Monster Carrot

Ok... Let's confess right now that one of the fun things about growing your own vegetables... is mutants. Check OUT this carrot! It required creative cutting & cleaning, but it cooked up wonderfully. What a masterpiece!

Monster Carrot

The favorite meal of this summer is root crop pockets. Dan introduced me to this wonderfully easy way of cooking - oil or butter, seasonings, & veggies in a tinfoil pocket in the oven while we put the baby down & do chores. Viola - ready when we are and carmelized to melt in your mouth. Since we are also harvesting garlic, that makes these particularly scrumptious!

Root Crop Pockets

Preserving the Harvest

Two new experiments this year: dill beans and smoked peppers. The gods of green beans have been flexing their muscles & recruiting worshippers with an impressive harvest this year. The freezer is full and more just keep coming. Peppers are more challenging for us. We have tried drying and freezing, but with mixed results. Jalapenos don't lend themselves to either, so Dan wanted to try smoking for our very own chipotle. On a hunch, I contacted an expert gardener, homesteader, jack-of-all-trades friend and asked if he happened to have a smoker. He did - of course - from his days of smoking salmon in Alaska. Score! So, for several days, the house & Dan reeked of smoke while he smoked his first serranos! The photo below includes the serranos (pre-smoking) chilis, cayenne, & a paprika (or a mutant bell?) on the screen where I'm drying sage.

Dilly Beans

Peppers

When deer attack

We, for the first time ever, are having a problem with deer in the gardens. It looks like we have a doe and baby prowling our gardens each night. We're doing our best to deter them, but they seem to have developed a taste for our beans and beets.

Low ribbon around the raised beds to discourage deer

Strawberry damage

Beet damage

Ribbon fence around the garden

Adding shiny things to the ribbon fence

More photos...

More photos from around the farm.

Raised beds

View of the dock

View of the river bank

Strange nest - maybe a squirrel nest?

False solomon seal

A lone orange hawkweed

Viceroy butterfly - Monarch mimic

Building a cold frame

Laurie came up with the excellent idea of building a cold frame out of rigid insulation to serve as a place to harden off our seedlings.

Max and Dan admiring the new cold frame.. from inside it

Loading it up

Loading it up... more!

All closed up

Farm life...

Another photo dump. :)

View of the big garden

Another view of the big garden

Allium

Astrantia

High-bush cranberry

Light yellow iris

Maroon iris

Locust bloom

Little pears

Light pink peony

Pink peony

Poppy

Strawberries

Black beans and sweet potatoes

Laurie planted 5 rows of black beans and a row of sweet potatoes in the garden today.

Weeding...

I spent some time in the garden tonight weeding, soooo relaxing.

Green stuff on the farm

Some more pictures of life on the farm. We learned today that it takes a lot of seed to cover our garden in green manure and we don't have nearly enough, that may be the end of that plan for this year.

Headed out to spread the seed with our new "mother's day" spreader

Spreader in action

Pak Choi still growing

Old clump of strawberries are looking good

Mulched row in the garden

New growth on one of our balsams

New basswood looking good

Beeches are holding on, but not thriving - lost one this winter

High-bush cranberry getting ready to bloom

Lovely locust

New willow and Roxie

Guarding the robin family

Herb garden

Laurie's been busy planting new purchases in the herb garden.

Gardens, flowers, seedlings, EVERYTHING.

Massive picture dump to update what we're up to.

Seedlings going strong - Kale is crazy leggy

Tomato seedlings - looking good

Pepper seedlings - small, but not bad

Flower seedlings for our wedding

Mulched berry patch

Mulched strawberry patch

New low-bush and mid-bush blueberries

Mulched raspberry patch

The big vegetable garden

Laurie's Scotch Elm

Pear tree in bloom

New basswood budding out

Pretty bluets

Lupine

Honeybee working dandelion

New blueberries, a pair of robins, and some seedlings

Our blueberry order from Miller Nurseries arrived and our new plants are planted in the raised bed! Four each of Northcountry, Northblue, and Northsky low-bush blueberry plants plus one each of Polaris and Chippewa mid-bush blueberry plants.

Plus in other news, it looks like we have a pair of robins nesting over our front door. Now I might expect that from a phoebe, but not a robin! Pretty cool! Hopefully they are as successful as the pair of killdeer that nested in our driveway last year!

