photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joiseyshowaa/

I live in an area where almost everyone  learned to plant from their parents and grandparents.  You plant corn when the whippoorwil starts calling.  You plant above ground vegetables in the light of the moon and root crops in the dark of the moon.   This is the way things have been done for generations.

Being new to farming as a living, I thought I would research it a bit.  It seems that there may be some basis in fact although it has not been scientifically proven.  According to Marian Owen of PlanTea, it may have something to do with the water tables rising during the gravitational pull of the moon.

We did decide to plant this week because the moon is waxing (coming full) this week.  The danger of frost should be well over by the time the seeds sprout and we are expecting showers through the coming week.  All signs that indicate a good time to plant.

In the ground today, are butter peas, thorogood limas, Contender green beans, Golden Queen and Silver Queen corn.  It is still a bit early to plant corn but it will give it a bit of a head start and we will plant another few rows of late corn in early June.  We also planted half a row of crook neck yellow squash.  It’s probably a bit on the early side for that as well.

The cabbage slips are starting to recover from being transplanted and are actually growing a little.  The broccoli plants are looking great and I have tiny lettuce starting to spring up everywhere.  Not a sign of the spinach or beets yet though.  The beets were planted on the right moon phase but the spinach was off.

Cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers are going to be the last thing in the ground as they really need the soil to heat up before they will start to grow.  I think I am going to have to have another bit of a garden just for them as our main garden is full to over flowing already.

Do you plant by the moon?  Do you use the Farmer’s Almanac?  How do you decide when to plant??

Packman and Major Broccoli slips

I have decided to document the kinds of vegetables that I plant and their progress through the year.  I have been experimenting with different types of the same vegetables and really need to keep track of how they do.  Last week we planted 30 cabbage slips.  I believe they were Market Pride.

Today I put down 18 broccoli plants of two different types, Packman and Major.  The Packman plants looked much healthier.  It’s not a lot of broccoli but it’s late to be planting it and I am not sure how it is going to do.  We still should have some to freeze and some to eat.  I also planted Bloomsdale Savoy spinach and Salad Bowl lettuce.  Salad Bowl is a leaf lettuce, it does not head up but it grows quickly and is delicious.

We also planted a whole row of yellow onions.  We added lime to the row this year as they did not fare terribly well last year.  They didn’t die but they weren’t much more than an inch in diameter.  Hopefully they will do better this year.

We decided not to plant black eyed peas or any of the dried beans that we eat on a regular basis.  When I can buy a bag of dry beans for about a buck, it just doesn’t make sense to plant them.  The money for seeds and the labor to harvest them is better spent on something that is more expensive.

We are champing at the bit to get the real summer favorites planted.  It’s still a bit to early to plant tomatoes, peppers and squash.  I have lost them too often to a late spring frost.  The cabbage type plants will actually winter over even if it’s in single digits so I don’t worry about a few chilly nights for them.

Randy is laying off rows with the tractor.  This is a new experience for me but he SWEARS we will not be over run with wire grass this year.  The tractor means that we have much, much more space between the rows and we are planting them lengthwise in the garden instead of across the width. This will allow him to cultivate between the rows with the tractor.

Now the bunny rabbits are a whole different ball game and I am still considering putting up a small fence around the garden but it will have to be moveable so he can get the tractor in and out.  If you remember last year, the wild bunnies ate almost all of our green beans.  We eat a lot of green beans over the year and not having them from the garden really hurt our budget.

Preparing the garden

Spring is here!  Although last week, I thought we had jumped right into summer with temperatures in the mid 90s.  This week we are back to spring with temperatures in the 60s and 70s and nights in the 40s.

The garden has been plowed and disced and then smoothed with the harrow.  You might notice that we have upgraded our tractor.  I am still not sure how a tractor this big is going to cultivate between the rows but Randy assures me that it will.  For the moment, I am thrilled that we don’t have a ton of wire grass already.

We got a row of cabbage planted yesterday.  Last week I had despaired that we had left it too late but the cooler temperatures are encouraging.  I want to get brussel sprouts and broccoli planted tomorrow along with some onions.

Iris

Last month, I planted raspberry, blackberry and blue berry bushes that my daughter and grandson brought me.  Randy made a spot for me in the back yard.  They should get lots of sunshine back there and it’s in an out of the way spot so the mower won’t run over them.  They may not bear a ton of fruit this year but in addition to the wild blackberries, I should have enough for a cobbler or two this year.

