Opening Day! We had beautiful weather yesterday. Low 70s, blue skies, no wind. We took advantage and got quite a lot accomplished.
The first thing we did was to hang our new Bat House!! We wanted one for years and we have a small family of bats here. Here is a link to the bat house post.
Part of ‘Opening Day” was to bring our hardiest seedlings outside for the first time. We put them in the shade to acclimate them to the outside, or, harden them off. We bring them back inside to the grow lights in the evening.
We also tended to our cold frame. This has been growing lettuce and spinach all winter and has really taken off in the last few weeks. Carol weeded it and harvested some beautiful spinach for our dinner.
Cold Frame
We made it from an old kitchen cabinet and storm window, both of which we found in the trash. When it gets warm, you need to open it.
Home grown spinach for our dinner.
After that was the biggest part of “Opening Day”: We opened the Fig Tree! I will put up a post just about the Fig at a later point and link from here.
Fig Tree 2016
After that we turned the entire compost pile and started a new one. Our trick to composting is adding Alfalfa Meal between layers. Gets it real hot (140 degrees!) and helps to break things down.
We have wanted a bat house for years! Way back to when we still lived in the city. We finally got one. Carol found a man on Ebay that makes them custom and for a VERY reasonable price. Here’s a few pics of the one we got.
New bat house
It was under $20 shipped. We have a small family of bats living somewhere around here already. Hopefully they’ll move in.
We did some research and figured out the best place on the property to put it so that the morning sun hits it and they have clear access. It needed to be 12-15 feet up. We decided our big old maple tree was perfect.
Putting up the bat house
After I mounted it, we cleared away some branches so they could have easy access in and out. Apparently when they leave, they like to free fall into a glide, so the branches had to go to make room. They are not good at just flapping their winds and flying away like a bird.
Here’s it is just before we trimmed the branches near it.
Last night Carol mixed a batch of compost tea! This is our first time making and using it. She put a shovel or two of our very nice compost into a tub and poured water in it and let it stand overnight.
Compost Tea in the TubCompost Tea
This morning (4/14/16) I scooped some out and filtered in through an old piece of window screen.
Filtering the Tea
I then used it to lightly water all of our seedlings that were more than just a few days old. I also put some on my fig tree cuttings. I will talk more about them in another post.
This past weekend we worked on our seedlings. We transplanted our Giant Romas from 3-4 in a tiny pot to single plants in larger pots.
Giant Romas
It was a bit incongruous since it snowed all weekend: April 9, 2016.
We also bought yet another shop light for a fourth row of sprouts!
Row on bottom makes our fourth lighted row
We noticed that our spinach has started to go to seed. We think its because they are under the lights 24/7. It is Tyee spinach, a hybrid that is supposedly slow to bolt. Sending up a flower after the second leaves is ridiculous but is no big deal. We will pinch off the flower and maybe they will continue to grow. If not, we will plant more. The recommendation is to plant spinach seeds every 2 weeks for a continuous harvest. We usually do a buzz cut at the soil line and they will grow more leaves.
Spinach starting to go to seed.
We also planted some new seeds- Roma VF and San Marzano. Both are Italian style plum tomatoes for making sauce.
Maybe today we will make some compost tea to fertilize our little plants. Stay tuned….
Sunday April 3 2016. Snowed like hell last night. Got maybe an inch or two and by this evening, most of it is gone.
Snow and wind yesterday and overnight. This is Sunday April 3 noon,.
Tonight we transplanted a bunch of plants that we want to get in the ground early to try to cheat the season. Broccoli, Romain, and Spinach mostly. All cold weather early crops. We split them out from their small initial planters and gave them medium sized individual pots, and now we have about a dozen of each! In addition, we tripled the size of our nursery shelves and lighting. We stole the additional shelves from the tractor shed and lights from the garage.
Here are the plants before splitting them out. Most were started March 8 and we are transplanting to larger pots on April 3.
Broccoli before split-out
Carolyn was pretty good at spitting out the young plants using an old knitting needle.
Young seedlings split-out
Each individual seedling got its very own new and larger pot.
Then we assembled a couple shelves and lights that we scavenged from the tractor shed and garage. Its only a couple of weeks until we can put them back—we can can put up with a bit less lighting and less shelving until the seedlings are done.
Two more shelves in the foreground with original light/shelf in back.
Next week the plan is to make some compost “tea” from our enormous compost pile and fertilize these plants, after they recover from the shock of transplant.
The best way to start seedlings is in mini clay pots. Tonight’s transplanting frees up about 2 dozen mini pots for the next plants to grow.
