Watermelon Redux

I am trying them again...they are just about bigger than a golf ball now. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

This year I am using plastic and rocks to keep the soil heated.

Carrots!

We are growing a lovely batch of carrots in the garden this year.  I planted them in the remains of the hugelkultur bed from last year...remember that? This year I just moved the pile of soil and rotted logs around and made two more beds to extend the garden the length of the chicken run. The soil is nice and loose from all the compost and my carrots are getting HUGE. And delicious. Especially dipped in hummus. Yum.

Mammoth Sunflower

I have a few volunteer sunflowers growing in the garden, in addition to the seeds I planted intentionally this year.

But this one is HUGE. It is probably over nine feet tall.
I am really excited to see what it looks like when it blooms.  It is so large it has branches growing off it with more buds than you can see here...I will post some updates as it blooms.

Cardoon Update

I am really pleased with my cardoon.  I love this plant.  It is huge and green and completely loaded with blooms. The first blooms are erupting in flower and the bees love them.

This plant has created its own ecosystem.

The ants are farming aphids.

The lady bugs are eating the aphids and laying eggs.
The lady bug larvae are then eating most of the aphids!

Evening Ritual

Every evening I go into the garden for my zen time. While I am there, I pull a few weeds, check on and water any seedlings and harvest anything that needs to be brought in.

This is the crew that greets me:

They know that when I show up, so do the treats! I usually pull any kale with a particularly large amount of aphids, or a thin out the volunteer squash, or I throw them a few overripe raspberries. From their reaction, you would think it is the highlight of their day.

You can see the remains of the morning treats on the ground around them....but they will always want more!

Sunflowers and Companion Planting

Another of my homesteading goals this year was to do more companion planting and incorporate more  plants into the garden to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects...
and to be pretty:

I absolutely LOVE sunflowers and the garden is loaded with them this year. I planted pole and bush beans along the chicken run and then sprinkled a few sunflowers in the row as well.  The beans are using the sunflowers as well as the string trellis.

I also planted chamomile along the path edge of the beans:

It is important to allow some of your veggies to go to seed. The beneficial insects are really attracted to them:

 Globe artichoke flower

I planted borage (blue flowers in front) near the tomatoes and allowed some of the radish (small white flowers) to go to seed:

The radish help by attracting the flea beetles off of the tomatoes.

Here is a handy companion plant list-- I cannot seem to find the site I saved this from, but I think it was the local OSU extension site:

Plant	Companions	Incompatible
Asparagus	Tomato, Parsley, Basil
Beans	Most Herbs & Vegetabes	Onion
Cabbage	Aromatic Herbs, Celery, Beets, Onion Family, Chamomile, Spinach, Chard	Strawberries, Tomato, Dill
Carrots	Peas, Lettuce, Onion, Sage, Tomato	Dill
Celery	Nasturtium, Onion, Cabbage, Tomato
Cucumber	Beans, Peas, Sunflower, Raddish	Aromatic Herbs, Potato
Lettuce	Carrot, Radish, Strawberry, Cucumber
Onions	Beets, Carrot, Lettuce, Cabbage	Beans, Peas
Parsley	Tomato, Asparagus
Peas	Carrots, Raddish, Turnip, Cucumber, Beans,	Onions, Potato
Potato	Beans, Cabbage, Horseraddish, Marigolds	Sunflower, Cucumber, Tomato
Raddish	Peas, Nasturtium, Lettuce, Cucumber	Hyssop
Spinach	Strawberry, Faba Bean
Tomato	Onion, Marigold, Asparagus, Carrot, Parsley, Cucumber	Cabbage, fennel, Potato
Turnip	Pea	Potato

Don't forget to plant sunflowers, I do not think there can be too many:

Peppers

Inspiration hit me this year to actually put some effort into growing some hot climate peppers.  I diligently covered the ground surrounding my peppers with plastic to keep the soil temperature high--genius, I know.

The soaker hose is running underneath the plastic---I was really thinking this year and accomplished some advanced gardening thinking ahead. (Basil seedlings in front)

I am hoping for some heat from these babies to add to my salsa's this year.  We will see.

Cardoon

I was given some cardoon seed from a friend that described them as beautiful huge flowers.  I had no idea what it was, and in fact waited a couple years before I even planted some seed.
I planted it last year in a sunny bed under my young cherry tree.  It grew 3-4 feet tall (and no flowers!), but as soon as the chickens were given free reign of the yard in the later fall, they decimated it in a few hours down to nothing.

Turns out cardoon is edible.  It is also known as artichoke thistle.  See You Grow Girls post. No wonder the chickens loved it so much. However, the process is pretty long and drawn out with a lot of direction on wrapping the stems up with string and burlap for weeks (ouch, those thorns are a couple inches long!) and then a very complicated cooking process.  Not something I am planning to spend my time on anytime soon.

To my dismay, last year, it never bloomed.

This year it is covered with blooms! Despite the chicken destruction, it came back with no prompting from me. Hopefully the blooms are glorious.

