Taters

This year we've paired our potatoes with corn and beans. The taters were buried in trenches while their companions were settled on the top of the mounds. The plan was to fill the trenches in as the taters grew. So we did just that.


We got some straw and chopped it up a bit with some hedge clippers. By the way this is not easy, straw is tough. Meg has got some guns.


After we filled the trenches pretty good with straw, we looted some compost from a heap of leaves that was left in our yard since before we even moved here. The compost was pretty good, but Meg ended up getting some poison ivy on her face. It's not too bad, but it still sucks all the same.


We topped off the straw with the black gold and gave it a good bit of water. What all this will do is allow the potatoes to produce tubers off their buried stems and it will also allow the corn and beans to generate stronger root systems. Oh, and it looks real nice too.

Companion Planting and a Flashy New Trellis

The tomatoes are in. The bed in the photo is 4' by 18'. There are eight tomato plants (a little less than half our stock) in the bed, which I know isn't very many, but they will be sharing the space with four varieties of poling beans, red onions, leeks, and a shit load of basil. Well, maybe not a shit load, but a fare amount none the less.

We're really happy with how well our new trellis turned out. The design is mostly from something Meg found on the internet and in the latest issue of Organic Gardening. However, the modifications are all Future House. It did take us a few hours to build, but it's nothing more than bamboo from our property and salvaged string (the whole thing didn't cost a cent). I'm certain that by the end of this year I'll be able to tie knots like a sailor (which is fitting, because I tend to curse like one).

Squash Beds

An executive decision was made last year that all of our squash and mellon type plants would be direct seeded this year. They are now all in. We spent the better part of the day clearing out all of the beds to hopefully get rid of any lingering squash bug larvae. The grass has been cut for the first time this year and we used the clippings for mulch. This photo gives a pretty good view of the five beds we planted (they're the green fuzzy ones). In each bed we also planted a few nasturtium seeds to help deter pests and eventually add some peppery zing to our salads. This now marks that 18 of our 22 beds are planted. All that's left are our peppers, tomatoes and some random last minute herbs.

'Taters are in.

Our potatoes are off to a bit of a late start this year—we finally got them in the ground this afternoon after being stymied by a late delivery and then fifteen straight days of rain (sixteen, I guess, if you count the showers this afternoon). We've got All Blues, Yukon Golds, and some red variety that we picked up at the local co-op last week. The goal is around 50 pounds, and I think we've got enough planted to make it. In between the potatoes are rows of corn and beans, so we're hoping to squeeze a lot out of produce from those three beds.

Brassicas and Homemade Cloches

Our brassicas have found their way into the garden. In the bed at the top of the photo we have six broccoli and six white cabbage and in the bed at the lower portion of the photo we have six Brussels sprouts and six red cabbages. We grouped them together like this for both protection and production purposes. If we can, I think we may try to squeeze some sage in there as well. We'll see.

Last year cabbage worms destroyed our brassicas, leaving very little for us to actually harvest. This year we purchased floating row covers to keep out the moths that lay the eggs that eventually become the kraut eatin' worms. From what we've read in books and heard at the farmer's market, row covers are extremely effective. However there is one set back and that is they also keep out beneficial insects that are necessary for pollination with some plants.

Luckily brassicas don't need to be pollinated to produce the goods. We figured that if we kept all the brassica beds free of plants that need pollinating we wouldn't need to worry. ( I know, we're doing rocket science over here.) Sage is also a deterrent of cabbage moths so we may plant some of it around the edges to discourage any insect sneakiness.

Another bit or protection we are looking for is against the elements. Although we hardened our plants off, we wanted to play it safe in case there were any surprise temperature drops in the next couple of days. Since the end of last year's growing season, Meg's parents have been saving water and milk jugs for us so we could carve them into cloches.


After we finished planting and had a little lunch, I set to work with our trusty utility knife and cut the bottoms off of twenty four jugs. It is now three days later and they are doing awesome. Our average lows at night have been around 38°. We figure that by Thursday the plants should be completely hardened off and we can remove the cloches and save them for our tomatoes and peppers.

On a bed of greens

This is our third growing season together and consequently it's our third year growing lettuce. The first year we didn't get to the spring planting in time, but the fall harvest was a boom. The second year saw results that were the complete opposite; the spring planting was on time and plentiful, but the deer and rabbits had their way with the fall sprouts. What has been consistent is that every planting has been direct seed.


This year we reinforced the fence, said to hell with consistency, and started some of the seeds indoors. We were really surprised at how well they did. Out of a tray of 72, only two didn't sprout. If I knew the names of the varieties [Buttercrunch and Black Seeded Simpson --Meg] I'd tell ya, but Meg's at work and she's the wiz at keeping that shit straight. I usually learn food names by consumption. (and I digress) Last week we hardened off our sprouts and Saturday we put them in the ground.

We're pairing this particular bed of greens with poling peas (the ones that survived at least). Last year this bed was a mix of fabulous carrots and failed parsnips. As I was digging the trench to put in the plants and fresh compost I discovered a carrot that managed to go unnoticed last fall.


We made short work of the carrot that evening. It was tasty.

It's been two days since we transplanted our future salads and everything looks great. Hopefully this weekend we can return to consistency and direct seed a bed of lettuce and also get our spinach going as well.

While Huffing Sage

I have no idea how to introduce this post...
I was gathering some sage and thyme this afternoon for a batch of cabbage and potato soup. Although this is all we have going on in our garden, other than some root veggies, I do like to hang out in there and mentally map out our possible plant rotation.

So there I was, huffing sage, staring off into space, cogitated, when I realized, "Man we are going to need a shitload of nasturtium seeds." You see, our squashes (oh yeah, all of them) were eradicated by squash bugs. After the disaster we discovered that nasturtiums are great companions to squash plants, specifically to keep away these types of pests. As I was daydreaming about our garden for next year I realized that we are planning to have a good deal of squash in all sorts of varieties. Since the squash bug will suck on anything in the squash family I figured that we were going to need, you got it, a shitload of nasturtiums.

Meg and I have been trying our best to save seeds this year and have done fairly well in our quest. Now most of our garden is cleared out and turned, but there are some flowerbed corpses that still have not been scoured for seeds. I ventured to the shade garden area to see if I could scrounge up some yellow-nasturtium seeds, but soon realized that I really wasn't too thrilled with digging through all kinds of frozen debris for little brain-looking seeds. However, I did manage to grab a few more cardinal climber seeds (pictured above) that were dangling nearby.