Welcome to this week’s homestead update. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of pictures to share today.
I had to get the grass mowed this past weekend. It was getting deep because of all the rain. I got out there Saturday morning and basically raced the incoming weather front. I was able to get the yard outside the fence mowed. I put the mower put away and the rain broke loose. It poured for a couple of hours. Then just drizzled all night long. Continue reading
Posted in weekly
Tagged food, garden, homestead, planting, preserving, salad, vegetables
It’s been a while since I’ve shown some pictures of the garden. So today, I’m going to do that.
Here’s a shot of one of the broccoli beds. Obviously they have started to go to seed. I pulled these this weekend and planted this bed with green beans. Continue reading
Welcome to this week’s homestead update.
I planted my onion sets. These are the sweet onion bulbs that I bought at Walmart. Since the bag was about 125 bulbs, I had to use more than 1 bed. I filled an entire bed and still had more left, so I planted the other side of the potato onion bed. I know I should not mono-crop, but we use so many onions that I need to do it this way. I plan to pick up another smaller bag of onion sets to inter-plant with the other crops. It will probably be red onion sets. Continue reading
Welcome to part 2 of my explanation of what seeds I ordered for the garden this year and why I ordered them. If you haven’t already, please take a look at part 1 of the series. While I hope that this helps the readers with their seed selection, I write this sort of post more to help me keep track of what I am planting. It also helps with planning the garden and guides me in my path to preserving the harvest. This entire order was from my main seed source, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Winter squash – I’m going to grow several of these. We are fairly new to growing winter squash. Neither my wife nor I grew up eating winter squash, but I would like to change this. I like the idea of being able to eat some of our harvest in the winter but without having to preserve it. Winter squash tends to stay good for a long time after harvest.
For those that aren’t overly familiar with squash, there are 4 different species of squash, C. pepo, C. maxima, C moschata and C. mixta (this is sometimes called C. argyrosperma). Planting 2 varieties of any of these species will allow cross-pollination. This does not affect the current year’s fruit, but will affect the seeds to produce next year’s crop. To avoid this, I am only growing 1 variety of each species. I will put the species in parenthesis after the squash name to help with identification.
Tahitian Melon squash – (C. moschata) I’ve read that this makes a very good pumpkin pie and great soup. Since this is similar to butternut squash, any recipe that uses butternut squash can use this squash instead. It also has a very long shelf life.
Rouge Vif D'Étampes (Cinderella) pumpkin
Rouge Vif D’Étampes (Cinderella) pumpkin - (C. maxima) This one is also supposed to make a great pie. But I really like the looks of this pumpkin and I think that my wife will set these around as Fall decoration.
Green-Striped Cushaw (Striped Crookneck) squash – (C. mixta) I had heard of cushaw squash and wanted to try growing these. From what I’ve read, they make a good pie and are really good baked with brown sugar or a stuffing mix. But what really drew me to this is the resistance to Squash Vine Borers.
Winter Luxury Pie pumpkin – (C. Pepo) This is mainly a pie pumpkin. I have plenty of squash that can be used for pies, but the kids like to grow pumpkins that look like pumpkins. So they will be able to grow these small pumpkins. This is the same species as the zucchini listed below. If I decide that I want to save seeds from this, I will need to hand pollinate the flowers.
Dark Green Zucchini squash – (C. pepo) I’m not a big Summer squash fan, but my wife loves it and my kids like it. So to help keep them happy, I grow zucchini. I do grate and freeze zucchini to make zucchini bread. This is very susceptible to squash vine borers, so I will have to plant this in succession to get a harvest the entire Summer. As with the Winter luxury pumpkin, if I decide to save seeds, this will require hand pollination.
Keystone Resistant Giant bell pepper – These are a bell pepper that gets fairly large. Southern Exposure lists this as being very well adapted to the Mid-Atlantic region. Since I have trouble growing peppers from seed, I want the cards stacked in my favor.
Calabrese (Italian Green Sprouting) Broccoli – I grew this variety several years in a row. It does not produce a big head, but instead produces a lot of small shoots at each leaf junction. This makes it produce longer than broccoli that only produces a big head.
Poinsett 76 cucumber – This is a slicing cucumber that produces fruit up to 8″ long and 2.5″ across. But what drew me to this variety is that the multiple disease resistances. It is an open pollinated variety.
Edisto 47 muskmelon – Most of the cantaloupe that is sold in stores is really muskmelons. My daughter loves cantaloupe, so I am growing these for her. This variety is very disease resistant, supposedly more so than hybrid varieties. I have never grown muskmelons before, so this will be an experience.
Crimson Sweet, Virginia Select watermelon – This variety is well adapted to the Mid-Atlantic. I didn’t have much luck with watermelon last year, but I’m going to keep trying until I get it right.
Amish Paste tomato – I ordered these mainly because they produce large paste tomatoes. Another thing that attracted me is that they are an indeterminate variety. Most paste tomatoes are determinate and mainly produce a single large harvest of tomatoes. These should produce the entire Summer. As long as I can get them to get beyond the seedling stage.
