Farming season begins

Winter has been desperately hanging on here this year, but finally, my beds are starting to poke out from the snow.  The cold frames are thawed (and no, my attempts to grow food in them through the winter were not successful at all - I think it may be more realistic to see them as season extenders rather than as a possibility for year-round fresh veggies).  It seems like we're going to have a cool spring, so I'm not in a huge rush to get the garden started.  We still have a good amount of cleanup to do, and I would so love it if this was the year I stayed somewhat on top of the weeds.

I have sorted out the seeds by planting date, and started the first batch of seedlings this past weekend (eggplant and brussels sprouts).  The brussels sprouts have sprouted, eggplants haven't.  I was planning on starting peppers last weekend but didn't get to it, so hopefully that will happen this weekend.  As I mentioned, not in a hurry this year!

Our big plans for this season revolve around planting more fruit trees and berries.  We're adding rows of raspberries, blueberries, and elderberries behind the vegetable garden, and need to replace a few of the apple trees that were terminally damaged by Mike's mortal enemy, the fearless deer.  I also found a variety of fig that's supposed to be able to withstand cold winters, and we'll be planting a couple of paw paw trees as well.  We may also put in a few ornamental trees to follow the landscape design that we had drawn up last summer - since we're going to pick up our tree order at the FedCo tree sale this year I have a strong hunch that there will be quite a few tree impulse buys.

Our landscape design includes some gorgeous ideas for perennial gardens, which we'll be holding off on for another year or so to focus on getting the trees and berries established.  We will, though, be ripping out the mess of existing plants that we have surrounding the house (tractor!), which I'm very excited about.  I'm also day-dreaming about putting in a perennial shade garden underneath some existing fir trees that we have in a corner of the yard.  We're lucky to have full sun in so many places, but I'm wanting to have some shade-loving favorites somewhere near the house.  And doesn't a sprawling shade garden tucked in a corner under fir trees sound a bit magical?  I've got to let this idea marinate a bit but I think I'd definitely like to include lily of the valley (I know it spreads, I don't really care.  We have a lot of space and it smells so lovely), bleeding hearts, and helleborus, and maybe this lovely silver lace black primrose (http://www.gurneys.com/product/silver_lace_black_primrose/shade-plants).

OMG, I thinned the carrots!

And it's just as exciting and monumental as the title of this post indicates.  I've been terrible about thinning out my carrots in the past, but this year, I actually made it out into the garden and did what I believe is a very fine job getting them all straightened out.  The thinning was desperately needed, as I had monster clumps of carrots starting.  So I thinned the carrots (and to a lesser extent, the parsnips) to about 2 inches apart.  While I was on a roll, I also thinned my squash, beets and kale, and added a few more fennel seeds to try to fill in the empty spaces in that bed.  We are relatively on top of the weeds this year, and while my eggplants are still struggling against the predation of the flea beetles, the garden dust has helped and I think they may pull through.  We've also had a good amount of rain this week, and so I haven't had to water.  Mike has been regularly giving compost tea to the asparagus, tomatoes, eggplants, and to the trees, and that seems to make them noticeably perkier and greener.

On the pest front, I've made tin foil collars for my brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, eggplants, and peppers, and that has helped tremendously with the cutworms.  I've also been using garden dust on the eggplants, broccoli and cauliflower.  The potato bugs are here, so I've been hand picking them and their eggs, and dreading the emergence of the larvae.  Today I noticed the first herd of cucumber beetles, who are going to town on my squash, so I'll have to do something there.

Speaking of trees, we have deer nibbling on the apple trees.  Apparently even though we added a third dog, they have done nothing to deter deer.  Weird, since they're all fantastic at barking at the wind....So Mike has purchased some deer repellent, and is hoping that it will work.

Fennel

Snap peas are coming!

Shell peas, spinach, snap peas, and pole beans

Edamame (front) and green beans

Tomatoes

Eggplants in their tin foil collars

Close-up of the sad, dusted eggplants in their collars

Walking onions

Shallots - apparently they really can't take a joke about being transplanted

Makeshift hotcap for a particularly delicate brussels sprout

Broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts

Glorious potatoes

Parsnips and carrots, pre-thinning

Is there a 12 step program for people who buy too many fruit trees?

If there is, then you should sign us up.  Immediately.  Today Mike put his new tractor, with its fancy post hole digger, to good use, and we planted 15 fruit trees, and 9 blackberry bushes.  Tomorrow we do raspberries.  It may be excessive, but it was also very exciting (if we're being honest, I think that Mike and Landon were mostly excited about all of the tractoring, but still, excitement was there).  Mike has done so much work getting the land for the expanded orchard yesterday, and it's wonderful to see the plan starting to take shape.

