I love looking at seed catalogs. Poring over the descriptions of seemingly endless varieties of beans, tomatoes, squash, carrots, beets, lettuce....it's just very exciting. And now that I have a year of gardening under my belt, the selection process is at least marginally less intimidating. I have a better handle on the amount of seeds that I need, and what plants work for me, and which ones don't. So last night, Mike and I sat down with the Fedco catalog and chose our 2012 crop. It's not the complete farming plan, as I'll be buying pepper, eggplant, and cauliflower seedlings at the farmer's market come spring, but it's a pretty comprehensive blueprint of what the 2012 garden will look like. Even more exciting, since Taperman gave me the fantastic Christmas gift of a Fedco gift certificate, we aren't spending much on the seeds! And farming does truly bring out your frugal side, so saving money on seeds is just delightful. At any rate, here's the 2012 lineup:
Potatoes - we're trying out four different types this year, and for a twist from last year, we plan on actually labeling the beds so we know what's what. I put Mike in charge of potato selection, and he chose the Rose Finn Apple fingerling, Sangre (red-skinned) early harvest, Adirondack Red (mid-season harvest, red skins and pink(!) flesh), and German Butterball (yellow) late harvest. Hopefully with this group, we'll have a nice long harvest of a variety of potatoes. And again, we're going to label the beds. And I'm going to try to attack the potato bug eggs early in the season so that I don't have to deal with so many nasty potato bugs this year.
Green beans - we both loved having fresh green beans last year, so I'm branching out our bean options this year. Since we now have a good sized chest freezer, I'm hopefull that we can freeze a good portion of the harvest to use through the fall and winter. Once again, we're growing the Provider green beans that produced so well last year, and we're also adding a haricot verts crop, and a pole bean multi-colored mix, to see if pole beans truly are tastier than bush beans.
Sugar snap peas - we loved these so much last year, and this year we are going to try to make a better effort to actually get two plantings in the ground so that we can enjoy more.
Cucumbers - after giving me a hard time for picking a fancy cucumber instead of a regular cucumber, Mike made the bold choice of Poona Kheera cukes, a brown cucumber from India. Hmmm. We're also going to try a pickling cucumber.
Zucchini - I'm just growing one type of summer squash this year, the Costata Romanesca zucchini, which is supposed to have a sweet almost nutty flavor and prolific blossoms (even though I did say that the squash blossoms were overrated last year).
Winter Squash - I had to put a lot of thought into the winter squash selection. Last year was disapointing for squash, and I do have the squash lady down the street so growing a wide variety of squash isn't really necessary. But I just couldn't face not growing any squash, so after much internal debate, I chose two varieties for next year. The first is sweet mama, a buttercup variety with dense, sweet, dry flesh that I mostly chose for the name, and the second is uncle david's dakota dessert squash - that was one that I tried this past year without success, but my one surviving seedling tried so very hard to grow that I want to give it another chance. This year the winter squash will be in the main garden, so I hope that will help me be a more attentive squash farmer.
Carrots - two kinds this year, and I'm actually resisting the multicolor carrots in favor of two varieties that are supposed to be tastier. I'm taking this as a sign I may be maturing as a gardener. But if they aren't significantly better than the multicolored carrots, I'm going back to the colors for 2013.
Beets - the Chioggia beets were a huge hit last year, so we're doing those again along with a crop of golden beets.
Scallions - I was less bad at growing scallions than I was at onions, and it is very handy to have scallions always on hand, so they made the cut again this year. I'm still on the fence about onion sets - I think I'll make that decision after I start doing out the garden plan, to see if I'll have space for them.
Lettuce - we're going with three different kinds this year, a mesclun mix, a greens mix, and arugula. But this year, lettuce won't have a dedicated bed; instead, I'll interplant them early in other beds, to harvest before they bolt.
Broccoli - I ordered a broccoli blend that should mature over the season. I'm planning on direct seeding these guys, so I don't have terribly high hopes. I may buy some broccoli seedlings come spring to hedge my bets a bit.
