Seeds !!!

I just LOVE when the UPS guy knocks on my door (even if he is just delivering Sam's tea).
Sometimes I want to buy stuff just so I can get a package in the mail!

This day it was our seed order from Fedco,
our official first purchase for the Sharecropper project....
...yippee yahoo!

Here's what we got today - - -

1 1/2 lbs. Provider Beans
1 lb. Red Kidney Beans
1 lb. Midnight Black Turtle Dry Bean
1/2 lb. Black Valentine Bush Green Bean

A quarter oz. of the following - - -

Big Max Pumpkin
Long Pie Pumpkin
New England Pie Pumpkin (sensing a 'theme' here)
Candy Roaster Squash
Uncle Davids Dakota Dessert Squash (bought strictly for the name:)
Waltham Butternut Squash

ps. the cucumbers are in the Seed Savers order Joyce...
...not to worry!

Hey, there's cement under here....

....Of course there is. Because in our world nothing goes as smoothly as we anticipate, we found the foundations of 2 tiny rentals that used to sit on the property where the garden will be going.

Some came up rather easily...some, not so much.

So, I measured where the unmovable cement will remain and reworked the garden plan so that the walkways will coincide with the cement....done.

And the funny thing is, I like the new plan better....yea!

The Plan

In case you missed it I talk about the our decision to garden smaller on my personal blog....from now on everything having to do with this yard will be on this blog.


We graphed out our new location and came up with a total of 500 sq. ft. of garden space plus room for 4 fruit trees. This doesn't include walkways and compost bins. For us, for now, this will be plenty. In fact, even with it being considerably smaller in scope than our original 1/2 acre idea...it still seems HUGE!



My drawing isn't so neat and I'm sure there will be changes along the way...but this is a rough sketch of how we will set things out. We've made walkways (decomposed granite) to get to the back alley and side yard, and we've given ourselves plenty of space between planting beds (each square is 2ft.). We're not sure how much we'll get planted this summer but the plan is to get all of it tilled and maybe a third of it amended and planted. We can work all summer on the pathways and building compost bins as well as getting more garden space ready to plant. Hopefully, by next fall we'll have most of it productive. We'd like to do raised beds, but again that will depend on finding the wood. If this is to be beneficial to us, it needs to be done as cheaply as possible so we may just hill up the beds and build the boxes as we find wood.

Change of Plans?

Here's the deal...as much as we are excited about our half-acre...we're also feeling quite overwhelmed by the prospect of 'starting over'. It's a huge undertaking and we are stepping back for a few weeks or so to make sure we are up to the task.

We are by no means giving up our plan to become self-sustaining, just not sure this is the way to go about. We've been mulling over some ideas that would be smaller in scale and a bit closer to home (walking distance). We have a neighbor whose entire back yard is barren. She loves my garden but just doesn't have the time or the inclination to do much beyond a few flowers in her front bed. We may talk to her about the sharecropping idea....use of her yard for fresh veggies all year long. It would mean walking across the street rather than driving or biking the mile and a half to Anns. The yard is fenced, so we would only have to fence a portion of it to keep out the dog. She and I get along great....and I know she would appreciate fresh veggies....she loves getting salsa and tomatoes from us every summer.

Lots to think about....lots to pray about...stay tuned.

God's Little (half) Acre

We have staked our claim and started a compost pile....yippee yahoo!  We went out to Ann's property about 2 weeks ago to measure out and position the 1/2 acre she is letting us cultivate for our garden/sharecropping project.

  It is so nice that she is excited about it too, actually had us move the garden closer to her house than we had originally planned.  And we are getting a bit more than 1/2 an acre....the garden will be 150x180ft. or 27,ooo sq. ft. (22,000 is half an acre).   Wow... that seems like a lot. 


Here is Steve staking the back left corner of the garden.... take a look at the panels on the red barn...

....we SO have solar envy :)

The dirt has not supported life for several years but was a plum orchard originally.  It will take a bit of amending and probably a few years to get the enriched soil we want. 




This is the front left corner, nearest the house, where the entry gate will eventually be.  Ann's property  extends to the trees, which are hers....she left them to provide a privacy barrier between her property and the neighbors.
 


Same corner looking towards house.  This house was originally in town and was going to be destroyed....Ann bought it and had it moved a mile and a half out to her property.

The official beginning of our farm project...aka Suburban Sharecroppers came this last week when we emptied all our leaves from the house to begin the process of composting.  Most probably we will be using this compost for the fall '09 garden....we don't think it will be ready by spring (especially since we won't be turning it).

The property is really beautiful, nice view of the Sierras and farmland on all sides. You can see the orange grove behind the truck Steve is emptying (which is for sale by the way :)

We've moved!

Well, our blog address has moved.  I was tired of all the ads on Today.com so we are now on our own....and the 3 people who actually read this blog don't have to be assaulted with weight loss ads.

good times :)

Freeze!

Too lazy to post twice on this one....check out my personal blog for details ...hey, it's almost Christmas!

Rain and....Hail!

Originally posted Dec. 16, 2008...

