the time we go to bed.
Speaking of wood, I have just about finished cutting and splitting all of the wood that I’ve got. What you see here is about two cord of wood (it’s stacked two rows deep) and a pile of random bits for kindling. That’s between 1/2 and 2/3 what we use a year.
Yesterday, I trimmed the hedges, which were getting kind of out of control. I don’t have a hedge trimmer, and I didn’t want to do all that work by hand, so I used the chainsaw. It went okay. It doesn’t look very pretty, but my sight-lines are clear again, and nobody went to the hospital.
A few months ago, I cut down the cover crop I planted in the garden beds in the fall. Of course, that alone wasn’t enough to kill off everything, especially the rye and sudan grass, so I’ve begun going back in with a hoe and turning over the top few inches of soil. It’s very tiring work to do by hand, but I figure I’ve got a lot of time and can use the exercise. My technique has improved to the point where I can get a whole 4′x30′ bed done before I have to stop and rest. The trick seems to be to know when you can get away with just scraping with the corner of the hoe, and when you really have to get in there and chop at more persistent roots and such. Chopping is much more tiring to my arms.
My mom came into town and helped Issa and me finish the pig enclosure for this year. This was my first attempt at such construction, and it mostly went pretty well. There are a few mistakes, but you probably don’t notice them. We’ll see if they turn out to be significant or not. We currently have four pigs accounted for, and one for ourselves makes five. We’re willing to take on one more pig if anybody out there wants one (must be able to pick up at the processor in Madison, TN). The enclosure is designed to be big enough to comfortably house the pigs, without being so big as to encourage them to hang out in there all day long. We want them to be eating off the field as much as possible, as well as depositing their urine and manure out there, instead of near to where they sleep. Last year, they were housed in a horse stall in the barn, and they took to sleeping at one end and using the other end as the bathroom. Some days, they hardly left.
Because of trouble with one particular neighborhood dog (whose owner can’t or won’t keep him on his own property), the chickens are no longer free-range. They’ve got a plenty-big enclosure and don’t seem to mind it, but I sure do miss seeing them touring around the property and coming to hang out near me when I work in the yard. What I don’t miss is the depositing manure all over the front porch.
One of the chickens is going into molt. She sure looks a sorry sight. Her egg production has been really low, pretty much since the day I got her, and I’m hoping that maybe after she molts, she’ll come back stronger. If not, she may be destined for the stew pot! Chickens gotta earn their feed!
#1 by Leah at February 3rd, 2011
Nice update. Did you grow onions and potatoes last year, too? I have a large flat of onion seedlings going under lights in my house, and high hopes for a real harvest this year. I’ve tried to grow onions for at least the past 5 years, and gotten nothing bigger than a golf ball out of my attempts. I got my seeds in plenty early this year, and am planning to put them out in a hoop house a little early to give them more growing time outdoors. fingers crossed! I’ve also had mixed results with potatoes (saw your post about them on Facebook), though I have gotten enough to be worth continuing to grow them.
FYI, I saved the slats from a set of cheap, old venetian blinds and use them to cut plant labels from. I tried popsicle sticks at first, but sometimes had problems with them molding in the pots. I use a permanent marker and push it deep into the soil when I transplant outside, so just the tip pokes out. That keeps the ink from fading in the sun.
I’m impressed with all the construction you’ve been getting done out there! I keep wanting to work in my garden, but it’s been under a veil of icy snow for the past several weeks! I ordered strawberry plants this spring, and need to build a bed for them.
Happy homesteading!
#2 by Leah at February 3rd, 2011
One other thought – are you familiar with Gardenweb? If not, make sure to poke around there (http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/). It can be a fabulous source of garden-related information, as well as a massive time sink. I was just reading there about indoor lighting set ups, and most of the gardeners there use exactly the kind of lights you bought. Have fun!
