Planning for permanent agriculture just got complicated

Last week Wifey and I had a productive date day where we came home with 2 almond trees, 2 hazelnut starters, and 2 purple raspberry starters in addition to the chicken coop we went out for.

This weekend my mother-in-law visited and also told me that she'd purchased some plants for me for my birthday.  While it's a great gift that will, hopefully, keep on giving it is also poses an interesting problem from a planning standpoint.

She gave me the following:

• 2 elderberry starters
• 2 hazelnut starters
• 2 shagbark hickory starters
• 3 hardy pecan starters

Wifey also got me 2 almond starters for my birthday.

Wifey and I took a bit of a walkabout this afternoon to try to figure out where we're going to plant everything.  We've pretty well sorted out locations for about half of everything.

• Two almond trees will flank the driveway by the street.  They will hopefully not provide too much shade to the garden.
• The other two almond trees will flank the silver maple in the front.
• I need to drop a few trees in the woods in the back to provide some added light and space.  That will be the new home for the shagbark hickories.  Conveniently, I discovered another pignut hickory nearby to where one of those trees will be located.
• I need to drop what Wifey thinks is a cherry tree to make some room for one of the pecans.  That will allow us to plant on what I refer to as "the peninsula" which is a spit of land extending into the gorge on the way to the orchard.  The cherry needs to go, anyway, as it is dying and has a nasty lean anyway.  

Trying to grow Sweet Potato slips

Wifey is interested in growing sweet potatoes again.  Instead of planting them in the garden and letting them go nuts (as before), she wants to try some sort of potato tower she read about somewhere (maybe Pinterest?).  So we need sweet potato slips to start the plant-growing.

After checking the usual of my (Southern Exposure and Baker Creek) and finding the slips to be expensive ($10 for 6 slips seems pretty pricey), we decided to try to grow our own before succumbing to a purchase.

We went to the local farm market and bought a $5 basket of organic sweet potatoes (maybe 7 slim potatoes in the basket) to use as fodder.  A few tooth picks, some collected rain water, and a few jelly and/or peanut butter jars later and we have 4 potatoes sitting in a south-facing window working to grow some roots.

Once they grow roots, slips (aka the plant attempting to send out runners) should form shortly afterward.  Supposedly, you just remove the slips and put those in water until they grow their own roots.  Once they have roots, you plant the slips to grow new sweet potatoes.

It is supposedly a lengthy process, but I have time.  I'm certainly willing to take that time to save ourselves some money.

A productive date day

I took today off of work for a very important reason: Wifey secured us some baby sitting for The Bear so we could go pick up our new chicken coop!

Although we are decided to give chickening another shot, we aren't certain that it's going to be "our thing."  We decided to forgo our normal M.O. of building something bulletproof (and expensive) in favor of relatively disposable (and cheaper).  In this case, it meant a clearance 10 chicken (bantam) coop from Tractor Supply.  We'd ordered ahead and traveled to the nearest one that carried that model.  As you can see below, it's something we need to assemble ourselves.

While there, we picked up 2 Hazelnut starters for our "nut grove" and 2 more Purple Raspberry starters to go with the ones I planted a few years ago in the orchard.

On our way home, we stopped off at the southern location for our favorite farm market to see if they had any leftover fruit or nut trees.  Sure enough, they had some that were still living.  We also managed to get ourselves a $20 off price reduction from each of the almond trees we purchased.

Can't wait to get this stuff either assembled or in the ground (as appropriate)!

Trying the "Ruth Stout" method of gardening

While meandering through the labyrinth that is Youtube the other day, I came across a video by a couple who grew a considerable amount of potatoes with almost no work.  It after watching it, they referenced a methodology that was developed by Ruth Stout in which you continually add mulch on top of existing soil and keep planting on top of itself.  In that manner, you continually have little/no weeds, replenish nutrients, and have to do very little work as far as tilling or weeding.  They also did a video on that approach.

I discussed it, showed the first (potato) video to Wifey and we decided to give it a shot.

In the video, they laid out a grid of chunks (appears to be 2"+ thicknesses) of straw bales to their field in the fall and let the straw rot.  In the spring they took the rotted hay, fluffed it up and pulled sections apart in areas and laid out seed potatoes.  Once their potatoes were laid out, they covered them up again.

