Urban Farmer

Well, it's starting to look like I will be an urban farmer.  I am still ironing out details, but I think I may have found more growing space.  It's closer than the community garden plot, which is nice. It's even on the way to the community garden plot, (we'll have to see if that's a good thing or not.)
I was relieved not to have to resort to flyers, or begging random strangers with sunny lawns. All I did was ask various friends that I knew had spots they were tired of mowing. I just explained that I was looking for more gardening space for organic veggies and waited to see if anyone would bite. One did! I will have to share the space with said friend's Mother-in-Law, who apparently was also interested in his sunny patch of lawn.  She was going to make him help her put it into garden, so I think he was relieved to be able to pass the project to me. :-D Hopefully she has realistic expectations about what we can grow. And hopefully our gardening styles mesh well. It almost sounds like she's a very inexperienced gardener, she sounded relieved that I would help site the garden and get it tilled. We'll see how things look next week when we go out to pound stakes and measure. But I'm thinking I'll get 200-300 feet squared of new growing space. For reference, I have roughly 300 ft^2 in my front yard I plant, plus various perennials and herbs grown in flower beds around the house. And I usually have ~300 ft^2 in the community garden I can plant. 
We had our first board meeting last week for the community garden. I re-read the rules, and was surprised to find that the ban on selling produce that I thought I remembered, was NOT there. I guess we just talked about it, but decided against it. So, that means I can use my community garden space for this endeavor.   This will hopefully use that space a little better.  I have been using it to put extras from my main plantings in the front yard.  (The last half of the seed packet in many cases, planted a week or so after the main planting.)  That works sometimes, but often the community garden spot is a bit too shady to grow the same types of things that I'm growing in the front lawn.  So, if I treat it as space for the market growing, I can focus on growing just the few crops that will really do well in that slightly shady space, and do staggered plantings of those crops and hopefully get some good results.
All added together I'm going to be farming less than 1/16th an acre. :-D But, it's a start.
I went and visited with one of the LeMars Market sellers yesterday evening.  Sue is originally from Korea and married an American guy from LeMars. She's been growing veggies in her backyard for the past 15 years and selling at the market. I think she probably grows on less than a 1/16th an acre, I've seen her backyard. I know she focuses on fewer veggies than I do, she really likes her cucumbers and tomatoes and peppers. I have noticed though that the past year or two she hasn't sold out of those items any week. She just has so much of those 3 things, that there's sadly not enough demand for. We were talking about who she thinks will be at the Market this year, and her thoughts mirrored my own, she thought it quite likely that she and one other gal would be the only ones there. She was excited to hear I was going to try to sell.  *whew*  Part of me was a little worried that I would be seen as an interloper, stealing customers with my hobby farming.  It was a relief that she was excited to have another potential seller.

The snow is finally melting. Rowen and I were outside Weds night planting spinach and lettuce in the larger cold frame. I'm not 100% satisfied with the new rebuilt spot for that frame, so I'm watching it closely this spring. I may have to rebuild it. I'm glad those seeds are out there, we're supposed to hit upper 50's today.
I have tomato and pepper seeds planted in cells on a heat mat inside. And the rest of my seeds on the kitchen table, eagerly awaiting their time in the garden.
I can't wait!
-Jennie

Fall harvests

I'm a pumpkin carving master.

We have a few hardy crops in the ground that are continuing to produce tasty fresh food.
The pumpkins of course have been a fun harvest.  They are indeed edible, I found that really the texture is the only thing that's different between my random pumpkins and the nice "pie pumpkin" I got from the store.  And texture can be amended with judicious applications of the immersion blender.  So, two thumbs up for the random pumpkin experiment.  We got a few carving pumpkins out of the deal and more pumpkins than we'll be able to eat.  They are sitting on the porch looking festive right now.  Snow is forecasted for next week though, so I need to bring them in if we intend to try and eat any this winter.

Dave is a pumpkin pie master.

