Farm Records: Early May

The garden is growing fast, and Adam is quickly applying mulch to the beds to keep down weeds. The sweet peas are going gang-busters! The sugar snap peas are out-performing the English peas, but only the harvest will tell which is better.
Yesterday Adam mowed to get the pasture under some semblance of control. We have a church picnic here this weekend.

Tomatoes:
I now have 65 tomato plants in the ground. Quite a few are cherry tomatoes.
So far, from the look of the plants, Black Prince and Green Grape don't seem very healthy. Green Grape plants appear to be recovering a bit. Black from Tula plants, although germinating early and seeming hearty, are yellowing and spindly in the ground. Sweetie tomatoes yellow significantly on bottom branches. The Large Red Cherry plants started quite well but spotted in the greenhouse while I was away. Not sure why. I potted them up larger and am hoping they recover.

Varieties that are doing well so far:
Cherry Chocolate, Juliet (a grocery store pack, I'm sorry to say), Black Cherry, both of Mr. McFadden's plants he gave us from church, and Matt's Wild Cherry. Come to think of it, the cherry varieties are doing quite well, have more foliage, and are green and healthy with few spots or yellowing.

The first bed is sicklier, and the second bed is better-looking. And today I began another row of tomatoes because I have so many in the greenhouse still. These will be in cages, which we found on the farm.

Second tomato bed on the left against the trellis.
Beginning of cages on the right.
Adam brought a truck load of mulch/compost over for the tomatoes.

Beans are growing beautifully. Most of these were started in the greenhouse and transferred outside.

Adam planted corn and it is up! Can you see it?

He has eight rows of corn: 3 silver queen, 3 popcorn, 2 ornamental. He's planting pinto beans among his corn. He finished up that field this morning.
The potatoes are blooming and they do have such pretty flowers.

I've put 2 zucchini hills, 3 cantaloupe hills, 2 watermelon hills, 2 cucumber hills plus 5 other plants, and about 6 squash plants. I have more cucs in the greenhouse waiting for some hills that are presently occupied by fire ants. Adam's taking care of that.
The broccoli hasn't flowered yet. The lettuce and greens are beautiful; we'll have salad tonight, with some sugar snap peas. The kale bolted quickly, but the collards are looking lovely.
Adam bought two packets of pumpkin seeds because he knew it would make me happy. I've started them in cells and will transplant them into hills somewhere when they're bigger.
The sunflowers along the road are looking great!

Hundreds of sunflower heads, waving at passersby. And hopefully a good start on chicken feed for next year. The first seeding Adam put down was eaten by birds b/c he didn't bury it well, but this second seeding is doing fine.
My evening reading these days:

To Summarize:
Thus far, things we failed at:
*ginger and turmeric from roots
*winter garden in a very wet location
*wheat/barley field -- the verdict is still out, but we're wondering what exactly is in that field and whether any of it is wheat or barley!
*greens/lettuce -- the ones we have are lovely, but we didn't get the germination we'd hoped. Perhaps more nitrogen needed?
*beans -- trying to start them too early, too cold. Peas like it cold; beans like it quite warm.

Things we've succeeded at:
*the greenhouse -- what an inexpensive, wonderful asset!
*compost -- Adam's compost-making skills are supreme. It's been a blessing to our early growing.
*worms -- they're doing great
*bees -- also doing great and the swarm has become established
*germinating seeds -- generally, I was quite successful in this task. Wish I'd had a bit less success with the tomatoes because now I can't bear to throw them away.
*potatoes -- this may be Adam's thing :)
*good beds -- Adam does a great job prepping a garden bed.
*herbs -- Not that I started them myself from seed, but the herb bed is looking good.
*flower beds -- very pleased especially with my shade beds

What will I write in August? Will we eat from our land? Will we sell any tomatoes? Get lots of canning done? Oh, I hope so!

Farm Records: April 21

Today I put 16 tomato plants in the ground in the first long bed. They look happy. It's a wide selection of cherry and regular varieties. A record of the order of tomatoes planted is kept in the farm notebook, back page.

Earlier this week I put the first, largest tomato in a huge pot, a Cherry Chocolate. Some blight spots have appeared on its leaves and on other plants' leaves. I'm picking them off.
Yesterday I put all the cucumber seedlings out in their bed, plus a bigger cucumber, plus our lone squash plant. All these plants had been set outside for several days to grow accustomed to sun and wind.
I successfully started 6 golden wax bean plants and put four of them into a hill today.

