They Survived!

Last Night I was outside choring my chickens and doing my usual walk around the 1/2 acre farm, and I noticed that my blackberry and raspberry bushes had their first sign of green leaves! This is very exciting to me because I planted them last year and really put a lot of work and effort into nurturing these plants through the summer, and I was afraid that they may not survive the winter. However, apparently they did survive the winter, and we should have blackberries and raspberries this year!!!

Blackberries

 

Raspberries

(Sorry the picture quality is bad, the camera didn't want to focus on the green buds)

 

On a sad note though when I got home last night one of my healthy little tomato plants didn't make it through the day. I think I had left my grow lights on too long and it got too hot in my green house and killed it. Also a blueberry bush (not the one Duke dug up) seemed to have snapped in half as well. I'm not sure what to think about these blueberry bushes at this point, every time I think they seem to be looking better....they take a turn for the worse. I may be going to a nursery within the next month or so and buying two new bushes. 





Everything is turning GREEN!!!

For some reason this weekend as I sat at my kitchen table gazing outside at our beautiful country view I noticed that the grass is really starting to turn green! And that Duke, my yellow lab, really stands out a lot in the green background as he is doing his business in my front lawn right outside the windows.........I really wish he would find somewhere else to do that!

We had a really productive and exciting weekend on the 1/2 acre farm! Saturday (March 28th) the kids and I removed all the peat pots from the green house, and proceeded to replant everything that I had planted in the peat pots. Last week I ordered 60 4" diameter plastic pots and 24-6 cell trays off of amazon, the 4" diameter pots were $11/30 and the 6-cell trays were $7/24.

The 4" diameter pots seem to be really sturdy and I am hoping that i can reuse them year after year. The 6 cell trays is what the kids used to plant some of moms flower seeds for her! We planted Bachelor Buttons, Pansy's, Sweet Peas (Isla's favorite since that is what I call her), Moon Flowers, and Impatiens. Now I'm sure the kids will be impatiently waiting for the seeds to germinate! Later that evening I replanted tomato plants, and pepper plants, I planted 10 new tomato plants, 5 green pepper plants, 5 red pepper plants, 5 jalapeno plants, and 5 serrano pepper plants.

 

The tomato plants that were planted in plastic Containers look really good! My watering cycle currently is I spritz the seeds and plants once a day, and I water the plants from a watering can every other day! Also yesterday (Sunday March 29th) I went out to the garden and found that we have onion sprouts!!!!

Tomatoes

Onion Sprout



 

My Birthday was March 22nd and I wanted to share one thing that my Aunt Gina got me for my birthday that I thought were really neat. She bought me 2 garden journals! I don't know if I should take it as a sign that she doesn't like my blog, and that I need to keep my journals more private or not though! HAHA I'm kidding Gina! The green one is really neat, its a book for daily journal entries and will keep 5 years worth of entries! The black one is a record keeping book for plants, tools, and for all sorts of information for you to fill in to document what you did! Thank you Gina!



The Berry Update We've All Been Waiting For!!!!

I want to update on the blueberries that, if you recall, were plated on March 13th, looked pretty rough a couple days later, and that the dog dug one of them up. Well as of right now I'm really happy to report that I actually think they're going to make it! The plant that the dog dug up I placed back into the hole and put some more cotton burr around it. Yesterday I went outside to check on everything and wouldn't you know, the plant that the dog dug up is starting to get green leaves on it and seems to be doing just fine!!!! The other plant doesn't have any leaves showing up yet, but looks just as healthy as this one!

 

Because of the mulch its kind of hard to see the plant so I circled the plant in red, and circled the green leaves in blue! I really thought after the dog incident that these plants weren't going to make it, but right now I'm pretty hopeful!

 

Nicolle sent this picture to me today, apparently our strawberries have survived the winter!!!! I have not pulled the straw off of them yet, because I'm not convinced that the cold weather is 100% gone (especially since they are calling for a mixture of rain and snow tonight!). However, starting Sunday the forecast looks to be more in our favor, and I will more than likely be pulling the straw off the strawberries towards the middle of April, if not sooner!

 

 



WE'RE BACK!!

We have made it back from beautiful Colorado! Nicolle and I spent the past four days on a vacation to Colorado spending the first day in the car driving, the second day in Breckenridge, the third day in Vail and Silverthorne, and the last day driving home! We didn't do any skiing but did a lot of shopping, and spent a lot of quality time together!