My raised bed gardens are probably going to be put on hold for the year.  I know I am going to get one for a salad garden but the rest will have to wait until we have more time.  I’m disappointed but I have had to face the fact that there are only so many projects that I can manage.

Wild violets

There is always time to enjoy the first spring flowers.  The yard is dotted with wild violets.  They spring up everywhere and add color to the spring grass.

It’s fun to walk around the farm this time of year.  Flowers spring up in the most unlikely places.  There are clumps of sunny yellow daffodils back behind the pack house in the pasture.  I suppose they survive because they taste bad enough that nothing will eat them.

The redbud trees are blooming along the edge of the woods and if you look closely enough you might even find a jack in the pulpit hidden among the trees.

The iris are blooming early this year.  I don’t think they bloomed until May last year.  I’m afraid that all of the spring flowers will be over before spring is done.

I haven’t told Randy yet that he will soon be building me some simple boxes for the gardens.  These boxes are easy to construct and easier yet to maintain.  I think that we are going to make them out of left over laps.  These are the rough edges that are left over when you make boards.  A friend of ours has a pile of them so we have a free supply.

The expensive part of starting a square foot garden is the soil mixture.  It needs to be made up of a mixture of compost, peat moss and soil.  The last time I bought peat moss, I paid almost $4 per cubic foot.  If you are making more than a small garden this can add up quickly.  At that time, I was also buying compost as I did not have a compost pile.

This year I have a ready supply of compost material.  I started it last year and it has worked itself into a black, rich soil like pile.  I will keep adding to it this year and should be able to keep a ready source.  Compost is a natural fertilizer and enriches the soil.

The good thing about square foot gardening is that once you have built the first one, there is little to no expense or maintenance.  Unlike a regular garden, you do not have to plow it every year and you don’t have to cultivate it during the gardening season.  Vegetables are planted close enough together that it keeps the garden weed free after the initial plants have grown up.  There simply is no room for weeds.  You don’t walk on the garden so you don’t compact the soil down.  The peat moss and high organic matter in the soil also keeps it ‘fluffy.’

Most of the problems that we had with our garden last year, will be solved with the square foot or raised bed gardens.  First we battled wire grass and then we had the bunny wars over my green beans.  Unfortunately, last year we lost both of these battles.  The worst was the green beans which simply did not survive the bunnies.  Out of 5 rows of green beans we only got about 2 quarts of beans.  The bunnies simply cropped them all off at the stem.  The wire grass simply made the garden unsightly and made it difficult to find the vegetables but the plants produced just as much and possibly more because the grass shaded the plants and kept them moist.

Over the next few weeks, I will be planning what vegetables we will plant and when we will plant them.  I am going to go ahead and start constructing the raised beds in the next month as well.  I want to plant some of the colder weather plants such as cabbage, onions, peas, etc in the raised beds.

Have you started your garden plans yet?  Do you garden in the traditional way or do you use raised beds?

Rosebud

Rosebud is a very special mule.  She came to us as a rescue and was severely underweight.  She has been my project for the last 4 months.  Because of her age, it has been an uphill battle to put weight on her.  Randy has told me several times that it would be impossible to actually have her gain any real weight.

I must admit that I have almost given up several times.  It seems like no matter how much I feed her, she just doesn’t put on a pound.  When my daughter gave me Progressive envision which is supposed to put weight on fast, it was my last hope but thankfully it is working.  It’s very expensive at about $1 per pound but I can tell the difference after just a few weeks.

Rosebud is about 20 years old which is pretty old for a mule.  She has worked hard for most of her life.  We can tell this because she is very familiar with a work harness and a plow.  She also rides and pulls a cart.  I plan to use her to do some light plowing and cultivating in our garden this year.   We won’t do a lot of it at one time but she will be more efficient than either the garden tractor or a hoe.

Come back in the spring of the year and I hope to have pictures of Rosebud at work.

I want to put the garden to bed.  The weather has gotten much cooler so once the rain stops this week, I am going to start putting most of the garden to bed and preparing it for early planting.  The first step is to pick all the tomatoes, ripe or not.  I will use these to make green tomato relish or picalilli.   I will also need to pick all of the remaining bell peppers and squash.  The peppers will either be frozen or used to make the green tomato relish.

