Tag: gardening

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On April 27, 2015

While there wasn’t a homestead or a post about the chickens here last week, that doesn’t mean things weren’t happening. As you can imagine, with the temperatures warming up, things are buzzing here.

Speaking of buzzing, that is the first thing of interest today. It seems the native bees, the Blue Orchard Mason Bees, did not decide to make the bee house I put up home. There is no sign of them nesting there at all. This doesn’t mean they aren’t around, they just aren’t there. Even so, there is plenty of bee activity. I think, looking back, I messed up by getting them delivered too late. That’s okay though – you live and learn. I still have one more shipment of native bees coming, and they are set to arrive around May 15th. These are Leafcutter Bees. I’ll post more about them as we get closer.

One thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks is the arrival of my Goldenseal plants. Goldenseal is an herb that is native to the US and widely known for its medicinal properties. One of the really cool things about it is that it grows natively in hardwood (preferably oak) forests in the shade. That makes it a perfect plant for one of the flower gardens here. Let me show a picture of it:

Young Goldenseal Plant

I have already planted three of the six of these I ordered, and the other three are ready to be planted now. I might be able to set them out today.

Regarding the rest of the garden, I am debating letting most of it rest this year. There is more to come on that later.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On March 30, 2015

What a difference a week can make! Last week we were basking in wonderful temperatures, and this week we have had freeze warnings! I read one person on Facebook who said, “If I knew spring was only going to last three days, I would have made sure to enjoy it more.” 😀

I am running into the same issue I ran into last year about this time. My workload at the office has increased to a point where I can barely get anything done at home, and when I am at home, I am quite frankly ready to rest. I am determined that this will not slow down planting when that time comes this year though.

Oh, speaking of plants, let me share what I saw yesterday!

Ms. T, the tenacious Chocolate Mint

I rarely “name” my plants. In fact, I think it sounds kind of crazy, but this one earned a name. I call her Ms. T., which stands for Ms. Tenacious. I have been growing this mint for a number of years now, and when I first bought the plant it barely survived. In fact, the other mints that were purchased at the same time died. Why? They were potted and didn’t get watered during a very hot, dry spell. She has also survived two winters of very cold temperatures, and a summer of very hot, very dry weather. No matter what is thrown at it, this mint just keeps going. I was happy to see her popping her head up good and strong this spring – a sure sign warmer days are to come soon.

This weekend my oldest son and I spent some time staking out the garden so we would know exactly where to plant things this spring. I didn’t finish it though, as I became a bit overwhelmed with it all. I’m not sure why that is. I may try to finish it this upcoming weekend. Thankfully I have some time.

One other thing I spend some time on this weekend was roasting coffee. This has been one of the better coffees I have had in a while – it is a Brazilian coffee, which is typically one of my favorites.

Roasting Coffee

I sure do enjoy the fresh-roasted coffee. Until you have had it, you can’t imagine how good it is.

Oh, one last thing before I go – be sure to watch this upcoming Wednesday for a post with a great comic one of my son’s created.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On March 23, 2015

What a week! We started off and ended with some beautiful spring-like weather, which is fitting now that we have officially crossed over to spring. It wasn’t without a nice brisk few days inbetween though. Even so, my gardening fingers are itching!

Speaking of fingers, both my index finger and thumb seem to be healing up nicely from the pruning accident last weekend. The index finger in particular seems to be doing quite well. The thumb was cut deeper, and I still do not have full flexibility with it. It is improving day by day though.

The big homestead project this week was to create a portable chicken run, which I decided to make out of PVC and fencing. It wouldn’t hold a big dog, but it will hold chickens. 😀 This is light enough two people can move it, though four people would be able to handle it easier. The plan is to move it to a different place in the yard weekly, and then let the chickens have a considerable amount of time in it throughout the day, which should give them a nice addition of bugs and grass to their diet. I’ll show pictures of it in tomorrow’s post.

Oh, one other thing from this weekend is that I opened my winter sowing pots and let them breathe. It is really going so well. All plants haven’t sprouted up in hearty strength yet, but I think all of them have sprouted. The brassicas are looking really good though! It won’t be long until they have their first true leaves and are ready for transplanting!