Green Arrow pea – We grew several varieties last year, and we really liked this variety. They are tasty peas that freeze well. I also like that the plants only get about waist-high and produce the most peas on the tops of the vines, so they are easy to harvest.
Tennessee Red Cob dent corn – The other day, I read the home ground flour post on Fast Grow The Weeds. They made some excellent points about growing corn for meal. I have grown sweet corn before, but this year I’m trying to grind my own corn meal.
Spring mesclun
Spring Mesclun Mix - This is my favorite salad mix. It contains several varieties of lettuce, spinach and mustard greens. The salads that come from this mix are very attractive with the mixture of green and red leaves. I last purchased this 3 years ago and it still produced wonderfully. Eventually I will probably start buying the individual seed packets, but for now I’m happy to receive the mix.
That’s it for my bulk order of seeds. I will likely have another post about some additional seeds. Those will come from local stores, or I could stumble upon some variety that looks interesting. If that happens, expect to see part 3.
I was listening to the latest episode of You Bet your Garden and the question of the week was about the dirty dozen. This is a list compiled each year by the Environmental Working Group. They use the USDA’s findings about pesticide residues on conventionally grown produce. The EWG says that avoiding these foods, pesticide consumption will be drastically reduced.
The order of the food on the list changes from year to year, but for the most part, the same food is on the list every year. Like most people, we want to avoid consuming pesticides. Today I’m going to talk about how I will try to avoid these pesticides in the future.
Apples - Apples will be among the fruit trees that we plan on planting in the Spring. They will take several years to start producing. So until that time, we will either stick to organic apples or reduce the number of apples we eat.
Celery – We don’t use all that much celery, but celery is necessary for things like roasted chickens and in soups. So we do end up using some of it. Unfortunately, celery is difficult to grow for the home gardener. So this year I’m going to try growing some celery substitutes. Unfortunately I haven’t tried either of these.
Celeriac is the first I may try. This is mainly grown for the ugly root bulb under ground. However, I’ve heard that the stalks can also be used as a substitute for celery. But I’m having trouble confirming this online. Celeriac is a very long season vegetable and isn’t harvested until after the first frost in the Fall. But the root has a very long storage life.
Cutting celery
The next one I may try is cutting celery. This looks like flat leaf parsley but tastes like celery. The information that I’ve found on this is that it is easy to grow and doesn’t require all that much care to keep it growing. But it enjoys cooler temperatures, so needs partial shade during the Summer. I understand that the celery taste is much stronger with cutting celery, so I will not use as much when cooking.
Strawberry tower
Strawberries – I started a strawberry pyramid last year. It came with 50 crowns, but I didn’t plant them in times. When I finally did plant them, only 8 of them grew. But this year, they came back with a vengeance. We got probably 2 quarts of strawberries out of this bed. This year we should probably do even better.
Peaches – Like the apples, we will plant some peach trees in the Spring. Luckily we have several peach orchards in the area that grow organically. These are more expensive, but really good.
Spinach – We only eat spinach raw in salads. So we grow all of our own spinach. We just make sure we eat it in season. Once it stops producing, we stop eating spinach.
Imported Nectarines – This is an easy one, we don’t eat nectarines.
Imported grapes – We don’t go through many grapes, but we are planning on planting several vines in the Spring. I asked my wife to pick out some types to plant and she just suggested standard Concord grapes. I plan on planting 6 vines, so I’ll have to choose the other 5.
Sweet bell peppers – We grow our own peppers, but usually don’t have great production. This year, one of my goals is to grow my tomatoes and peppers from seed. So hopefully we will increase our production.
Potatoes – My wife wants to plant some potatoes this year. We have never grown potatoes, but they should be fairly easy to grow. I plan on using the above ground method. Basically, you put the seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with good soil and compost. Then as the plant grows, you cover the plant with straw up to the top leaves. Each leaf junction will form roots, which in turn will form the potatoes.
Blueberries – We have a single blueberry plant. The birds get all of the berries. We like blueberries, but there are so many other things that we want to do at the homestead, blueberries get pushed aside. Eventually, we will plant additional blueberry bushes, but for now we just don’t eat them.
Mixed salad greens
Lettuce – From about April until November, we grow all of our lettuce. It is so simple to do the cut and come again method. I plant 1/3 of a 4×8 garden bed at a time with a mesclun mix. Two weeks later I plant the next 1/3, and 2 weeks after that I plant the final 1/3. This staggers the growth out. Then I cut what is big enough. The plants will just keep producing until it gets too hot for them.
Kale & collard greens – Another easy one that we don’t eat.
That’s my plan to avoid some of the pesticides that are on supermarket produce.
I was reading the Trace My Preps blog this morning and decided that I should also do a look back at what I have accomplished on the homestead over the past year.
