My new, main garden bed is doing better now, since the temperatures have been getting a little warmer. We’ve been in the 60s and 70s and most of my plants, and seeds, seem to be actually growing and sprouting now. Here are some pictures of my garden:
My back garden, which I increased in size from last year, is doing ok. I have a lot of things growing in it, most of which was not what I planted. I have a lot of weeds, but luckily they are mostly lamb’s quarters, which are edible and actually really delicious (they taste kind of like spinach). I liked the few we found last year so much that I bought seeds for this year, and then didn’t have to plant any – they grew on their own. Here are some photos of my back garden plot.
I haven’t posted in a bit, I’ve been really busy… and we’ve had a ton of rain. The garden is doing ok, things are growing slowly, and my seeds (and second sets of seeds I had to plant) are sprouting, mostly. I planted two types of corn, on either side of the garden. The yellow corn I planted has sprouted, the plants are about 2 inches tall. I got maybe a 70% sprout rate though. My white corn has done nothing that I can see. The seeds were packed for 2014 so that may be the problem. I plan on adding more yellow corn seeds soon.
I had to replant seeds for cucumber, and some for zucchini. I don’t know if they damped off when the seedlings were put in, but the original cucumber seedlings had all died and I have one original zucchini; I had put in 4 seedlings. So I added new seeds; They are now sprouting.
I planted some rows of onions, carrots, beets, and turnips. In that garden, I have a TON of lamb’s quarters (weeds), which are actually really tasty so that is ok. I have a bunch of turnips. I think I have one or 2 onions coming up, and 5 or 6 carrots, and 3 or 4 beets. I will add more seeds for those this week. I’m not sure what happened to those. I did notice a beet growing in my pathway, so the seeds must have gotten washed away somewhat.
We have had a lot of rain. It rains almost daily, and our temps have been in the 60s or so, sometimes into the 70s, but still not as warm as it could be. The rains aren’t very warm rains either. The garden is trudging along. It will do better as we get a lot more sun. My sunflowers are doing ok too, so that makes me really happy. I haven’t had a sunflower grow for me at this house. Last year I lost every one I planted to deer. This year they are planted inside my fence.
Last week, I got home and the chickens were mixed together. From my driveway I can see the babies’ little run. I parked and saw adult chickens in there. I went to see what was going on, and somehow the door that divides their coop space (inside the coop) was left open, so the adults and teens (which are pretty much adults now) were all over in the chicks’ area, and my chicks were scattered. There were 3 huddled in a corner, one hiding behind a food bag, and the rest were outside hiding behind the coop. The adults scratched up the chicks’ run, so it’s a lot more muddy now than it had been. I got them all sorted out, and we’re making absolutely sure that we lock the inside coop door, so that it doesn’t happen again.
As soon as the chicks are 3 months old, around July 20th, I am going to integrate them together. I cannot wait! The reason for this, is that our current adult chicken run is a disgusting muddy mess. We are going to add a second fenced-in run area, an area which currently has grass, and then integrate everyone into that run. We’ll then cut off their access to the current run, so that we can fix the mud problem. I would also like to plant it with some chicken edibles, so they have stuff to munch on over there. The muddiest spot is right at the door from the coop to the run, so we need to figure out what to do there – maybe put some kind of patio (brick/concrete) there so that it doesn’t turn to mud as soon as it rains. Once everything on that side is fixed and plants are growing, I will start cycling the chickens between runs – so they can eat down one side while the other side is growing, and then we’ll switch them to the new grown stuff, and so on. With all our rain, the run doesn’t dry very well, or for very long, and then the teens don’t like to go to bed at night when I put them in, so it takes awhile to get them all in, and we end up trudging through mud, and they all have muddy feet, and it’s disgusting. I do lure them in to the coop with treats, but I have to wait until they are all in and the door is shut, or they take their treats and run outside; then I have to chase them in. Ahh… chickens.
I planted my new garden yesterday. Most of the plants are looking a little sad today, since we got rain last night. I think they’re fine and will perk up once we get some more sun. I’ve got lots of vegetables, with some flowers interspersed along the middle pathway. I ran out of room for my herbs because I wanted to grow various kinds of squash – zucchini, yellow squash, acorn, and butternut. I ended up with two small rows of mixed herbs – basil, rosemary, cayenne, lemon balm. (I meant to make a separate herb bed, but this new garden took up most of my energy this year).
Instead of tomato cages I decided to use some leftover fencing attached to poles, and will attach the tomato plants to them as they grow. I made some supports for my beans and peas using saplings and string. I pounded the saplings in like fence posts, and then wire was used to hold the saplings together and to attach them to the fence.
