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).

Gearing up for the big farming weekend

Memorial Day weekend is upon us!  This has traditionally been our big planting weekend to get everything out in the garden.  It's supposed to be a wet weekend, but I think we'll go ahead with most of the planting anyway.  I have the eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, flowers, and tomatoes and Chinese broccoli (these last two from my friends - it's so nice to have others to swap with!), all out in the cold frames.  They haven't really been hardening off much out there since it's been so wet and dreary and the frames have mostly stayed closed, but this still is more of a hardening off effort than I've made in either of the past two years.

The seeds that we directly sowed in the garden are doing really well, for the most part.  My strawberry spinach didn't germinate at all, which was disapointing but probably inevitable since the seed packet was quite clear that they needed to stay moist, and I neglected to water (and the skies neglected to rain - I'm willing to share the blame here).  But my arugula, beets, turnips, radishes, lettuce, regular spinach, peas (snap and shelling), shallots, garlic, scallions, and carrots and parsnips are all coming up.  The kale is a little iffy, I think I'll direct seed some more with the chard this weekend.

I'm hoping to hit up the farmer's market tomorrow to round out my seedlings, but if it's a total downpour, I may just go to Skillins on Sunday and hope that they have everything I need.  It was great to do a mini seedling swap with a few of my friends, and now I just need:

5-7 more tomato plants (mostly paste, with 1-2 more cherry/slicing if there are cool varieties available)
peppers (3 bell peppers, 3 jalapenos, 2 poblanos)
Herbs for the cold frame (rosemary, thyme, oregano, chives, parsley)
Herbs for the herb bed (parsley)

And now, pictures!

My lovely new coldframe!

Romanesco (back left), cauliflower, fennel and tomato seedlings in the coldframe 5/20/2013

Basil, nasturtium, and eggplant seedlings in the coldframe 5/20/2013

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.

Despite the lack of blogging, we are farming

Having a newborn makes gardening rather tricky, but we have managed to get our cold weather plants in the ground over the past month, and have started our tomato seedlings as well.  We've figured out that Landon is quite happy to be worn in a wrap, so Mike has been doing the bulk of the actual farming work, while I wear Landon and supervise.  I hope that once I can wear him on my back, I'll be getting my hands dirty more often.  At any rate, a quick run-down of our progress so far this season:

Around April 15, we started the tomato seedlings inside.  We let them go in their starter cells for much longer than we did last year (due to nothing other than parenting induced exhaustion), and just transferred them into larger pots last night.  Right now we have 24 seedlings, and I plan to plant 12 of them in the actual garden, sending the extras off to Taperman and anyone else in need of tomatoes.

Tomato seedlings 4-18

Tomato seedlings 5-6

Tomato seedlings 5-13

The weekend of April 29, we did our first cold weather plantings, getting arugula, mesclun greens, sugarsnax carrots, beets and scallions in the ground.  I had wanted to get more done, but this was my first attempt at leaving the baby inside with his dad while I farmed, and I just couldn't stay outside for longer than an hour.

The next weekend we tag teamed the planting, and got the potatoes, chard, half of the cabbage, broccoli, radishes, carnival blend and koruda carrots all planted.  We've had a nice warm spring with lots of rain, which I'm hoping will be good for the garden.  So far, it's been excellent for the weeds, so we've had to spend about equal time weeding and planting each weekend.  The chickens have been the happy recipients of the weeds, which is the only upside to their presence.

This past weekend we took Landon on his first trip to the farmer's market to pick up leek, shallot, more cabbage, and brussels sprouts seedlings.  We ran into one of his baby buddies from our prenatal group, and even though he slept through the entire outing, I think he enjoyed it.  At least, we enjoyed it!  Mike broke out the rototiller and cultivator attachment for the weed whacker to create some additional space on the northern side of the garden for the brussels sprouts and for sunflowers, and he planted all of the seedlings.  Landon and I supervised (again, Landon slept).  Now we just have the warm weather crops left - eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, bush and pole beans, squash, and zucchini.  I think I'll plant them Memorial Day weekend, and we'll be hitting up the farmer's market one more time before then to get some more seedlings, since we'll need to buy eggplant and pepper seedlings.

Easter egg radishes 5-14

Rhubarb 5-14

Sugar snap pea seedlings 5-14

I'm planning on starting cauliflower seedlings inside once the tomatoes move into the garden, to be planted in July for a fall harvest.  We'll also plant a second row of sugar snap peas for a fall harvest (hopefully this will be different than last year, when I said that we'd plant a second row of peas, but never actually did). 