Here we are in Breckenridge!

 

We made it home so late last night that I had to walk around the garden with a flashlight to see if we had any potato or onion sprouts.......and we had 0 sprouts, but I'm hopeful we will have something soon especially with this rain we just had.

 

While we were gone I was a little nervous about my tomato plants and pepper plants that we had in the green house. I left the grow light on them and we left with fingers crossed that they were going to be alright. As it turns out all the plants in plastic containers made it just fine and look really good! The plants in the peat pots......no so much. I'm going to be quite honest, I think I've decided that I'm not a big fan of these peat pots. Nicolle and I have tried to grow flowers from seeds in these pots and they germinate, get about an 1" tall, and then wilt over and die. I think that plastic containers retain the water so much better, where the peat pots pull the moisture from the soil and then the heat dries out the peat pots. I'm going to get some more plastic pots and start some new tomato plants in those, and since my pepper plants never germinated in the peat pots I will re-plant those in plastic containers as well. I am going to try one more time with peat pots though. I want to start some flower seeds in them, but this time I am going to pour about 1/4" of water in the tray that they sit in, to try and keep them moist by pulling water from the tray vs the soil. I'm not sure if it will work, but I figure it's worth a try!

The plants in the plastic containers look really good!

The ones in peat pots.....not so much!

 

 



Garden Planning with Companion Planting

The more I research about gardening, the more I'm finding out that I don't know a thing about gardening! As I researched when to plant potatoes, and onions, and tomatoes, etc.,  I learned that there is something called "Companion Planting". Growing up watching my grandparents garden I just always assumed you just planted your seeds, vegetables grew, you picked them, and then you ate them. Apparently there is way more to it than that. On the right under Good Reads you will see a new article about companion planting. This article goes over what plants are good to plant next to each other and what plants will compete with each other and shouldn't be planted together. So with this new knowledge about Companion Planting I found a handy dandy app on my iPhone called "Garden Minder" from Gardener's Supply Company. This app gives you a grid and helps you plan out how you are going to plant your garden! For instance here is my grid with my garden for this year:
 

 

And like so many infomercials will say "AND THAT'S NOT ALL!",  it helps with how deep to sow seeds, the spacing, when you can replant, days until you can harvest, and all sorts of interesting things about each plant! And probably the most exciting thing that this app has, at least to me anyway, you can make journal entries!!!!  Here is an example of what it talks about:

 



  Beans, bush

	Sow seeds 1" deep directly in garden after all danger of frost. Spacing: four plants per sq. ft. for bush beans, six to eight plants per sq. ft. for pole beans Plant second crop of bush beans (if needed) two weeks after first planting Days to harvest: 50-80 days from seed, depending on variety. Not frost-hardy. Hint: Add a legume inoculant when planting to increase vigor and yield.
Carrots, summer
	Sow seeds in garden 1/4" deep three weeks before last spring frost. Spacing: Plant 30 seeds per sq. ft.; thin to 16 plants per sq. ft. Replant six to eight weeks before fall frost for late crop. Days to harvest: 55 to 70 days from seed. Frost-hardy. Hint: Before planting, loosen soil to 12"; remove stones and add compost.

I know this is probably going to disappoint everyone, but Nicolle and I will be heading out tomorrow morning for a long weekend vacation to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado for my birthday (which is Sunday)! So this will be my last blog post until Tuesday of next week. Hopefully on Tuesday, I will be able to report about onion and potato plants sprouting!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Well I guess it would actually be a Happy belated St. Patrick's Day! The Half Acre Farm had a very busy St. Patrick's day, we planted our potatoes and our onions. I read many articles on when the best time to plant potatoes and just about every master gardener says 2 weeks before the last frost, and the same goes for onions. However, I have always heard to plant your potatoes on St. Patrick's day, and if you miss that day plant them on good Friday. I question if the theory to plant on St. Patrick's day is more of an approximation that it is two weeks before the last frost. Honestly, I decided to go with the old wives tale to see what happens, based on the fact that it has just been so nice outside lately I just couldn't help myself. I had to get something in the ground!

 

I planted 80 sets of yellow onions, Enought for 2 and a half rows of onions. I couldn't let any go to waste and i didn't want to start another row just to plant half, so I planted the half row alternated between the two rows. If that doesn't make sense think of the number 5 side on a dice. I may not have plated them far enough apart, but we'll see.

