May. 29, 2009
Here's How Our Garden Grows
Posted in Gardening
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The garden is coming along. Now is the part of gardening I don't really like- weeding. We have been weeding and mulching the last few weeks. Mark is trying to mulch everything really well this year to cut down on the weeding. Since we don't use weed killers this can be a big job! We used old hay mostly for the mulch. We found out the hard way not to put hay around the melons, squash and cucumbers because those plants like a drier hotter growing climate. Also, the hay acts as a habitat for the cucumber beetle which spreads powdery mildew on the cantaloupe. We are using landscape fabric around these.
We had to replant cantaloupe,cucumbers, and watermelons and some of the corn.
We staked the tomatoes and beans. We have tried different ways to stake the beans and tomatoes. This is the way we like best. It is easy to pick the beans with this set up.
 Here are the beans starting to climb up their stakes  Here are the tomatoes. Some have little green tomatoes. We pinched the blooms off the strawberries. These are the peppers The corn looks kind of scrawny. Mark replanted some of it. |
Apr. 30, 2009
We Did It
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Well we got most of the garden planted!! Here is what we got in:
-6 rows (approximately 65 ft long) of Blue Lake Pole Beans. These are actually planted in beds of 3 rows each.
-6 rows ( approximately 50 ft long) of Incredible Corn
-40 pepper plants ( combination of Big Bertha and California Wonder)
-cantaloupe ( Ambrosia, Athena, and Hales Best)
- Dark Green Zucchini
-Jarrahdale Pumpkin
-New England Pie Pumpkin
-Crimson Sweet Watermelon
- Yellow and Crookneck Squash
-Winter Density Romaine Lettuce
-Sweet Slice Hybrid Cucumber
Planting notes:
We have planted Blue Lake Bush Beans and Roma Beans in the past but we don't like picking them. Of course, Mark doesn't like staking the pole beans... but he doesn't want his labor crew to mutiny, so he plants the pole beans for us. Last year Earliqueen Cantaloupe did very well for us but we couldn't get seeds for those this year. Hales Best Cantaloupte is an open pollinated seed which we would rather plant ( so we can save seeds ) but they had a lot of mildew problems. We love the Jarrahdale Pumpkins they cook up thick and aren't watery. Mark just wanted to try the New England Pie Pumpkin this year. We have tried Kandy Korn in the past but it was too sweet for us. We put up a 6 foot fence around the garden to keep the deer out.
In a few weeks we will plant several rows of Silver Queen Corn and Georgia Jets Sweet Potatoes. Now we get to fight weeds until the harverst. |
Apr. 25, 2009
Gardening again
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Planting season has gotten underway big time. We recently planted close to 200 Guardian strawberry plants. I will give you Mark's step by step instructions on those. We also planted several rows of white potatoes. Now Mark is tilling to plant the rest of the garden. He hopes to get some of the tomatoes in today then plant the rest of the warm weather things Monday night and Tuesday when he is off. Potatoes: The Kennebec potatoes we planted in hills. I know some people don't spend too long planting their potatoes but Mark wants things done right ( read "his way"~ smile) After tilling, he digs a trench with a hoe pulling the dirt to one side. Then he ( or his slave labor) sprinkles a bone meal/blood meal fertilizer in the trench. Next the potatoes are placed in the holes about a foot a part. Last the dirt is hilled back up over the potato trench. The rows are about 3 ft apart. When the potatoes start to come up, more dirt will be hilled up around them. Now for the strawberries: Mark tills the area. Bone meal/blood meal fertilizer is sprinkled in before the last run of the tiller. After tilling, we dig a small hole with our hands. In the middle of the holes we make a little mound of dirt.  We carefully put the strawberry plant on top of the mound and spread out the roots, making sure the plant will be buried up about halfway on the stiff part where the "crown" is. The plants are about a foot apart with rows 3 ft apart.  To cut down on weeding-since our slave labor crew is getting smaller every year-we put down landscaping fabric around the plants.  Hay mulch will be also put on top of this. It is good to do a thorough job on this since the plants will be in the ground several years and keeping weeds out is important. Around the outside of the strawberries we put down black plastic then put our fence up. We use the landscaping fabric close to the plants because it will allow water through, unlike the black plastic. And the tomatoes: We planted Early Girl, Celebrity, Better Boy, Amish Paste, Brandywine , and Mortgage Lifters. The Celebrities have consistently done well for us and are good for our planting zone. They seem to be pretty disease resistant. Mark is equally meticulous about planting the tomatoes. First he tills, then we make holes with a hoe about 1 foot apart.  In the hole we put old, dry chicken manure.  We sprinkle a little dirt over the chicken manure and place the plant in the hole. Next we liberally water the plant and put more dirt around the plant up to the first big leaves.  Mark likes to cover about half the plant even if the first leaves are covered with dirt. The tomato rows are around 4 feet apart.  All this will be mulched heavily with hay. The less weeding we have to do the better. Since we are doing things organically we won't be spraying any weed killer on our garden. Mark doesn't really stake the tomatoes. Along each side of the row of tomatoes at about 10 ft intervals he puts T-posts. Then , as the tomatoes grow, he tightly stretches 3 levels of nylon twine down each row of T-post . This works well for large quantities of tomatoes. We planted about 120 plants. (In Georgia one time we planted around 700 tomato plants ! Glad we didn't have to do that tonight.)I hope this isn't all too detailed. I just figure if you haven't done this before it might help. |
Apr. 3, 2009
Grow Light Set Up
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This is turning into just a gardening blog. I will have to get on this week and write about something else too. Here is what is happening in our garden this week and Mark's grow light set up. We're still having rain and the broccoli is growing.  The pepper and tomato seedlings are looking good. The lettuce seedlings are small but coming along. This is Mark's grow light set up for seedlings.