The fruit trees have been blooming for the last two weeks and are just beautiful.  Right now the apple and crab apple trees are in full bloom.  So lovely.

Finally, the chickens.  They aren't a pretty group.  We've tried giving them extra protein in the form of sunflower seeds, and extra mental stimulation in the form of large seed blocks, but they are still pecking each other to the point of baldness.  I think we only have one or two girls who remain unpecked, and we've given up on trying to protect them from each other.  They're laying very well, producing 12-15 eggs a day, but they certainly aren't much to look at right now. 

The farm is constructed!

Although we didn't have a tractor this weekend (very, very sad), we still managed to get quite a bit of farm construction done. On Saturday morning, we went to the Portland farmer's market to check out seedlings. We were supposed to go to another plant sale after the farmer's market, but I bought all the seedlings that I needed at the farmer's market, and figured that I would only cause myself spacing issues if I went to the plant sale. At the farmer's market, I bought broccoli, cauliflower, red and green cabbage, leek, several kinds of onion, brussels sprouts, and thai basil seedlings. With the exception of the thai basil, these are all supposed to be cooler weather plants that should hopefully survive outside now, so I planned to transplant them over the weekend. Sadly, one of the thai basil plants is already a goner. We noticed yesterday afternoon that it was quite droopy, and this morning I saw that it had succumbed to damping off. This happens to seedlings sometimes, quite quickly, and kills them. As you can see in the picture, it's not pretty. At least it wasn't a seedling that I grew, so I don't feel responsible, although I am the one who selected it at the market...

We also went to the tractor supply store to buy supplies for the fence. We have lots of wildlife near our house, including deer, so a fence is not optional for the garden. We went with a five foot fence, but have been warned that this may not be high enough to discourage the deer. We'll have to see. Mike worked on putting up the fence (I did provide key assistance in keeping the corner posts straight, and wrestling with the wire fencing, but he did most of the actual hard work). I transplanted most of my seedlings, also adding a few that we picked up at Skillins on the way home, because I really do go there every weekend. On Saturday, I managed to get the strawberries, brussels sprouts, onions, and cabbage planted. We were rained out by 5:00, so I couldn't finish the rest of the seedlings. I wasn't too disapointed though, as I've learned over the last few weeks that 1) I'm really, really not very good at shoveling and 2) gardening involves a lot of shoveling. Because we ran out of compost last week, I had to manually get the manure into the remaining beds. At one point, I had to admit to Mike that I wished we had a tractor. Either that, or I need some serious shoveling lessons and possibly steroids to bulk up faster.

Above from top: Entire garden post-fencing, cauliflower/broccoli bed, start of the herb garden, and strawberry/rhubarb bed

Today, Mike finished the fence, and I put in the rest of the seedlings and was able to plant all of the seeds that I had scheduled to plant this weekend. I had planned out where I wanted to plant everything, and I almost managed to follow my plan - I mixed up my first bed, but got on track after that. I used hot pink string to make rows to follow when planting the seeds, which I'm hoping will help me a bit when I start weeding the beds, so that I don't inadvertantly pull up my plants instead of the weeds. I'm glad that we went with the raised beds, because even though it's rained for what feels like the last two months, the soil in the beds was moist but not soaked, unlike the rest of the yard which has turned into a huge mud pit.

Above from top: cabbage bed, brussels sprouts with arugula seeds, onions/scallions, and leeks/broccoli & cauliflower (I had extra seedlings)

Below - Seedlings taking over the office! The top photo is mostly tomatoes blocking everything else. In the bottom you can see the marigolds, zinnias, peppers, and tomatoes.


Hopefully in a few weeks, we'll start having baby lettuce. It's very exciting to look out onto the garden and see the seedlings and know that I planted seeds - now I hope that it grows! Next weekend I'll plant more of the warmer weather seeds as long as it looks like we won't have another cold spell, and then I'll transplant the tomatoes and peppers and plant my squash in June. We still have to prepare the beds for the squash, and decide exactly where they're going to go, but all of the other garden prep is done. Well, I also have to mulch the walkways in the garden, but it's so gross and muddy in there that I need to wait for it to dry out a bit.

The beds are done, the lawn is raked, the rhubarb is planted, and we're exhausted!

After our long day of farming on Saturday, I took Mike out to dinner at a brew pub. I also brought my farm notebook and seed catalog, so that we could figure out exactly what I'll be planting in my beds. I've been having trouble figuring out how to plan out the beds - I just don't know how much space each type of vegetable needs, versus how many seeds I have. We had an incredibly productive dinner - so much so, that I'm pretty sure our waitress thought that it was a business meeting rather than a date. Now all of the beds are planned out, and I realized that I needed to buy a few more types of veggies and flowers. This morning, I finished planning out the planting schedule, which hopefully will start next weekend, as long as it doesn't rain. If it does, then I'll just be doing massive planting Memorial Day weekend, followed by squash and the other warm weather plants in early June.