New blueberry bed

Nest building robin

Beet seedlings

Pak choi seedlings

Strawberries - we're so pleased with how they're doing!

Gooseberry in bloom

Bleeding heart in bloom

Green manure, Kale, and Blueberries

We're planning on seeding most of the expanded garden with cover crops/green manure this year to help prepare it for our rotation plans. To that end we bought alfalfa, red clover, and dutch white clover seeds. Very exciting, well, to us it is. :)

I also took a few minutes to get some Redbor and Winterbor Kale started.

Green manure seeds waiting to be planted

Newly started kale

Blueberries waiting to be mulched

Weeding and mulching...

Laurie weeded and planted the herb garden today after work and we mulched the raspberries with sawdust (something new we're trying this year).

Newly mulched raspberries

Wild ginger in bloom

Solomon's seal

Pak choi seedlings

Garlic

First planting in the big garden...

We planted four rows of potatoes (Kennebec and Norland), one and a half rows of snap peas, one and a half rows of shelling peas, two varieties of carrots (Nelson and Danvers - one row each), and one row of beets in the big garden. We left two rows for beans to be planted later -- we're trying companion planting of the beans and potatoes to try to keep down Colorado potato beetles and Mexican bean weevil.

We're feeling so on top of things this year! Of course, that mostly has to do with the weird spring we're having so far. We feel so fancy this year, our row markers are made of cherry thanks to some scraps from Max. :)

Garden planting is started.. see the tiny little markers. :)

Potato marker

Snap pea marker

Watering the garden

Ouch, frost.

We got hit with a decent frost overnight, not something we normally have to deal with in the spring since we tend to be late getting stuff out. Let's hope everything fairs OK.

Update: seems everything is going to be OK, everything has thawed and nothing looks wilty.. yay!

Frosted strawberry

Frosted strawberries

Another frosted strawberry

Frosted cranberry

Frosted pak choi

Big garden is tilled!

We'll it's done. We did it. We expanded the big garden. *grin* It's about four times bigger than last year, though the plan is to only use the part we've been using and green manure/cover crop the rest to prepare for a multi-year rotation. Last year's plot is really looking nice, the soil is loosening up nicely and not as chunky as it was last year.

The biiiig garden

Asparagus and rhubarb

We were starting to worry that the helianthus had out-competed the asparagus in our back flower garden, but it's starting to shoot up! We've been planning to move these plants to the new asparagus raised bed, but weren't exactly sure where they were. Now we'll mark them and move them in either the fall or early next spring.

Asparagus shooting up!

Rhubarb is looking good again this year!

Spring spring spring!

Not much to say, so a bunch of pictures instead!

Expanded high-bush blueberry bed

Herb garden

Strawberry plants - looking good!

Pak Choi seedlings

Daffodils

And more daffodils

Wild ginger in bloom

Pretty bluets

Marsh marigold

More blueberry bushes and signs of spring!

We poached (OK, we were allowed to poach) three mature high-bush blueberry bushes from Laurie's parents. They are awesome, huge, wonderful things! We spent this evening enlarging our berry patch and moving the high-bush cranberry to another location to accommodate them. Looks like the gooseberries will be moving at some point in the future as well since they are showing somewhat invasive tendencies.

In the process of enlarging the berry patch

Daffodils in bloom, must be spring!

Catspaw - even the wildflowers are starting to come on!

Another seedling update...

Just another seedling update. :)

Tomato seedlings

Pepper seedlings

More weekend work

We Typar'd and tar-papered the coop today. We planted our new basswood tree down by the river, 3 new sugar maples on our property line, and a weeping willow on the other corner of our property. Our whole Fedco Trees order is now in the ground, yay! I managed to get some of the old tomatoes raked out of the big garden and got the rest of strawberries planted in the end of the cranberry bed. We're talking about expanding the big garden this year to allow for a multiple year rotation with cover crops to enrich the soil in the off years. If you're going to dream, dream big.

Tar-papering the coop - leftover tar-paper from the roof
and some Typar that Max had in his barn, thanks Max!

Can't you just see this full of low-bush blueberries???

