what a difference 7 years makes

I was having fun going through some old photos the other day and ran across one of the main garden area from early 2006.

Here is the one I took yesterday from about the same place.

What a difference a few years makes!

garden updates

A quick walk through some of the gardens yesterday. Things are growing pretty well with few bugs except the squash bugs. After getting very dry for a spell,last week we had about 14 inches of rain.As you can see in the video, the weeds and grass are growing very well. Life here is busy with it just the two of us keeping up, my school work, and manthing working.

be independent

grow your food

a walk in the gardens

yay for rain!

Yay for rains!
The gardens were beginning to get a little bit thirsty  and since we have no secondary water supply from the pond at the moment, I was beginning to worry a bit.  After the rain  hitting everywhere but here over the last several days, it was  nice  to get a smidgeon last evening and through the night, with more on the way tomorrow.

 The gardens looked so much happier this morning  and should allow us to begin harvesting some cukes, zukes, summer squash, broccoli, and maters  within a week or so. The garlic, onions, and carrots will also be coming out shortly to make way for  other things and stuff.  I cannot wait as I am  sick of the flavorless semi fresh crap I am stuck buying  from the local markets that haul in their  produce from  Florida. There simply is no replacement for fresh, from the garden, veggies.

I had to cut the morning walkabout short but  here are a few pics of the beds up around the garanimals.   Things are beginning to look like a garden  rather than empty beds. I do not much care for the time period between planting and when things really start looking good. Another couple weeks and I will have my beautiful mess  back. The squash are beginning to run  everywhere and make the manthing's weedwhackin life more difficult.

how does your garden grow...

All the  gardens are now planted out except for the remaining tobacco. Early spring  crops will be coming out in the next week or two and will  be replanted with summer things.  The first corn planted is a couple foot tall and  many of the tomato plants have fruit as do the squashes. Everything else is slowly poking through the soil. My favorite time in the gardens is coming: when things grow  enough overnight after a good rain to notice a difference in everything and things  become a beautiful mess.

 

  

 The hot tub is again full with wood and leaves using  a bit of the soil we made in  the hugulkultur experiment. In a few years we will have another tub of  nice soil to use around the place but have  a fine growing spot in the mean time.   

tobacco time...

After getting the majority of the gardens in for the summer, it came time to begin planting the tobacco down in the holler.  We loaded up Azulita with plants, the tiny tiller, wood ash, fertilizer and chainsaw then  headed down the hill for a day of "fun."

Manthing tilled up the rows right quick while I  followed behind with the bucket of ash, fertilizer, and my handy dandy little trowel. After he tilled, I sprinkled some ash in each hole, threw a bit of  grow juice in  and set the plants in.  We do use commercial fertilizer twice a year for the tobacco. It is a very heaver feeder  on the soil and though we do not use chemical fertilizer on anything else we grow, we cannot keep up with amounts needed for the tobacco too.

 

  

The plants were a  tiny bit smaller than I would have liked but they did  have an excellent root system for a change.   Once manthing got my rows done he went off and collected  cook wood from dead fall while I planted and planted and planted.  About 200  plants were put in the ground and we still have about that many to go in yet.  Depending on the weather we may get them in this weekend. Tobacco needs to stay moist just after transplantation or they tend to die off to the ground. Planting just before a rain  or watering them in is needed.  As a side note, once tobacco has established   good roots it is very difficult to kill  off. It more often than not, will grow back  from  what looks to be a dead plant so  wait a week or two before replanting if you think you have killed the babies.

  

traumatizing the mushroom logs

      Time to make the mushrooms fruit.  We are past last frost and the logs have been inoculated for a little over a year. To get them to begin fruiting they will be soaked  for 24 hours or so. It is also supposed to rain so maybe we can get by without having to flip them.  Once they come out of the water they will go back to their hidey-hole and be watered well a couple times a week (if it doesn't rain) so they can begin  fruiting.  In a couple few weeks we should begin harvesting from them and then we can  start the whole process again for the remainder of the summer.

dehydrating herbs

The  solar dehydrating  season is in full swing.  The herbs are growing like crazy this  year so I am having to give many of them hair cuts early in the season. Today I  took an entire five gallon  pail of   trimmings off of two  small clumps of  parsley.  After washing and taking the stems out I was able to fill all three trays with  the herbs.