 

Here are my potatoes. I read an article that you can supposedly grow 100 lbs. of potatoes in a 4 sq. ft. box. I bought white seed potatoes, I used 2x2 posts for my verticals and 2x4's for my edging. How this is supposed to work is as my potatoes sprout above the ground I will add another row of 2x4's and fill that row with dirt. I will continue to do this row by row until the box is approximately 3'-4' tall. Then when it's time to harvest I willo remove the bottom board and harvest the potatoes from teh bottom up. It seemed to make sense to me, I'm really looking forward to this experiment to see how well it produces potatoes!

 

Now I would like to report that yesterday on March 17th we had our first tomatoe plant germinate! we have 4 or 5 sprouts that came up yesterday. We planted our seeds on Friday the 13th and had our first sprout on Tuesday the 17th, so 4 days to germinate!

 

 

Blueberry Bush Report!!!

I didn't take a picture because I was very angry and upset last night, so I will just report to everyone what happened. Duke (the 21 week labarador puppy) dug up one of the blueberry plants. If you recall from yesterdays posts they didnt' look very good to begin with, and now I'm not sure I can do anything for it. I did place it back in its hole and will continue to nurture it but I'm afraid it might be toast now.  



The Berry Patch Addition

I forgot to include in yesterday's post that I planted my blueberries also last Friday (March 13th), which expands the berry patch to 4 different kinds of berries! When I purchased my blackberry, strawberry, and raspberry plants last year I bought them from a local nursery, and they really did well. This year I thought I would try something new and I bought a couple blueberry plants from Orscheln's Farm and Home. The plants were reasonably smaller, but they had some good green buds starting on both plants I purchased, and they were only $5/plant. So I thought what the heck I'll give it a try. I dug my hole for my blueberries, but before I placed my blueberry plants in the hole I filled the hole with cotton burr. Blueberry plants like very rich acidic soil when planted and cotton burr, like I've said in my previous posts, is really good stuff! I filled the hole with cotton burr, transplanted my blueberry bush and covered it with cotton burr and mulch. I do apologize I meant to take a picture at the time of transplanting but I forgot. These pictures are from Sunday night when I returned home from the weekend.

 

As you can, barely, see the buds don't seem to be as green as they were when I planted them. I'm hopeful that they are just stunted due to the transplant, and that I can nurse them back to a healthy state. I will keep you all posted!

Finally Getting Started!!!

I hope everyone had a good weekend! Mine was good and fairly productive, especially since I wasn't home for the weekend. On Friday I started some of my seeds for my garden. I started my tomato, jalapeno, serrano pepper, green pepper, and red pepper plants in my little green house. I used some bigger recycled planters from some flowers we bought last year to start my tomatoes in, and then I used some peat pots to start my peppers in. The peat pots you can buy just about anywhere, and when you get ready to transplant your plants you just plant the whole pot and everything. We'll see how that goes!! I bought the 1.75"x2" peat pots that have 8 spots in each tray. I basically followed the article "Starting Seeds Indoors"  that you can find on the side of my blog under "Good Reads". I purchased Jiffy Organic Seed Starting mix as my soil for the containers. I'm not sure how much it really matters what brand it is, this was just what was available at the Orscheln's Farm and Home store when I bought my seeds, but I want to document what I used so we can see if this stuff works or not! I dumped my seed starting mix in a bucket and I wet it all down really good before I filled my pots. I didn't saturate the mix to where if you squeezed it a bunch of water came oozing out between your fingers, I just added enough water that it made the soil a little sticky. Also I spritzed all of my peat pods down with water from a squirt bottle before I filled them with soil as well. Then I filled all my pots with soil. After I filled them I placed 3 seeds in each pot (just to help the germination rate out of each pot), and then I covered them with dirt. I then gently pressed the dirt down in each pot to make sure I have maximized the dirt contact to the seed. Then I put them in my green house and spritzed them one more time for good measure and zipped them up!

I plan on spritzing the seeds every other day. Spritzing the seeds with a squirt bottle versus pouring water over them helps to make sure that the dirt stays in contact with the seed. Pouring water over the seeds can create a separation between the two and reducing the germination rate. We'll see if that holds true for me!