Winter Sowing – Broccoli

Yes, they need thinned out – ALOT! I didn’t think I seeded that heavily, but obviously I did.

That reminds me of another task I need to complete. I need to stake the garden off so I can know exactly where the planting areas are according to my planting map. Yeah, yeah, yeah – that’s the nerd coming out in this gardener. 😀

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On March 16, 2015

It is often said here, as in other areas, if you don’t like the weather, wait a day. It will change. This week has been a real example of that. Within a one week time period we went from very low temperatures and greater than a foot of snow on the ground to a fantastically warm 72° F. Welcome to spring in Kentucky!

I was on the road for my job last week, and was anxious to get back home for a number of reasons, one of which being to check the winter sown vegetables. I am very excited to report that many of them have sprouted! Check these pictures out:

Calbrese Broccoli Sprouts

German Chamomile Sprouts

So far I see sprouts in the Romanesco Broccoli, Purple Broccoli, German Chamomile, Purple Cabbage, Calabrese Broccoli, Early Jersey Cabbage, Forage Kale, and Russian Kale winter sown containers. Woot! Now to see if they survive the coming cold spell, though I suspect they will.

One thing I am excited about this year is my Back to Eden garden. While I can’t speak to the success of the garden here yet, I can tell you that I will be able to get my garden out much sooner than I would if I were planting traditionally. Our ground is absolutely saturated. Even so, I can walk all over these woodchips and not feel as if I am sinking in at all. This is wonderful!

Despite the rain on Saturday, I decided to go ahead and plant some brassicas and lettuces:

Kale, Cabbage, and Broccoli

Lettuce in the Raised Bed

I also decided to spend some time pruning my fruit trees this weekend. I received some nice pruning equipment for Christmas, which I have been wanting to use, and I am several weeks behind the latest date I wanted to do this, but the weather has not been cooperating at all. Here are the tools:

Pruning Tools

Let me tell you – that saw is sharp! Don’t ask me how I know that. However, if you see me over the next few days, you will know how I know. 🙁 If you want to see what happened, you can check it out, but don’t click on the link if you can’t handle seeing pruning wounds. Seriously, it’s not that bad, but you still may not want to click on it.

I pruned two apple trees and a cherry tree, and I am extremely pleased with how it turned out. Here are a few before and after shots of the apple trees:

Apple Trees – Before Pruning

Pruned Apple Tree

So the point in pruning back so much is to shape the tree as I want it to be shaped, and to limit the height to something usable/reachable for me. I also want to provide plenty of air flow and sunshine. While they look a little bare right now, I am expecting them to fill on out as the spring and summer move forward. If I have done the job right, we should see better apples this year off these trees.

As you can see, I still need to clean up the branches, but that can wait. I plan to cut up that wood to use for smoking food later in the year. There are also still a few branches on the second tree (the last picture) that need trimmed, but I need my pole pruner to reach them. I will hopefully get to that today.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On March 9, 2015

Okay, I am officially sick of winter. 😀 This is the time of year I am beginning to prepare my garden, but as of now there is nothing but snow on the ground. Thankfully it is starting to melt. About every decade or so, we get substantial snow in our area, and the trend obviously continued this year. It wasn’t one storm this year either, it was two back to back storms with just enough time between them for the snow to melt off for a day or so. The second one packed a greater punch than the first, dumping over a foot of snow at my house. Did I already say I was sick of winter?

The biggest upcoming challenge is going to be the soggy ground, which is going to be very hard on farmers and gardeners in the area. Hopefully it will dry out before it is time for folks to till their garden. I’ll tell you this – there couldn’t have been a better year for me to start my Back to Eden garden!

It has been a very quiet week at the homestead due to the weather, though I do have a very interesting post tomorrow about the chickens. You aren’t going to want to miss it!