 In the remaining bean hills I put blue lake beans directly in the soil, for the third time (!!!), hoping this time it is warm enough at last, and they will survive. They'd better, because I'm now out of blue lake seeds.
Wheat is still growing (among all the weeds and buttercups). Not as vibrant a crop as we'd hoped, but Adam still hopes to get enough straw to grow some mushrooms in the summer.

The honeybees are quite busy. No swarms that we know of. Oops! A few minutes after typing that, Adam picked up a small swarm in the wheat field, of all places!

Scooping them into the box with one gloved hand. He got one sting, on the other hand.

No boxes added recently.
The worms continue to do well.
The new barn cat, Bill, seems to be sticking around. She's free to roam but continues to use her litter box and eat her food. We see her occasionally skirting into various barn bays.
Saw a large mouse in the barn office yesterday.
The green potato tops are coming up again above the mulch we topped the bins with during the last cold snap.
Both beds of peas (English and sugar snap) are doing very well.

Lettuce is finally coming along, but did not germinate as broadly as hoped.

Both garlic and onion beds are doing quite well. Onions are splitting/multiplying now.
Remaining in the greenhouse: lots of tomatoes of various sizes (a couple dozen still needing to be transplanted out of their first cells), four pepper plants, six basil plants.
The fig cuttings did not take. They were zapped by cold even in the greenhouse. Will need to try again.
Adam put up deer fencing around the garden area to keep Ned out. He tends to tromp the beds.

In the house lot, all the plants I've put in are thriving. Doing particularly well are artemesia and hostas. A climbing rose was transplanted from the orchard onto the trellis and has wilted a bit for lack of water. It has been quite dry for the last week.
Highs this week have been in the 70s, lows in the 50s. Rain expected tomorrow. This March our highest temp was 86 and our lowest temp was 32.

 Ned has a good life. Buttercups galore blooming all over the pasture.

Farm Records

Update: It's 4/16 and we still haven't put any greenhouse plants into the ground. Lows this coming week are around 47 degrees, with a projected low of 43 degrees 4/20. Still waiting. April has been quite windy also.
Adam and I think it's been a cool April, maybe even cooler than March. We had a freeze warning on the night of the 9th. Lows this week will be in the 50s, down into the 40s. We are waiting to put tender plants into the ground. The greenhouse is bursting at the seams.

You can see which tomatoes are older and which are the second plantings.

This is my biggest tomato plant. It's a cherry tomato -- Black from Tula, I think.

 And my thyme seedlings are coming right along. At first I found it daunting to get every thing from seed, but it's been fun.

 Our broccoli is growing at last!

Adam finished digging his second long tomato bed with the dog's help.

By the way, we've decided to call him Ned after all. I prefer Moose, and may still use it someday, but Adam's and Julia's hearts are a bit wounded by using a name so close to Maggie's nickname ('Moo'), so we will opt for Ned. He's such a good dog. Adam is quite pleased with his development as a good farm dog.

 Adam checked his Worm Tea bucket and found a gracious plenty of delectable liquid. The Clampetts might call it "Black Gold" -- haha!
We're also slowly filling up our old swimming pool with rain water. We use this for watering also, so our plants don't have to put up with treated town water.

Four new cucumber plants have germinated in the greenhouse.

Even Though We Don't Have Chickens ...

Even though we don't have chickens (yet) or goats (yet), we do have an ever-increasing number of animals on the farm. If you read my other blog, you know we acquired a new farm dog this past week, Moose:

Moose is a lab mix with some Great Dane in there too.
And today, we adopted a cat named Bill. Bill is a she. She needed to be rehomed because her owner is moving and needs a good place for Bill to live. We hope she likes it here after she has acclimated to us. She's staying out in Julia's building at first because I'm allergic to cats. Later we hope she'll be happy as a farm/barn cat. If you have any helpful advice about winning over the affections of a cat, or rehoming a cat, or getting a cat to stick around (especially on a farm), please let me know in your comments!
And the worms! Let me not forget the worms, though they be small and quiet. Adam recently "rehomed" them also.