Note: I learned that although the terms are often used interchangeably, there is a difference between hay and straw.  Hay is dried field grasses where straw is hay that has had the seed pods largely/entirely removed.  Hay is often consumed by animals and straw is bedding.

I took a trip to the local Ace hardware and bought 4 small bales of straw.  Wifey and I then laid them down in a grid to rot for the remainder of the winter until it gets to be potato planting time.

Seeds are started!

It's almost become tradition for Wifey and I to start getting stir crazy for the outdoors right about this time.  Although Winter has technically just begun, we long for our gardening, landscaping, and doing work in the orchard.  This year is no different!

A few days ago, Wifey and I took stock of the leftover seed from the last few years, discussed what we want to grow in the garden this year, and started looking through the seed catalogs from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Baker Creek. 

Yesterday I got the bright idea to start some herbs.  I took two 4-plug leftover plant trays from something or other, added in some of our potting soil, and went searching for herbs.  I didn't find all that I was hoping for and ended up planting 4 plugs of basil.  That still left me with another 4-plug tray loaded with potting soil, but no seeds in residence.  Unacceptable!

After anther search, I came up with the bright idea (if I do say so myself) to plant some peppers.  We have never had any luck with bell peppers (hot peppers seem to do fine, though) so I figured we might as well do an early planting of peppers to see if we can do some experiments to get some to actually produce.

Merry Christmas - a year in review

Merry Christmas to whomever may end up reading this.

This is my first post since July.  The family is in a lull from post-present hysteria while the kids are playing with toys and whatnot so I figured I'd try to do a post for a change.

This year was WET.  Just for reference, as of late November Baltimore had received 22" of rain over the yearly average and had broken the previous record for rainfall established in 2003.  We've had more rain and a little snow since then.

We also didn't get a ton of heat.  Our typical summer alternates between very dry and marginally wet, but extremely hot and humid throughout.  Although we had temps over 80 pretty reliably, we generally didn't spend a lot of time in the mid/upper 90's (as is typical) until August.



Garden

Tomatoes
Unfortunately, our tomatoes were very sad this year.  Last year Wifey did a lot of canning of tomatoes; this year was the opposite.  Thankfully, we were able to harvest a few of her grandfather's heirloom tomatoes.  We saved seeds from those.

We learned we didn't like the Black Vernissage tomatoes.  Too hard to figure out whether they were ripe or not.

Beans
The purple pole beans did quite well this year.  We saved seeds from them to reuse for next year.  Thankfully, I planted them relatively early this year allowing them to get reasonably established before the deluge began.  They were a real topic of conversation at the farm market and at the farm stand where we "tithed" veggies.

The green beans really struggled, however.  I planted the entire gallon bag of seeds I'd accumulated from the previous year with most rotting in the ground.  I should have considered mounding the soil up where I would plant them for better drainage.  This practice is recommended in a book I have about gardening in Colonial Williamsburg (VA).  I ended up getting quite a few beans, but they weren't as prolific as if even a majority of the beans had grown.

Cantaloupe
I built a small arbor for them to climb at some point.  They did, but all the rain eventually rotted the roots as well as the single cantaloupe that reached harvesting-size.  Worth trying again.

Tomatillos
The tomatillos were pretty prolific despite all the rain.  We harvested a lot of them and Wifey was able to make a few batches of tomatillo salsa for our tacos al pastor.  Very enjoyable!  Worth growing again.

Pumpkins
The baking pumpkins turned out reasonably well.  They vined out aggressively which eventually became somewhat invasive.  We harvested about 6 pumpkins which made for good pumpkin bread.  Worth growing again in a smaller number particularly if I could figure out a way to trellis them.

Peanuts
The peanuts grew somewhat, but rotted in the ground.  Not really worth growing again.

Cucumbers
The Edmonson cucumbers are really strange-looking.  It wasn't obvious from the catalog pictures.  Although they were a decent size, they didn't have a ton of flavor.  Probably better to try another variety.  We were able to barter some at the farm market, though.


Peppers
Once again, the bell peppers didn't do anything.  For one, they were shaded mightily by the tomatillos.  The rainfall couldn't have helped, either.

Wifey planted two starters of jalopenos in the front bed.  They did quite well.  Don't know why.

Okra
Holy cow did we get a lot of okra.  Wifey fried some and we froze quite a bit to go in soup or jumbalaya.  I also saved a lot of seeds from when I was pulling out the plants.