Tomatoes - last year, the heirloom mix as kind of fun, but it was confusing not to know what we were working with. So this year, I chose a paste variety for canning/sauce, sun gold cherry tomatoes for snacking, salads, and oven drying, and a slicing variety for sandwiches. We should be able to keep these straight. These I will start from seed in April (when the baby arrives), so cross your fingers for the tomato crop.
Herbs - the only herb seed I ordered was basil, since last year the basil that I started from seed did just as well as the basil from seedlings. The mints and chives should come back, and I'll buy seedlings for parsley, oregano, and thyme. NO catnip for 2012.
So there we have it! I still have to do up the garden plan to figure out where everything will go, but since I used the mother earth news planner last year, it should be fairly straightforward to determine how the crops should rotate. The garlic, asparagus, rhubarb and perennial herbs are already in the ground, and of course, we don't need to construct the garden, so I do have a bit of a leg up from last year. Now this baby just needs to be a good farmer, and we'll be in business!
Monday, January 23, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
A little present for the girls
My chickens remain totally incapacitated by snow. And now that we finally have some, they've spent the past week in their coop, refusing to go into the yard because of the terrifying blanket of white stuff. I was concerned that this would not be good for the bullying situation, or for the overall state of the coop, so this morning I braved the 6 degree weather to shovel out part of the yard for the girls. I was additionally motivated by Taperman's assertion that there is a direct correlation between chicken parenting and child rearing, and, since I haven't done an outstanding job in the chicken parenting department what with all of the dog/chicken debacles, I decided that I needed to step up my chicken parenting game.
So I hauled my six-months-pregnant self out with a shovel, and cleared out about a third of the yard. Agnes, Alice and a rhode island red came out almost immediately to supervise, and by the time I was finished, the majority of the flock had decided to venture back out. I only cleared the part of the yard that gets a good amount of sun, but it still gives the girl much more space than they had when they were self-confined to the coop. Bullet and Lily found the whole process fascinating, especially when I accidentally tossed a frozen orange rind out of the yard. Lily made that big score, and appeared to find it delicious. Bullet was the happy recipient of a frozen egg (he ate the shell, too), and neither one of them rushed the fence, so I'm calling the morning a success.
You'll note that despite the shoveling, there's still a thin layer of snow on the ground. Apparently, this does not meet the threshold amount that disturbs chickens. I was happy that Alice, Agnes and the rhode island red clued me into this early on in the shoveling process, as it saved quite a bit of time and exasperation. I think there might be a science to this.
So I hauled my six-months-pregnant self out with a shovel, and cleared out about a third of the yard. Agnes, Alice and a rhode island red came out almost immediately to supervise, and by the time I was finished, the majority of the flock had decided to venture back out. I only cleared the part of the yard that gets a good amount of sun, but it still gives the girl much more space than they had when they were self-confined to the coop. Bullet and Lily found the whole process fascinating, especially when I accidentally tossed a frozen orange rind out of the yard. Lily made that big score, and appeared to find it delicious. Bullet was the happy recipient of a frozen egg (he ate the shell, too), and neither one of them rushed the fence, so I'm calling the morning a success.
You'll note that despite the shoveling, there's still a thin layer of snow on the ground. Apparently, this does not meet the threshold amount that disturbs chickens. I was happy that Alice, Agnes and the rhode island red clued me into this early on in the shoveling process, as it saved quite a bit of time and exasperation. I think there might be a science to this.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Reflections on the first farming season
It's below zero here today - but don't worry, the girls are fine - and the time seems right for some reflections on what I learned in my first year as a gardener/farmer/chicken handler. The seed catalogs are coming out, and very soon it will be time for us to decide what we want to plant next year. We had some great successes in the garden this past year, and some things that I certainly won't be doing again.
1. Planting cold weather plants in cold weather is probably a good idea. Because we had a pretty hectic spring and the garden wasn't constructed until May, and because the spring weather was so weird with lots of cold and rain, I got a very late start on my spring planting. I think this hurt my yields for cold weather crops, and so this year I fully intend to get some good planting done in May.
