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

Stink Bugs and Squash Beetles

I kept thinking that I had escaped the risk of having a pest attack on my tomatoes and squash plants. I was very wrong. This morning while out watering and checking to see if my summer bearing tomatoes had finally ripened I saw them. Stink bugs crawling on the fruit of my tomato plants and squash bugs on my patty pan squash. So what are my options right now? Really their are only two that I am considering for this season. Option 1 is to hand pick all the mature bugs that I can find. 2 Neem oil. It seems like a combination of both will work best. Picking off the bugs I can find will hopefully limit the immediate damage that is done to the fruit already on the vine. The application of Neem Oil should help limit problems with future bugs that hatch later. I just need to wait for the local feed store to open up tomorrow and the required oil will be in hand.

My squash is so covered in bug eggs

It doesn't always work out like you want.

Life is one big experiment. And like all others this one does not come with a map or a guarantee of success. My raised bed went together like clock work which is great. Its just the after that is giving me a hard time. I planted it out and everything was going fine for a while. Now it seems that I counted my chickens before they hatched (before I even got them as the case is for me). Either the rain has gotten to my plants, which I doubt, or I used too much of the manure and humus mixture in combination with the topsoil I filled the bed with. This is more than likely the case as I planted some backup tomato plants about two weeks later in a different bed and those seem to be doing fine. What has caused my problems? I think that the levels of nitrogen are way to high from an overabundance of manure. This has caused my roots some problems and is killing my first planting. If this is the case then eventually I will pull the failed plants and some of the soil in the raised bed and remix it with an amendment of native soil and in an attempt to balance out the npk ratio and the percentage of organic matter. If nothing else this will be a lesson learned on my journey to growing my own food. Hopefully by this time next year all I will need to buy from the grocery store are the meats, dairy, and some fruit that I cannot grow my self (at least until I have some more land...but that is still down the road). The one thing I am certain of is that my thumb is green. The herbs that I am growing and the fruit and vegetable production class I took way back in 2013 have proven that much. That and the fact that I helped my dad garden as a kid, and even created a producing garden for his house this year are definitely reassuring. I'll have some more pictures here in the near future.

The first raised bed

I finally built and planted out my first raised bed about 2 weeks ago. It has 3 different types of tomato, an Anaheim pepper, a cabbage, and I've seeded some carrots and beets.

During the process

One of my sad little tomatoes. 

Owning a home comes with a lot of projects. Luckily for me the gardening ones happen to be the kind that I like. Hopefully I'll have some fresh gardening news soon.