Time to begin again

Oh gosh, it's been a long time since I last wrote.

I wish I had something good to report regarding my veggie beds.  Through the end of August I got maybe a dozen tomatoes total, mostly due to lack of attention.  Two part time jobs and not of enough watering was too much for them to overcome. 

This is what I have now.

 

We had a hard freeze (26°) the week before Christmas and all the tomato plants froze.  There were actually 6-7 small tomatoes (about the size of Ping-Pong balls) on one plant that I forgot to pick.  Interesting that the Bermuda grass didn't freeze.

There was an okra plant in that white pot that I got about a dozen pods from.  I had no idea you could get over 60 seeds from one pod.  In the orange pot by the okra was my lone corn stalk from which I got one ear of corn.  It was only half developed but I saved the kernels. The black pot with the white stick had my bitter melon vine which produced three 'melons'.  I chop some of the melon (it looks like a very warty cucumber) and add it to my scrambled eggs along with some chopped sweet onion.  Yum!

On a positive note, the two little avocado trees that I had in pots seemed to have had no problem with the cold.  They were next to the brick planter on the front of the house which may have helped.  I have seven more avocado seeds that have just sprouted roots and stems - I'll pot those up next month, once they get a little bigger.

Lastly, in the white pot is a passion vine that my grandson planted.  There's still a little life in it since the freeze.  The large orange pot has the moringa tree sucker which sprouted up this year after the main trunk died.  The sucker froze. The small brown pot had a lantana plant that also froze.  The gray half-barrel has my blackberry vine and it did great.

I haven't written a New Year's Resolution list in a long while, but this year I think I should work on my short term goals list, specifically the gardening part.  It sure would make me feel better about raising most of my food once I'm on my little homestead if I could have some success now.  I did ok in 2015 with those indeterminate tomatoes and the cucumbers but I wasn't working at all back then. So, last month I let go one of the part time jobs and hopefully that will give me more time to dedicate to my gardens.  I won't have any outside jobs once I'm on my homestead, so I'll have no excuse then.

Until my next post, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.

TOMATO GARDEN UPDATE

When I purchased the tomato cages several weeks ago and installed them in the tomato garden, they looked huge.  The little tomato plants were only about 18 inches tall and looked swallowed up by the 52" cage.  My neighbor also commented that he thought the cages looked big.  

Apparently not.  I've got lots of little flowers, and since I added bone meal, I hope to get lots of tomatoes! 

 

On another note, I finally got around to starting a dozen or so older onion sets three weeks ago but something got into the pots a couple nights later and dug them all out.  I'm guessing it was  mamma raccoon and her three little ones.  They also dug out a few of my aloe plants that I had divided up.   I was able to salvage the aloe, but not the onions.  So...I've started onion seeds.  Plus some green beans, black eyed peas and butter beans.  I haven't had the best luck with my seed starting.  I thought that last group would do better since I moved my seed starting operation to the back yard.  I set up a piece of plywood on a couple sawhorses under the pecan tree and organized my pots and bags of soil beneath them.  I could see them from my kitchen window.  But I guess not, so I've moved my seed starting back to the driveway just in front of the house under a tree.  I've had 5-6 pots on top of a low platform I had first set up for seed starting and the raccoons have left them alone so far.  Assuming the onions sprout, as soon as they are a couple inches high, I'll cut out the bottom of the little pots and slide the whole thing into the bed in the back yard (the one that had the run-away tomatoes last summer).  This bed gets sun from about 11am through 5pm, so I'm hoping it won't be too hot.  Our forecast for this next week is near 100 degrees all week, and this is just the first half of July.  How strange would it look to have a shade cloth over it...

Update: I have a tomato!!! I believe it is a Rutgers, it's just about an inch in diameter right now.  YEA!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have fallen behind on adding posts to my blog - my two part time jobs have kept me really busy.  I will try to get back to posting something at least once a week.  Until then, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.