2. Don't plant a full bed of lettuce! We had so much lettuce that all was ready to harvest at the same time. This year, I'm going to interplant my lettuce in other beds (like with the tomatoes). By the time the lettuce is ready to eat, the other plants will still be small enough to not be crowded, and then I hope I'll have less wasted lettuce.
3. Morning sickness and the fall harvest are not a good combination. I realize that a newborn and the spring planting are probably also not a great combination. What can you do? At least this year I should be able to eat anything that I'm able to plant.
4. Twenty tomato plants was a little excessive - this year, I'm going to pare down considerably, and instead of doing a scattershot heirloom mix, I plan on growing a few paste tomatoes, and a few cherry tomatoes. Then I should have a good harvest to preserve, and plenty of little cherry tomatoes for salads, snacking, and roasting.
5. Squash growing was not as easy as all of the books said it would be. Between the cucumber beetles, rambunctious dogs and wacky weather, I lost over half of my squash plants. The amount of space and time that they took up has made me seriously reconsider dedicating another field to squash next year. Instead, I think I'll choose one variety (I know, though, how do you pick a favorite squash???) to grow in the garden, and buy the rest from the squash lady down the street. Maybe in the future, when Mike is living the dream with a tractor, I'll try another squash field, but for next year, it's out.
6. Eggplant, which was supposed to be very challenging, was not. So I'm growing eggplant again next year.
7. My cats don't like home grown catnip, and catnip takes over everything. Not growing catnip again.
8. We really, really love fresh snap peas and green beans. Next year, I'm planting more of both and will try to pay better attention to when I'm actually supposed to plant and harvest them.
9. Same with potatoes and chioggia beets. Even though we get beets and potatoes through our winter CSA, I'm still planning on growing our own so that we can enjoy them in the late summer and fall. And beet greens were delicious.
10. Chard is amazing - definitely doing chard again instead of spinach or another green, but next year, I may stagger my plantings. Or not. That was such an easy, indestructible crop.
11. I probably should have cleaned up the garden before the ground froze. I didn't. But I'll have plenty of time to do it this spring, right? You know, this spring when I have the baby? Big oops.
12. Related to 11, next year I really need to actually complete the fall harvest in the fall. I have an embarrassingly large number of carrots, beets, and leeks that remain abandoned in the garden. I really have no excuse for this, which is troubling.
13. If I have a gut feeling that the chickens are in trouble, they are. Also, if I have a gut feeling that something with respect to the chicken yard is not going to work out well, it won't.
14. Having realistic expectations, or even seriously underplaying expectations, is a wonderful thing. I had such low expectations last year that every time a vegetable appeared in the garden, it felt like a huge success. I plan to continue this philosophy next year.
15. The hardening off process for seedlings appears to actually be pretty important. I'll try harder at this next year (although even as I type this, a part of me is saying that the hardiest plants will still make it, and those are the ones that have the best shot at surviving my gardening attempts anyway).
16. Starting seedlings inside is really fun. So even though I'll have a newborn at exactly the same time I need to start seeds, I still plan on starting some. But I also plan on buying seedlings from the nursery and farmer's market. It's all about low expectations.
17. Having chickens makes me feel so much better about garden waste, and means that even if I don't directly eat all of the produce from the garden, I'm still reaping the benefits through eggs. Thanks girls. Also, garden waste makes the chickens slightly less expensive to feed.
18. Growing onions was very challenging for me, but leeks weren't. So next year, I'll probably only grow a few onions if I can fit them into the garden plan, and keep growing leeks and scallions.
19. I love having a garden and growing my own food, even though I still have lots to learn about it and still really don't like bugs. Still worth doing.
In the next couple of weeks, we're going to start coming up with our 2012 garden plan. My very generous father gave me a gift certificate to Fedco for Christmas, so the bulk of my seed orders will be from there. I was very happy with our Fedco seeds last year, and like the variety they have. I'm going to try to choose as many vegetables that I can directly seed into the garden as possible to cut down on work in the spring. We also now have a chest freezer, so I hope that will help preserve the harvest this year. Now I'm all excited to pick out my seeds!
