Garden Update April 2023

 It's that time again. Everything is waking up. I see the wild currant bushes are blooming. My rhubarb is waking up.

Back behind the potato bed, I plan on getting a few stakes and some netting and fencing off a little area for radishes and lettuce. I'm hoping it will be enough to keep the rabbits and deer out.

Speaking of which, we've gotten a lot of rain lately and the big puddle down in the rock pit has finally filled up with water. It's deep enough for the deer to swim in. I saw them do that yesterday. You can see the pink blooms of the wild currant bush.

Here you can see one of the does swimming. It was pretty cool to watch.

We planted out potatoes a few weeks ago. It's about time to get these covered with straw.

These violas wintered over just fine. I'm glad they did. These are my favorite ones so far.

I bought some onion sets and planted this pot out with them. These are my spring onions. I don't let them get huge. I use as scallions.

I had planted this raised bed out with Walla Walla sweet onions and the bottom fell out of it. They were made from untreated lumber and will only last just so long and, well, its time had come. Bob cut the legs off and lowered it down so that I can get one last season from it. I'll get some onions from it, but I was pretty bummed about it giving up the ghost.

Another bed of Walla Walla sweet onions.

This is a Castelfranco raddichio. It's sharing this bed with banana shallots.

I planted out 2 beds with German Red Musik hard-neck garlic. It's coming along quite nicely.

We have the cover on one of the greenhouses. These only have 1 door on them, so we are going to make it to where they both open in the middle.

It's so much bigger than the one I had last year. I'll really be able to grow some super tender crops inside of there with no crowding problems at all. I think I'll put 3 rows of big pots.

We are tossing around the idea of doing a raised bed on the ground. We haven't quite decided on that yet.

 
I have so many beds of frigging onions! I went WAY overboard.

We let this get away from us completely. This is where the raspberry bushes are. Bob's got his work cut out for him, for sure.

In this bed, I have broccoli, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts and red onions. Yes, even more onions! I also have viola.

I'll be up-potting nightshades this coming week and they will go into the greenhouse.

We're opting to grow our peas at the end of our deck this year. The second greenhouse took up a lot of room, so we figured this would be a good spot to put them. I have 10 different varieties.

I have a few lettuce plants going. I'll have even more to plant out next week. I started 50 different types of lettuce and greens.

And, lastly, our chicken pen. We bought an old 10x53-foot used industrial tarp to put over the top as a roof. It's in the back of my truck. I haven't gotten pullets yet, but we're planning on that in the next week or so. We'll brood them in the coop. It's plenty big enough and we have a heat lamp and a brooder heater in there for them. I cannot brood them inside. The cats would be after them and, with the dust that they would create, it wouldn't be good for my breathing problems.

Thanks for taking the garden tour. I hope to post another one in a few weeks.

Planting Potatoes-I Chit You Not

 Last year, I had pretty good success with my straw method of growing potatoes. I'll be using that method again this year. I'm doing a few things differently, however. I'm actually chitting out my potatoes this year. I usually don't do this, but I have a reason. I'm cutting the larger potatoes that I chit out so that I have more to plant. I want to see if I can duplicate last year's harvest using few seed potatoes. I am trying to figure out the most frugal way to get the most potatoes in my harvest.

Just for a reminder, here was my potato bed last year and some photos of what we harvested.

I planted a mix of Red Norlands, Mountain Rose, Kennebec and Yukon Gold.
This year, I'm going with Red Norland and Yukon Gold.

Some of these chitted out nicely. I cut the larger ones in half. For me to cut them in half, they have to have eyes all around them.

The 6 on this tray, I just bought. I'm leaving them out in the light. That will cause them to start to chit out.

This is a nicely chitted potato.

I didn't cut it because it only chit on one end.

By this weekend, if the weather holds, and we manage to get over to the feed store for a bale of straw, I'll get these all planted out. I'm going to get a scale before harvesting so that I can get an accurate weight on how many I've grown. I know that I have 8 pounds of seed potatoes going in.

This will be a new adventure, for sure.

End Of January Garden Happenings At Kelpie Kapers Farm

 I think a good start to 2023 would be to show you all what's going on around Kelpie Kapers Farm. First, I'll attempt to walk you all through what I plan on doing as far as getting a flock of laying chickens going here.

Bob put up the fence so that the cats could go outside last summer. They didn't really use that pen all that much, to be honest. They like to go out into the yard with the dogs and they seem to mind pretty well doing that, so that's what we've been doing these past several months. We are going to expand that pen. I'm going use 3 more of those fence panels to trellis tomatoes and other things on. I had planned on planting out 100 indeterminate tomato varieties, but I think that 80 should suffice and I can use the other panel for cucumbers and winter squash. Anyhow, that will leave 6 panels to build a chicken yard. The yard will be 20-foot long x 10-foot wide. We plan on putting the coop inside of it and we also plan on putting a bird netting or a tarp over the top to keep flying predators out. We just need to figure out a solution to keep them from going through the gap at the gate. We also need to figure exactly where we want to put this. I think having it partway under those fir trees will be a great thing for helping to shade it during the heat of summer, but I also have to think about the fact that raccoons do climb trees, so there's that to factor in, as well.

