Soil test results

Something like a month and a half ago I took soil samples from my yard. I did this so I  could find out what my soil quality is. Here are the details.

My only concerns right now are adding some organic matter and maybe seeing if I can get my soil slightly more acidic. Ideally I just want to get it down to maybe 6.9 or so. I have no idea if that is even realistic since the soil is almost completely neutral. Luckily for me I am in an Animal Science program at an agricultural college. I'm hoping to score some natural fertilizers in the form of various animal manures. Chief among them are chicken and cow manure, with horse manure added in for good measure. If anyone has a recommendation for lowering my soil pH please leave me a comment. 

Ding Dong the squash is dead

I just pulled up my squash plant that had completely taken over my raised bed. One day it just started to die on me so I decided it was time to cull that bad boy. I'm pretty sure that it was caused by an infestation of squash bugs. That said I cut it up and added it to the compost pile. Of course the bugs I found got squished too.

Trip to the city municipal yard

So about two weeks ago I woke up to a notice on my front door from the city that basically said, do you have a ton of stuff you can't fit into your trash can? Well it turns out that I do have just that. So later today I will be taking at least one trip to throw away the stuff that I haven't decided to recycle instead.This is a big deal especially considering that we tore down the shed that came with the house when I got it. It was definitely a necessity as that structure was not going to cut it. I was as tall as that building, and it had been totally hammered by a nasty hail storm a year or so ago. Maybe I will have some more pictures later today.

Counting down till fall garden time

I've made some new preparatory steps toward having the fall garden I want to have. The biggest things in terms of time and money are machinery. My dad has had this old wood chipper/shredder made by Troy-Built for years. He hasn't used it in probably half a decade though, so we thought it might be pretty rough getting it started up. As luck would have it, it started right up like a champ and we ran a few pieces of large shred from the city through it to make sure everything was still working. The next step was giving it a much needed oil change. I did that yesterday and you would not believe what that old  oil looked like. Frankly I'm not sure I would classify it as oil anymore. It really seemed like some black toxic ooze, I've never seen anything quite like it honestly. Luckily the process was simple and I was prepared from last weekend when we got supplies at the local hardware shop. On to the big money item. After much deliberation my dad decided to finally replace his old beaten up front-tine rototiller. Lucky for me he decided not just to replace but upgrade as well. He ended up getting a monster Craftsman rear-tine tiller. Even more lucky is that for the foreseeable future I have custody of it. Realistically this means that at least until I finish preparing my fall garden beds (of which I plan to have between 4 and 8 more) I am keeping it down here at my house. 

On the much cheaper and easier side of things, the majority of my seeds have sprouted and are well on their way to being ready for planting in another ten to fourteen days. If you take a look back at my older post Seedlings are hatching you can see just how much of a difference a week and change makes in plant size. 

Please ignore my random hangers.

As I'm sure you might have guessed the big guys in this picture are squash. 

On to a list of what is in this seed starting rig. I have dill, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, peas, and two different lettuces, one is a red romaine, the other is a crisp-head variety I think. This was just a portion of what I hope to plant this fall. Now that some new seeds have arrived (heirloom of course) I can get the ball rolling on some of them. I plan on adding beets, swiss chard, collards, mustard greens, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, and a few winter cabbage varieties. There may also be some spinach, and more lettuce too. I'm also expecting my tomatoes that were giving me a hard time earlier to make up for that now. I was lucky enough to have the first tomatoes ripen earlier this week. They have obviously been consumed already. If I can remember to I will take pictures of the next tomatoes that ripen up 

Happy Homesteading