You will also see that I have a light in the corner of my green house. Home depot sells grow light bulbs that fit just perfect inside a heat lamp for only $7! This was exciting to me because to buy fluorescent grow light fixtures is quite expensive! Seedlings don't necessarily need the light until they germinate and become plants, but I'm using my grow light as a heater for my green house. It doesn't produce a lot of heat, but I am getting good condensation on the walls of my green house, which is a good thing, so it must be producing enough!

 

The last thing that I did over the weekend was I bought some good black composted horse manure from a lady down the street to spread on the garden! She had made a post on the local swap and shop selling horse manure for $5 a tractor bucket load! I couldn't pass this up so I hooked onto the trailer yesterday and went and bought 2 bucket loads. I spread it over the garden really good and then pulled out my little mantis tiller and mixed it all together. I would like to get a bigger tiller out and get everything turned over one good time before I plant, but the mantis tiller mixed it in good for now anyway!

 



(You can really see a difference with the manure!) 



Without getting a big tiller in it, I think it still looks pretty good!

When life gives you Mulberries.......make Mulberry jelly???

I travel a lot for work, and there is one specific state that I spend a lot of time in.....Nebraska. At this point in my life after 2 years of being a Bridge Inspector I'm pretty sure that I have been to every single county in the state of Nebraska, and I would venture to bet I have been to 75% of the towns in the state. If you haven't spent much time in Nebraska I apologize for ruining the surprise, but there is NOTHING very exciting about this state, unless you're a corn farmer or live out by Scotts Bluff. However, I found last June that there is 1 itsy bitsy super exciting thing in Nebraska that happens only in June. That is Mulberries, yes that's right mulberries, and I'm here to tell you they are EVERYWHERE in Nebraska. We spend a lot of our Nebraska time on gravel back country roads inspecting these little bridges to make sure they are safe for the farmers and their equipment, and these mulberry trees grow all over the sides of the roads we are on! SO....what do you do when you're sitting at a bridge getting ready to inspect it, and you look over and see a mulberry tree loaded with plump, juicy, sweet berries?

That's right!!! You take a 30 min. (maybe an hour) break and you climb the tree and start picking!!! I filled a gallon sack took it back to my hotel, washed them, and threw them in the refrigerator until I could get home to make delicious mulberry jelly! This was our first run at making any kind of jelly, and it turned out really good! Thanks for that jelly recipe Mom....oh and by the way I've lost it, so I'm gonna need another copy!!!

 

 

Now this will be the only time I say this....But I'm looking forward to June getting here so I can get back up to Nebraska and pick me some more mulberries!!!! I doubt Nicolle shares the same enthusiasm  though..........



The 2015 Garden

We have the introduction done, the farm pre blog, and now its time to move on to the fun stuff! Time to GET DIRTY!!! At the half acre farm we don't like to do anything "easy" it seems, so why would our garden be any different?! There really wasn't a good spot to put our garden when we moved in. We have a lot of trees around our house that blocks sun, and our lot is longer than it is wide. SO....that meant something had to go! Last fall we chose to clear out 3 or 4 big cedar trees (they were in pretty rough shape to begin with), grind out the stumps, and VOILA! garden space!!!! The picture below is also in the previous post I made, but it is the best picture that shows what we were dealing with.

 

What we're talking about here are these GIANT monstrous, mangy, hideous trees that did absolutely nothing but take up space, right there behind the strawberry bed and beside the chicken coop. Thanks to my two neighbors and a good friend we were able to get these bad boys cut down, hauled away, and out of my site forever! We then had a tree service come in and grind the stumps away. Leaving us with this end result.....................

 

 

HELLO FRESH BLACK DIRT!!! Now I've had multiple people ask me since I've done this "How will the cedar trees effect your dirt?" or "Aren't the cedar trees too acidic for a garden?", so let me answer these questions to the best of my ability......I have no idea!!! This is my first garden, and all I know is that this specific spot was the best spot on my "farm" to place a garden. I have done things to try and help the soil in the event that the dirt is too acidic from the cedar trees, but what I've done is nothing more than what I would have done on a spot cedar tree free from the beginning! I tilled it up last fall as you can see in the picture, I have spread chicken manure on it, and I have taken the ashes from my wood stove and spread it across the garden as well. I also plan on getting more cotton burr from my local nursery and mixing it in the soil before I do any planting. I'm also going forward with this garden with the thought that I used cedar mulch on my strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry plants how will that be much different than this? I guess come this fall we will know how it works because we will either have a bountiful harvest, or it will be a flop! Everyone will know as I know!