Our dear daughter came running into our room at midnight to inform us that it was hailing outside.  Her desire, as is all our kids, is to have it snow here....something it has not done significantly for ten years.  Every once in a while we get a bit of frost that lingers in the morning and if you squint and turn your head just the right angle you can imagine what it would be like to have snow on the ground here in the Central Valley.  But snow to the degree that my children would appreciate comes maybe 2 or 3 times in a lifetime.  The last great snowstorm of '97 closed down schools (all 2 inches of it:).  We drove around town taking pictures of snowmen and kids skiing (ok, being towed by their parents) on their front lawns.  Great day!

But I digress.  Last night it was hail and the suggestion of snow....today its sunny and the dream has disappeared.  Oh well.  The garden has survived and tho things were a bit droopy first thing in the morning.....


...all plants are alive, upright, and thoroughly enjoying the sunny afternoon....yippee yahoo.

The little broccoli peeking it's way thru the green leaves is our first sign of winter veggies and I am thrilled to finally see some of our future harvest.

Kind of wonderful to be out picking salad greens after a hailstorm...ain't life grand!

More Lettuce?

Originally posted Dec. 2, 2008...

Yesterday was the first of December (son’s birthday…yea!) and I planted another pkg. of lettuce seed.  This is the first time I’ve sowed a second crop of greens and tho it is quite foggy and a bit chilly outside I’m hoping that some of what went into the ground will germinate and we can have a few more baby green salads this winter.  Our other beds of lettuce and mixed greens are doing well, the black-seeded Simpson and Romaines are about 6 inches tall and still quite tender.  The Asian baby leaf (in photo) came up fast and got tough fairly quickly.  Next year I will plant those more sparingly, we couldn’t eat them fast enough and they were much more tasty as babies.

Powdery Mildew

We are having a bit of an issue with powdery mildew on our ornamentals. These are our little calendulas growing by the broccoli out in the front yard garden.  We have had such a warm fall (see garlic post :) and powdery mildew is especially prevalent in these particular situations….. 

Warm temperatures and shady conditions encourage the fungus to grow and spread. However, the spores and mycelium are sensitive to extreme heat and direct sunlight.

...from Green Guides

 

Unfortunately, the spot where these are planted is still shady because our deciduous trees haven’t lost their leaves yet.  I’m trying 2 different solutions as sort of an experiment...one I learned about on another blog using a milk and water mix and the other is the standard organic defense using baking soda.  Maybe the baking soda or milk mix combined with a bit of sunlight will take care of the problem.  It is still pretty sunny and the leaves are falling as we speak, plus the condition is not fatal. So I guess I’m not going to worry too much at this point. It shouldn’t spread to the broccoli, tends to keep to just a few plant species in our area and I knew calendulas were susceptible.    The only other advice I could find was to pull up all the infected plants...which is all the calendula plants in the garden, so that’s not happening.

I’ll take my chances with soda and milk.

Garlic ...Maybe

Originally posted Nov.19, 2008...

The warm fall weather, not my ignorance at all mind you, may have messed up our chances at garlic. I planted at the end of October and we have had spring-like weather from that day on.

To form cloves, garlic must be exposed to temperatures below 41 F (5 C). Thus, if planted too late in the spring, garlic will tend to form large onion-like bulbs instead of individual cloves. In the North, garlic is normally planted in October so that it can establish roots before winter and really take of in the spring. Southern gardeners can only plant garlic if they know the temperature will dip low enough. Often, they can wait until November or December to plant.

This is only our second attempt at growing garlic. The first time it went into the ground at the beginning of May; I guess I now know why that didn’t work out so well. I figured this year we were going to get it right. Maybe I should have paid a bit closer attention to the weather channel my daughter always consults before clothing herself….or maybe I should just ask my daughter :)


We have the garlic planted in one container, another spot by the lavender, and a row by our side fence.  I wanted to try a few different locales to see which ones were the most productive, now it may be moot...sigh. At this point I guess only time will tell.  It’s so wonderful outside, sunny and warm, that I probably shouldn’t be hoping for a quick drop in temperatures…but I am.

Links to avoid the mistakes I made :)

Organic Gardening

Fine Gardening

Green Guides Growing Garlic

Houston Grows

New Life

Originally posted Nov. 18, 2008...


There is something incredibly satisfying about going out in the garden and discovering the first signs of life on new plantings.  I start looking the day after I sow seeds….despite knowing that at least a few days will have to pass before nature does it’s thing and this small, hard, shell of a seed can burst from it’s cocoon and push it’s way up thru the soil to greet the sunshine.  I am tickled by the green that arises from seemingly insignificant pods of brown.  Many times I have gotten excited checking out the raised beds only to discover that for several days I have been cheering on a weed (or in the summer - a morning glory…virtually a weed at our house).  No worries…usually the real plants are not far behind.

Today, the onions are up and reaching for the sky.  This is one of the Com Reds that were planted last week.  The shallots are starting to poke their way thru the composted soil, but are not quite as speedy as the little red guys.  I know it will be months before they are harvested but for today I am happy just to see sprouts and know there is hope for our little patch of onions.

Slow Food

Originally posted Nov. 13, 2008...

