Onion Harvest 2020

So, I harvested, cured and cleaned up my first batch of Egyptian walking onions. They aren't the biggest or the fastest growing onions in the world, but they are one of the easiest that I've grown so far.  

 

Fifteen years for one good carrot???

Yes, I have tried growing carrots many times over the past 15 years of growing my own garden. I've had gardens on six different properties and this year, I got what I think was my best carrot I've ever grown. 

In the past when I have attempted carrots, I either planted them too close, didn't have enough patience, let them get too weedy, didn't have the right fertility, who knows? They were always either very small, bitter or sometimes nothing but leafy tops.

This one was happy though and it lived a good life. I planted them in mid April with the radishes.  It was a danvers variety, known as a half size carrot; it was only 3 or 4 inches long, but the flavor was exceptional.

I actually didn't even mean to pick it, I was weeding and noticed something orange poking out from the pile.  That night I had it for dessert and it was sweet, tender and juicy. What a blessing! 

This definitely inspired me to try growing more.  Maybe I will try to plant a winter crop of them! ✌❤🙂

My first swale and berm system in action

This is a short clip of my first swale and berm system in action.  Please excuse the mess, I wasn't planning on taking a video, but I had to jump at this opportunity. I had just built it and hadn't even planted it yet. The video was taken during a heavy rainfall and it didn't overflow any of the berms, which let me know that my design was effective.

Since then, I have moved, but when I drive by, it looks like it is still functioning.

Simple Sheet Mulch aka "Back to Eden"

This is my simple sheet mulch project, to create my first garden on my new property.  This is similar to what is called the "back to eden method" or the "Ruth Stout method".

I started by marking out the area that I wanted to use. It is 4'x16'.  I weedwacked the area as low as I could. As seen above.

Next, I covered the areas with a layer of cardboard. I made sure to overlap the ends, to prevent any unwanted weeds from coming through.

Then, I dumped about 9 or 10 buckets of mulch material on top of the cardboard. I got this material from my local compost facility for free.  It is a nice blend of finished compost and wood chips.

To finish it off, I spread the mulch evenly over the area and watered it really well to soak the cardboard. That's it.  It took about an hour to create a nice little starter garden.  I've only used an 4'x8' area so far because I didn't have enough mulch, but I will do the rest the next time I can get into the compost facility.

✌❤🙂

Three-bin compost system.... and a surprise ending!

I wish I had taken a "before" photo.  The three-bin compost system at my community garden has been neglected and was overrun with all kinds of dead plant matter. With the help of my mulch fork, I did something about it today.  We could use some new pallets soon, but at least I got it cleaned up and added the mulch to make it safer to walk in the area.

If you're not familiar with the three-bin system, you basically add all your raw compostable materials in one side and when it starts breaking down, you move it to the second section,hen when the second section breaks down some more, you flip it to the third section to finish.

There are endless benefits of adding compost to your garden, so I won't go into it, but I heard an interesting quote about compost today:

"Compost is the currency of the garden."
     - Huw Richards
https://youtu.be/s7iu4xgSu1Y

Will you look at this....

Just as I thought I was finished writing this blog post on this cloudy, late-April afternoon, the sun decided to say hi from under the clouds for a magnificent sunset.

✌❤🙂

Planting potatoes for 2020

It's potato day 2020 and as usual, I'm trying something new.  I had purchased a few bags of potatoes back when the grocery shopping panic was happening a month and a half ago.  I had one bag that I didn't use fast enough and they all sprouted eyes, so I'm giving them a chance to work in the garden. 

I had a 4'x4' raised bed that was lying fallow, so that seemed like an ideal spot.  I raked away the mulch and dug some shallow trenches to plant in. Unlike the traditional method, I placed the potatoes in whole, rather than cutting them up.  I figured it would increase the strength of the plants as well as my chances of success. 

There was just enough soil to cover the potatoes back up, and then I covered the soil with an inch or two of the wood chips that I had right there.  I will add more wood chips soon, but this should give them a head start while we get some rain for the next few days.  I plan to hill them with wood chips until they stop growing or the chips overflow the area.

I'm hoping the wood chips work wonders for the potatoes like I have heard about from people like Paul Gautschi. I can visualize them growing through and setting potatoes on the vines, beneath the surface of the wood chips.  

With people talking about food shortages, increasing food prices and overall inflation, people's fears are on the rise.  God willing, this should give me a little bit of "food insurance" to help improve my odds of success throughout this unstable situation that we're all in right now. 

Good day everyone and may God bless you. 

✌❤🙂

The Story of my Community Garden Plot Part 1

It has been quite a while since I have written on here.  I'm on to a new garden location and I have been working on it for the last year and a half.

This garden is a 1000 square foot plot in a community garden.  When I first walked through, I loved the location because it was on the end of a row, it had great visibility and I knew there was a lot of room for improvement. It was so overgrown! The whole thing was overrun with weeds and some of them were taller than me.

First order of business was to clear it out so I could actually move in there. It was already September and I had to get the place prepped so I could move some perennials in there before the danger of frost. It took me three tanks of gas and lots of string in my weedwacker to get through it all, but it was immediately worth it.  Apparently the people who had this plot before me had planted it in the spring and there were tomatoes in the corner that were nice and ripe, so that made a nice treat to reward me for my efforts.

After only a day of weedwacking I had discovered a few surprises.  As I was going along, I quickly got a whiff of onions.  I looked down and found a plant that I had been curious about, but never bought: Egyptian walking onions.  They were everywhere! 

Soon thereafter I found a strawberry patch that I uncovered from the jungle of weeds, then an bed of yellow onions.  The last thing I noticed was as I was leaving, hanging from the arbor was a bunch of Scarlet runner beans. This was a plant that I had recently learned about. I heard that Bill Mollison had considered these the best bean you could grow.