Mike putting in the first tree of the day

Adding pea stone to act as mulch

Soaking the bare roots in agri-gel

Mom multi-tasking!  While he looks very still in this picture, Landon spent most of the time trying to jump out and play with the water.

Bare-root trees in the box

Meanwhile, inside the seedlings are looking good.  The eggplant finally germinated and seems happy, and the fennel, basil, tomatoes, and flowers are all growing as well.  None of my chinese lantern flowers have sprouted yet, but I'm not giving up hope on them yet.  As Mike pointed out today I don't have a spot in the garden picked out for them yet, so if they don't grow, it's not a huge loss.

Tomorrow will be our first outdoor planting day in the garden!  It's been cold here for the past few weeks, and we've been dealing with some sad personal events, so I postponed my original planting plans.  Tomorrow, though, my parents are going to come to help wrangle Landon, and I'm planning on planting my peas, radishes, scallions, shallots, kale, turnips, carrots, beets, and endive.  We're also going to put in the raspberry bushes.  Well, some of the raspberry bushes.  Since I had that whole golden raspberry impulse buy situation we'll have another round once those arrive.  I'd say "and then we'll stop," but even I don't believe that.  Maybe after next year (with the blueberries, elderberries, and kiwi), then we'll stop.

We've got germination

(This video only seems to want to go to the top of the post, but you know what, that's fine.  It's adorable and tangentially farming related).

All signs are pointing to this being the year that we actually come up with a thoughtful plan for the garden, and then follow it.  The seedlings are germinating beautifully in the mudroom, Mike has been working hard to clear out more land to expand the orchard, and even the baby has helped in the efforts.  Tomorrow we're hitting up Skillins to look at floating row covers, and we may even start to do some planting outside.  When I checked the beds this morning the soil temperature was only 40-45, so I'm not feeling behind despite the fact that I haven't gotten anything in the ground out there.

Our 13 new trees, plus raspberry and blackberry plants, arrived earlier this week, and they're all hanging out in the barn, to be planted hopefully this weekend.  Mike upgraded from a lawn tractor to a real (small) tractor, but the post-hole digger attachment hasn't arrived yet so the orchard plans are on hold for a few more days.  In the end, this is good, as we realized today that we need to take down two more trees where the orchard is going, and were able to better plot out where the fruit trees will be.  Plus, we used a sledgehammer to drive in the stakes to mark the future tree locations, and the baby thought this was absolutely hilarious.

I missed one tree in our Fedco order, and we found one last apple variety that we'd like to try, too, so next year in addition to starting the blueberries and elderberries, we'll also be getting a Frostbite apple and Cox's Orange Pippin apple.  And then we'll be done with apple trees.

Eggplant seedling tray - not much was happening this morning, but when I just checked, it looked like they have started germinating.  Phew!

Fennel and basil

Broccoli and cauliflower

The flower tray - marigolds, zinnias and nasturtiums

Second eggplant tray.  Again, not much happening yet.

Land that we've been clearing for the orchard.  That big tree in the middle comes down this week.

Bearcubs eating one of the little trees that Mike knocked down

Clearing out space for the blackberries.  He got stuck.  But then he got to use his truck to pull his tractor out, and it was awesome.

The seedlings are started!

I had two lovely helpers, who helped me get the seedlings started on Sunday morning.  Mamie was slightly more helpful than Landon, who didn't understand why I wouldn't let him eat the seeds, seed starting materials, or containers.  I'm such a strict mother.

Also, let's all marvel at my new seed starting setup, made by Mike.  We need to set up the lights, and hook up the warming mats, but it's a thing of beauty even in progress.

I've started two 72 cell trays of various eggplant varieties, one tray of flowers, one tray of fennel/basil/purple tomatoes, and one tray of cauliflower/broccoli.  I was hoping to get some seeds in the ground outside this week, too, but we'll see if I get a chance.

Hilling, weeding, and the first potato bug sightings

We've had a ton of rain over the past week, which has been fantastic for my seedlings and even better for my weeds, so today when Landon was ready to be handed off to his dad, I headed out to the garden.  My first task was hilling the potatoes, which have gotten huge over the past week.  Mike picked up two yards of compost this morning to use for hilling (and for other things, as that is clearly an excessive amount of compost to hill two beds of potatoes), so I started by shoveling the compost out of the truck into the garden, then into the beds.  I'm going to be one sore mama tomorrow.  I surveyed the plants for potato bugs and eggs before I started, and found about 10 potato bugs, although I couldn't find any eggs.  I'd really like to catch the eggs so that I don't have to deal with the larvae, so I'm going to try to get out to keep checking over the next couple of weeks.