Up until this year all of our dehydrating has been  solar. Recently, a high school class mate offered me an electric one that she no longer uses. I could not resist as it will come in handy for when it gets too humid to use this one or on those days when we get our regular afternoon showers.  I will start the process in the solar  then transfer  it to the  electric reducing waste.   Here is  a previous post  on the dehydrator  as well as  some links to plans.

the hugulkultur experiment-part 2

With the success of the hot tub hugulkultur bed we decided to try it out in a normal garden bed. For this experiment, we are using use an already established bed (of weeds) that we double dug when the manthing was laid off and we were on a bed building spree. This bed has not successfully grown anything (except weeds) since we dug it and began throwing amendments on it. It was also convenient because we had some piles of brush nearby, making our job (manthing's job) much easier.

The basic principle of hugulkultur is digging out a hole or spot and then filling it back up with things n stuff that will break down over time into a nice soil while having the benefits of water retention and a raised garden area. Our main reason for doing this is building healthier soil, since we try to maintain a closed homestead and purchase no outside fertilizers, soils, mulches, etc. We get over 70 inches of precipitation a year, so, water retention is not too big of a deal for us most of the time.
The process is pretty easy although it is a good work out if you don't have a mechanized earth moving contraption and live in mountainous terrain. This bed is about 14x5 and was a 2 (half day) job for one person. A young, in shape, person could probably do one in a day and live to tell of the experience. Us older folks have learned not to beat ourselves up when time is not of the essence so we tend to take things a little bit easier when we can.

Our observations thus far...

The dirt that comes out of the hole is very likely not going to be enough to cover it back up, especially if you mound it like most reference sites suggest. Be prepared to have extra dirt somewhere nearby that is accessible and easy to get to the new location.

It is a great way to use downed trees and/or brush and limbs from cutting firewood. But,it takes a whole lotta material to fill that big hole back up. Have plenty (more than you could ever imagine) of filler nearby or in a place that is easily accessible. For those that heat and/or cook with wood or live in an area where wood is sparse, this could be an issue and should be weighed before you decide to do digging massive holes in your lawn.

the hugulkultur experiment-part 1

A few years ago we found ourselves with a hot tub that no longer functioned. Rather than hauling it off to the dump we decided to make a garden out of it. Because we were completely unemployed at the time, an economical way had to be found to use little soil yet fill the tub up so it could grow veggies. After some research, we decided to try an experiment with hugulkultur in a controlled environment. We filled that sucker up with brush, leaves, and dead wood, tossed a layer of compost over the top, then waited and waited and waited, all the while growing veggies in it. Our hope was that the experiment would be successful enough that we could use the hot tub to build soil that was good quality for adding to already established beds or for making new ones since true soil here is nonexistent.

After growing successfully for near two years, in the tub, we decided to see how the soil was coming along. It was still looking a little rough looking and had pieces of twigs and branches throughout so we threw some straw over the top and grew potatoes in it and later a crop of tomatoes.
This spring when we began digging to see how things were going Lo and behold, everything had decomposed and we had three feet of beautiful,wormy, healthy, happy soil.
I am currently in the process of moving the soil to where I need it and only saving enough of it to begin the process again. It worked well enough that we are now working on a couple actual beds using the same methods. It will be interesting to see how they turn out. Though hugulkultur is a great method of building soil it does have a couple of downfalls that I will post about in the next installment of our hugulkultur experiment.

seeds of the month

My year of Seeds Of The Month has ended. Yes, I am an adult but everyone loves to have a package delivered and for a gardener, seeds are the ultimate gift. I have really enjoyed the SOTM and not just opening the pack to see what is inside but actually growing the veggies and herbs. All seeds are non-gmo, open pollinated, heirloom varieties that have been tested for a germination rate of 90% and higher. Everything I have received has grown and produced well for me even though I have used many for experimental purposes and treated them harshly. The cost of the seed club is very economical and well worth it, especially if one is able to catch a web special. For those new to gardening or for children, it is an excellent way to pique interest and give a gift that will give forever more. Overall, the seed club is very well worth the money and offers quite a nice variety of seed.