We definitely used the tractor rental to the max this weekend. We were up again early this morning, to try to rake the east side of the lawn (where the squash is going to go), and to try to clear out the rocks that prevented us from being able to mow that area last year. I'm planning on covering most of it with squash, but I'd like to be able to mow it before we plant the squash to cut down on bugs, voles, and the general jungle appearance that our yard took on last summer. It was not easy, especially because it rained all morning. But we're tough farmers. With workboots and carhartts. That's right, I now have my very own work boots. I'm still wearing Mike's carhartts, though. Baby steps.

Mike went over the area with the tractor and rake, and I followed along picking up rocks, or helpfully pointing to the ones that were too heavy for me to pick up.Below is our final pile of rocks (in front of our partially completed, totally random, rock wall. We still have no idea what to do with that.). I'm sure that there are still rocks buried out there, but at least we know have the area to a mowable state. We also discovered that the soil out there is really sandy, which was a bit of a bummer for my squash plans. So now I think I'll make piles of manure on top of the sand, and then plant the squash seeds in the hills.

I was so glad that we finished the raking of the east side of the yard yesterday, because we ended up getting quite a bit of rain today, so now that entire side of the house looks like a giant, muddy slip and slide. This actually ended up being fantastic for Mike. We had a delivery of manure this morning, and because of the mud, the dump truck carrying the manure got stuck. So Mike got to tow it out with his truck. I think it may have been one of the best moments of his life. I didn't get any picture of the towing, because I was afraid that would scare off the manure guy and I'm sure we'll need more at some point.

We had to return the tractor by 1, so after much cleaning and rangling of the tractor to get it back on the trailer, we headed off to Windham. On the way home, we stopped at Skillins, to get the final seeds that we wanted, pick up a couple more rhubarb plants, and look into asparagus and potatoes. I was glad that we went there, because after talking with the saleswoman, we decided to reduce the number of asparagus beds from two to one, and to have two potato beds instead. They had about six different kinds of seed potatoes, so we got enough Yukon Golds for one bed, and then decided that for the other bed, we'd do a mix. So we got a few of each of the kinds of potatoes that they had, and didn't write down any of the names. When I go back next weekend, as I'm sure I will, I need to remember to find out what we bought so that we have at least some clue what we're planting.

Then, when we got home, I planted our first crop! My mom brought over some of her rhubarb last weekend, and I wanted to get it out of the plastic buckets and into the ground. I was glad that we had the raised beds, because it meant that while I was walking in our giant mud pit, I was only packing down the walkways in the garden rather than the beds.

Back inside, we re-arranged the seedlings so that we can customize their lights a little better, since the tomato plants are so much taller than the rest. Now we have the tomatoes all at the front of the table, and then the rest are further back so that we can lower the lights for them. I also gave the seedlings another watering, as they were looking a little dry. This next part might sound a little ridiculous, but I also set up a small fan in the office for them. I'm exercising their stems for outside! Finally, Taperman has found his camera, so hopefully we'll all see new pictures of the chicks soon! Hint, hint...

Seedlings at 3 1/2 weeks

I realized that I've been neglecting my seedlings in terms of blog posts, since we've been making so much exciting progress with prepping the garden and getting the chicks.

At three and a half weeks old, the seedlings are doing great. Everyone has survived the first transplant so far, and the stems are getting noticabely thicker, and leaves are becoming much more defined. The peppers are still the smallest plants, but they're making good progress. I have to thin them soon, but in looking at the pots I don't think the decisions will be too difficult.

Above, pepper plant on May 11

Below, marigold on May 11

Above, tomato plants on May 11 - they're huge!

This weekend, we have more grand outdoor plans. We're hopefully getting a delivery of four yards of compost today, and then this weekend we're renting a tractor (no, I'm not at all sure that Mike understands that we need to give it back) to fill in the beds with a combination of dirt, compost, and potentially manure. Mike has to call a manure guy today, to see if we can get some delivered this weekend as well. If we can get all of the beds placed and filled this weekend, I'll be one happy farmer. That will mean that I can plant some of the cooler weather crops the next weekend!