 

Yum, Smells Good!
 
I have an idea for a couple new perfume scents.

I check on my tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum) every day ("Patience" is not my middle name) and as I brush against the leaves or gently move them back inside their cages, I get a wonderful aroma wafting up to me.  And every time I think to myself  'there should be a perfume with this scent". 

The second perfume would be from basil flowers (Ocimum basilicum), a rather obvious one.  About 15 years ago I worked at a history museum and we put in a vegetable garden appropriate to the 1800s log house on the property.  We had basil plants with beautiful little flowers on the stem ends.  I would pinch them off to encourage the plant to become more bushy and rather than throw away the pretty flowers I brought them in to my office and put them in a little bowl on my desk.  The aroma from them was absolutely delicious! 

I'd call the tomato leaf perfume SolaLyco, and the basil flower perfume OciMumba.  So now I just need to find out if Channel or Hermés would be interested in developing them...

I'll have more on my tomato plants in my next post.

Until then, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.

Start Your Seeds, Part Deux

Yes, I'm starting seeds again.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I had started all my seeds at the same time, and fortunately not all of them germinated.  Nine tomatoes and two cucumbers sprouted and have been installed in their new bed, along with several nasturtiums.  There are five little kale plants in pots just inside the fence waiting for the 'leafy' bed to be prepared.

I had tons of interruptions/distractions right after I cleared the grass and laid the paper and edging blocks down.  And during that time we had several hail storms and lots of rain.  The hail tore holes in the paper and the rain spurred the grass to grow ferociously.  As a result I had to completely redo both beds.  Yeah, move the edging stones, pull up the remaining shredded paper, weed-eat the grass down to the nubs again, and lay new paper and replace the stones.  It took me all day to repair the one bed due to the heat and humidity, but it's done, and lookin' good! 

 

The 'leafy' bed is ready for soil, and only took a half-day to repair.  Of course, there is a specific order for the next steps for this bed: soil goes in, seedlings transplanted, then fencing goes up - all on the same day.  If I put the soil in now I'd need to put the fencing up or my kitties will think I have just built them the most wonderful litter box ever.  But with the fence already up I'd end up stepping in the new soil and compacting it when it came time to plant the seedling; so I'll wait for the seedlings to be ready before moving forward on this bed.  I'm thinking about two weeks from now.  I've started iceberg lettuce, red romaine, and more kale for this bed.  I also started some rosemary, basil, and cilantro, and poblano peppers, bell peppers, chicory, and birdhouse gourds.  I'll put the peppers in with the tomatoes when they're ready to transplant and the rest will go in the leafy bed.

 

 

UPDATE:  Kale sprouting!  Just a few days after I wrote this post and before I could get it posted, some of the kale seeds have sprouted!  Nature is amazing!

I'm going shopping for tomato cages and trellises today. Should be fun!

 

Until next time, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.



 



Progress Is Good

I started this Blog as a way to record my progress toward living on my own little homestead.  My main goal to own land and live out in the country hasn't changed, I am however taking a slightly different route than originally planned.  And until I am able to purchase any land, it makes good sense to practice homesteading where I am. 

In one of my first posts "First Steps" I mentioned a list of skills I wanted to tackle while I was still working.  These included purchasing a pressure canner and learning to can vegetables, fruits, and meats, begin to bake my own bread and make butter, cheese, and yogurt, and to put a small garden in my back yard.  I have the pressure canner now, plus a water bath canner and a dehydrator and have canned pinto beans, water bathed a dozen different types of jams and jellies, and dehydrated a ton of apple slices that my son and grandson promptly consumed.  I still need to practice making breads and cheeses from scratch. 

I put the small garden in the back yard in 2013, that's the one I resurrected last summer and learned all about tomatoes with.  It had cabbages over the winter, and I'm preparing it for 'root' crops for this year.  And of course I have the new beds in the front yard, too.