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On February 23, 2015

Whew! What a week this has been! There isn’t much happening around the homestead, as we received a whopper of a snow this past week, which was followed by another snow, extreme cold temperatures, and then on Friday night into Saturday we had sleet, freezing rain, and rain. As I write this on Saturday morning, I suspect it is a terrible mess outside. There have been reports of folks roofs leaking, flooding due to drains on roads being clogged with snow and ice, and roads that are in treacherous shape. It doesn’t seem like it will get much better today, as I am expecting the temperature to hover right above freezing all day. By the time this post goes live, this will all be old news though, and we will be talking about the blustery cold temperatures Monday will bring us again. I am so ready for spring. 😀

I am sure many of you looked at the pictures I took, mostly of birds, last week. I also took a few around the house of some monster icicles:

Monster Icicles #1

Monster Icicles #2

Monster Icicles #3

I just went out to check on the chickens, and wow it is messy. The rain is melting some of the snow, and water is pooling everywhere. It remains to be seen how this will be at the end of the day.

Oh! I took a few pictures of my winter sowing project!

Winter Sowing – Peeking Through

Winter Sowing Holes

Even with a slow week around here, it wasn’t without some homesteading excitement though. I received a packet of seeds from Slovenia! These are minerature blue popcorn kernels (seeds). Check out the seeds and the envelope:

Minerature Blue Popcorn Kernels from Slovenia

I know, I know. I am a bit weird to get so excited over popcorn kernels, but I am excited to incorporate this into my popcorn landrace. Aren’t those stamps cool too‽

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On January 19, 2015

Like much of the US, this past week has been a nasty week, so there wasn’t much happening around the homestead this week. That certainly hasn’t stopped my mind from wandering on spring planting though. 😀 Like most gardeners, I get so ready to spend time in the garden this time of year that I cannot hardly stand it. This year is that and more. I am so ready to get this larger garden planted and see what comes from it.

One of the things I had hoped to be able to accomplish this week was some winter sowing. What is winter sowing? Ah, I am glad you asked! 😀 Winter sowing is something I read about not long ago where you make miniature greenhouses out of 2 liter bottles, quart or gallon milk jugs, or any other container that is mostly transparent and made of plastic. You then set the containers out in your yard in a mostly sunny place and let the seeds do their thing. They freeze and thaw, and eventually start growing inside this somewhat protected container, which allows you to have the benefits of a greenhouse combined with the benefits of not having to harden off your plants. Oh, I can see I need a whole post on this! Let me do just that later in the week. In the meantime, you can see a really good video on it here:

I also roasted some coffee this weekend, but essentially botched it. I had my fire too hot and ended up with a French Roast instead of my normal light roast. SIGH. It is still a very smooth cup of coffee though. Surprisingly smooth.

The other big project around the homestead that I did get to this week was changing out the litter in the chicken coop. You’ll be able to read more about that in The Chicken Chronicles this week. However, this is one of the big reasons we have chickens. They are fertile soil making machines! I like the way some describe it – my chickens are fertile soil making machines that happen to also lay eggs. 😀

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On December 29, 2014

Wow! I logged in today and noticed it has been nearly a month without a post! Needless to say, the last month has been very close to chaotic continually, and what little time I have had has been spent on living, not writing about living. 🙂

Despite the chaos, I have had a pretty productive month or so around the homestead, mostly in planning for the upcoming gardening year. By next week I should be able to share the plans for my garden for 2015, which will be a very different garden than any I have planted before. You have already read of the Back-to-Eden style gardening change that has been made, but I am also planning on a much wider use of companion planting this year in order to get the most out of the garden. More to come on this soon.

I was pleased this Christmas to get a few new yard tools that I have been wanting, including a pole pruner, a pruning saw, and pruning shears. The pole pruner is the only one of the three I have used yet, and it did great. We have a couple of pecan trees on our property, and one of those has branches that stick out above the power lines coming into our house. Twice since we have lived here those branches have caused and issue with our power after a winter storm and both times cost a considerable amount of money to fix. I was able to safely trim the branches back for the most part where they didn’t extend over the power lines. There is still one troublesome branch that is just a bit too high for me, but I may try to trim it back using a ladder on a warmer day.

The other pruning tools have a more interesting purpose. I plan on pruning back my three fruit trees this year: two apple trees and a cherry tree. I have been learning quite a bit about pruning, and I think I am ready to give it a shot. More to come on this as well.