I tried something last night that was pretty tasty. I roasted the usual sweet potatoes for Rowen, with some of the pumpkin flesh I had saved from carving, and then mashed them together with the usual butter/milk/spices.  Pretty good.  Hard to tell that it was sweet potatoes and pumpkin mixed together. Considering the lack of sweet potatoes to be found this fall, that will help stretch them a little bit.  On a related note, I'll be figuring out how to grow sweet potatoes this winter. :-D

The first of three pumpkin harvests.

The swiss chard is still doing fine, nights below freezing don't bother it much.  It's the brightest green you can imagine, my community garden folks are jealous, I can tell.  They're envious of my tasty greens as they hoe under their sad bedraggled tomato vines. :-D

The turnips are still going. I have those buffered with piles of leaves and covered with row cover, just to help keep the ground from freezing around them.  Now, if I could just find a way of cooking/preserving them that the boys like.  One of my friends tried a turnip pickle that turned out ok...

Rowen and I picked the last of the carrots yesterday.  He was eating them dirt and all, before we even left the garden.  He usually doesn't like carrots, so that was a win.  Yay for frost sweetened carrots.We only pulled a half a pound or so out, but that's not bad considering the complete lack of attention I gave these things.  I do that every year.  Carrots take sooo long to germinate, and then they are hard to keep alive, and then they grow sooooo slowly, that I'm always sure they're going to kick the bucket before making any roots, so I give up on them. Then along comes November and I'm digging up the tastiest carrots I've ever eaten, and wondering why I didn't try just a little harder in July to get the carrot bed weeded and watered.

Kohlrabi is also still producing.  They definitely slow down once we get past fall equinox, but they withstand quite a bit of cold without much fuss from me. Plus, they look like alien saucers, which I love.

I found a bit of oregano under the leaves in the summer herb patch, doing well enough that I harvested a handful and put it in some water in the kitchen.  We ate some on the roasted veggies last night. Mmmm fresh herbs in November. Not too shabby.

Still to come: 3 small heads of purple cabbage, that I'm giving every last day I can before harvesting them.  They were the heads buried under the pumpkin vines. They are still alive because I made a bridge for the vines to climb, but they were definitely slowed because of the shade.  I'm more likely to eat them in Nov than I was in July when the other cabbages matured, so it's a good thing I think.

Family=Family++

For my code-impaired readers, the title means basically Add 1 to Family.   :-D

I'm happy to announce that Dave and I are expecting a little podling around May 20th.  I'm happy to have a warm little proto-human nestled inside for the long cold winter ahead. And I'm happy that most of the ice and snow will be gone when I hit the huge-and-clumsy stage at 8+ months.   It'll mean another year of spring planting with nursling in tow, and winter garden planning to include another baby's worth of peas and squash. Love it. :-)

We had our first frost yesterday, so the gardening heyday is definitely done.  I've got my blankets and such out, trying to extend the season, Rowen helped me wrap the tomatoes up.  It kept them from freezing, but they are definitely stressed, I can see signs of blight and I just don't know if all the green tomatoes will ripen or not.

The squash vines are slowly dieing, revealing their fruit goodness. I think I'll have a few butternuts and a dozen or so little green acorns and 6 at least pumpkins.  Whether they are all edible, remains to be seen, since most of those are volunteers.

The squash has been a fun experiment

We have large quantities of goodness stashed away in jars. Green beans did really well this year, as did the herbs and onions and garlic.  Potatoes did well enough, and I might get one more head of cabbage before the end of the year.   So, while I'm not ready to see it end for the  year, I am happy with the bounty we got for our efforts.

Rowen helping pick the green beans

Kindergardens - The edges of the day

Dawn, and dusk. Something about those times creates magic in the garden. Dawn still retains some of the darkness and mystery of night. Fog and mist twine around the growing produce, especially here in zone 4 as we ease into chilly September. There's so much promise to the day, what will be new? A new tomato? A new squash blossom?
Dusk brings an easing of the day's heat. Dew gathers as the coolness of night spreads. The fading sunlight and the twinkling of the first stars. Yea, there's definitely something about the edges of the day.