Of course, any program has its faults and here are the few that I found. Some of the seed packs did not contain enough seed for my liking, though it was only with a couple of seed types. The bantam corn, for example, only had 16 kernels in the pack hardly making it worth the effort and pollination became a concern. There was a little repetition in the types of seed sent over the course of the year. I do not mind this as seed saves quite well and can be used at another time but I would have liked to have seen a bit more variety in what was sent.

Overall, I was very happy with the SOTM and would recommend anyone interested in an economical and fun way to collect seed to join the club. Members receive 8 packs of seeds their first month and then 4 packs of non GMO seeds every month thereafter for as little as $0.06 per day. You can join at http://seedsclub.averagepersongardening.com/ or join them on facebook

broccoli babies

Today the broccoli babies went from their germination trays into cell packs and were kicked out to the GH to live in the fish tank until planting time. The tank can be covered with a plastic cover if it gets too cold for them, though after this winter it is doubtful they will need it. In addition to these little guys another 40 or so were planted into a GH bed and an outside bed with a makeshift ghetto GH over them on the cold nights. The plant markers are made from old window shades that I have been snipping sections off of when I need markers.

peachlings

Two years ago when, we had the glut of peaches from our then lone peach tree, many of the peaches ended up on the ground or eaten by critters. Unlike any year prior, all those peach pits sprouted into tiny trees, so for kicks I decided to let them grow assuming most of them would die a natural death. Oddly enough, most actually lived through their first winter and and all through last summer and on through this winter (what winter we have had and it aint much). Between not having time, having bad weather when we did have time, having people say they were going to move them and then not and my own laziness, I just got around to digging several of them out today and replanting.

I had big ideas of moving all 23 of them today and only got 12 moved but it was a good start. Since these peaches were all surrounding a tree and since they were not in pots, but in the actual soil, getting them out with all the roots was a bit challenging. Most came out with a nice chunk of sod with them, making the transplant fairly easy, but a couple came out bare rooted. Wonder if they will survive?

This is just another experiment around the place that only cost me some time. Will they survive the transplant? Will they grow decent peaches? Is peachling a word? Only time will tell, but if they do, we will have one heck of a peach orchard in a couple years.

turnip coffee-Blech!

Folks that have followed my ramblings for any length of time know that one of my hobbies is finding a suitable alternative to coffee. This time around, the adventure was using turnips. For hundreds of years turnips were animal fodder rather than people food but during the early 1900s in Germany, they became a staple food item. They were used as a coffee substitute, flour substitute and became a primary ingredient of many dishes including war bread.
Since we have had virtually no winter this year, turnips have grown very well and out of curiosity, boredom, and the need to know I decided to make me some turnip coffee. After slicing and dicing, drying and roasting, and grinding it all up I finally got to make me a fine cuppa turnip java.

BLECH!!!!

Maybe it is an acquired taste, that comes from necessity? Hopefully it is a necessity I will never have to acquire a taste for. Of all my experiments, it is the worst tasting and smelling. After all the hard work, it still smells and has the flavor of a turnip. Perhaps not being a huge fan of turnips to begin with plays a part but liquid turnips is simply not appealing. Maybe it will be better used as a flour replacement though I doubt it.

ETA... I should have added that turnips have many other uses beside fodder for man and beast. They have medicinal as well as other uses around a homestead. Rather than write it all up here is a link ....

sowing of the seeds

With the weird winter we are having this year, planning and planting of the gardens has been quite a challenge. We have had next to no winter weather and nice warm days with few cold nights which makes it very hard to hold back from planting early crops.

Over the last couple weeks I have decided to not hold back any longer since it is just seed and why waste what could be a perfectly good cold crop growing season. Of course, now that I have planted several thousand square feet of gardens, winter is going to arrive. Even if it all gets killed it is just seed and I will have wasted approximately five dollars. If I did not plant until the calendar tells me to I may miss the window and not get any of the cool weather crops.