The top poles are from the top of the saplings, and attached to the poles with wire. I then tied string and attached it to sticks at the bottom where the peas and beans are planted.
I realized I had started way too many plants. I had overestimated the amount of space I had. I also didn’t figure I’d get as good of a germ-rate as I did for some things. Next year I won’t start as many plants, and I won’t start them so early. The April-started plants were ok, but I think it would have been better to start them in May. My tomatoes were no longer happy in the pots they were in – hopefully they will be happier now that they are in the garden.
The garden looks pretty sparse now, but as things grow and fill in, it should look really nice.
I also planted some spinach and chard, and kale in my older garden bed behind the house. I had started carrots, beets, onions, and turnips a couple weeks ago, and some are starting to show up through the soil now.
I put some of my chickens to work today. My garden is just sitting, waiting for me to start planting this coming weekend when I have time. I want to get all the plants in at once. I decided to put a few chickens in there today, to scratch around and get any bugs out, and also to eat some of the grass that is at the fence line.
I chose to use some of my adult hens because I figured they may be more efficient, and also I didn’t want to cause any kind of anxiety issues with the teenager chickens. I thought that taking them out and then putting them back in the coop later may cause them unneeded anxiety, but that my adults would be able to handle it since they’re top of the pecking order. We put four hens in the garden in the morning before I left for work, with a little shelter made out of large flower pots and a piece of wood, in case they needed to get out of the sun.
My ladies did a good job – my garden seemed quite picked over; I could tell that they had scratched most of it up. I had made a pushed-down “trail” going through the middle, which will be my pathway, and that was completely gone by the time I got home. I could tell the grass at the fence line was a lot smaller as well.
The garden space is right next to our dog run. At first the hens were very scared when Atat ran out to see what they were doing. Downey was interested but not as playful as Atat. Atat ran up and started running up and down the fence line, and the chickens ran away back and forth from him, and then finally bundled up in the corner for awhile, till he went back inside.
My husband said it got better later during the day – when the dogs would come out they would just quietly watch the chickens pecking around in the dirt. The chickens relaxed a little when they figured out the dogs couldn’t get to them.
When I got home from work I put the ladies back in their own coop/run. I noticed that the pecking order in the coop was a little different before the hens were put back. Moving four hens to the garden gave the teenagers an advantage against the hens. Six teens to five hens – my teenagers seem a little more aggressive, which I take as a positive sign; they’ve been so scared of the hens until now – I saw one of my teens run up and peck a hen, instead of cowering when she walked by, which is what they usually do. The pecking order will shift a bit for awhile I bet, until they all get used to each other and figure out their places. That will probably be just in time for me to introduce the babies into the flock.
I’ve been working on a new garden bed, and it’s finally ready to plant! I killed most of the grass using tarps and cardboard, and was going to hand-till it all up, but it’s quite large. I started to do a little work on it one night and was very daunted by the work involved. The grass had been very lush in that area – Killing the grass did not kill the roots, so the soil was very hard to dig into even with the grass gone.
I was very lucky and was able to borrow a rototiller from my uncle. So now the soil is ready for planting. We put a fence up around it today to keep deer out. Here’s the finished garden bed:
I have been scrambling to get this bed ready for this weekend, because that was my goal for getting plants in. Our last frost date depends on who you talk to – some say May 15th, some say June 15th. Last year I had stuff in by the end of May and it was ok – you just have to watch the forecast for frost. We had frost warnings last night (I think some places got some frost) and we have frost warnings for the next two nights; I’m going to have to wait to put things into that bed. I do have some things already planted in a different bed, so I’ve been doing the “cover-up” scramble each night: covering up those plants at night, and then uncovering them each day once the sun is warming everything up. I need to check the weather and then hopefully I’ll start filling this bed up in the next week or so.
I have some plants hardening off outside. I put them inside a cage we have out there, which is easy to cover in case of frost. The cage also protects the plants from hungry animals. It’s been easier to block sunshine or rain, to get the plants used to being out there without them getting too much sun or water before they are acclimated. I put the plants out to harden off last week, figuring I’d have to block sunshine somewhat, and then we got several days of rain instead.
I’m looking forward to being able to get everything in the new garden – I just hope our weather decides to cooperate soon.
I’m starting a new garden bed this year, and it is in an area where our lawn is typically very lush. I was going to do a lasagna-style (layered) garden, but I don’t have enough dirt for the top layer. The garden is going to be 10×30 feet in size. So in mid April I decided to try to cover the grass to kill it, which would make tilling it a lot easier, and prevent me from having to dig up all that grass.