1. Planting cold weather plants in cold weather is probably a good idea. Because we had a pretty hectic spring and the garden wasn't constructed until May, and because the spring weather was so weird with lots of cold and rain, I got a very late start on my spring planting. I think this hurt my yields for cold weather crops, and so this year I fully intend to get some good planting done in May.
2. Don't plant a full bed of lettuce! We had so much lettuce that all was ready to harvest at the same time. This year, I'm going to interplant my lettuce in other beds (like with the tomatoes). By the time the lettuce is ready to eat, the other plants will still be small enough to not be crowded, and then I hope I'll have less wasted lettuce.
3. Morning sickness and the fall harvest are not a good combination. I realize that a newborn and the spring planting are probably also not a great combination. What can you do? At least this year I should be able to eat anything that I'm able to plant.
4. Twenty tomato plants was a little excessive - this year, I'm going to pare down considerably, and instead of doing a scattershot heirloom mix, I plan on growing a few paste tomatoes, and a few cherry tomatoes. Then I should have a good harvest to preserve, and plenty of little cherry tomatoes for salads, snacking, and roasting.
5. Squash growing was not as easy as all of the books said it would be. Between the cucumber beetles, rambunctious dogs and wacky weather, I lost over half of my squash plants. The amount of space and time that they took up has made me seriously reconsider dedicating another field to squash next year. Instead, I think I'll choose one variety (I know, though, how do you pick a favorite squash???) to grow in the garden, and buy the rest from the squash lady down the street. Maybe in the future, when Mike is living the dream with a tractor, I'll try another squash field, but for next year, it's out.
6. Eggplant, which was supposed to be very challenging, was not. So I'm growing eggplant again next year.
7. My cats don't like home grown catnip, and catnip takes over everything. Not growing catnip again.
8. We really, really love fresh snap peas and green beans. Next year, I'm planting more of both and will try to pay better attention to when I'm actually supposed to plant and harvest them.
9. Same with potatoes and chioggia beets. Even though we get beets and potatoes through our winter CSA, I'm still planning on growing our own so that we can enjoy them in the late summer and fall. And beet greens were delicious.
10. Chard is amazing - definitely doing chard again instead of spinach or another green, but next year, I may stagger my plantings. Or not. That was such an easy, indestructible crop.
11. I probably should have cleaned up the garden before the ground froze. I didn't. But I'll have plenty of time to do it this spring, right? You know, this spring when I have the baby? Big oops.
12. Related to 11, next year I really need to actually complete the fall harvest in the fall. I have an embarrassingly large number of carrots, beets, and leeks that remain abandoned in the garden. I really have no excuse for this, which is troubling.
13. If I have a gut feeling that the chickens are in trouble, they are. Also, if I have a gut feeling that something with respect to the chicken yard is not going to work out well, it won't.
14. Having realistic expectations, or even seriously underplaying expectations, is a wonderful thing. I had such low expectations last year that every time a vegetable appeared in the garden, it felt like a huge success. I plan to continue this philosophy next year.
15. The hardening off process for seedlings appears to actually be pretty important. I'll try harder at this next year (although even as I type this, a part of me is saying that the hardiest plants will still make it, and those are the ones that have the best shot at surviving my gardening attempts anyway).
16. Starting seedlings inside is really fun. So even though I'll have a newborn at exactly the same time I need to start seeds, I still plan on starting some. But I also plan on buying seedlings from the nursery and farmer's market. It's all about low expectations.
17. Having chickens makes me feel so much better about garden waste, and means that even if I don't directly eat all of the produce from the garden, I'm still reaping the benefits through eggs. Thanks girls. Also, garden waste makes the chickens slightly less expensive to feed.
18. Growing onions was very challenging for me, but leeks weren't. So next year, I'll probably only grow a few onions if I can fit them into the garden plan, and keep growing leeks and scallions.
19. I love having a garden and growing my own food, even though I still have lots to learn about it and still really don't like bugs. Still worth doing.
