Change happens

There is nothing that highlights changes like absence. The old saying goes that a watched pot never boils. The same can be said for your garden, and really life in general. On Friday I drove back to Alabama to visit my Alma Matter and several friends from college. I arrived back home yesterday afternoon. I ended up being too worn out to really look at the garden from any closer than my driveway. But today I found a pleasant surprise, tomatoes I thought would never ripen suddenly had. Even more exciting is that my raised bed is flush with newly germinated seeds of several kinds. What will soon be my fall crop of mustard, carrots, collards, swiss chard, and lettuces are popping up with great speed. My fall squash plants are thriving and putting out little creeper vines too, which means I have to put up some trellising. That will hopefully keep me from having the same problems I've had with my tomatoes. Mainly that they have sprawled out and nearly taken over a single garden bed. 

On a less exciting note weeds and grass also has a way of popping up when you turn your back on it. That means there is some weeding and grass pulling in the newer beds to begin soon. After that will come some serious bed prep and mulching to choke out the weeds. Of course if that all happens soon enough I can plant out all my root vegetables and some cabbage varieties. 

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.