#3 by Joshua Bardwell at February 3rd, 2011
I grew onions and potatoes last year, yeah. It was my first year. The onions turned out surprisingly well, considering the trouble people seem to have with them. You can see a photo in this post:
http://jackbootedliberal.com/2010/07/just-some-pics/
For potatoes, I think we got a pretty decent return. We got approximately 2 bushels of potatoes off of 15 lbs of seed. Google says a bushel of potatoes weighs 54 lbs, so that’s 108 lbs total, for a return of about 7:1. You can see the potatoes here:
http://jackbootedliberal.com/2010/08/the-end-of-the-bounty/
I like your idea of using old venetian blinds. That’s really clever!
Good luck with your strawberries. I have a whole bed dedicated to them. They grew in fast and thick, but their fruit production was a little bit disappointing. Decent quality, but not much quantity. Fortunately, they look to be surviving the winter, and I hope that they will really spring back in their second year. Did you go with everbearing or June-bearing?
I’m familiar with Gardenweb. It’s a fantastic resource!
#4 by Leah at February 3rd, 2011
Nice harvests on both the onions and the potatoes – definitely a better yield than I’ve managed so far. I have pretty limited space so I plant intensively, which definitely impacts production on some plants a lot. I read the posts you linked to, also, and am impressed with what you managed to harvest in a short first season there.
I can’t take credit for the venetian blind idea, but it sure works well for me!
Did you prune the runners on your strawberries? The reading I’ve been doing suggests that it is important to do that if you want high yields of fruit. You can cut the runners off and plant them separately to maintain productive beds (most varieties produce well for ~3 years and then slow down), but if you leave them on the mother plant a lot of the resources go into the babies. I ordered an everbearing variety called Seascape. If they do well for me, and I find another spot for more, I’d love to add a bed for June-bearers, too.
If you email me your address I’d love to send you some squash seeds from a fabulous heirloom variety. It is an Italian winter squash that also makes a fantastic summer squash and is resistant to borers! Some years I’ve had trouble getting it started, but the past 2 summers I had 2 hearty vines that were prolific. Two years ago I harvested 26 mature winter squashes off my 2 vines, with an average weight of 5-6 pounds each! Last summer I made a critical fail in watering my baby seedlings and all 4 died, much to my dismay, only to discover that the volunteer plants I’d allowed to grow from my compost pile were the best possible kind of volunteer! All my regular summer squash plants were destroyed by borers early in the season, so I used the courge lounge primarily for summer squash, leaving only the ones that got away from me to mature for winter. I ended up with 6 winter squash of similar size to last years – much more reasonable for our consumption here! We also discovered that we really love the flavor of this squash as a summer variety. Here is a picture of it as a summer squash (scroll to the bottom) http://zizoucuisine.over-blog.com/article-34163871.html and here are some mature winter squash of the same variety http://gardenbreizh.org/photos/jeandepoussan/photo-53194.html
Another very cool site I recently found is http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/ where they solicit feedback from gardeners around the world on different varieties of vegetables. You can then search/read ratings in a fairly accessible database, either in general or within your climate. I used it heavily to narrow down my new seed purchases this year. the Rampicante-Tromboncino squash reviewed there appears to be very similar to the courge lounge I’ve been growing, so you can see some additional reviews of it there.
Sorry this is so long!
#5 by Joshua Bardwell at February 4th, 2011
I didn’t prune the runners on my strawberries, but I seem to recall that’s because I read that there’s not much point doing that for everbearing, which put out fewer runners to begin with. I kind of wanted them to put out runners so they would spread to fill the bed, and boy howdy have they! This year, it’ll be easy to keep the runners in check, since I’m not going to let them get out of the bed they’re in.
It’s funny that you’ve got the Seascape–that’s exactly what I have. I’ll be interested to hear your results. I have read people saying that June-bearing have much better flavor than ever-bearing, but I have learned to take such things with a grain of salt.
I’d love to get some of your squash seeds, and have sent you my address via email. The idea of a single squash that works as both summer and winter is quite appealing! I plan to scale back the squash this year, honestly, as last year, we were simply overwhelmed with yellow squash and zucchini. I think one plant each (instead of three) will be fine. Maybe two plants just to hedge my bets. I hate planting one of anything!
I just clicked through and looked at the picture of the squash. It’s kind of obscene, isn’t it?!