Out here in the fields...

I don't need to tell you that we had our work cut out for us today. On our list:

Clear out last year's leftovers
Till
Fertilize
Form our rows

And, no fools we, our experience from last year taught us that if you don't mulch on the same day as you do all of the above, your rows will be washed away and weeds will takeover by the time you actually plant. So, we added the following to our list:

Mulch within an inch of our lives

Another lesson from last year: don't be afraid to actually purchase mulch. I think we spent more time looking for free mulch last year than we did actually mulching. So, this year, we brought bags of leaves with us to the farm (free) and bought 6 straw-bales ($40 total).

















Next, we cleared the plot of all the large plants and pieces of roots. We thought we'd be able to till the smaller bits of plants into the ground but that didn't really work. So, we did something we thought we'd never do. We burned it:


It is amazing what we are reduced to because we don't have the time or resources to do things the way we'd prefer. The way we'll do things when we have our own farm: no tilling, permanent beds, permaculture. But all of that is for another day. In the meantime, we tilled, formed our beds and then mulched.

Behold, this is the neatest you will ever see our plot:



And then we fertilized. I have no idea what all is in our fertilizer mix this year but I do know it is all vegan. Among other things, there is corn and alfalfa. Adam will have to tell you the rest.

To do list:
PLANT!

UPDATE: I lied. I do know what is in our fertilizer mix - the ingredients were right here on our blog! It has just been so long since I gave any thought to it that I forgot.

Mission Accomplished?

You may have seen my to-do list for this weekend. And you might be wondering if we accomplished everything we set out to do.

I'm here to say we did.

Almost.

We were able to run around and collect some mulch. We got a bag of magnolia leaves from my dad (Big thank-you to the large magnolia tree in my parents' front yard.)

We also got some cardboard from the neighborhood liquor store. (And thank-you, neighbors, for the large amounts of alcohol consumed.)


I've been (not seriously) considering changing the name of this blog to The Great Mulch Experiment.

So far this season, we've used straw, magnolia leaves, oak leaves and mulched trees and other tornado debris.

It was kind of a surprise to discover the mulch that worked the best.

The magnolia leaves!

Take a look at the pictures below.

The first one is a row of okra with no mulch...


...and the second is a row of okra with magnolia leaf mulch.

There's not a weed to be found in the magnolia mulch.

Now take a look at our potato plants which were mulched with oak leaves. Do you notice some weeds poking through?


So, I'd say the breakdown of mulch (best to worst) goes something like this:

1. Magnolia leaves
2. Straw
3. Mulched trees and tornado debris
4. Oak leaves

Other than The Great Mulch Experiment, we also watered, fertilized, harvested and made pickles.

The fertilizing and pickling will have to wait for another post.

The pesto-making was the only item not crossed off our to-do list. However, my weekend is technically not over yet because I have Monday off. So...

The harvest today included:

okra
tomatoes
cucumbers
herbs
flowers
and......
POTATOES

Apparently, when the potato plant gets all wilty and dead-looking (see above) the potatoes are ready. So we pulled about 4-5 plants today and found roughly 20 Yukon Golds awaiting us.


I plan on roasting these with the herbs we harvested today: rosemary, thyme and oregano.

Yum.

If you remember, we planted several cut potatoes. This is what it looked like when we pulled the plant:


Sometimes, you can get something from nothing!

Lesson learned.

Out, out damn weed! (And other adventures)

Our mission this weekend was to rid our garden of weeds.

Or, as many weeds as humanly (and non-chemically) possible.

Which means a lot of hand weeding. And a lot of mulch. Luckily, we heard about some free mulch that would be available to anyone with enough gumption to shovel the stuff and not enough sense to know better.

This particular mulch was made from the debris left by the spring tornadoes. It was good to know that a tragedy (or, actually, several tragedies) can become something positive for everyone.



We brought a box of garbage bags and loaded them with mulch. This mulch was great and seemed to consist mostly of downed trees. While we were shoveling (or, I should say, while Adam was shoveling and I was holding the bag) we would see a piece of siding every once in a while that would remind us that some of this mulch wasn't just from trees. Some of it was from people's houses.


And did I mention it was hot? Not just the air and the sun but the mulch itself. You could feel the heat radiating off of it as we (again, Adam) shoveled it into the bags.

We took the mulch back to the garden and got a lot of use out of it! We were even able to mulch our seating area, which seemed rather important since we plan to spend an evening or two out there with wine bottle(s) in tow.




If you think the transformation in our seating area is dramatic, you should see the rest of the garden! I only hope we did it in time for our bush beans, which are looking pretty haggard.

After we weeded and mulched, we fertilized everything since it had been at least 3 weeks since the last time we added fertilizer. We did this with the same water-diluted fish emulsion fertilizer as before.

I'll do a farm-photo-catch-up post tomorrow!

Everybody's mulching for the weekend

Adam and I went in search of mulch last week. Apparently, when "weekend farmers" such as ourselves decide to take the weekend off, the weeds come out of hibernation and create a ruckus in the garden.

Since neither one of us likes to weed, and Round-Up is just not an option, we knew we needed to get some mulch down soon to prevent this from becoming a weekly problem.

However, we are cheap. After several years of living paycheck to paycheck we still cringe at the thought of spending money on something we can get for free. So, we went around our neighborhood looking for bagged leaves.

Through FreeCycle, we heard about a guy who had some yard waste on his curb. But it seemed his yard waste included waste-waste as well, judging by the amount of flies in the vicinity.

We were about to call off the search when we saw two (two!) houses with several beautiful black bags out front. We hesitantly stopped at the first one, peeked in one of the bags, and were delighted to find leaves.

Magnolia leaves.

Quite possibly the prettiest leaf around, if this southern girl has anything to say about it.

We filled our car to the brim and made our way to the farm.


Somewhere between the roach crawling across my arm and the realization that we literally could not see the forest for all the leaf bags, we discovered the importance of owning a truck.

Not right now of course.

But some time. The future farm of our dreams includes a future non-gas-guzzling truck. And, while I'm populating our dream with specific items, I'd like to include a dog.

Several dogs actually.

And I want one of them to be tall enough that, when he is standing next to me, I can rub his ear without bending over.

Potatoes and Onions

Potatoes

I'm not much of a potato person - except for when it's in the french fry or sweet form. However, being married to an Irishman, I guess it was inevitable that potatoes would be a part of our garden.

Turns out, planting potatoes is easy! Here's how we did it:

1. We bought some potatoes with every intention of cooking them. But we forgot about them and, when we next looked in the paper sack, we saw they had many, many eyes. So, we decided to plant them.

2. We cut up the potatoes, ensuring that each section of potato had some eyes on it.




































3. We prepared the potato beds with a compost/peat mixture and then dug holes about 4-inches deep.


4. We planted the potatoes (eyes facing up!) in the holes and covered with dirt.



5. We watered around each potato with the organic liquid fertilizer mixture. Then we mulched with leaves and watered some more!


UPDATE: Adam tells me that the potatoes did not have eyes. They had eye-buds. Eyes are normal on a potato but when those eyes start sprouting buds the time to eat the potato has passed. When the eyes start sprouting buds, it is time to plant!

Onions

If planting potatoes was easy, planting onions was practically mindless.

First we prepared the bed by raking over it to break up any clumps. Then Adam made "rows of holes" by sticking his finger into the ground. I went along behind him and dropped an onion into each hole.

We covered the holes with dirt, fertilized with the organic liquid fertilizer mixture, watered the whole bed and called it a day.