One of the many reasons Steven and I are dragging our family along the organic/grow-your-own food road is the abysmal state of the American diet and the long term health consequences of continuing down that path. How sad that the ‘Greatest Nation on Earth’ is now foisting upon the rest of the world our propensity to consume large amounts of sugar, fat and salt. I was dismayed to read the following article out of Greece about the consequences of a fast food diet replacing the heart healthy, and highly acclaimed Mediterranean diet. In countries famous for their diet of olive oil, fish and fresh veggies, the rates of obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing. Call it the McDonaldization of the world, call it whatever you want, we don’t want anything to do with it.

When our kids were younger and our vision of food and it’s vital importance to future health issues not nearly as sharp, we frequented fast food establishments as a convenience. While attending out-of-town sporting events, shopping trips to malls, or evenings when the days activities precluded having time to prepare a home-cooked meal, we succumbed to the temptation for fast and fatty food. We still do occasionally (she admits sheepishly) though we are much more particular in choosing the places we trust to feed us (McDonald’s remains off-limits).

But even as we were eating various chicken shaped stars and burgers piled high with condiments and secret sauces, we never considered it healthy. It was a ‘treat’, much like going out for ice cream or eating candy. While I am embarrassed to admit that we ever ate in certain establishments, I can at least say that we never confused them with Whole Foods. And the more research we did, the less money we spent in fast food joints. These days, our kids rarely drink sodas and the standard response in the evening to the age ole, “what’s for dinner?” query will most likely be, chicken...or leftovers, or smoothies, or make-your-own….you get my drift.

So I guess I’m kind of amazed that so many people still frequent these places so, well….frequently. I would like to see them all go bankrupt as more people choose to do their slow food shopping at the local farmers market. I would like to see the United States take the lead in teaching nutrition and it’s effect on disease prevention, I would like to see kids eating green at every meal...
...I would like a flying pony for my birthday...sigh.

The Seeds of Suburban Sharecroppers

Originally posted Nov. 11, 2008...


This life we now lead started years ago.  It is as much the growth of our marriage and life together as it is our desire to eat better and healthier.  We thought it might be nice to go back and write about some of the influences that brought us to where we are now.  Some things have been forgotten and some remain.  Maybe we will remember some that shouldn’t have been lost. Though we didn’t have the current name, the beginnings of our present endeavors came after we were first married.  We had a book on the shelf called The Integral Urban House. This was a project of the Farallones Institute in Northern California.    It was a normal urban house in Berkley, CA that had been changed and converted into a self sustaining urban farm.  We started to incorporate some of the ideas from this book. We started slowly with a compost bin and garden around our little rental house in Visalia.  The gardens were double-dug and we planted some vegetables in that first experiment.  The double-digging idea came from another book, How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine: A Primer on the Life-giving Biodynamic/French Intensive Method of Organic Horticulture by John Jeavons.  Double digging has become one of the staples of our gardens. When we convert a piece of ground to garden, that is what we do to start.  Double-Dig, compost, manure at times, gypsum, peat moss and lots of shovel work.

...to be continued...

Onions

Originally posted Nov. 6th...




Planted onions and shallots this week. We love onions, and by ‘we’ I mean Steve and I. The kids are not quite sure about them and tho I put them in tons of recipes I usually dice them as tiny as possible so no one will notice. Lately I’ve been substituting shallots for onions in most recipes because they get more tender after cooking and therefore more easily disguise-able (is that even a word? :) Part of being a good parent is learning the fine art of subterfuge.

Years ago when we first switched over to organic milk, the kids were unsure of how this alien milk would taste and hesitant to drink it. So for about a month I poured organic milk into a couple of normal milk cartons that I had saved. After a month of drinking it without noticing, we told them they had been drinking the organic stuff and all was well from then on (neener neener). I also used to put tofu in quite a few dishes without informing the young ‘uns. I distinctly remember the evening Wilson found out he had been eating it in my enchiladas….. said he thought it was cheese. Months later, after finding a tiny piece of soy in the eggrolls, he asked me if I had put mushrooms in them. When I told him that it was tofu, he was relieved. Maybe our kids just need to learn to eat with blindfolds on.

But I digress. Onions, shallots, and garlic. These antagnonists of peas and children everywhere went into the ground this week for our winter garden. I have grown onions only 2 other times so I am still a novice….still plenty of mistakes to be made. I got my sets by mail order - Comred onions, Dutch Yellow and French Red shallots, and California hard and soft-necked garlic. No pics of the garlic, they went in the ground last week and I forgot to take photos.



Here is the onion bed….inter-planted with 4 broccoli plants and surrounded by mixed greens and an unfinished concrete pathway (long boring story) 

The onions were about an inch in diameter and we planted them about 6 inches apart and an inch deep.

 The shallots were considerably bigger (not withstanding the little guy in the pic)…

but the instructions said to plant just deep enuf to cover the crown…so that’s what we did.

They are also planted next to broccoli and their archenemy, the pea, is probably 3 ft. away….we’ll see how that goes. 

Good onion info can be found on these links…

Info on onions bolting
National Gardening Assoc.

Harvest to Table

Vegetable Garden Harvest