The rhubarb is doing quite well. I believe that I'll have a bumper crop of it this coming year. I have 2 plants. I'd love to add about 3 more, but I'll have to see if I can get these seeds to grow or not. I'm not going to buy anymore crowns. Bob covered it with a bit of soil.

See? It's healthy and thriving in it's blanket of straw.

There's the 2 rhubarb crowns enjoying their place. Now, I just need to figure out how to keep Rose from walking over them.

Here is one of the two beds that I planted out with garlic at the end of October. I plan on harvesting it sometime in later July or early August.

Here is the second bed of garlic. They are growing right along just fine. They even went through our 3 day deep freeze.

I poured a small amount of milk over the end of this log last spring. I knew what would happen and just look! So cool! I love having fungi grow!

Bob started doing some cleaning down on the terraced garden. On the next day that it's not raining, you all know where I'll be.

We have to add some serious amendments to these raised beds. That soil that we bought in bulk flat out sucked.

Here is the start of the first 20-foot long greenhouse. I'll be able to grow some serious crops in there!

We're not putting the cover on until winter's over, though. We don't want to lose this. We just need to figure out where to put the second one.

I plan on putting okra, melons, winged beans, cucamelons, butterfly peas and all my peppers into the pair of these greenhouses.

One frame up and one to go...as soon as we figure out where to put it. Bob is even contemplating parking his car over on the back side of the trailer and putting that other one alongside of that one. I suggested putting it out front. I'll let you all know where we decide.

Mid-September Garden Harvest

 It's that time again. It's been a minute since I posted a garden update. We are actively harvesting now. I've put up several jars of pickled items. I've made a lot of stuff with blackberries. We're picking our tomatoes when they've reached a blush stage. Ideally, I'd leave them on the vine to fully ripen, but we are running a month behind this year, so when they blush, they get pulled unless there is higher temperatures in the forecast and no chance of sprinkles.

The above photo is one of my Reisetomate tomatoes. They are an oddity, for sure. From what I've read, they aren't the greatest tasting things, but they are sure a conversation piece.

Don't mind my volunteer tomato. We still don't know how that happened, but we're going to roll with it and see what it does.

We got a small rain prediction for today, so we thought it best to pull all the tomatoes that were beginning to blush. I'll ripen them up inside instead.

We just need a few more weeks of warm weather and I'll get a harvest. It won't be enough to sustain us through the winter, but, at least, have an idea of how many I'll need for next year.

Growing my own, from seed, was easier than I thought it would be and it's opened a huge door as to the varieties that I can grow. I'm approaching the 200 varieties mark in my personal seed stash for next year.

The Sart Roloise tomatoes are stunning. Absolutely stunning.

This volunteer ....er tomato just cracks me up. It's starting to flower.

Bob's getting some weeds cleaned out by one of our strawberry patches.

We decided to see if we could find any potatoes. We didn't. We'll have to wait for a bit and dig down into the soil at the bottom and see if my method worked or not.

We only tried in one corner, to be honest. Who knows about the rest of this contraption.

These are cannellini beans that I'm growing out for someone else. How it works is that they send me a small number of seeds. I grow them out. I send them back between 60-100 seeds and the rest are mine to grow out from then on. I like doing that.

More cannellini beans. These are one of my favorites. I always have a can in my pantry and after next year, I'll be able to have a supply of them dried.

Here is the Sart Roloise I picked today. This is just a stunning looking tomato.

Tomatillos, tomatoes, and some Dragon Tongue beans so far.

I was able to find some cannellini beans that were dried out. Bob harvested some rhubarb and I picked the okra, cucamelons and the Tanya's Pink Pod beans.

That Jing Orange okra is pretty to look at. It tastes really good, too. I haven't cooked it. I just eat it raw.

A view of today's harvest.

More of the harvest.

Bob went down to the bean bed and harvested any that were dried. This is my collection so far. These are for our own personal use. I grew some stunning looking varieties this year, for sure!

My Black Beauty zucchini plant is starting to really produce. I'm going to be turning zucchini into crushed pineapple in a later blog post.

These are my Jealous Neighbor F1 cucumbers. You can see that we overlooked one and it got a bit big. These are a hybrid variety that I ordered from a company in Ukraine, so I won't be able to save seeds from them unfortunately.

Rose says THANK YOU for reading!