 After the seeds germinate he puts them here. He keeps the lights as close to the plants as possible. He has a chain with an "S" hook so he can adjust the height of the lights. You can probably see he used PVC to build this. He uses regular florescent bulbs .He keeps the lights on 12-14 hours a day. You can use more expensive grow lights and not have to put them as close to the plants or keep them on as long. This set up has worked for us. Mark usually chooses cheaper over more convenient. :) Mark waters the plants as needed and feeds them. He uses natural liquid fertilizer from Peaceful Valley called Omega 6-6-6. It contains equal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. He feeds them about every week and a half after they get their secondary leaves.
 I thought you might like to see part of how we fertilize in our garden. This is Mark's portable chicken coop. We move it around in our garden area and the chickens fertilize for us. Mark just built a second one for us. The back open part is where the chickens nest and the eggs are easy to get out.
 We got our strawberry plants in but it will be hard to find a dry time this week to plant them. We will have to coordinate planting them with Mark's work . Also, this week we are watching Mark's dad while his mom is out of town. We won't get much done in the garden this week! |
Mar. 27, 2009
More Gardening News
Posted in Gardening
 I know some gardeners have been frustrated by the rain we are having this week because they want to plant. Mark watches the weather closely even in the winter but in the spring and summer he really watches it. If he sees a dry time we plant, or he plants, even if it is inconvenient. Since he works a full time job, we have to plant when he is off to supervise. The garden is his baby and we don't want to mess it up.  Mark planted around 30 Premium King Broccoli plants last weekend and Walla Walla Onions. Our spring broccoli never does as well as our fall crop and this year is no exception. Mark thinks the Premium King variety is more susceptible to the cold. One day when he was hardening them off ,he put the plants out early before he went to work. The plants looked kind of wilted when he came home.( Packman Broccoli is usually what Mark orders but he wasn't able to get those for spring planting.)So our broccoli is off to a slow start but hopefully we will get a good crop. I was very happy this week when Miriam noticed we had several bags of frozen broccoli still in the freezer at my mother in law's house. ( She lets us use part of her freezer and we give her fresh produce all summer ) Now on this rainy afternoon Miriam decided to make broccoli soup -Yum! Over the next couple of weeks we hope to plant some Kennebec Potatoes. We usually get those locally at Potters where Mark works. Mark says there is a potato shortage this year, according to their suppliers at Potters, so better get your potatoes soon! I don't know if it will affect the price of potatoes later this year or not. If our Guardian Strawberries that we ordered from Simmons get here, we will plant those this week-200 of them! This is a good resistant variety for this planting zone and they have a good taste. Some of you may want to know that Mark orders our seeds mostly from Fedco and Shumway. Fedco has good seeds and cheap prices. They are more organically oriented. We got our onion plants from Steele plants in TN. I know Mark should just write these gardening blogs but he doesn't have time. I can get him to dictate them to me so I can post them on here. Guess that will have to do. I love eating the produce but I don't love the gardening part. Too bad you can't eat flowers . I like flower gardening! Sorry there are no pictures again. Maybe next week... |
Mar. 20, 2009
Planting Broccoli and Hardening Off Explanation
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This week we will be planting broccoli plants- 50 of them. I can taste it now... Here is step by step what we do: 1- Mark tills the plot. We plant the broccoli seedlings about 12-15 inches apart in rows. The rows are about 2feet apart. 2-Dig the hole with a hoe 3-Use a spading fork and loosen the soil 4-Toss in a handful of chicken manure ( We let Mark do this part and yes he uses his bare hand-yuk) 5-Toss a little dirt over the manure ( so the manure doesn't burn the plant) 6- Plant the seedling 7-Water the seedling and press the dirt around it. 8- Pray it grows and produces We are also planting around 150 onion sets. Mark isn't as picky about planting the onions so I won't explain that. Misti asked about hardening-off- Hardening -off is the way to acclimate seedlings to outdoor conditions. A few days before transplanting into the garden we leave them outside in the yard to get toughened up. The seedlings are still in their trays to they can be brought in at night and if the weather gets bad.The seedlings have been in a controlled environment and need to gradually get used to being outside. I will try to get pictures when we plant. |
Mar. 10, 2009
Gardening in KY
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Some people have asked me about our garden. I am just the slave labor when it comes to gardening. Mark is the brains behind all our gardening endeavors. I questioned him to make sure I got this right. We have been planting a garden for about 20 years- that sounds like a long time! Some years were more successful than others. Weather, of course, is a big factor in each year’s harvest. Oh, I should mention that we do things organically- read that “the hard way”. Generally this is what we do this time of year. I will try to keep you up on what we’re doing. Mark usually plows our garden spot in early March. (He says it is better to do it in the fall but he usually doesn’t get it done then) He starts our spring crop of broccoli by planting seeds inside around February 1st. He uses seed starter potting soil from Bonnie Plants. He plants them in Styrofoam seedling transplant trays from Mark also started cool weather lettuce(Romaine) around March 1 to be transplanted toward the end of March. Onion sets could also be put out the last half of March. Potatoes can be planted anytime from now to mid-April. Mark started tomatoes and pepper seeds inside the 1st week of March. These warm weather crops will be transplanted around the 1st of May. The average last frost here in southern KY is around April 15th. There have been some years when we have had to cover all our plants because of a frost warning so don't plant too early. I guess you are wondering when the slave labor comes in since Mark has done all of the seedling planting. Well, we get to help when we put them in the garden. |