Pussy willow bloom

New American Basswood - we can't wait for this to grow up,
their blooms smell heavenly and bees just love them

Weekend work

I finished up preparing all the raised beds, turning them and adding composted manure to each remaining bed as well as adding peat moss to the new blueberry bed. Laurie finished shingling the coop, planted the cranberries, prepared a bed and planted some flower seeds down by the river (where we're going to be married) and planted pak choi, swiss chard, cilantro, and beets in the first raised bed.

Work in the raised beds

Laurie finishing up the shingling

Daffodils in bloom

Hyacinth in bloom

Peonies coming up

Gardening!

Laurie got the rest of the raspberries planted today and I did some work in the raised beds getting them ready for the cranberries and the rest of the strawberries.

The well-documented seedlings

New high-bush blueberries

New strawberry plant

New raspberries

View of the coop from the compost pile

New berries planted!

Amy was so sweet and came over to babysit for us for a bit while we ran out to do some gardening tonight. I planted 50 Sparkle strawberry plants and 25 of the 50 Earliglow strawberry plants in the end raised bed. Laurie planted our four new high-bush blueberries (Bluecrop, Blueray, Northland, and Patriot) and the 10 Pathfinder raspberry canes. We still have 10 August Red raspberry canes to plant, as well as the remaining 25 Earliglow strawberry plants (which means turning the end of the cranberry bed into a second strawberry bed), and 20 American cranberry plants. Then there are always the new trees that need planting!

Strawberry bed mid-planting

New high-bush blueberries

Cranberries waiting to be planted

Mmm... soil...

I've been working on getting the raised beds ready for their new tour of duty as fruit beds and we're both really excited about the idea. We have new strawberries and cranberries from Fedco Trees waiting to be planted as well as strawberries and cranberries in the herb garden waiting to be moved. We're still waiting on an order from Miller's with some low-bush and mid-bush blueberries for one of the beds.

Playing in the soil in the strawberry's raised bed - this soil is a mix of compost,
composted goat manure and soil from previous excavations.

Post-pruning look at the pear trees in the mini-orchard.

First true leaves on the tomatoes!

We noticed tonight that we had our first true leaves on the tomato seedlings! Yay!

Seedling and garden update

Just a quick update on the seedlings and to record some progress clearing out last years tomato plants from the vegetable garden.

Seedlings are growing well, the new setup seems to be working!

We pulled the old tomato plants out of the garden

Seedling update

This morning when Laurie turned on the lights, we lost another bulb (a total of three for the season). We decided to try florescents instead since the incandescents seem to be drying the soil out too quickly and are more expensive to run. I picked up some fixtures and aquarium/plant bulbs at Home Depot, rigged them up to the shelf, and lowered the shelf to get more light directly on the seedlings. Hope these last longer!

Third incandescent bulb to blow this season

Take that - these should last!

Tomato seedlings still looking good

First seedling thinning

Thinning out all the tomato seedlings that are way too close together...

Changes to the seed starting setup

When we were visiting with Laurie's dad yesterday she noticed a metal rack in front of his barn that she thought would radically improve our seed starting setup. It's an old metal seed rack from her dad's feed store and it really does work a lot better than our old beat up saw horse! Not to mention it gets the lights up off the soil a bit more, hopefully helping reduce our problem with the soil drying out so quickly.

Thanks to Max for the new rack!

New setup!

Update on the pepper seedlings

First pepper seedling!

First pepper up, a Jalapeno even!

Garden/yard work...

We did a bunch of work in the yard today. Laurie raked out most of the flower beds while I removed the soil from the "soon-to-be" strawberry bed in anticipation of moving in some fresh composted soil. After I finished with the raised bed, I collected up the raked debris from the gardens and made a new compost pile by layering the debris with the sod and soil we removed from underneath the chicken coop. Laurie also worked on pruning the pears in the orchard - quite a feat with Max in a backpack! I did battle with the monster rose in the maroon and white garden, pruning it back so we can move it out by the road where it hopefully won't be a problem that it is so amazingly aggressive.

I've been slowly picking at clearing all the garden debris from the "big veggie" garden in the field, I haven't made much progress, but it's something!

