The goods

Last week I was able to get some pretty good stuff out of the garden. I got to harvest red romaine lettuce, collards, swiss chard, spinach, and the last of the carrots. I'm pretty pleased as this is my first fall doing this gardening thing on my own.

Baby it's cold outside

You know season has really left summer behind when you can smell fires in the air. Although we Texans have only had one day were we could see our breath its still time to make sure the garden is protected. I have my first set of hoops up over two of the raised beds that are still producing. I'll finally be able to finish that set up tomorrow with the help of an extra set of hands. We will be stretching plastic over this in preparation for the freezing temperatures set to hit on Wednesday. Additionally I hope to build a cold frame to protect the third raised bed. I have also been mulching lately with leaves, wood chips, and leaves. This helps to maintain moisture and modulate soil temperature. If everything goes according to plan I'll continue to produce greens and perhaps even some root vegetables throughout the winter.

Update. I built a short lived hoop house. Here is the final result while it lasted.

The biggest grasshopper ever?

I found this bad boy this weekend while I was clearing out the old cherry tomato plants. They had finally given up the goose so I decided it was time to clean house and add some compost to get things ready for a winter run of greens and root vegetables. This fine specimen was something along the lines of 3 1/2 inches long. I have a sneaking suspicion that he might have been the culprit for plenty of my pest damaged collard greens.

Small fall garden update

     I have fallen behind in my blogging of late. This is due to prioritizing my energy mostly on school work. Chemistry is not a dear friend, (sadly that is just not how my mind works). But on a truly positive note my garden is not so bad as you might think.
     My tomatoes are still going, albeit at a reduced rate. My larger varieties are finally making a decent showing. Squash and I are destined to remain bitter enemies it seems. I've tried three different varieties this year (both summer and fall) sadly they have fallen short of expectations. I got a late crop of Anaheim peppers which is nice. Glad I let them hang around during the summer heat. They will be making a nice addition to some chili here soon if things cool down enough. My spinach didn't work out the way I had hoped, but they are making a showing now. So too are my rainbow Swiss Chard, and Georgia collards. This year my garden has been a lot of error and trial. That is not usually how its said but it is certainly how it feels. The red Romaine lettuce seems to be doing better now that the most of the oppressive heat has past.  I have about three pounds of garlic that will be going in here soon so I won't be running out next year. This is especially good as I hate having to buy garlic in the store. Its too expensive for the quality and lack of variety that you can find. Lucky for me I went with all heirlooms and a few different ones just in case some don't perform as well as I hope.

     I found a source of some free horseshit horse manure which I am really excited about. I should be collecting that in the next week or so. The plan there is to amend the soon to be backyard garden with that for the spring, and still have enough to let it compost over the winter for use when I need it.

     If I can keep my self honest my goal is to start keeping some good records about the goings on here in the terms of inputs and yields that I get starting in the spring. What this really means is spreadsheets, which I do not like, but will hopefully help me keep track of some good metrics going forward. Things like how much of my own produce I actually eat, what didn't work, what does, all that good stuff will be nice to have for subsequent years. 

    On a separate note the backyard re-fencing is almost complete which means...one step closer to hopefully some chickens in the spring. That will be triply beneficial, I get good pest control, I get eggs/meat, and I get poultry litter to fertilize with.

Hopefully I will have some more stuff to share soon,

Ryan

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

Seedlings are hatching

It looks like some of the seeds that I started last week have already germinated. Fall garden here I come. 

Plant updates

So I took my pitiful looking tomato plants out of raised bed number one and transplanted them about a month ago... which turned out to be a great idea. I moved them to a bed that had been sitting for a while and was left unkempt by the previous owners.

One of the old beds. 

What I did in the way of prep was really just scrape the old weeds and weed barrier plastic up and plant the two new plants. These are them below. The picture is obviously not from the day of. I'd say it is from maybe 2 or 3 weeks post transplant.

Same bed with a second planting of tomatoes 

 I would say about two weeks after that my initial planting of tomatoes from the raised bed decided they didn't like their home. Lucky for both them and me I had a new home available for them.

These are the transplanted plants. Probably less than one week post transplant.

The plants initially struggled but I kept them watered pretty regularly for the first week or so. I also supplied them with some mulch. Admittedly I haven't put anywhere near enough down yet but I had all my old tree branched chipped by the city (a service they provide free once a month) so those wood chips will soon become mulch and compost fodder. I will probably add another much more current pic tomorrow to show all the marvelous new growth.

What is this?

This is pretty simple, I have some plants that might or might not be weeds. If anyone knows what they might be I'd love some help. 

First week

This is the front view of the new house. Week one has brought some landscaping, lawn has been mown, most of the weeds have been whacked. This weekend should bring the changing of some lights, installation of a new gas stove and toilet (not gas), and if I get everything else done I'll be putting the first raised bed in. Wish me luck.