Also on the list is to make Mead (a honey wine), learn first aid, and begin saving seeds.  I saved some of the tomato seeds from last summer - (an interesting process for another post) - but those tomatoes were hybrids so I'm not sure what I'll get if I plant them.  When I buy seeds I make a point to purchase only heirloom seeds, however last year's tomato plants were gifted to me.  I marked the packet with the saved seeds 'hybrid' but since I have heirloom tomatoes I can save from in my spring/summer garden, I doubt the hybrid seeds will ever be used. 

I feel I've made some progress toward my goal and although I've had to change my route a little, I know where I want to be, and I'll get there, eventually.  (I suppose I should add 'learn patience' to my list!)  And I'm still reading everything I can find on homesteading, farming, gardening, and rural life. 

 

Until next time, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Seeds!

The thought of finally starting my seeds was intoxicating.  The more I thought about it, the more excited I got, and the faster reason went out the window.  I started all of my seeds at the same time.....the tomatoes with a 6-8 day germination time, the cucumbers with a 4-6 day germination time, and lettuce, needing only 2-3 days to germinate.

I used a 72-cell tray and had grow lights overhead.  I suppose it was fortunate that not all of the seeds germinated.  My Rutgers and Burbank tomatoes (both determinates) sprouted, as did the cucumbers and kale.  A few of the lettuces sprouted, but had keeled over within 3 days.  Suffice to say I will be starting more seeds in the next weeks.  Most of my seed packets have germination times on them, but not all do.  For those that don't, I should have researched.  I've made a list of the seeds I need to re-start, and each one's time-to-germinate.  When I start them I'll do it based on longest to shortest. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please note I'm not complaining since I didn't have the beds ready for them to go into anyway.  My front yard gets lots of sun needed for a veggie garden so that's where I'm putting them.  I have a beautiful Mexican Olive tree in a small bed on one side of the yard and decided to extend that bed all the way across the yard to the driveway.

 

 

 

 

I used my weed-eater to outline the beds, then went over the entire area with it cutting the grass down to the nubs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, I laid down kraft paper to block the grass and prevent it from growing back, then set the edging stones around it.

I bought the edging stones from a Craigslist ad and got the flagstone from a friend who had them leftover from a project he did.  The beds are 9'x7' and 9'x9' interior dimensions.  I have wooden stakes that I'll paint to match the house; they'll support the chicken wire fence I'll need to put up to keep my kitties out. 

 

 

Next post hopefully will have seedlings in the bed.

Till then, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.

 

Hope Springs Eternal for my Spring Garden

Because I am an eternal optimist, I have great hopes for my spring garden.  I expect to harvest a lot of veggies but I also expect to learn a lot.  Last year's gardening venture taught me about tomatoes.  I also had a small bed of sweet potatoes which, as it turned out, reaped more learning than sweet potatoes.  But I am not discouraged.  As long as I learn something, it's not a complete failure.  What I learned about the sweet potatoes is that...uh...they need fertilizer.  This year I'll have four beds full of veggies to learn from. 

And speaking of learning, some of my reading over the past couple months has covered crop rotation.  To keep it simple, you don't plant the same vegetables in the same bed from one year to the next.  The diseases and pests that liked your tomatoes last year, for instance, will still be there waiting for your new tomato plants this year.  So you'll want to plant something from a different plant 'family' in that bed instead, and plant your tomatoes in another bed.  Also, planting the same vegetable in the same bed year after year will deplete the soil of the nutrients that that vegetable needs, resulting in lower yields.  Finally, moving your vegetables from one bed to another each year will benefit them even more if  you move them in a specific order.  Leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, spinach and corn, need nitrogen. Planting them in the bed where your peas and beans grew last season will give them the nutrients they need without your having to amend the soil, since legumes 'fix' or leave nitrogen in the soil.

