End of Winter, into Spring. Work, work, work!

written by Yvonne

This post is an accumulation of about three weeks worth of gardening work. Instead of writing about it by the week, it's categorized by areas of the garden.

GARLIC

The grass had grown SUPER high around the garlic and it was gonna take some time to dig through and determine what of the tall green stuff was grass and what was garlic.

Describing this as similar to finding a needle in a haystack may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.  The garlic looked ever so slightly different from the grass. The grass was so intermixed, it wasn't possible to pull the grass out without disturbing the garlic, so I oped to just cut the grass as close to the soil as possible.

These two piles of grass is what I cut from around the garlic.

Last step was to put hay around each bulb of garlic. Whew! What a job. If Ruth Stout's hay mulching works, I'll never have to do that again.

POTATOES AND ONIONS

This area is where we've grown potatoes before. Last season, we planted both onions and potatoes but the onions never took off. Or so we thought....

Upon closer inspection, there are onions growing here (kinda hard to see in this picture, but they're there). We started a round of onions in pots this year and Tom added them to this patch as well.

I threw the potatoes on one end of the potato/onion bed and then covered them with a thick layer of hay. We'll see if they spout this way or now.  It'll be SO cool if they do!  (I have doubts.)

PEAS

Granted, it has been cold, but gosh darn it these peas are taking their sweet time.  This big white ball in the photo is the pea seed pushing out of the ground ready to open up.

Here is one that has shed its outer hull and started to actually sprout.

NEW PLANTINGS (IN POTS)

Time for even more seeds to go into the greenhouse.

All the herbs, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and round two of broccoli, kale, and more greens are all in pots now.

The first round of collards, kale, onions and broccoli are doing pretty good at this point.

PARSLEY

I'd uncovered a parsley plant no too long ago.  It sure is great to have such flavorful parsley at the ready when cooking! I spread another row's worth of seeds next to it so there would be plenty through the spring and summer.

COLLARDS

After putting the hay down just a few weeks ago, the collards, spinach and cabbage grew significantly and they all turned greener. I couldn't believe how much of an impact the hay has made in such a short time! Since the second round of collards had sprouted in pots and was read to plant, I thought the best thing to do would be to...

pull all the collards out and make space for the new seedlings. So I did just that. Once the plants were pulled up...

I pushed the hay to one side...

and carefully separated the seedlings from one another and planted them in the space where the previous collards had been.

And now it looks like this.

And here's how much I pulled up. Three baskets full!

Tom and I made an assembly line to blanch the greens and set them in 10oz nests for freezing. We were able to get 5 10oz nests out of the three baskets full.

BERRIES

We blinked and all of a sudden the berries started blooming. These are canes that didn't produce berries last year and supposedly they will produce berries this year.

We didn't get all of the canes cut back and now (obviously) it's too late cut them. So we may just wake up one morning to find our cars completely surround by fast-growing raspberry and blackberry canes.

DIRECT SOWING

Several items do better by sowing them directly (versus starting them in pots) so Tom got to work doing some direct sowing. First thing he had to do was clear the hay completely off the planting area. When planting seeds direct, you have to get them at least to touch the dirt.

Once the hay was removed, he sprinkled seeds in the dirt and patted them down.

Here is a nice half-bed worth of lettuces...

and another quarter of a bed of spinach, carrots and beets.

Once the seeds sprout, we'll pull the hay around the plants, like we did for the spinach and collards.

There's lots of activity going on with T's Bees these days. If you want to read all the buzz, go to www.tsbeeshoney.com.  Also, if you want to know when the 2013 crop of honey is ready for purchase, click on the Contact Ts Bees page and fill out the form.

Hay: It's Not Just for Horses

written by Yvonne

We FINALLY harvested some greens - spinach and collards.  And boy were they delicious!

We've also been enjoying carrots as well.

As Spring fast approaches, we needed to get hay to implement the Ruth Stout gardening method.  So we made an outing to Woof'N Hoof in Mint Hill.

We hadn't a clue how much hay to get. All we know is that the hay needs to be 8" thick to start and more will be needed once that all settles down. We filled up Tom's truck with12 bales. We should have gotten a clue that we over bought when the woman at the store said, "How big IS your garden?" I very proudly said, "Oh, it's big."

Now that Tom has thousands of other critters to take care of (bees), the worms have taken a back seat. It just became too labor intensive to keep up with the worm compost so we decided to dismantle it.  We'll still compost our kitchen scraps, but they'll go in the big composting bins with grass clippings and yard waste.  That way we're only keeping up with one composting system rather than two. Nonetheless, Tom put the worms to good use by scooping up all the worms and all of their castings....

and relocated them directly into the garden.

Once that was down, the spreading of the hay began. One of the beauties of Ruth Stout's method is that you shouldn't have to weed a bed ever again. You simply pile more hay on top of the weeds and that snuffs them out. So, we figured me might as well test it out from the get-go and simply pile the hay on top of the weeds. Bed 2 had all the rye grass in it which Tom turned under several weeks ago. However, much of the grass re-rooted so instead of tilling it under, I just piled the hay on top.