In the next couple of weeks, we're going to start coming up with our 2012 garden plan. My very generous father gave me a gift certificate to Fedco for Christmas, so the bulk of my seed orders will be from there. I was very happy with our Fedco seeds last year, and like the variety they have. I'm going to try to choose as many vegetables that I can directly seed into the garden as possible to cut down on work in the spring. We also now have a chest freezer, so I hope that will help preserve the harvest this year. Now I'm all excited to pick out my seeds!
Friday, January 6, 2012
So, did anyone remember that I planted brussels sprouts?
Because I forgot that little detail until the end of last month. Not completely, of course, I mean, I knew that there were still brussels sprouts in my garden hanging out, but I seemed to forget that I needed to actually harvest them. Mike has quite a taste for brussels sprouts (seriously!), so after Christmas we decided that it was time to be brave and see if our little sprouts were actually harvestable. And mostly, they were! Mike cut down the stalks and trimmed the sprouts, and we kept about half of the batch and gave the rest to my parents. The straggler sprouts that fell on the ground during the harvest were quickly consumed by Bullet and Lily, who will eat anything.
Since the brussels sprouts were frozen anyway, I just bagged them up and stuck them in the chest freezer. Allegedly, staying out through a few frosts makes brussels sprouts sweeter. I certainly gave them many opportunities to become quite cold, so hopefully they'll be delicious.
On the chicken front, Taperman's gift to the girls was a platform for their water container, as they were kicking quite a bit of litter into the water and it was just gross. I think they were very appreciative.
We had yet another dog/chicken debacle last week, but once again it was much better than it could have been. Mike and I did a big refrigerator purge of Christmas leftovers and brought a huge load of food out to the girls, which thrilled them. We're talking pie, cheesecake, pasta, lots of good stuff. Unfortunately, neither Mike nor I shut the gate to their yard. Big oops. Then we let the dogs out. For a while. Another big oops. We finally noticed what was going on, and rushed outside. The girls' survival instincts are getting much better, as most of them hid under tree trunks and branches and played dead, which is remarkably effective. Lily was chasing a few girls around, but Bullet seemed to be thoroughly distracted by the food, which I think is what ultimately saved the girls. We sassed the dogs and tied them up, and then began the chicken round up. By the end of the afternoon, we had accounted for all but two girls, and while two were injured, all of thegirls that we could find were alive. Before bed we did one last check outside, and found the last two girls huddled near the garage. This was about a week ago, and the injured girls seem to be doing much better. Egg production has tanked though - apparently trauma is not conducive to laying as we've gone from a yield of 9-10 eggs a day to 2-4. Poor chickens. Clearly, one of my new year's resolutions is to be a more responsible chicken parent.
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| Brussels sprouts in the garden, December 2011 |
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| Our half of the brussels sprouts harvest |
On the chicken front, Taperman's gift to the girls was a platform for their water container, as they were kicking quite a bit of litter into the water and it was just gross. I think they were very appreciative.
We had yet another dog/chicken debacle last week, but once again it was much better than it could have been. Mike and I did a big refrigerator purge of Christmas leftovers and brought a huge load of food out to the girls, which thrilled them. We're talking pie, cheesecake, pasta, lots of good stuff. Unfortunately, neither Mike nor I shut the gate to their yard. Big oops. Then we let the dogs out. For a while. Another big oops. We finally noticed what was going on, and rushed outside. The girls' survival instincts are getting much better, as most of them hid under tree trunks and branches and played dead, which is remarkably effective. Lily was chasing a few girls around, but Bullet seemed to be thoroughly distracted by the food, which I think is what ultimately saved the girls. We sassed the dogs and tied them up, and then began the chicken round up. By the end of the afternoon, we had accounted for all but two girls, and while two were injured, all of thegirls that we could find were alive. Before bed we did one last check outside, and found the last two girls huddled near the garage. This was about a week ago, and the injured girls seem to be doing much better. Egg production has tanked though - apparently trauma is not conducive to laying as we've gone from a yield of 9-10 eggs a day to 2-4. Poor chickens. Clearly, one of my new year's resolutions is to be a more responsible chicken parent.
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