Thus far, we have carrots, onions, peas, greens of all sorts, beets, turnips, sprouting broccoli, broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage of several varieties planted in the GH and outdoors. Since none have sprouted yet, I am hoping that the cold streak coming in for the weekend will not harm them in any way. Though, if it does, I will just plant again.

It is the perfect time to get some of our other seeds started. The tobacco was seeded the other day as were some tomatoes, paprika peppers, cabbage, and brussel sprouts. Now I can relax a bit while all the little darlings germinate and work on outdoor beds as time permits.

Speaking of time, only four more weeks until I am done with school! It will be awesome to have a three month break before I begin again but more importantly, it falls the 6- 8 weeks before our summer planting, leaving me with plenty of time to get gardens ready.

Lastly, after searching for a tobacco growing group on the lovely FB and not finding any, I made one. For anyone wishing to join in on the fun we now have frugal homesteads, homesteading, and hobby tobacco growers group on there .

growing quinoa

This is an old post I did on growing quinoa a few years back and never put up. (pic is not mine)

The quinoa growing experiment
This past spring we decided we were going to attempt to grow some of our own grains in our attempt to become as self sustaining as possible. One of the grains we chose to grow is called QUINOA or the mother of all grains.For ease in explanation here is a pretty good link describing it. It sone of the best grains available and is super high in protein content (20% or there abouts). It also has all your amino acids in it and very little is needed to be a very nutritious grain for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa

My own observations
It was very simple to grow, simply plant and let it go. It withstood both heavy rains as well as dry to drought conditions very well until just before it should have been harvested. The weight on the seed heads did cause it to snap off just before harvest time. I am assuming that part of the breakage was because we planted in rows and it wasn't dense enough to keep it standing .

The plant itself it beautiful, when it is nearing maturity it changes color much like hardwood trees do. There are shades of yellow, reds and oranges in the leaves then they begin to fall off. The quinoa we planted had seed heads that were rainbow colored as well, making the plants even more pretty.

Plants were ready to harvest here in about 4 months time. I direct seeded just after the last frost and harvested the second or third week of august. I simply went out and cut the stalks off then laid them out to dry or hung them to finish drying. Then I rubbed the seed heads between my hands onto a large sheet. Once this was done i harrowed it in front of a fan to get the chaff and junk from the actual seed. This is a bit tedious and boring... OK, it is a lot tedious and boring, but a good job for a useless eater. I then let them finish drying and tossed them into a storage container.

The biggest problem I have had with the quinoa is removing the saponins from the outside of the seeds themselves. The saponins are also what make it a good plant since birds and other animals will not touch the seeds. Removing the saponins is very important before cooking , they can make you very ill or kill you if you ingest too much of them. To remove the outer coating, books will tell you to soak for 12 hours before cooking. I did this and it didn't work . I since have figured out that in order to eat the final product, you need to think about it 3 days in advance of when you plan on eating it and soak them in water for all three days. Change the water out several times a day and mix the grains around in it while doing this. The water may bubble some , much like soap does and it will be a greyish color when you change out the water. When the water runs clear and no more bubbles it should be ready for cooking. A different approach is to soak it for a day or two before cooking, Place it in water boil for one minute, change the water boil another minute and then cook.

It is a rather odd little grain, has a different consistency to it and takes a bit of getting used to . There are a few ways to cook it other than boiling like rice. Some roast it and "pop" it and make something resembling popcorn balls. It has a slightly nutty flavor to it when done this way. It is often seen in vegan and veggie dishes and there are a few cold salads that it can be used in... It can also be sprouted and used as a sprout.

Overall, it is not bad to grow, harvest, or cook. Its pretty and can be grown in some pretty rotten soil and conditions. As a survival food it would be good to grow in a garden or in a guerrilla fashion. It will reseed itself and grow again the next year. One other thing I did notice was that it will begin to sprout in the field when the seed heads are ready and a big rain comes so it is important to get it out of the weather when it is ready for harvest. I lost a few plants of it this season by not realizing just how easy it goes to reproducing..

