New garden beds

We decided to move the garden beds to near where the blueberries were.
We are doing this because:

• closer to water
• closer to house
• re-design so I can use the large mower to mow the area

 So this means I get to:

• get new beds made
• fill new beds with garden soil
• make a lattice for one of the beds
• make a gateway
• setup fence

Then:

• remove old fence
• remove old fence posts
• remove old beds

I've got the new beds made and filled and the fence posts in, time to work on the fence.

Greenhouse started

The Port Orchard house has a plastic greenhouse. It was rather dismal when I first looked at it, lots of dirt/mold/etc on the outside with weeds/brambles on the outside, the inside full of rubbish and broken florescent light tubes.

I cleaned it up inside, mixed in some compost, mushroom compost, steer manure, and chicken manure into the sandy soil. I mixed it up very well to distribute it well. I also power washed 3/4 of the outside. I'll finish powerwashing it later, the side that is not fully done is the shady side.


Here is the an old picture of it.

And now how it looks outside:

And the inside:

Last weekend we planted a mixture of heirloom seeds that Cedar gave me. There are small shoots popping up already. Woohoo!

Book Review: Growing a Farmer

I just finished 'How I learned to Live Off the Land' by Kurt Timmermeister. Tim has written a very good book about how he changed his 4 acres of overgrown land into a 12 acre successful small farm.

He really goes into good details on how he's had to adapt and learn to work out his problems that he encountered.
His chapters are:

• Growing the Farm
• Bees
• Fruits, Apples, Vinegar
• Sheep, Goats, Pastures and Grazing
• Cows
• Dairying
• Raw Milk
• Vegetables
• Fowl
• Pigs
• The Slaughter
• Butchering
• The Present-Day Farm
• The Table

All in all, a good read and worth the money to acquire it and learn how to plan for a homestead.



Amazon info:

Book Review: 'The Good Food Revlution' by Will Allen

I just finished Will Allen's book 'The Good Food Revolution'. This is a great book on growing food and ways to do it organically and w/o lots of chemicals. He covers composting, vermiculture (composting with worms), intensive growing, aquaculture (closed loops with fish and plants), and how he gets it all working together. It's a great book, check it out!

Amazon info:

Container garden started

Over the weekend I also started a small container garden. I bought a 26" long planter, and planted some lettuce and broccoli starts. I also stuck into the soil some radish seeds. The plants are looking good.

Mushrooms!

My son is interested in mushrooms, so when I was out getting a small container to do some container gardening, I ran across  the Back to the Roots mushroom growing kit. It's a plastic bag filled with used coffee grounds that has been inoculated with Oyster mushrooms.
I saw it at my local HomeDepot, the website for it is:
 Back to the Roots Mushroom Kit.
A picture of the kit:

Some basic info on it:

The Back to the Roots' grow-at-home mushroom kit lets you grow up to 1 1/2 lbs of gourmet, tasty oyster mushrooms per box.... harvest your first crop in as little as 10 days! Mushroom Garden will last in the box before opening - No Shelf-Life, Can Grow All Year Round

	Features Grow up to 1 1/2 lbs of tasty pearl oyster mushrooms per box Multiple crops (at least 2, though some have got up to 4!) Grow your first crop in as little as 10 days! Just 3 Easy Steps - Open, Mist, and Harvest (spray mister included). All indoors - just set on a kitchen window sill and mist twice a day (mister included) The soil inside is 100% recycled coffee grounds - safe & sustainable 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Frontyard progressing

I pulled out the grass that was left in the new gardening area. I also planted a Calif Native plant (I'll get the name later). Sprinkler pipes tested ok and am swapping out the heads for what is needed.

Root balls out

Finally, the root balls of doom are removed! It took me 2-3 hrs per root ball to get them out. More time when I expected. But they are out. Now it's time to get the new clear area ready to plant. I already planted last weekend the 2 mandarin oranges we bought.

Mummy berries!

My 2 blueberry plants have lots of flowers on them, but also some of the leaves are turning red. Last summer they also turned red and the berries dried up, we thought it was because the plants were scorched by the sun during the hellish weeks we had.

We started researching red leaves on blueberries and it looks like the plants have 'Mummy Berry' disease. This is a fungus that infects the leaves and flower and the fruits. The leaves turn red and curl up, the flowers change and create a sweet syrup (that entices bees to spread the fungus) and the berries turn hard and look like pumpkins. When the berries dry up and fall off, the berries sit on the ground. When spring comes little fungus 'funnels' come up from the berries and spread the spores. And so the cycle continues.

This fungus can kill the plants, so we did some research and found that Serenade can help with this problem (http://www.serenadegarden.com/). I just sprayed the plants and hopefully they will start to get better before they die off.

Front-yard gardening

I've been working on the garden in the front-yard the last 2 weekends. So far the wood borders have been removed, the black border is put in, and the right hand bed has had chicken compost mixed in. We bought 2 mandarin orange and want to plant them as soon as I get the time. I'll post pictures shortly.

Gardening tasks

Well, I've finally become tired of the ugly hedges out front of the house. We had 3, one each in front of the windows and a 30' long hedge on the left of the lawn. So in the last 2 weekends I've removed all 3. I still have to remove 10 root balls on the long hedge, those are strong and will take a while to do. This weekends tasks are:
-tear out root balls
-mix in tons of compost into all 3 areas
-plant 3 mandarin dwarf orange trees in long area
-take out falling apart wood borders and put in black plastic commercial grade border

Lots to do.

Amaranth take 2

My first batch of amaranth was wiped out by snails. So I've planted 3 types ( Hopi Red Dye, Love Lies Bleeding, and Pygmy) and sprinkled the area with Sluggo. Let's see the slimy SoB's get the plants now!

Amaranth

I planted 3 types of amaranth out front last week. They are: Hopi Red Dye, Burgundy, and Love Lies Bleeding in 3 sections, tallest in back.
I have small shoots coming up now. A mixture of red/green, red, and green.

Book Review: A good back to local food book

Not quite a homestead book, but getting back to the locally grown foods. Esp their own.

A good read.

Amazon info:

Their website can be found here.

Berry season starts!

Berry season is starting, time to start picking the delicious fruits of nature. I especially love raspberries and blackberries. Time to learn how to can/make jam of them.