I think that my first real accomplishment is that I was able to get my wife on board with building the homestead. Up until this year, she has just humored me with my homesteading aspirations. But in the Spring, she noticed how prices were steadily increasing. We also talked about the increase in salmonella outbreaks. She is now very supportive of my homesteading goals and will help me reach the goals.
Another big accomplishment is that in mid-September, I made my first post to my blog. By launching my blog, I feel that I was adding legitimacy to my homestead. I was finally sitting down and putting in print what I intended this homestead to become. It also makes me accountable for making or missing any goals that I set forth.
I think those are my 2 biggest accomplishments of the year. Without those two, there would probably not be any Homestead Fritz. Some of the other accomplishments are bigger and some smaller, but all have helped me build the homestead. Here are some of the other accomplishments in no particular order.
Started the asparagus bed by planting ~30 crowns. Asparagus is a very long-term crop. We may be able to harvest a couple of spears this Spring, but maybe not. But it will produce for 20 or 30 years.
Increased the garden area from 12 beds to 20 beds.
Paid off one of our vehicles. This frees up some money that we have been able to use for other expenses. I feel that moving towards being debt free is critical to any homestead.
Began making cheese. So far I have only made cheese curds, cottage cheese and yogurt successfully. But I have learned from my less successful cheese making experiments.
Harvested all the garlic that we will use for the entire year. This is in addition to the seed garlic that I planted. I also discovered that we will always plant hardneck garlic because it produces scapes.
Built up my seed stock of potato onions. Hopefully these will allow me to continue growing onions forever.
Harvested enough onions to last from August 1 until January. These were mostly yellow onions planted from sets.
Preserved enough green beans and pumpkins to last us the entire year.
Processed some black walnuts from the trees along homestead border. It was an experience and I discovered that they don’t taste good enough to make them worth while. But it gives us another fat and protein source if we would need to make use of them.
Identified several types of weeds in the yard. Some of these are edible. Next year some of them will find their way into our salads.
Built a 3 bin compost bin system.
Built a low tunnel over one of the garden beds. This allowed me to harvest salad greens until the end of the year. I also learned that while draping plastic over the hoops works okay, I need to develop a better way of attaching the plastic.
Saved seed from my garlic chives, French breakfast radish and from my okra. This allows me to save money on the seed. But it also helps to develop varieties of these plants that are acclimated to my micro-climate. It also helps me develop my knowledge of how to save seeds, and I believe it makes me a better gardener.
Began baking bread again. I used to do this fairly regularly, but I drifted away from it. After finding the bread in 5 minutes a day, this allows me to not use time as an excuse for not baking bread.
Finally, I have been able to make use of the produce that we produced on the homestead. We have made pumpkin rolls and pumpkin bread for dessert. I have made beer bread from the beer that I brewed myself. I have made use of the zucchini that I froze to make zucchini bread. I have even made use of scraps that I would normally throw away by roasting pumpkin seeds.
I wasn’t going to do this wrap up of the year post. But I’m certainly glad that I did. This really shows me how far we have gone with the homestead. We still have a long way to go, but by seeing these accomplishments, it will really help keep us motivated. I’m hoping to have an even more productive 2012.
Once again, yesterday was a very busy day. Lots of running. I guess that’s what having 2 kids that do different activities in different directions at the same time does for you. So I headed south for karate right after work and my wife headed not as far south for dance. I guess that’s a long way of saying I did very little on the homestead last night.
But I did take a good look at the asparagus. We have quite a few weeds growing like gang busters in the asparagus bed. When I planted, I didn’t fill the trench as full as I should have. So as soon as they turn brown, I’ll fill it the rest of the way with some compost. Part of this process is to get as many of the weeds out of there as possible. So as I was pulling some weeds, I felt the prickling in my hand of thorns. I investigated further and I had 3 blackberry canes that snaked along the ground into the asparagus. It took root there. I hated to do it, but I had to dig those canes out. I destroyed them in the process. I certainly hope that they don’t come back next year.
Salad garden bed
We harvested a lot of the greens for salads the Friday before last. They have been in the fridge in the salad spinner ever since. We finally used up the last of it today, and surprisingly it was still crisp and fresh. But we didn’t have enough for all of us, so I was able to go to the garden to cut a salad. This is a shot of the salad bed that is not covered. I noticed that some of it is getting really long leaves. Some of the spinach stalks are starting to feel weak and floppy. It won’t be too much longer before this uncovered bed dies.
Tonight's salad
Here’s the greens that I cut. One thing that I really love about this salad greens mix is the colors. I really like the reds mixed into my salad. It is just so much more appetizing than a straight green salad.
I didn’t look in on the covered salad bed today. It just gets dark so early since we changed the clocks. I’ll try to get a shot of that garden bed tomorrow. The plastic that is over that bed is translucent, not transparent. So I can’t really see what’s happening in there without uncovering it. I still haven’t figured out a better way of holding down the plastic. I have some ideas, but I need the time to execute the plan.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged asparagus, food, garden, harvest, salad, vegetables, weeds