August has been a productive garden month. We've had a steller run of the bush green beans and purple beans. I've got the first pumpkin, and we've harvested at least a dozen summer squash. Potatoes and onions and garlic are nestled in their storage locations. Rows of jars are full of August bounty. Little bits of summer, ready for the long winter ahead.

Rowen quickly learned the joys of green bean picking. After he tired of plucking at random parts of the patch, he decided to help move the piles of beans from one place to a "better" place. Then he decided that the green beans and the purple beans should be in different piles. lol
He's also really intrigued by the watering process. Mostly I think he just likes to play in the water, but often he'll fill the can up and lug it around and water plants that interest him. It doesn't seem to be plants that necessarily need water, one time he spent 5 minutes watering one especially large squash leaf.


We have some amazing volunteer squash that have literally taken over the yard this month. (And the tree, and the garden and the compost pile....) Behold, the elusive tree squash. A delicacy, or so I'm hoping.

Stay tuned for an exciting child related announcement later this week. :-)

Little Man, Big World

Another Kindergarden post. If you want in on the fun, hop over to Inadvertent Farmer.

I let Rowen have the camera this past week. At just over 2 years old, he's not real good with keeping steady while pushing the button. Plus, he kept crawling into the bike trailer, instead of clicking away in the garden. Here's the view from inside his trailer, looking up at my legs. lol

After that, we settled for a walking tour of the beds around the house, and I let him point at what we should take pictures of. That worked a little better. :-D We have some really pretty lilies open right now. Next to lilacs, lilies are my favorite. These guys don't have as much sun as they'd prefer to have. So, they are leaning over and a little leggy. Still really pretty though.

We saw a big moth on our large ash tree. Can you spot him? I hesitantly identified him as a catocala. If someone thinks otherwise, let me know! :-)We had a playdate Weds with Sue (the gal from the community garden) and her grandson who is 4. Rowen enjoyed having another small person around. We all sat outside and let the kids play in the wading pool. Sue, of course, would love to see us join her church and dropped hints whenever she could politely fit it in the conversation. :-D I, of course, was frazzled from a long day of remote startup support with a plant in Ohio, and was in no mood to be preached at. She never took it that far, and even said at one point how, "unique" she finds our family to be. lol But, we enjoyed the visit anyway, and the kiddo's sure loved that pool. And so, the collaboration continues, politely and at time tentatively, but it's worth it to see that garden full of veggies for people in my community. Does anyone else find that kids can ease socially awkward situations?

Kindergarden - What's new?

What's new in my garden this summer? The green onions were new this year. The spring round of them is done now, to much success. I am going to try a fall round, which will be planted in another couple of weeks. The other new thing is the amount of vine crops I'm trying to grow this year. In the past I have only had the room for a couple vines of squash goodness. This year, due to lawn space and the community garden plot I have all of the following planted.
Black Beauty Zucchini
Gold Zucchini
Parade Cucumbers
Butternut Squash
In addition to those varieties, I have a couple of vines sprouting from the compost pile, where several acorn squashes met a moldy end over the winter. So, I'm hopeful that I'll get some locally adapted acorn squashes from those.

Rowen's interest continues to wax and wane. I can usually get him interested for a few minutes if there's something related to bugs, mud, or piles of things. :-D He did pull a few leaves off a weed last week, as his contribution to the weeding task.

I wish veggies made noises. :-D Rowen is learning words right now, and is fascinated by the noises that other things make. I'm sure if veggies went, "Ding" or "Woooo wooo" he would be much more excited by them. The last few thunderstorms have been gold mines for noises that need names and repeated mimicry. :-D Thankfully they've barely made any damage in the garden. We had a beautiful lily get knocked down last night, and some branches from our big tree. Storms like that remind me of yet another positive benefits of root crops, they are unperturbed by wind.

