Onion Seeds are Surviving.

I am all about garden survival. I think I start out the process expecting everything to die and fail so I won’t be disappointed.

Good news is that the onion seeds sprouted and are still growing in their little pots. YAY! A measured success. Have to start more seeds this week as well as get some into the ground.

Updates on the way!

Seed-Starting

We are starting seeds!

Onion seeds to be exact – maybe a little late even, but that’s never dettered us before.

The Homestead Year

I just finished reading The Homestead Year by Judith Moffett. I think that anyone not interested in homesteading would find this a terribly boring book. Maybe that explains why it hasn’t been checked out since 2007. I, however, found it fascinating.

Not quite a daily accounting of life on a one-acre homestead. The drive for self-sufficiency acted out and recorded in pretty thourough detail. It was an impressive account of the authors attempt to take one year off and fully focus on the homestead. What an exhausting experience!

Beekeeping, caring for a flock of ducks, growing all of your own food and dealing with all of the chores that go with it. Whew!

On the other hand, I found it all together inspiring. I was simply amazed at the volume of food they were actually able to pull from a one-acre plot of land. It also gave me the confidence to try new things in the garden – starting from seed, new plants, new ideas. In other words, I don’t need to fear failure in the garden.

I also have found in my reading that my results from last year were not unusual. 2009 was not a good garden year for anyone. Our VERY late frost and weird growing conditions led to poor returns for many gardeners. So, it wasn’t just me.

How can I not try again this year. And be better prepared. Better prepared to fight pests (organically), water adequately (but not too much), and recognize garden problems earlier. I am still learning so much and I want to keep it up!

New Seeds!

I made our seed order from Baker Creek last week. Yesterday I was greeted by a hefty envelope in the mailbox!

We have a bunch of seed packets now and plans to go buy seed-start mix ingredients later this week. Then we’ll be folding newspaper pots and starting some onions.

O happy day!

A New Season and a New Plan

After some successes in the 2009 growing season (and lots of lessons learned!) we have a new plan for 2010.

First off, we are making the move to all heirloom seeds. In the last year I have learned quite a bit about seeds and seed-saving and I am really attracted to making that effort to save seeds and be a more self-sustaining gardener.

Second, we are expanding! We’ll be adding two garden beds to the side yard in the coming months.

In addition we’ll be adding some new vegetables and new varieties of vegetables that we grew last year. I already ordered my seeds and started planning seed starts and setting out dates. Amazing what a little planning will do to cure the winter blues.

Tomato Hornworms! and a New Website…

Tomato Hornworm

Meet the newest addition to our little garden. Yes, I pulled 4 of these suckers off of my tomato plant the other evening. Haven’t seen anymore since, but I am certain that they will be back!

I also discovered a new website that has greatly impressed me. It documents an urban homestead, completely self-sufficient on 1/5 of an acre! Seriously. Check out Path to Freedom for more info and details!

Spider Mites

After a few days of worrying over my tomato and bean plants and the weird spots I finally saw a web.

Yup. Spider Mites have moved in.

I went out this morning early and sprayed down the leaves of all the plants. I will be spraying daily. Apparently mites don’t like wet. Well then, these leaves will be wet every morning. Hopefully we can control them that way. Otherwise I may have to take stronger measures, though still organic!

A Neglected Garden Blog is a Sign of a Cared for Garden?

Let’s just pretend, okay?

But I have been busy in the garden. With every change, and every unexpected bump I have to remind myself that this was supposed to be a learning/experimenting year.

So what have I learned as of July 1st?

• Squash vine borers suck. Literally. They wiped out my squash for the most part in just over 3 days. Thankfully, I had gotten about 5 pounds of squash off of the plants before the little buggers struck.
• Dwarf is a relative term. Again with the squash. The plants were HUGE! They shaded out the cucumbers and were inching towards the broccolli when the borers struck. Granted, they may have been smaller than a regular squash plant, but still… We decided to add another, smaller box next year for squash only.
• Broccolli really isn’t really worth the time and effort on this scale. It took forever to do anything. We netted 3 small heads off of 9 plants. And I had to spend 1 million hours picking cabbage loper worms off the plants. And they still ate most of the plants. Very disappointing.
• I need to have a better plan for succession plantings. Once the radishes were done I had no plan for what to put in their place. Whoops! So that square has sat empty – partly because I lacked a plan and partly because I underestimated how big the broccolli would get and it shaded that square completely anyway.
• Tomatoes should be caged, even if they are determinate… that’s all I’m sayin’.

Mid-June Garden Update

My little square-foot garden is doing so much better than I ever imagined! Here’s the harvest so far -

4-5 pounds of green beans

5-6 pounds of summer squash

3 okra

1 cherry tomato

24 radishes

2 bell peppers

I am so excited I can hardly see straight.

More Plantings

We planted: Sweet Corn, Yellow Squash, and Okra yesterday. Making for gumbo… Yum!

So far the only harvest so far has been strawberries and we’ve gotten about a dozen little red jewels from those three plants! They are little berries, but they are so much sweeter than the giant berries at the store. Captain Chaos picks and eats them straight from the plant. It’s very funny!