Subsequently, to be sure I was putting the right veggies together, and to be sure I rotated them in the right order, I needed to identify the different families into which plants are grouped and the significance of each.   My research turned up more than a dozen 'family' charts and lists with plant groups numbering as few as four to as many as nine.  However some of the groups didn't agree with each other.  One of the 'four family group' charts didn't include leafy vegetables; another had the Legumes going into the bed after the  Brassicas (leafy crops).  After sorting through them, I came to the conclusion that many if not all of these crop rotation/family group charts were drawn specifically for it's author's garden/farm.  Thus, I've created my own also.  With my limited space I'll use the smaller group of four rotating crops: leafy, root, fruiting, and legumes.  The nitrogen fixing legumes will follow the root crops which have loosened the soil as they grew deep.  Leafy crops will suck up the nitrogen left by the legumes, and fruiting crops will move in where the leafy crops were previously. 

 

My next post will cover seed starting.

Till then, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.

 

 

Where am I and What am I doing here?

As I said in my last post, I'm not on my farm yet due to circumstances that I regrettably allowed to happen.

In a nutshell, in September 2013 I had dinner with a friend from the hobby club I'm in and was led astray by his charms.  He was looking for a travel companion and he thought I might be interested.  I've always wanted to travel, so enticed by this opportunity and taken in by his cleverness, I retired from my job with the City in February 2014, over a year sooner than I had planned. We spent more than half of 2014 traveling around the U.S. and Europe.  We traveled by train to New Orleans, then on up to Washington, D.C. and back.  We RV'd up to Ohio and then through the Midwest and eventually down to the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque NM.  During the two trips to Europe we covered Germany, France, Holland, the Czech Republic, and Austria.  I've seen the Constitution of the United States and the flag that flew at Fort McHenry and inspired our National Anthem. I saw a nighttime mass ascension of hundreds of hot air balloons in all kinds of crazy shapes, including Elvis and Darth Vader.  I've seen what's left of the Berlin Wall and walked the Normandy Beaches.  I saw a Guttenberg Bible, fields of tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens, Krivoklat Castle near Prague, and Lipizzaner horses dancing.  It was an amazing experience and I've got some wonderful memories, but eventually I began to miss being home.  And my dream of owning and living on a farm began to creep back into my consciousness.   

Once I got myself back home I began to realize the consequences of my choices.  Retiring early resulted in a smaller retirement annuity so I had to go back to work.  Add in the credit card balance I ran up purchasing all those souvenirs I couldn't resist, and I may have to work another three years just to get where I was two years ago and I have no one to blame..... except myself.  But, what's done is done and what I need to do now is just move on and be stronger.

Since I didn't travel in 2015, other than to a family reunion in Charleston, SC in May, I was able to get a small veggie garden started.  I resurrected a little 4'x7' raised bed garden that I put together in 2013 and, with the help of my grandson, we expanded it to a 6'x7' bed and planted a couple tomato plants, two cucumber plants and six various pepper plants.  The tomatoes took over the whole bed, almost shading out the peppers and cucumbers.  I know that there are different fruiting types of tomatoes (globe, roma, beefsteaks, and cherry, for example), and now I know that there are different vine types of tomato plants, too.  Determinate and indeterminate.  Determinate varieties tend to produce all of their fruits at one time and have somewhat more compact bushes.  Indeterminate varieties produce all season long and, as in my case, they grow and grow and grow and will take over a small bed if allowed. 

 

 

What a great learning experience this turned out to be!  I want tomatoes in my garden this year and since I prefer not to dedicate my entire garden to tomatoes, I now know that determinate tomatoes will work better for me, and if I succession plant them (start 2-3 plants every 4-6 weeks) I can still have tomatoes all season. 

Oh, remember the pepper plants that got shaded out by the tomatoes?  Once I pulled out the tomato plants in late October to make room for the cabbages, the peppers came back to life. 

 

In my next post I'll write about my spring garden which will comprise four beds total - the original in my back yard and three new ones in the front yard.

'Til then, never give up, never surrender, and may all your dreams come true.