Finally, I have been blessed to already receive numerous seeds for the next growing cycle. Today I am hoping to take some macro photographs of the seeds to share their amazing beauty with you. Who would have thought a seed could be beautiful? Just wait and see!

Oh, did I already say finally? Hmm – I have one more thing. 😀 First, let me begin by thanking those who saved babyfood/small jars for me. They have come in so handy. Several of you have asked what I am using them for. I grow popcorn, and I selectively save the seed from the popcorn in order to grow better popcorn next year. In order to do this faster and better, I need a controlled environment for the popcorn so that I can ensure all the corn has the same moisture ratio. Moisture is a key component of popcorn’s popping ability, and if I am going to truly save the best each year, I need to be sure the moisture is the same during the popping trials, which commence soon. So, here is a picture of the filled jars:

Popcorn Jars

Even though I have enough of these for this year, I still need about 300 more jars, so if you or someone you know is feeding a baby babyfood, I would love to have the jars. Even better are pimento jars or any other jar that holds about 4-6 ounces. Bigger or smaller also work, but I don’t want anything larger than a half-pint.

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On November 24, 2014

It has been another quiet week outside of the chickens, which has been quite busy. I’m not going to spoil it though – check back tomorrow for more on that.

The cold snap has come and gone, but it is raining buckets of water as I write this on Sunday evening. We are planning on starting the Back to Eden project this upcoming Friday, pending the mini-front-end-loader/backhoe arrives as expected. There is way too much to spread in one weekend by hand, but with some machine assistance, we can get it done.

The end goal of this new garden area is an 80 ft. x 80 ft. garden with four inches of woodchips on top of some leaves. I had hoped to get some manure for the bottom layer, and actually had two offers for some, but my work schedule has not cooperated at all. Perhaps 20 cubic yards of it will appear in my yard before Friday. Dear manure donor, if you read this and decide to help, please dump it in the already gardened area – it will make it much easier to spread. 😀

Unfortunately, without the compost under the woodchips as I had hoped for, the first year of this garden style is likely going to be less than stellar. The compost speeds up the process of getting the soil ready for the first year, as the wood chips will not have decomposed much yet, but even without the manure, the garden should be better than it has been. I think I will supplement the decomposition process with blood meal, which should help heat the chips up enough to begin breaking them down some.

Again, a slow week this week, but next Monday there should be some exciting updates, with pictures!

Happenings Around the Homestead

Posted by Steve On November 10, 2014

It has been another slow week around the homestead, though we did receive two more loads of woodchips for the big garden project this year. Now that I type that, I am not sure I have mentioned it on here before. It is a unique way of gardening that people have been made aware of through a film titled Back to Eden. Basically, the premise of it all is that you provide a ground covering, preferably wood chips. The wood chips keep the ground moist and fertile. While that is the elevator pitch about Back to Eden gardening, it is well worth watching the film, which is well put together and held my interest, which says a lot.

Regarding that, I am still trying to find good, composted manure to put as a base layer for the garden. The problem is threefold: finding it, getting it here, and having enough. That reminds me, I need to call a friend this week, as he may have a source for horse manure, though I am not sure how composted it might be.

The garlic I planted a few weeks ago is starting to sprout, though it is tiny still. The chickens are my big challenge though, as they seem to think it looks like fun to pull on those green garlic leaves. Hopefully they will get tired of it before long, or at least long enough for them to get rooted well.

I have also been posting on Facebook about my need for small jars. This is for an ongoing popcorn experiment. I am growing landrace popcorn. As part of this ongoing experiment, I need to save the best seeds from year to year, which means I have to test pop all the popcorn. The seeds that are saved are those which are the best popping corn, though I strongly take the ease of shucking and the appearance into consideration. The reason I need the jars is to ensure the water content of all the popcorn remains the same. Yes, it sure is a lot of work, but it keeps my interest. Regarding the jars, I am making progress. I have already received a small number of babyfood jars, and my mom had some other small jars she gave. I then had a friend let me know she is saving her jars for me, so it looks like I am on my way to having enough jars. Thanks to everyone for the jars!

I think that is all for the week. It will likely be slow for a few weeks until I start spreading the woodchips, then it will pick up again for a short stint before the winter slows things down until March or so.

365 Days of Me