That's our old bathtub that came out during the Great Bathroom Redo. It's in the barn now and is the perfect home for worms. Adam keeps it covered in cardboard and plastic when it's chilly (which it's been). It's set up on blocks:

And it has a plastic tub under the drain hole to catch the moisture that comes from the compost and worms. That liquid is called "worm tea" and is quite desirable to water plants. It's chock full of nutrients plants love. Adam removed a good bucket of it just today. Our worms are doing very well.
The bees are doing great too -- five healthy hives going into summer. Adam will add boxes as needed to encourage honey production.
In the greenhouse, I have 145 tomato plants germinated, from itty-bitty to quite large and ready to go in the ground when it's warm enough ... which it should be next week. My tomato plants, I'm proud to say, are quite beautiful and healthy.
Note to self: do not plant beans when it's cold. We've lost two plantings thus far. They sprout and get zapped. Live and learn. We will wait until it's good and warm. It's tough being a newbie.
Sister-in-law Anne from West Virginia gave me some plants to bring home, and they are all thriving! (Thank you, Anne!) The hosta is sending up many spears, and even the yarrow, which I feared I'd dried out, sprang back to life when I put it in the ground and gave it a good watering.
I've been mowing and mowing, getting the "lawn" under control. The knock-out roses are beginning to bloom, and the wisteria is dripping from the pine trees like pale clusters of grapes. We had a freeze warning last night, but here's hoping that's the last one! That's all from the farm!

Farm Records: Late March

Dog Update: Gracie's owners have been found. Her name is really Joy. I'm sure they have joy in having her back home, but we will be more lonely than we were before if possible. The dog hunt must continue.

Broccoli is looking rather limp and pathetic. I think it doesn't like the warmth of the greenhouse, but it's not sturdy enough to plant outside yet.

On 3/24 I reseeded lots of tomatoes that hadn't germinated. The plants we have look very healthy.
The tomatoes started in the greenhouse have done better than the ones started in the barn. The greenhouse ones were mostly started in individual pots; the barn ones were started in black plastic cells. The difference is quite striking. The germination rate is much better in the individual pots, even if they're plastic.

I replanted Blue Lake green beans in their mounds. Only one had germinated and come up.

I put dill seed I harvested last July into the herb bed under a layer of moist straw.

There appears to be a random volunteer cucumber seedling in the snap pea bed. I wonder if it will fare better than the one in the greenhouse.

All the peas are doing well.

Soaked a packet of moon flower seeds in water and planted them near the pasture fence . A friend sent them to me years ago. I can't wait to see what they do.

We've been watering with "worm tea" the last couple of days. Adam collected worm casings and put them in water to soak, and then we use that water for the plants. It's a "super compost."  The worms are doing very well.

Farm Records: Spring

Temperatures this past week in the upper 70s.
Today is cloudy, sprinkles of rain, 75 degrees at 2:00 PM.
It has been a warm, wet winter.
Less rain has fallen in the past 2 weeks.

Greenhouse:
46 tomatoes up, most with real leaves (probably have about 50 cells that have not germinated yet)
61 pea plants up in their beds
10 thyme plant cells up and green
8 parsley pots doing very well
7 dill pots doing very well
5 cilantro pots, up and green
35 cells of broccoli up with real leaves
6 large pots of pearl onions ready to go in a bed
1 cucumber up and seed leaves
1 squash plant up very well with real leaves, repotted
Turmeric and ginger root did not come up at all, Probably dead.
White beans that had come up were frozen out early and the rest probably will not germinate.
Chives have not germinated yet.
Heart of Gold cantaloupe has not germinated yet.
Gourds did not germinate.

Farm:
honeybees are very active, lots of pollen coming in
2 apple trees in the orchard have new leaves -- the two espaliered trees against the west fence, in front of you as you enter the back gate
many carpenter bees around the garage shed, orchard, and pine copse. These are good for pollinating fruit trees.
worms are doing very well. They ate the entire fall pumpkin we put in there, within a few weeks, plus lots of other food scraps, etc.
garlic in the bed is tall and healthy
lettuces are up some and small
2 hills of beans have sprouted
garbage can with potatoes: 5 plants are green and healthy
Wheat and barley field looks much the same as all winter, about 4-6" tall.
Winter garden of greens was an utter failure, planted in very wet area.

Yard:
Dandelions are blooming well.
Japanese magnolia is in full bloom and passing.
Daffodils are in full bloom and starting to wane.
Forsythia is in new bloom.
Lily bed I planted in the fall is up and green, about 6".
Fig tree has little leaves.
Floribunda roses by the front porch are leafing out well. We failed to prune them back hard in the fall or spring, so must do that this fall.
Artemisia overwintered well, lots of new growth.
2 clumps of sedum look very healthy, coming up.
Hosta plants are not showing at all yet.
Astilbe plants are not active yet.
Lambs' ears overwintered beautifully and have spread.

Herb bed:
Oregano is doing very well -- 3 large patches
2 rosemary bushes are healthy, if not robust.
2 patches of mint are returning.
One sickly plant of thyme still has a couple of green sprouts trying to live.
Sage plant overwintered well and is growing.

Forsythia