April 2023

 

Much work has been done in the gardens this year.

There was a long hiatus in the blog, I went through several eye surgeries - and last year's garden was minimal and the weather was poor.  This year is looking up.

 

 

because of watering concerns, poor soil quality and my vision - and increased animal traffic knocking down our fences and getting into things - I devised this set of beds that provided me with greens, tomatoes and peppers last year, even through the really bad drought time we had I was able to keep it watered and weeded and keep most animals out of it


 

 

thoughts :

little composting bin that I made out of household stuff (for another post) is not much but it is a start to playing with making soil which I need a better system for, every 'master garden' and heirlooms book I've read about their systems that is a huge part of it but I have not stuck with a system for it here


I have a high nitrogen soil in one place, what to put in there to normalize it that the goat might be able to eat and won't require a lot of care

:: kale, radish, corn, beet, carrot?  I have a bag of essex rape as well

continued watching different bees in the garden, the one on the strawberries was not any of the types I remember, look it up – it looked like a ‘long honeybee’  I spent some time the other day watching the carpenter bees buzz around - they were not around today but this other bee was.

I should pull that one piece of long bean fence back up where it is not being used and put it up to keep deer out of the garden a bit better - the one place I tried to grow okra and beans outside of the fenced beds did fine for a little bit, and then something walked in and ate it all down to the ground.  The okra was gone - but the beans came back and I did save an entire envelope full of them.  (Alice Whitis pole dry beans)

book : Paradise Lot, I've borrowed it four times from the library

ebook - I have a Kindle book about building soil that I have not cracked into for a while, remember it, check out what it has to say again

Last year's potato experiment did well considering the drought killed the plants off in the midsummer - they came back and tried again after the rains finally came back and I found lots of small potatoes in the ground this year.  I moved some of them with roots and leaves to the bed I am keeping reserved for them this year - and they have all perked up from transplanting. 

I'm trying a new type of mustard this year 'mighty gold' that someone sent to me - and I am planting the komatsuna again.  I have the bag of southern curled fordhook for when it gets a little warmer, but I am running out of bedspace.

onions.  I don't know where.

start working on another raised bed - six more cement block, and the soil can come as it comes - fall planting of carrots and beets

another roll of the pvc or nylon netting fencing and some more posts

watering system - need that badly now that the new hydrant is fixed (there was one on the old hydrant but it was unused for years and the pipes have cracked), swap hoses, new 'y' with shutoffs 

 


the front garden this year - the hamburg parsley came back, and I have it planted with numerous types of greens and nasturtiums again





CHICKENS

chicken barrel watering trough we discussed making - call for price on barrel

we collected 24 green eggs for a neighbor who wanted to try incubating them... I'd incubate some of ours just to see what the cross looked like (Sapphire Gem rooster and Olive-Egg mothers) but we have 'capacity chicken' right now and are trying to get rid of the eggs we don't eat usefully, selling them at the market, giving them to relatives, eating them twice a week in planned meals etc etc.. but it's something I still want to think about, expanding to have a separate coop in case we want to put a few there to bring to market, or eventually have youngsters we need to keep separate for a bit etc..  This winter during the negative temperatures we were lucky our flock was mostly coordinated with each other finally and almost all of them stayed in the house and didn't fight with each other - the one rooster and two or three hens stayed in the other barrel house outside from the others and froze their combs some.. but they all survived even the -2 temps.  We were hoping, with the breeds we had chosen, that they would be hardy in the cold temperatures like our Cinnamon Queens had been in years past.





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