Front flower garden after raking

Container herb garden (hasn't been cleaned up yet)

Blue and yellow garden (hasn't been cleaned up yet)

Porch garden (left)

Porch garden (center)

Porch garden (right)

Maroon and white garden

Pruned rose in maroon and white garden

Back garden

Garlic bed in the back garden

Scotch Elm

Unweeded berry patch

Raspberry patch

Partially pruned pear tree

Strawberry bed (post excavation)

New compost piles (front pile is soil from the strawberry bed and back pile is a layered mix of debris from raking and the sod from the coop)

Veggie garden in the field

Seed starting update

This is what the seed starting setup looks like today, an old sawhorse and three reflector lights with full-spectrum incandescent bulbs. With the bulbs at this height the seedlings are getting plenty of heat and light, but the soil is drying out faster than is practical to deal with. We're having to mist the seedlings once or twice an hour to keep the surface soil from drying out. The tomatoes are loving the heat and we're hoping the peppers make an appearance soon!

The current seed starting setup

Tomato seedlings going strong!

Tomatoes popping up everywhere

The tomatoes are really starting to pop up, nothing from the peppers yet.

Tomato seedlings popping up everywhere!

First tomato seedling!

The first seedling of spring is always exciting!

First tomato seedling!

Black bean burritos

One of our experimental crops last year was black turtle beans. In a normal year we consume vast quantities of store-bought black beans to make burritos, so we decided to give growing them a try.

They grew wonderfully, and other than Japanese Beatles eating the upper foliage, we had no major issues. It all started with the harvesting - the day before Max was born, and needless to say the shelling process has been quite extended. With Max's birth (and his initial intolerance to mom's milk when she has eaten beans, which has thankfully gone away now) the shelling has been low priority. First the beans dried on screens in the living room. Then the screens moved to the downstairs bathroom, where they proceed to explosively toss dried beans all over the bathroom periodically. (Did you know that black bean pods open automatically and broadcast their seeds on their own? Its pretty cool actually, they twist as they dry and it breaks them open.) Then they were all dumped in the bathtub and covered with the screens. Now we've got them down to a small enough number that we've just have them stuffed in a cooler in the bathroom and I pick at them as time allows.

We also planted two Banana Pepper plants last year (purchased from Snells) and had a bumper crop from them! We canned the excess to see if we could reduce the amount that we have to purchase during the winter. Unfortunately they are decidedly not as good as store-bought, they are fairly mushy and mostly taste like vinegar. Looks like we'll have to experiment with them further.

Last year was also the second year that we made and canned our own salsa. It isn't like what you buy in the store, but we've come to love it! It has our own tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, chilli peppers, cilantro, and garlic in it! The onions come from Snells and only the vinegar and lime juice come from away. We eat tons of salsa in a year normally and it feels really gratifying to be able to be able to provide an entire year's supply from the garden!

Black bean burrito filling

Homemade burritos, yay!

Homegrown and canned Banana Peppers

Beans still waiting to be shelled... in April.

Starting seeds

We started our tomatoes and peppers today! Yay for the start of the gardening season! The plan is to try to have them out by the beginning of June this year to try to be able to harvest more of the tomatoes before the first frost. We've also cut back to 30 tomatoes instead of the 60 the we planted last year.

We've planted:

• 12 Rose (organic/indeterminate)
• 12 Roma VF (determinate)
• 8 Oregon Spring (organic/determinate)
• 16 Ace Hybrid Bell Peppers
• 8 Early Jalapeno (organic)
• 4 Joe's Long Cayenne

Changes in the raised beds..

We've got big new plans for the raised beds this year! We're moving all of the vegetables down to the big garden in the field and converting the beds to perennials. The first bed will be next year's garlic bed (instead growing them in the back flower garden), then asparagus (moving it out of the back flower garden), then low bush (and two mid-bush) blueberries, then cranberries, and finally strawberries. I recently cleaned out the hallway and one of the goat stalls in the barn and mulched the aisles and fertilized what will be the cranberry bed. I'm also going to take all of the soil out of the strawberry bed and compost it for a few years since it's most recently had peppers and tomatoes in it and then bring in new soil, compost, and composted goat manure.

Also, we've settled on a site for our new chicken coop, it's going to be in the back "courtyard" to the side of the clump of maples. We're finalizing coop plans and getting materials ordered for construction. We're hoping to have a very nice home in place for our 12 Dominique pullets and 1 Dominique cockerel by the time they arrive!

Freshly mulched beds.

Bed with compost awaiting new cranberry plants.

Me, Max, Rox and the goats in the (partially) clean barn.

Future home of our new chicken coop.