If you are wondering about the Kindergarden blogging, check out Inadvertent Gardener for the details.

Summer Solstice - 2011

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. It marks the point of the year with the longest day length. For gardeners, this means anything planted after that day will have less sunlight every day. So, I try to have everything in before the solstice, and then I shift into harvest/weed mode for a month or so until it's time to plant for fall/winter.

This spring has been pretty good, in spite of the wind and rain I've got everything in that I needed to get in, and a few extras.

Rowen helped me plant the community garden plot. (And by help I mean he napped for the first hour, then blew some bubbles, and then followed me around like a little duckling making his quack quack noise.) We put straw around the squash hills, which have sprouted and grown real leaves. We put seeds in for some more purple green beans, (because you can never have too many) kohlrabi, (sorry dear, I couldn't resist) two different basils, a red and a green, and some swiss chard. We also rescued some sad looking onion transplants and put them in the ground, I don't know if they'll make it, but I'm not worried about it either way. While we were there we met our garden plot neighbor, Ms Linda. She was very nice.

The home garden is also bursting at the seams with freshly planted warm weather crops and lush well grown cool weather crops. Garlic scapes were harvested this past weekend. Bulb production is looking good. Onions are bulbing nicely too. Cabbages have started to head. Lettuces are sending up seed stalks. Peas are covered in pea pods, but due to the herbicide spray from last year, I'm hesitant to eat them. I'll likely save them all for seed. Beans are looking good and are about to flower, as are potatoes. I got 10 tomato plants planted, with organic egg shells crumbled into each hole to stave off blossom end rot. (I'm hearing reports of blight in the NE again, keep an eye on tomatoes again this year.) I also got three pepper plants in and a few herbs. :-) We should be good on tomatoes and peppers, if they produce well. *cross fingers* Rowen wasn't able to help with the tomato planting as the mosquitoes were about to carry me away, and it was decided he should stay inside with Dave. They both helped slather me with anti-itch creme as soon as I was done. Such nice boys.

Speaking of the men-folk. Rowen did get to help with the card we made for Father's Day. I put some cut out letters in a ziplock with a few dabs of paint and let Rowen squish it all around. (I think there was some hammering involved too.) Once a nice tie-dye look had been achieved on the letters I took them out and let them dry. We then colored a nice background on a construction paper card and I glued the letters onto that. :-) Yay crafts!

Happy Solstice everyone, enjoy summer!

Growin' Rowen

:-) I amuse myself with titles for these posts sometimes. :-)

The garden is coming along nicely. Dave and I are quickly ramping up our salad eating to keep up with the lettuce, spinach and green onions that are in full production. Speaking of, the green onions are a BIG success. They are so sweet and good, and haven't required any additional work on my part. The spacing seems right, they aren't looking too crowded, and I was able to pull out individual green onions without a whole row coming up. I was aiming for about an inch between them in the rows, and a couple of inches between rows. Tight spacing means we have a LOT of green onions, for a very small outlay of space. I will definitely be doing this again. I might even try it this fall if my leftover sets are still good.Above is what the garlic looked like a week ago, it's a bit more bedraggled looking now, as the wind has been gusting above 20mph almost every day since I took this picture. Garlic is pretty sturdy though, so I'm trusting it to handle the abuse.

Rowen has been learning the finer points of "stay on the path," a tough request when his crazy Momma only leaves about 8 inches for said path, then meanders it around corners to better accommodate the plants instead of the walker. :-D He's getting pretty good at it though.

The potatoes have sprouted, most of them. Yay! I'm anxiously waiting for signs of life from the middle row, but the front and back rows are mostly - partially up, so I'm hopeful that I didn't kill them all by putting them in before the last snow.