The next step will be to remove all of the old plants.  We could plow or till these into the ground but the lawn tractor has not been running terribly well and I don’t want to strain it in the garden.  Once removed, the plants will either be added to a fresh compost pile or burnt.  This will help to cut down on any garden pests that have layed eggs in the plants.

Once the plants are removed, we will start covering the garden with composted manure.  This manure is over a year old and has stayed warm enough to kill all of the weed seeds.  This compost will be added to the garden and tilled in to help fertilize and to keep the garden soil soft.

After the manure is worked into the soil, Randy wants to cover it with plastic.  This will keep the soil hot and help kill any remaining weeds.  Hopefully it will give us a head start on the wire grass next year.  The wire grass has been the bane of my gardening this year.  It is almost impossible to kill and it makes it really hard to find the vegetables.

With those tasks complete, the garden will be ready for early spring or late winter planting.  Overall, while our garden didn’t look very pretty because of the wire grass, it was very successful.  We had enough lima beans, corn, tomatoes, okra, squash, and cucumbers to feed us through the summer and well into winter.

How did your garden do this year?

I am trying to keep up with all of my chores plus R’s chores.  I can’t do it all but I am making a pretty good stab at it.  I made it out into the garden today and oh my gosh!!!  It has gone wild over the last 5 days.  I picked half a row of lima beans and got 2 gallons.  Then I picked two gallons of tomatoes.  There will be more by Sunday.  I still have another full row of lima beans and all of the peppers to pick.

I figure that I will have 15 – 20 Green peppers and another 2 gallons of lima beans.  Then there are the chili and jalapeno peppers that need picking.  Believe me, I am not complaining.  We should easily have enough vegetables to see us through the winter and into the spring.  The big freezer is almost full and I am going to have to start using the two smaller freezers.

I am going to try Marci’s suggestion of freezing the tomatoes whole and unpeeled.  She puts hers in a paper bag and then blanches and peels them as she needs them.  Hopefully they will work just as well in a plastic grocery bag.  I should have much more time to blanch and peel them as I need them than I do right now.

Over the next week, I need to get the fall greens planted.  I am planting turnip and collard greens.  I am also going to plant some more cabbage, lettuce and spinach plants.  These will pretty much round out the vegetables for the winter.

However, the rain did help the corn, limas and tomatoes.  I have been keeping track of what I have picked and put up.   The limas and the corn are the definite winners here.  Cucumbers would be a close third.  The squash and tomatoes have just not done well.

We have picked:

• 152 ears of corn
• 5 gallons of limas
• 25 cucumbers
• 15 yellow squash
• 5 tomatoes

I have put up:

• 15 quarts of corn
• 10 quarts of limas
• 5 quarts of squash
• 5 1/2 pints of bread and butter pickles

I have been a little disappointed in the garden so far.  I had hoped to have enough to put up to see us through the winter as well as sharing some with R’s and my kids.   Right now with the exception of the corn, it doesn’t look like we will have enough to see us through the winter much less the kids.

Some of it is our own fault.  We killed half a row of green beans with weed killer overspray trying to get rid of the wire grass.  The  wire grass has made it difficult to keep garden pests off of the plants.  It doesn’t hurt the plants themselves too much but you can’t see what is attacking the plants.  We also did not do enough preparation prior to planting the garden.  We should have sprayed the wire grass and let it die and then covered the rows.

Regardless, for the small amount of money that we have spent in seed, we have done well.  The tomatoes will ripen eventually.  There are tons on the vines and it’s just a matter of having enough warm nights to ripen them.

We have already planted a late summer planting of beans and squash so we should do better with them in August and September.  Once the corn is finished, we are going to plant turnips and collards there.  I also want to get some brussel sprouts and broccoli planted for the fall.

The first post that caught my eye at The Homesteading Carnival was Grandma’s Fried Tomatoes.  I haven’t had fried tomatoes in ages but I think I might try some tonight.  They might have to be Fried Green Tomatoes as I don’t think my tomatoes are EVER going to get ripe.

Also at The Homesteading Carnival another post caught my eye, Home Life Weekly has a post on Types Of Mulch.  It is an interesting look at the different types of mulches available.

My favorite at the Make It From Scratch carnival was this delicious looking Sausage Spinach Pasta Toss.  These are making me HUNGRY.  Try making it with fresh garden spinach and garden tomatoes.  YUM!

