Our 2012 Garden Thread | Food Production and Preservation

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Our 2012 Garden Thread

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13 Mar ’12 - 10:04 am

So yesterday I ran down to johnnies to pick up a few things, the place is fricking huge

on the way back home I heard the weather report of a chance of snow this weekend, so I decided to hold off on planting. I was surprised to see the strawberries blossoming all ready when I got home.

I also found a new toy in the garden, I think my father felt bad for me bending over to weed so he picked me up a garden weasel!

I figured I would give it a shot on one of my beds

I removed the string from my boxes and started working the soil, it did a ok job of breaking up the top soil but didn't get real deep attacking the roots, I'll keep a eye on this over the next couple weeks and see what happens with this bed.

I was shocked by how much the asparagus had sprouted over the last 3 days

since I decided to hold off on planting the two beds I had already prepared, I decided to get the other beds ready and set up my hoops

with the higher raised beds I just shove the pvc tubing into the box

and shove them in the other side, only issue with trying to do the hugulkultur with the beds is sometimes you can hit a chunk of wood which creates a pain

I hooped the other beds that I had planted the peas in and the asparagus, my compost pallets and burn pit are getting overloaded

I finished the last two before it got dark and raked up all the foliage I had pulled out of the beds, I need to weed the mulch pathways and order some mulch next week to deepen the pathways

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19 Apr ’12 - 10:53 am

So yesterday I ran down to johnnies to pick up a few things, the place is fricking huge

on the way back home I heard the weather report of a chance of snow this weekend, so I decided to hold off on planting. I was surprised to see the strawberries blossoming all ready when I got home.

I also found a new toy in the garden, I think my father felt bad for me bending over to weed so he picked me up a garden weasel!

I figured I would give it a shot on one of my beds

I was shocked by how much the asparagus had sprouted over the last 3 days

since I decided to hold off on planting the two beds I had already prepared, I decided to get the other beds ready and set up my hoops

with the higher raised beds I just shove the pvc tubing into the box

and shove them in the other side, only issue with trying to do the hugulkultur with the beds is sometimes you can hit a chunk of wood which creates a pain

I hooped the other beds that I had planted the peas in and the asparagus, my compost pallets and burn pit are getting overloaded

I finished the last two before it got dark and raked up all the foliage I had pulled out of the beds, I need to weed the mulch pathways and order some mulch next week to deepen the pathways

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13 Mar ’12 - 11:50 am

So I pulled the lid off yesterday and I was at 100 degrees, I figured it was time to test it out.

Since this is a test, I went and grabbed some cheap seeds from wal-mart

I'm always amazed by the size of seeds, I don't know why

So I pulled the lid off, and grabbed the discs that had expanded and were ready to plant

I am going to do succession planting over the next several weeks, so for now I started 16 broccoli, 16 cabbage and 8 spinach

I put half of each in the cold frame

and half in our greenhouse/smokehouse. There was some discussion last year how well it would work without angled glass so I decided to try it

with such high temps in the day and nighttime temps still in the 30's, I added a pan of water to help stabilize the interior temps

and set the thermometer on the pan and locked the tote lid back on

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13 Mar ’12 - 12:07 pm

So I went and checked the tire greenhouses next to see if I could get my potatoes in the ground.

I had 4 or 5 inches of warm soil

but it was frozen solid below that, so I will give this another couple days

I walked down to check the pig area, looks like it's going to need some work before we get the new ones

I miss those little buggers

http://www.youtube.c.....fHxWiN54dw

with everything that happened last year, I didn't get a chance to properly clear out the beds and prepare them for winter and it shows

so I decided to get them prepped for planting next month. I went and grabbed a roll of black poly and my razor blade

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13 Mar ’12 - 12:23 pm

I started on my sunflower and rhubarb bed

I removed the hoops and pulled or broke off the leftover stalks

I rolled out the black plastic to get my length but kept it short because the last 4 feet in the bed is my rhubarb plants and I do not want to bake them off

the roll of plastic was 12x100 feet so I could cut it in half and use one piece on two beds. So I went around and stapled the plastic onto the boards

and trimmed off the excess

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13 Mar ’12 - 12:41 pm

the short piece worked perfect on the next bed because I have rhubarb sets in that one as well. So I stapled that one down and starting clearing out the next 3 beds

and covered them up

before

after

A friend had mailed me some ground cherry seeds last year to try since I had never planted them before. Not knowing what to expect I planted 6 plants. Yeah I would do one if I plant them again. They totally took over half the bed

You can see here how many ground cherries we missed last year. You can't eat ground cherries when they are green on the plant because they contain solanine, the same substance that makes green potatoes toxic. So you have to wait till they are on the ground, hence the name. If I planted them again I probably wouldn't even plant them with the square foot method, but just their own spot in the garden because of how much space they take.

all done, we left the bed in the front uncovered because that is our garlic and onion bed, so I just need to weed it well

so now I will let the beds bake over the next 4 weeks to kill any weed seeds and break down any organic material down back into the soil.

Here is a good site with more ideas to bake off your beds

http://gardenbedsnj......-beds.html

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12 Apr ’12 - 5:58 pm

So yesterday afternoon I decided to get going on the garden. We have had a couple weeks of decent weather and my 2 weeks of driving all over the northeast is finished so I figured it was time. Besides my potatoes were ready to get in the ground.

I pulled the glass of the tires and raked out the soil to loosen it

I'm surprised how much our seed potatoes had sprouted and started rooting

I used the seedlings that had the least amount of shoots and trimmed off any over 1 inch and cut them half and set 6

I had added a couple of extra tires to increase production this year, plus I wanted to do atest

I covered the seeds with soil

I set the panels back on the tires and left 2 of them uncovered, I want to see how well they do versus the ones with the panels on

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12 Apr ’12 - 8:44 pm

the strawberry plants are starting to come in good, I think we will have another great harvest this year, I think I am going to dehydrate a large portion of them this year

I hooked up our rain water catchment system, I need to build a enclosure for it to protect the tanks from uv rays

with everything going on I haven't been focusing on the cold frames, I really hadn't touched them for about a week, things are still sprouting though

the rhubarb is starting to come in

I need to clean up the asparagus bed tomorrow

the blueberries and fruit trees are starting to bud, I'm concerned for the fruit trees, we ran into a similar situation last year where we had a early spring but then a late frost wiped out a large portion of blossoms