Strawberries
Our strawberries really didn't do much.  Possibly due to all the rainfall.  We're not sure they're worth the space they're taking up.



Orchard/Yard

Pear
We only ended up with a single pear this year.  We got a lot of rainfall right after the flowers came out.  As a result, most of the flowers came off the tree.  The single pear was a good one, though.

Figs
Once again, no figs we could harvest.  We did end up with some very small ones toward the end of the season.  I'll chalk it up to having to regrow all the above-ground growth due to last year's extremely cold winter.

Apples
We didn't harvest any apples this year.  Similar to the pears, we lost a lot of flowers due to rainfall.  The few apples we did get had a number of rot spots.

Blueberries
We were able to get some blueberries this year.  Not a ton because the bushes are still small, but some.  The deer nibbled on some of the new growth reminding me that I need to cage those plants in.


Peaches
We bought two peach trees for the orchard.  Unfortunately, I didn't put up deer netting in time.  They ate all but three of the peaches on the trees as well as lower vegetation. The peaches that survived rotted on the trees.

Persimmon
We bought and planted a persimmon tree this year.  I put up deer netting as soon as I lost the peaches so the persimmon fruit was saved from the deer.  I lost a few of them due to rot, however, we were able to harvest and eat 3 or so.  Tasty.

Quince 
Wifey saw someone online was giving away quince plants.  We took them off his hands.  I'm not sure if one or both survived the transplant.  We'll see in the spring, I suppose.

Kiwi
I built the structure for a kiwi arbor and bought 6 kiwi starters.  Unfortunately, all but one of them died.  I'll retry the experiment in the spring.

Mulberry
I bought two mulberry starters.  Each is quite small, but seem to have made it through the rainy year.

Elderberry
I bought three elderberry starters.  One was assaulted by tent caterpillars (which traveled from nearby black walnut trees), but seems to have survived.

Raspberries
We got a very few raspberries this year.  The canes are all still getting established.  Interestingly enough, the ones I got from a friend at work are sending out volunteers nearby.  Great news!

Inherited Peach Tree
We learned that the dwarf peach tree we inherited when we purchased the house is some sort of Korean variety.  A woman at our old church was very excited when she learned what it was and made some sort of peach "wine" out of it.

Inherited Japanese Dogwood
We have learned that an unknown variety of dogwood in the front is actually a "Japanese Dogwood" or "Kousa Dogwood."  The fruit (which it grows in abundance) are edible, apparently.  Unfortunately we didn't learn this until the tail end of the fruiting season.

Hickory
Technically not a fruit, but regardless I'll write it up here.  No hickory nuts this year.  From some reading I did the other day, I've learned that hickory trees generally don't produce nuts except for every other year.

Black raspberries
There are some residual inherited black raspberry canes by the woods line here and there.  We got no fruit this year.  I'm not sure if it's because of the rain, because we'd never pruned them (until this fall), or something else.  We'll see what next year brings.

It's been a busy Spring and Summer

Been a while since I've done a blog post.  Let's see here.

The weather has been extreme.  We had a ton of rain in late April/early May immediately followed by some really hot and dry weather.  Over the last few weeks we're back to getting a whole lot of rain.  It's been a challenge to grow stuff.  I lost all the corn and many attempts at getting our saved pole beans to grow.  In the end, we have about a dozen green pole bean plants growing (plus a healthy amount of the purple pole beans), but it's been tedious to get them to grow.  The tomatoes are finally ripening, but with all the rain recently they're splitting.  The pumpkin, peanut, and muskmelons are all waterlogged with the plants suffering mightily.

I planted a few more blueberries, the kiwi starters, two peach trees, an Asian persimmon, the elderberry starters, and the mulberry starters in the orchard.  All but one kiwi starter died.  The mulberries are stunted.  I didn't put up the netting fast enough so we lost all of the peaches we had on the new peach trees thanks to the deer.  We also lost almost all our blueberries for the same reason.  We finally have some apples although they're small.

In good news we traded 14 of our cucumbers (Edmonson, a strange looking variety) plus $1 for a dozen eggs, 2 good-sized bell peppers, and 6 peaches a few weeks ago at the local indoor farm market.

We're finally getting more beans and tomatoes.  Also, our first artichoke!