 

There are all kinds of articles and gardeners out there who will tell me that I need to test my pH balance of my soil and make sure it falls between point A and point C for the best results. But my mom has always told me......if there's black dirt, dig a hole, and plant a seed, it will either grow or it won't! So here goes nothin!!!!!

 

We have purchased our supplies, and we are getting ready to start our tomato, cucumber, and pepper plants in our little green house. We are planning on planting our potatoes and onions in the next couple weeks as well. Also you see below we are expanding our berry patch and introducing blueberries this year!!! So please come back to see our progress over the next couple of weeks!



The Farm thus far.....

We bought our house in August of 2013, and had big plans come the spring of 2014. Unfortunately we didn't get everything done that we wanted to get done in 2014, so somethings had to wait until spring of 2015. What we did get done in 2014 was we built a chicken coop and we own 13 chickens.

 

But that's not all that we accomplished in 2014, we put in a berry patch! We planted 2 blackberry bushes, 2 raspberry bushes, and 20 strawberry plants. My strawberry patch is a 64 sq. ft. strawberry bed. I went to Home Depot and bought 4x8 landscape timbers for my bed edging, then I went to the local nursery and purchased 4 bags of a compost called Cotton Burr. Cotton Burr is a compost that is very high in nutrients and a great soil conditioner (see: http://www.organic-gardening-for-life.com/cottonburr_compost.html for more information). I tilled up my 8x8 piece of ground, then threw in the cotton burr, and tilled in the cotton burr into the soil. After I planted my strawberries I made sure to cover the bed with a cedar mulch really well. You can use any mulch, or even straw, which is where the name "Straw"berries came from! I planted my 2 black berry bushes on one side of the strawberry patch, and my raspberry bushes on another side of patch. My strawberry plants seemed to be stout plants, they were running, and creating buds all over the place last year. Its hard to say if the cotton burr is the cause, but I'm sure it didn't hurt! I would recommend plucking the strawberry buds off of 1st year plants to obtain stronger roots. We did not do this, just for the mere fact its very hard to pluck the fruit that you've worked hard to grow, and Aiden was a huge fan of picking them and eating them right off the plants so we left them for him! I covered our strawberries with straw for the winter and I plan on pulling the straw about mid April. We will see if they survived our winter and if they will produce fruit this June! Our Blackberry and Raspberry bushes really took off last year, and we have a lot of new canes coming out of the ground, I'm hopeful that they will have no problem taking off this spring. We even had a few Raspberries come in last fall but like strawberries, as hard as it is to do, I would recommend plucking buds as they come on. Stay tuned to see if our berries will be a success this summer!!!!

 

 

 

Also....yes that is a scare crow. We had birds eating our strawberries, and Isla came up with this idea all on her own so we HAD to try it!!! It didn't really work, but I was proud of her for using her head!

 

 

And Isla picking the fruits of our labors!!



 

Welcome to our Half Acre Farm!

First I would like to say welcome to our Half Acre Farm blog. For those that do not know us I am Josh, my wife is Nicolle and we have 3 beautiful children named Isla, Aiden, and Evan!

OH and we can't forget Duke the family Yellow Labrador, who is a 20 week old puppy!

 



Now that the introductions are over I want to clarify (if the title hasn't done so already), we don't "technically" live on a farm. We live on a 1/2 acre lot outside of city limits in a very small 2 block neighborhood.....and we LOVE IT! We have chickens where the kids collect eggs and sell them, we have a berry patch that we planted last year and will hopefully get fruit from this year, we are putting in our first vegetable garden this year, and last but not least we are going to be adding an apple tree.  Right now, until I get some grand idea to expand with something else, that is what we like to call our farm.

 

So why start a blog? Why would anyone care what we do on our so called farm, right? Well, to answer these two questions that I know everyone is asking....Its not for you!!! OK I'm kidding.....sort of! I wanted to start a blog for two reasons, reason #1 is to help track progress on our own gardening so that I can document for future years the success/failures of certain things that we try. Reason #2, to share with everyone our success/failures!!! I hope that everyone finds this blog informative, maybe sometimes useful, and if nothing else a place to go for a good laugh! Also feel free to comment on anything that I publish with ideas, point out something I'm doing wrong, or to just say Hi if you want!

 

I look forward to sharing our journey of gardening, chicken farming, and preserving what we produce, and I hope all of you do as well! Happy gardening everyone!!!!