Also forgot to mention last post that we dug up 15-20lbs of carrots before we tilled last week. Carrots keep well over the winter in the ground. You can harvest them as needed all winter long, as long as the ground isn’t too frozen! You just need to dig them up in the spring before they turn to mush.
We have also been kicking around the idea of expanding in the way of animals. We talked about pigs, but may be too late for the season already. However, it seems we will be getting more chickens and of different varieties. Considering Barred Rock and Black Orpington. Need to build another coop first….
Greetings All! Thanks to the mild winter, we are getting an early start to our 2016 garden. Its been dry for the last week-week and a half and I took the opportunity on Thursday 3/24 to lightly turn/harrow most of the gardens. Got the main garden, old potato garden and the corn bed. Turned in some organic material. Mostly leaves and chicken poop. All of the garden plots add up to roughly 3500 square feet.
Main Garden March 2016. Chicken coop and Fig tree, still wrapped, in foreground. Potato bed right rear.
Also started some seeds indoors: Giant Roma, two types of onion, lettuce, spinach & broccoli.
Starting plants indoors, March 2016
Bought a fluorescent fixture from Home Depot and hung it between two mic stands 🙂 Easy to adjust the height!
The chickens have fared well over the winter too. Happy cluckers gives us about an egg a day.
A big part of our move was preparing the old Cleveland house for sale. We spent countless hours washing walls, fixing holes, painting, repairing etc, etc. After several weeks of work, we had the Cleveland house in beautiful shape! We hired a real estate agent and he came and took pictures and listed the house. To help skew things in our favor, we also enlisted in the help of St. Joseph, burying him in our front garden per our pastor’s instructions.
A couple weeks past. I visited the house several times a week just to keep an eye on things, take out the trash, mow the lawn. Then, one day I parked in the driveway and noticed something funny. “What the heck is that?” I thought, noticing the siding on the house. I thought our bad neighbors sprayed something on the house.
Siding on Cleveland house
I though little more of it other than how I would need to clean it off and went inside…
Our carefully cleaned house for sale was ruined! It was raining in the kitchen. I allowed myself just enough time to expel some expletives then ran upstairs. The tub supply had sprung a leak. I shut it off and ran to the basement to shut it off there too, just in case. It was raining in the basement, too
This was not good.
Cell phone. “Hello, Carol? Call the insurance company. We can’t fix this one ourselves.”
I immediately set about trying to save what I could. It was a fools errand, but I had to try.
I mopped and put out buckets and set up a huge fan. I prayed and I cursed, but nothing was gonna save this mess.
The entire kitchen ceiling eventually wound up on the floor. The floor itself, buckled pretty badly, 1/2″ plus. The counter top swelled and warped. The window wouldn’t open. The cabinets were popping apart before my eyes. The electrical circuit breakers popped. The dishwasher was filled with sludge. Tiles and paint were popping off the walls. There was a water fall down the basement stairs. The rooms in the basement were an inch deep in water. The upstairs bathroom floor was buckled as well. This was not a good day.
The next day it looked like this…
Yes, That is the kitchen! The contractors tore the kitchen out–down to the studs on the first day! Looked like a cabin in a horror film!
It was shocking to see how it was all just gone.
Everything was removed.
The bill closet was stripped down to the lathe.Oh what a mess!
We hired a general contractor to manage all the destruction and construction crews. We had to pick out new cabinets, counter, lighting, tile, paint, carpet…everything. Lots of decisions.
Eventually it all came together.
Like a magazine! Its extra wide because we eliminated the closet. It’s for sale!New sink, faucet, dishwasher, garbage disposal, tile, under and over lighting and more!Kitchen floor was saved! New recessed lighting makes it bright and big.
Lots of good things around here, not the least of which is some excellent bicycle riding!
I Got A Bike: Bicycling around NovaBicycle crossingLocal farmers selling produce twice a week at a public auction.Most of the food at auction comes from nearby Amish farmsA ride around the neighborhood, Fall 2014
We were really in a rush to get the garden put in, as we didn’t take possession of the house until May. It turned out to be the best garden we ever planted, bar none!
Putting in the new garden
The new garden tilled.
We had to buy a tractor to mow all that grass, which we then use as compost and fertilizer. Who knew that grass could be so useful? Alexis taking Uncle Guy for a ride.
The garden doing well about halfway through the season.
Eventually, we had to buy a tiller, as the garden kept expanding. This bad-boy is a Troy-Bilt from the early 80s (craigslist). Came with a plow, hiller and tire chains. Gonna make life a LOT easier!
Carol and Guy with a bit of the bounty
Bounty canned!
Our first potato crop ever! 110lbs!
Garden, late summer. We built the shed from scratch, intended as a chicken coop. We decided it’s too nice for chickens and will build them something else in the spring.