The seeds that I planted two weeks ago are all coming up nicely, and earlier this week I put in my second planting of bush green beans.  I'm planting three sets 10 days apart, in hopes that they'll be ready for harvest at a staggered interval this year. 

Pole beans 6-10

The beets continue to do nothing.  Strawberries are coming in, and I hope that this year we'll be able to snag a few before the birds eat them all!

 In the lettuce bed, I've tried to replant some of the lettuces, rather than thinning them, as my seeds came up in clumps (I'm sure this had nothing to do with how they were sown...).  Today they transplanted lettuces are looking a little limp, but I'm hoping this will work.

Lettuce 6-10

 The carrots and radishes look fantastic.  We harvested our first radish for salad on Saturday night, and it was delicious. 

Carrots and radishes 6-10

Chard 6-10

 I think cutworms got to one of my eggplant seedlings and one of my pepper seedlings, so we hit the farmer's market again to buy replacements.  The other seedlings in those beds are fine, so I hope these were isolated incidents.

Eggplant and tomatoes 6-10

 I have at least three tomato seedlings that have come up from last year's crop, including the one below (with one of last year's onions), one in the scallion/leek/shallot bed, and one nestled in with the cabbage.  I haven't pulled any of them yet, as I'm still admiring the fact that they took the initiative to grow.

Rogue tomato and onion from last year's garden 6-10

Snap peas

 Lily has spent the past week trying to eat the bulbs that my mother planted, so Mike installed a pretty fence around the perennial garden out front to keep the dogs out.  It looks lovely (he also mulched), but has been completely ineffective as far as the dogs go, and I've caught them both in there several times.  Apparently the new mulch is delicious (says Lily).  She can't understand why she's also banned from the vegetable garden...

Mostly planted

I had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend, with lots of farming and even a bit of sleep.  Mike and I hit the farmer's market on Saturday morning to pick up eggplant, pepper and herb seedlings, and then stopped by Skillins to get a few last herbs and tomato cages.  When we got home, Mike strapped Landon into the Ergo and they had major father son bonding time while I spent two wonderful hours in the garden, weeding and planting.  On Monday, we repeated this setup and I "finished" (are you ever really done?) weeding and planting the summer seeds of bush and pole beans, zucchini, cucumbers, winter squash, and basil.  Mike then managed to pull off the feat of watering the garden while wearing the baby, which was impressive but ultimately unnecessary given the huge amount of rain that we got yesterday.  Also on Monday, my mom planted day lilies, gladioli, and peonies in the flower bed around the well.  Lily has spent the past two days trying to dig up the bulbs and eat them.  She also helped herself to a generous serving of last Thanksgiving's fried turkey oil that was in the barn.  Anyone want a bearcub?

The tomatoes seem to have benefited from the actual hardening off that I did this year, and they look happy in their spots in the garden.  The carrots, radishes, snap peas, potatoes, and swiss chard are germinating very well.  My beets have barely come up at all.  I'm not sure if they are just being slow to germinate, if they were duds, or if something is eating the seedlings.  Also in the category of garden puzzles is the fact that some bug is snacking on my scallions/leeks/shallots.  I was under the impression, from all of my gardening books, that bugs left onion family plants alone.  Not in my garden.  These tiny black and white caterpillar/inchworms are munching the tops off of all of these plants.  Very odd, and I haven't found a solution yet since none of my go-to garden guides mention this type of pest.  So for now I'm just hoping they go away.  I'm sure that will work.

cabbage 5-30

chard 5-30

herbs 5-30

from front, eggplant, arugula, tomatoes 5-30

potatoes 5-30

radishes & carrots 5-30

beets (?) 5-30

We started spraying the arugula, mustard greens, and cabbage family crops with organic insecticidal soap as the flea beetles are just terrible this year, and they've officially killed one broccoli plant.  The soap has helped a bit, but we'll need to keep on top of it as it only works when it's wet.

Our peach trees both have a fungus, so I think we are once again going to spray and forgo the notion of organic trees this year.  I think if we don't, we may lose them.

In chicken news, the girls continue to look like a very ratty bunch due to all the pecking, but are laying very well and are enjoying the weeds that I bring to them from the garden.  One of the rhode island reds has become broody, and she spends her days and nights trying to hatch the fake lime in the corner of the coop.  She may not be intelligent, but she is very determined.  Expect baby limes any day....