PS...
I forgot to mention that we planted only one small pack of seeds this spring in ground that had only been tilled in order to plant grains. In total i had about an 80 row of quinoa (was actually four 20 foot rows). No fertilizers or nutrients of any kind were used so the soil base is hard chunky clay for the most part . When all was said and done i got about 4 pounds of quinoa for cooking purposes or two quart jars which for us would be about 8 meals as a side dish. All total time spent between harvesting n harrowing was about 3 hours in addition to the time spent tilling, planting and weeding once.

We are thinking next year of just scattering some seed in an area using the broadcast method and seeing how this turns out rather than using tilled garden space for this grain...

PPS...
We have since been growing quinoa in non garden areas and it seems to do quite well that way. I just leave a few plants to do the reseeding for me and it comes back year after year.

around the homestead-the cistern saga continues

Ahhh, we should have known better than to think the cistern project was going to go well the first time around.
After coating the cistern with the sealant, the weather took a turn for the worse. It continued to rain for an entire week and nothing was drying out even with a fan and a heater running in the room. The biggest issue, however, was the seepage from the blocks themselves. It is amazing how much water a cinder block will hold. The water seeping from the blocks made the sealant slide down and puddle and we were again left with bare cinder walls. There were also a couple spots that we decided could use a bit of hydraulic cement too, just in case.Those minor patches were made and then it became a waiting game. MothEr always wins so after a couple of days we realized that time was the only cure for the mess we had created. We decided it was best to just shut the door and forget it.

Finally, on Saturday the cistern was dry and we could fix the messes and give it another good coat of sealant. With warmer temperatures we were sure it would dry before the next round of rains came in. It did, so we gave it one more coat for good measure. By Monday morning everything was dry so the gutters were hooked back in. By last evening the cistern was full and we could turn the water back on to the shack.
We would like to think the cistern project is now a done deal but we can't be entirely sure of it.

around the homestead-refurbishing the cistern

For the last few weeks we had been noticing puddling water around the cistern room but because we have also had decent amounts of rain it was hard to tell if something was amiss. On Wednesday manthing had to go into the cistern room and he decided to look at how much water was in there and we only had 2 blocks of 7. With just the two of us here and knowing how much rain had recently fallen we knew the cistern had sprung a leak. After looking around we believe we found the source but then a decision had to be made. Would we simply patch the hole and be done or would we finish emptying it, clean it out, scrape it down, make any repairs, and reseal the entire thing.
We decided that since the cistern was well over 20 years old and had never had any maintenance that it would be wise to completely go through it and hopefully be done with it until we are too old to be doing such things. We also had a fairly decent window to get the work done before the weather turned, a big bonus in January. The bad part was that our window was a fairly small one for the work that needed to be done so it meant bustin our butts a little bit to getter done.
We had to start by finishing emptying the cistern, so we brought the 325 gallon tank up and filled it. We knew we would be without any water for at least four days and perhaps more depending on the weather. This left about 3 inches of water and a big layer of nastiness that had collected on the bottom for twenty odd years. The only way to get it out was by climbing in and bailing the water out by the bucket full, lifting it over the edge and having the second person hauling it out to dump. It then had to be completely dried and scraped down to remove the old sealant and expose as much block as possible. After getting as much out as we could , it was decided the kitty litter soaker upper stuff would work best to dry it then we could scoop it out.
Once it was all dry we made any repairs that needed to be done and could then begin applying the sealant. After applying each coat of sealant it needed to dry for several hours before the next layer could be done. Last night, we were able to get the second coating on and decided that the rain was not going to come in until late this evening so we would do a third and final coat this morning We also neglected to pull the gutters from the pipe going into the cistern since there was only a 10% chance of rain. At 3:30 this morning we had a middle of the night trip to pull the gutters out and protect our masterpiece.
The final coat went on this morning and we are now hoping that the heavy rains that are forecast do not come until tomorrow so that we can put the gutters back in, fill the cistern and see how the pretty cement pond works.

mushroom logs-first harvest

Just as I was beginning to wonder if the mushroom logs were going to do anything before winter set in, low and behold I checked them yesterday and noticed we had some beauties ready for harvesting. We got about 4 pounds of the oysters and I do believe I saw a few shitakes growing under there. Hopefully the rains coming in will get a few more grown out before the cold weather sets in.