I marked the corners of the bed, and then used what I had on hand – large cardboard pieces, plastic tarps, and even a big sheet of metal. I placed rocks and pieces of wood on top to hold everything down.
Here is what it looked like with all the supposedly-grass-killing coverings:
I uncovered it all today because I’d like to start getting it ready – I have plants waiting to go in. I could tell over the last month that there were areas I’d still have to pull grass out from. I found out today that the plastic tarps acted more as a greenhouse for the grass than as a grass killer. The cardboard was the best thing – those areas are almost bare – the soil will be a lot easier to till. The metal sheet worked well also. Sheets of plywood or particle board would work as well – I found this out by accident when we left some scraps out a few weeks ago in an area where we didn’t want the grass killed.
I’m not going to be doing any tilling for a couple days, so I took the cardboard pieces and placed them over the still-very-grassy areas, in an effort to at least keep the grass from getting any bigger in those spots. Here is my bed now:
Once I get it all tilled, I will be fencing it in, and then planting! I think this little guy is excited too:
I’m working on getting the garden beds ready for this year’s plantings. Tonight after work, I wanted to start working on my old garden bed from last year, which is at the back of our house. I’ve been eying it lately, realizing I’d have some work to do to get it ready. My parents used it for several years, and then we planted in it last year, so the soil is ok, but not wonderful. I dug it a little bigger last year – it’s now about 25×6′ in most of the garden – there is a spot that is still grassy that I will tackle in the next few days. The part closest to the house is very sandy, and as you get further away it’s very clay soil with lots of rocks. I added some amendments last year – newer soil, some leaves, grass clippings, but it will probably take a few years of amending it to get it really nice.
It was pretty dry here the last few weeks, so the soil was very compacted. We got some good rain the last couple of days so I thought tonight would be a good night to try to till it, because it would be softer – I do not have a rototiller that works, so I have to do it by hand. With my trusty helper (my son Daniel) by my side, we chopped up some of the top layer of soil. My plan was to pull the weeds that were setting up in there, move the top few inches of soil, and bury some compost into it. Our compost isn’t fully composted yet, but I have a good mix of old chicken bedding/poop and leaves sitting on the compost pile that I decided to use.
Working in sections, I would move the soil we’d broken up and dump in a wheel barrow full of compost material, and then bury it. I also tried to move the sand/clay portions of dirt around so it’s more mixed together. Here is the finished section we did tonight – there’s still quite a bit of work to do since we only had time for about a 6-8 foot section tonight, but it goes pretty fast once you get the dirt broken up. It’s a lot of shoveling. I think the bed will work nicely though. I have some Kale seedlings that I need to get planted soon.
I’ve been busy getting ready for my summer garden. I have an elaborate plan for this year, and I’m starting pretty much all of this year’s plants from seed. I’m working with a staggered-out planting schedule – I started some seeds in early April, and yesterday I planted my Early-May seeds.
I had a lot of success so far with my seedlings from April. Most things did well, but I did have a couple of things not even sprout. I started some aster seeds, and none of them sprouted – I’m not sure why, except maybe my seeds were bad. They were a leftover packet from last year. I’ve usually had great success with asters, they are one of my favorite garden flowers. I love their little colorful puffballs. I usually start too many seeds on purpose, just because sometimes you get some that don’t sprout – i.e. I planted 6 tomato seeds but really want 4 plants. My tomatoes are growing well, I planted three different kinds, I ended up with 5 plants of two kinds, and six plants of the other. Most of the April seedlings are now replanted into pots – they got too big for their original peat pellets.
I only have one spot to start seeds inside, a table in a south-facing window that’s about 5 feet x 2 feet, with a grow light hanging overhead. I needed that whole space for this new Early May batch. Which meant that I had to figure out what to do with my older seedlings. I can’t put them outside yet. But I do have another grow light. I devised a plan: To hang the extra grow light underneath the table, and put the older potted seedlings below that. Here is my new setup:
I also have a cat that likes to eat plants – I found this out while potting some of these up – he came up and started chowing down on some. We have some extra window screens in our bedroom that aren’t in the windows currently, so I used them to block his access:
In the pictures, the sheets of paper hanging down below the seed trays on the table are my charts of seeds in the trays – otherwise I could end up lost with mystery plants. Some things I would recognize, but I’m trying a lot of new plants this year, so I need a map.
Here is the whole setup:
I have a few small seedlings that are still small enough for their peat pellets, so they are sharing the far left tray with some new seeds – about half the tray is seedlings, half is seeds.