Transplanting seedlings - it's like pulling teeth

The seedlings are now in their own “big plant” containers, after last night’s transplanting session. We started the night with about 140 seedlings, and ended with 60 of what I hope were the best of the group. After doing a search that yielded a terrifying instructional video on transplanting seedlings that highlighted the dangers and stress that transplanting posed to plants, I felt sufficiently worried enough to get started. Seriously, this video highlighted, at three different points, that seedlings were in imminent danger of death at multiple points in the transplant process. At least I had a dentist on hand - that counts for something, right?

We mixed up a combination of seed starting mix with a potting soil that has compost included, which according to my most trusted book, should mean that I won’t have to fertilize the plants until they get outside. Then, we had to make the decision of which seedlings got to move onto the next round of farm life. For the most part, the decisions were fairly easy. I tried to select straight plants that had thicker stems and a nice set of new leaves. Any that were either tall, skinny and leaning, or seemed to be short and stunted, didn’t make the cut. I decided that for our 60 pots, we’d take 10 marigolds, 10 zinnias, 10 peppers, 10 garden peach tomatoes, and 20 heirloom tomatoes.

Above are peppers and tomatoes (left to right)

Below are peppers, tomatoes, marigolds, and zinnias (left to right)

We experimented with the transplant process a few times on zinnias that we weren’t going to keep, which I highly recommend should any of you end up growing seedlings. The first few did not go well. The potting mix was crumbly, and we tried both attempting to push the seedling out by the bottom (did not work), and then scooping them out with a spoon. According to Mike, the seedling removal process is very similar to extracting a tooth, so I let him do most of the transplants while I filled the pots with dirt.

My book said to plant the tomato seedlings deep into the pots, up to the first set of leaves, so we tried to get as close to that as we could given the depth of the pots. The book says that this will encourage the plant to form more roots and be stronger, to prevent the dreaded transplant stress once they move outside next month.

We also have our expanded grow light setup in place, and it’s now blindingly bright in the seedling room – but it will be worth it if this prevents plants on the far sides of the table from stretching too much to the light. I’ve read that lack of light is a main cause of seedlings becoming too leggy before transplant, so I’m hoping that this will keep the little guys happy.

Lastly, stay tuned for chicken updates! I believe that the girls are arriving at Paris Farmers Union today, and are going home with Taperman either tonight or tomorrow. I’ll have my first visit with them this weekend. Lots of chick pics to follow!

The thinning of the seedlings

Zinnia on April 28

It was a big night in farm land - tonight, I decided that it was time to thin the seedlings. After a little bit of research, I decided on the snipping approach (as opposed to pulling), so that I wouldn't inadvertantly kill the remaining seedlings. I tried to make the decisions pretty carefully - keepers were straight seedlings, growing somewhere near the middle of their cell, with sturdy looking stems. Mike helped with some of the tough calls, and now we're down to one plant per cell. Except for the peppers - I'm going to give them a few extra days so that I can better see which seedlings are going to look the hardiest.

(Top picture - tomatoes post-thinning. I think the bottom shot is pretty self-explanatory)

It's really easy to tell the different seedlings apart now that their true leaves are coming in - with the tomatoes and marigolds especially it's obvious what they're going to grow up to become.

Marigold on April 28

This weekend will be a big farming weekend - we have plans to meet with our neighbor/garden guru to talk garden plans and raised beds, and (fingers crossed), we might be able to have the area where the garden will go rototilled. Also, another neighbor is coming over to help us pull out some nasty wild rose bushes and stumps, which Mike is very excited for as it will entail the use of an excavator, and potentially a tractor.

New leaves, and fruit trees

The seedlings are all doing really well this week. The flowers and tomatoes are almost all starting to get their first full set of true leaves, but I think I'll be able to hold off on moving them into larger pots until Sunday. I was a bit haphazard in my tomato seed distribution, so before I transplant, I'll have to thin out the seedlings in quite a few of the cells.

Peppers on April 27

Because the vegetable garden and chickens didn't feel like quite enough, last weekend we acquired several fruit trees. Last summer we planted two apple trees (well, my parents' neighbor planted them, and we hovered), and since we've gone nearly a year without killing them, we felt it was time to expand. Mike did nearly take one out last weekend while felling a neighboring pine tree, but luckily our little apple tree only lost a branch.

Skillins was having a 20% off sale on trees, so last weekend we loaded up on 2 peach trees, 2 pears, and 2 sweet cherry trees. The sales woman assured us that they'll all grow and produce fruit in Maine, although she did say "they can take a little work." I suspect that for the peaches especially that might be an understatement, but the idea of having a mini fruit orchard was too appealing. Next weekend we'll pick up the trees after we go to a vegetable gardening class, so this weekend's outdoor project will be putting them all in. Optimistically, we're trying to think of all the digging as an excellent cross-training opportunity.

Zinnia, April 27