The beans have sprouted, including some of the runner beans that Rowen "helped" plant. The runner beans are entirely for the local pollinators. I'm rehabilitating some areas of the backyard from the damage the last owner left. The landlady didn't like the natural methods I was employing last year. (i.e. weeds, the neighbors complained, there was poison involved, it wasn't a good day.) So, this year I've planted tons of peas and beans in those places and I'm hoping that a bit of compost and some healthy growing things, will help them along. Next year, (if this year goes well) I'll think about planting food for us in those spots.

The cabbages are filling out nicely. We'll have 7 good sized plants this year, which makes me happy. True to my word, I gave them their own bed, with lots of space and light, so they'll hopefully do better than last year. I failed again at growing them from seed. All my little cabbage babies died in the trays. Oh well, there's always next year.

I have cucumber and black zuchinni seeds sprouted in hills on the East side of the garden. As well as a whole host of squash babies sprouting in the compost pile. :-D I may let a few of the volunteers there live, if only out of curiosity. Even though Dave might kill me. :-D

Right now Rowen doesn't seem to be interested in the the sprouted plant babies. I'm not sure he comprehends that those tiny green leaves are from the seeds that he helped put in the ground. It's a tough concept, and 2 is probably a bit early for it. So, we'll keep trying. Right now I mostly try to keep him from walking on them. He is very interested in tools. He sees me and Dave use tools, and we have a set of small plastic ones that he can use, but he totally knows the difference and it's increasingly hard to get him interested in the small plastic ones, when he knows that he wants the big serious ones. To this end, I'll usually let him help with the hoeing, which usually consists of me helping to hold the weight of it, while he furiously works to make it go up and down. He also gets to help push the mower over shorter grass, again with me or Dave doing most of the work. (It's a push-reel mower, don't call DHS on us.) Usually a few minutes of this and he'll decide he's helped enough and will let us take control back. I sometime have to catch myself, when I start to get irritated with the delays and interruptions, and I have to remind myself that this is early training and NOT a waste of my time. In ten years no one will remember if I got the side lawn totally mowed on Friday night, but Rowen will remember getting to help with the mowing, and it'll make transitioning that chore to his responsibility a bit easier.

Kindergardens!

The Inadvertent Farmer is sponsoring another year of Kindergardens! The basic premise is to encourage youth to get in the garden, be it planning, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting or eating. :-D We do a lot of those things, and Rowen loves to be involved with all of it.

He's 2 now, and helps more and more every day. He's slowly learning how to stay on the path. He's a pro at watering. And loves helping to move piles of things into other piles of things. Sometimes those piles of things are of the same type, sometimes not. :-D

The other member of our family is my hubby Dave. He likes the food that comes out of the garden, but isn't as heavily involved in the day-to-day operations. Partly because I like it so much, and he knows it's my stress relief , as well as something I really enjoy doing with Rowen. He does heroically take over when I'm out of town for work travel. That always happens at least once a summer, if not more, so he keeps up to date with what's going in and what's coming out and always does a great job of stepping up to help out.

This will be my 9th year gardening my own plots, so I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about what's going on and what to expect. I love helping other gardeners, so if you're new here or new to the garden thing, feel free to hit me up for advice. I am in zone 4, so my knowledge does tend to lean towards short season problems and tricks, and I know less about heat/drought problems. But, some advice is universal.

This year we'll be gardening the main plot in the front yard. It's roughly 8 feet x 16 feet I think. We also have small gardens on the South and East sides of the house, and one on the South side of the shed. The smaller gardens have more of the flowers and perennials in them. I also keep a multitude of containers in production. Flowers, herbs, greens, veggies, whatever strikes my fancy and has a root system amiable to the container size I have available.

We don't have much that's specifically for Rowen to garden, he has a few pots that he can play with, and some tools, but usually he just helps with whatever I'm doing. He loves to help hoe and loves to steal my spade. :-D Mommy's tools are always cooler than his tools.

Join us for this year's Kindergarden blogroll. If nothing else you can get a weekly dose of cute kids outside.