Then I piled some more...

and more...

until we had a good 12" layer.

Critics of Ruth Stout's method say that the hay makes for an unattractive garden. Personally, I'd rather see the hay than weeds. I suppose it's not super attractive, but you know what? If it makes easier work of gardening, who the heck cares? (That was her philosophy too.) Besides, it's in the backyard and as of yet Home & Garden hasn't come knocking on my door, requesting a photo shoot.

I thought we'd give this patch yet another try. We tried for a few years to get something happening in this mostly shady spot but nothing took root (except weeds). Last year we didn't try anything. So I layered it with hay and we'll plant something or other in it soon.

When you have plants growing, like this cabbage (left), you simply pull the hay around the base of it, keeping the moisture locked into the soil and the plant exposed to the sun and rain. Then, you mush down the weeds (right) with a thick layer of hay. Ironically, after tucking the hay all nice and neat around this cabbage I ended up harvesting it for dinner the next night. I pulled the pant out, cut the head out of the middle, left the rest of the plant in the bed and covered it up with lots of hay. From here forward, that's how we're to handle the 'waste' material from the garden. Instead of taking out the stalks and roots of plants, we are to lay them down, cover them with hay, and they'll compost right into the bed.

I tucked the hay all around the rows of spinach...

as well as the collards. You'll notice I didn't put any hay to the left of the collards. That's because there are pea seeds planted there which haven't sprouted yet. Anywhere seeds have been planted should be free from hay until they sprout. Otherwise 1. you won't know where the seeds are and 2. they won't grow because the sun can't get to them.

I tucked hay around the remaining cabbages as well.

Here is the before, where most of the green you see in Beds 1-3 are weeds...

and here is the after.  The green at the far end of Bed 1 is garlic and a lot of weeds. I have to take some time to clip out the weeds before spreading the hay around the garlic. But that'll be another day. Our last frost date is April 15 so we're keeping the hoop houses on Bed 4 where the spinach and collards are just in case we get a freak winter storm between now and then.

Remember when I said we didn't know how much hay to get? Well it took all of three bales to cover what you see here and the misc bed up near the house. Needless to say, we overbought by a little - 9 bales too many! Oh well. We'll definitely use one more bale to cover the potato patch and to finish out the rest of these beds and there's no doubt we'll use more as we go along.

Oh, and if any of you want to start using the Ruth Stout mulching method of gardening in your own garden, no need to find a source for hay. We have some to sell ya! If you're in Charlotte, we'll even deliver it to you.

Seeds Sprouting Started

written by Yvonne

After only two weeks, a few seeds Tom planted have started to show signs of life.

I believe this is kale, but it's hard to tell because of the cryptic labeling 'system' Tom came up with.

In fairness, the system I came up with last year didn't work well either.  So I came up with yet another  labeling system.  We marked the front of each tray, then I crated a map of sorts, designating what seeds were in each pot.

Then I stuck the maps to the door of the outbuilding for easy reference from the greenhouse.

In each circle is the seed that was planted, and the planting date is listed at the bottom.  If we like this system, we may attach a wipe off or chalk board on the door for next year.

The following seeds were started in pots this weekend:

Tomato: Green Zebra
Tomato: Black Krim
Tomato: Cherry (black)
Tomato: Cherry (yellow)
Tomato:Persimmon
Tomato: Solar Flair
Tomato: Bonny Best
Tomato: Opalka
Broccoli
Cabbage
Swiss Chard
Pepper: Hot Pasilla Bajio

I thought I'd straighten up the very disheveled hoop houses and check on our greens.

Yes, Honey is attached to me the whole time I do this work.  She's not ready to be off leash yet, but I want her to get used to being with us as we work in the garden.  The first few times I brought her out, she walked right into the beds so she has to, ya know, STOP doing that.

Olive set a good example for Honey on how NOT to walk on the beds.

Yes, she had to follow me everywhere.  :)

Time to take a break.

Right now more grass is growing in the beds than in the yard. But that's OK.  There's not much point in weeding them since we're going the Ruth Stout mulch-with-hay method very soon.  We'll just cover up the grass with a thick layer of hay and be done with it.

The bed with our winter greens has been under cover for many weeks of cold weather. Since it's not going to be as cold, and we have rain coming our way, I thought I'd uncover them and see what's been happening. Aw yea!! Spinach is ready to harvest!

And collards too! At the very end of this bed in an empty space, I planted three kinds of peas direct (no pots): Sugar Pod II, Snap Peas, and Big Red Ripper (cow peas).

We have a few more cabbages that will be ready soon as well.

There is no doubt that growing food and keep up with a garden is a LOT of work. And, it's true, it's no fun  to work in the garden when it's very cold and/or very hot. And, it's also true that it's not always convenient to have to manage our life around Mother Nature's schedule.  But as I was planting these tomato seeds, I became very awed by the fact that these little seeds were going to grow from this...

to this...

 

to this!

 

It really is amazing that these little, tiny seeds are going to grow into plants that produce food.  And the joy of harvesting the end result, and cooking food we grow from seeds is worth all the work and inconvenience.  I think having that moment was enough motivation for me for the rest of the year!