I also had to take a peek at these Crocheted Baby Thongs.  I was imagining a baby in a thong diaper but these are really cute.

We also had an article in A Gardening Carnival.  You can learn how Home (Garden) Economics works with How Gardens Save You Money.

Raised Bed Gardening has an article on how to garden if you don’t have a yard.  If you live in an apartment or townhouse you might want to check out one of these two articles Going To Pot With Container Gardening and 12 Vegetables You Can Grow In A Pot.

The Money Hacks Carnival always has great tips for saving, investing and making money.  This week’s carnival was no different and here are my own favorites.

From I Need More Allowance:  A Teen’s Summer Guide To Getting More Money comes 23 Ways To Make Money.  I wish that more teens were as enterprising as this one is.

5 Personal Finance Lessons We Should All Relearn from the Present Financial Crisis is right on the money.  I wished I had learned them the first time around.

By gosh, I think that is all for the week.  I hope you enjoy browsing the carnivals and picking out your own favorites.

Squash Bugs

Squash Bug

I have picked squash one day and gone out the next to find the whole plant wilted.  Once you see the damage from squash bugs, there is very little you can do to save the plant.  There are several ways to combat squash bugs but the best is to buy squash bug resistant plants.  You can also inspect your plants often and physically remove and crush any bugs or eggs that you find.   For a chemical management program, sevin dust sprinkled around the stem and under the leaves will kill the bugs.  At the end of the season, bury or burn any remaining vines to kill out the adult bugs that will overwinter.  Companion plantings of catnip, tansy, radishes, nasturtiums, marigolds, bee balm and mint may help to repel squash bugs.

Corn Ear Worm

Corn Ear Worm

How many times have you bought corn on the cob only to find that an annoying little worm has eaten a good bit of the tip.  When you pull back the husk, the brown trails are highly visible and probably the worm itself.  Yuck!    Good gardening practices of frequent tilling of the soil will expose the pupae and kill them.  There are also several insecticides that you can inject into the silk of each ear.  I haven’t tried this but I have read that you can squeeze an eyedropper full of mineral oil onto the tip of each young ear to suffocate the larvae.  I guess all of these methods would depend greatly on how much corn you have planted.  If you plant a few rows, it is likely that no matter what you do, you are going to have a few corn ear worms so just break off the damaged part and throw away.

Grasshoppers

Ah, Grasshopper

Yes, those common little grasshoppers eat half their weight per day.  While they are not a huge problem here in the South East, they claim that they consume 25% of the available forage in the Western US.  Again, good garden management helps reduce their numbers so till between the rows often to churn up and expose the eggs.  For long-term grasshopper control, apply the biological pesticide Semaspore Bait (Nosema locustae) to hatching beds – field margins and other undisturbed grassy areas – when grasshoppers are young.

Tomato Hornworms

Tomato hornworm with Wasp larvae

Easily the yuckiest garden pest, Tomato hornworms are usually controlled by handpicking them and putting them into a bucket of soapy water.  These large green or striped caterpillars use camouflage as their defense and it takes careful inspection to find them.   Look for black droppings on the ground and leaves, if found, spray the foliage with water and you can see the hornworms thrashing about.  Pluck and dunk in soapy water.  If you find one that looks rather like a porcupine, move it to a less desirable plant and let it eat.  The spines are acutally a beneficial wasp’s eggs that will help to control the rest of the population of hornworms.

Cabbageworms and Cabbage Loopers

Cabbage Looper

These two small green caterpillars can do huge amounts of damage to your cabbage type plants such as broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, etc.  The looper gets it’s nick name because it inches along as it eats.  Both can be controlled by handpicking as well as by using companion plantings to attract beneficial insects.  Good companion plants for cabbage are Attract native parasites and predators into your garden by planting flowers for them to feed on. Beneficial insects prefer small flowers like those found on parsley, dill, fennel, coriander, and alyssum.  I have also heard that dusting the plants with self rising flower will kill off the caterpillars.  Apparently they eat the flower and it reacts with their digestive juices causing them to explode.  R swears by this method but I am in a wait and see mode.

These are just a few of the more common garden pests.  Most can be controlled by good gardening practices – frequent tilling, fall tilling and keeping the rotting garden material cleaned up.  Hand picking works for most and you can use companion planting for many of the pests.  When all else fails, careful use of Sevin dust will keep them to a minimum.

Do you have any tips for controlling or eliminating garden pests?