Here are some of my little guys close up:
I love plants, they are a ton of fun to grow. I just hope that nobody gets too big before I can get them outside – their beds won’t be ready till probably the end of May. Plus it may be too cold before then – my plan is to get them outside over Memorial day weekend. We’ll see how the weather is. I got a mini pop-up greenhouse I can put them in later this month. I plan to harden them off out in that before actually putting them all in the ground.
Winter has seemed pretty long, even though we are having a relatively mild winter this year, here in the U.P. We have a lot of snow, although definitely not as much as last year, and it doesn’t seem like we have as much as I remember us getting when growing up here. The temps are still pretty harsh, but at least we get breaks in between the REALLY cold days (if you can call 15-20 degrees above zero a break – I do). This is always the time of year that everyone is tired of winter and just ready for it to be over. Just like most gardeners, I have been busy planning my garden for this spring.
I went all out with my planning for this year. In the past I usually have not been as organized – I usually plan some, but get a lot of stuff spontaneously later in the spring. I’m mostly used to gardening down in lower Michigan, but the Upper Peninsula has a shorter growing season. Our winters can be 6-8 months long (I have actually heard of snow in July here, although I don’t remember ever seeing it). I have grand plans of canning a lot of food for next winter, so I want to have everything ready, and make sure I have enough time to harvest everything – and have it all grow in time to be harvested. I learned a few things about this the hard way last year – I put in Tomatillos in July (they were just over pea sized by the time everything else was dying for the fall). I had a pumpkin plant that only produced one very small pumpkin, because they need 110 days – I just don’t have that long here. My tomatoes would not ripen on the vine – I ended up bringing them in and ripening them in a sunny window. (My mom said something about cutting the suckers off the plants to ripen them, which I’ve never had to do – the tomatoes I was growing didn’t seem to have these “suckers” that I could find).
I went through my box of seed packets that I already had – some were leftover from previous years, and some were new “on sale” seeds I bought last fall. I figured out what I wanted to grow from those, and I looked online to see how long different kinds of seeds can last. Depending on the plant, seeds can be viable anywhere from 2 to 5 years. I actually had some really old packets from 2007/2008 – those got tossed. I ended up with a decent assortment of vegetables and flowers, but there were things I wanted to try this year that I needed new seeds for. So I got to ordering.
Last summer I got a nice catalog from a company called Horizon Herbs, and their catalog had lots of really good information about their seeds and a good variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers. So that is where I ordered my new seeds. They had some different “Ancient Grains” seeds, so I am going to try to grow Amaranth this year – it’s supposed to be good cooked up as an oatmeal kind of thing, and for bread. And I figure if we don’t end up liking it, the chickens probably will. I also found out that artichokes can grow as an annual, so I’m going to try to grow some – I don’t know how big the artichokes will actually be, but it’s worth a try.
I was careful when picking seeds out, from both my old supply and the new order, to make sure they are shorter maturing varieties. I have some white corn seeds that are 90 days, and I found one (yellow corn) from Horizon that needs 70 days (called Fisher’s Earliest).
I had made a rudimentary drawing before my order, but then because of some things not being available, and some changes to what I decided to grow, I redrew it. The new drawing actually plans for how big everything will get, and also has space so that we can actually walk between plants. (My son got mad at me last year trying to get around in our garden because it was a jungle without actual pathways between plants. He’d get trapped behind tomatoes trying to get to the zucchini).
The plan above is actually only one bed – a new one I’m planning. We built a fenced-in area for our dogs last year, and this will go next to it, utilizing one wall of fencing from the dogs’ area. I didn’t have space to draw it as one big 10×30 grid, so the drawing is split in half, side by side. I drew it on graph paper, making each square foot of the garden = 4 graph paper squares (so I could actually write names of plants in). I have another bed that will have acorn squash and watermelon, and onions, and some other stuff.
I also ended up ordering a few fruit plants for this year – raspberries and strawberries and elderberries – I’d like to try to make elderberry wine.
One other thing about gardening where I live is that I definitely need to fence it in. We have deer that will hop anything less than an 8 foot fence, I’ve been told. My garden last year was left alone by animals though, even though my fencing was pretty crude – I only had a 4 foot fence and it was made of old fence scraps I found around the yard (we didn’t have money at the time to buy new fencing). I found some snakes and toads in there (they helped me with bugs), but I never saw evidence of rabbits or deer. For this year we have some leftover 5 foot fencing (from making the dog fence in the fall) that I believe will be enough to close in the new garden bed – I’m hoping the fact that my dogs run around a lot in their enclosure, actually next to both gardens, will help to deter deer from jumping in.
Now I just have to wait for all my new seeds, and spring to get here!
My tiny u.p. farm 