You can see the long thorns

Testing testing 1 2 3 - Artichokes

I am testing the blogger mobile app to see how this can work while The Hubs and I travel around Scandinavia later this summer.  Here goes:

So this lovely lady has appeared. I harvested two little artichokes from this plant... But left the largest a bit too long so I am letting it flower. Artichoke flowers are huge and beautiful. 

I'm back - and so is the garden

I know, I know, I KNOW!

It has been way too long since my last post.  I apologize to the entire group of five of you that were actually reading regularly.

So here goes, I have big plans. BIG PLANS.  Hopefully I will get posts up a few times a week regardless of whether I have put together a few paragraphs of garden, chicken or frugality tidbits.  I will at least post photos of what is happening in the Pollo Loco homestead - cause I do take photos almost every day.

So this is what the garden looked like back in March when we actually did install the permanent chicken run -- the first item on my 2013 goal list -- DONE.

This is what it looked like in May with the radish, kale and beets coming up:

Here is the garden in June, a couple weeks ago:

I have been harvesting loads of peas, kale, radish, raspberries and blueberries. Even invited friends to come over and help pick the raspberries!

How does your garden grow this year?

Homesteading Goals for 2013

The world has not ended and the zombies did not invade and 2013 is here, therefore we will list our homestead project goals again this year. This remains a list of things I am very interested in doing, but is also a list that gives and takes with all the ups and downs of the years coming events. Our oldest graduates from high school and starts college this year and the Hubs and I are actually going on VACATION this summer so I anticipate less accomplishments.


Our goals from last year:

1. Build a top bar hive and get some bees!  Did not happen last year, the financial investment for a new hive was too much and I did not get organized enough to jump on the swarm list action.
2. Build a new roof for the chicken coop. CHECK! We replaced our little plastic roof with a nice metal corrugated roof complete with gutter and rain chain!
3. Start an herb garden in the front yard.  Well, not in the front yard, but I did start one in the back!
4. Make more wine.  Did not get around to it, but we made cider!
5. Make more cider. CHECK! 
6. Expand our water collection system. I am re-thinking the entire system and its location, so this was postponed.
7. Build a root cellar.  This is a much bigger project than anticipated, and the Hubs and I are still trying to decide how to allocate the basement.
8. Learn to make mead. Well, I did learn to make it, just haven't made it myself yet..need the bees!
9. Grow some artichokes. CHECK! 
10. Use the pressure canner.  Turns out I did not have much to pressure can this year, so I ended up freezing our green beans instead.

Hmmm.... so 4 out 10 is not too bad..... is it? I did accomplish some things that were not even included on this list.

• We built and planted a hugelkultur bed, and it was very much a success after I figured out how to keep the chooks out of it again and again!
• We grew three watermelons!  Okay, they were less than 3" in diameter and I ended up feeding them to the chickens...but I grew them!
• I planted a new pear and an Italian plum tree, and kept them watered through the summer and they survived, even grew three pears!

Pollo Loco 2013 Homesteading Goals:

1. Build a permanent chicken run.
2. Add two more hugelkulter beds.
3. Layout a planting plan utilizing companion planting and actually follow it this year (this is started!).
4. Build and use a cider press (with our friend that has a farm with apple trees).
5. Intermingle more herbs and beneficial flowers into the veggie beds.

Pollo Loco circa 2012 - "Before"

This is a good before photo of the homestead, note the sticks and plastic fencing for the chicken run. Stay tuned to see the transformation!

Friday Farm - Beans Beans the Magical Fruit

Bowl full of things Pollo Loco has in abundance.

This lovely fiberglass bowl used to be my grandmother's. It has a collection of smaller bowls that match.  We used to eat popcorn out of them! They are a prized possession, I love them very much.

The Squash That Took Over the Homestead

I let a few volunteer squash grow to see what I would get this year. The little things that bring extra excitement in the garden... surprise squash. Squash cross pollinate really easily, so saving seed from squash is kind of a crap shoot in itself....and the volunteers from compost are a roll of the dice. It is fun to see what you get.

As you can see, squash tends to attempt world dominance. Since we will not be mowing again for a while I allow it to take over the grassy areas. We do not water our lawn areas in the summer, we allow the grass to turn brown and go dormant until the rains return. What you see here is actually only from two plants, one growing from each end of the Hugelkultur bed.

(The white sheets are old curtains that the chickens are using as shade in this hot weather.)

This acorn squash and two of its cousins were harvested from one of them this week. There are a few more yet to ripen on the vines. The acorns seem pretty true to their original kin.

The intentional squash is planted within the garden and is doing its own support of the world takeover. The winter squash (Sibley) and the summer squash (yellow patty pan and zucchini) are on either side of the cucumber trellis.

The coop is disappearing behind the tomatoes and squash.

Friday Farm - Artichoke Bloom

This was the last artichoke. I let it go to flower, so beautiful.

Purple Potato Invasion

These represent maybe one tenth of the potato's we will harvest this year:

My potato plants started turning yellow and then all of a sudden they were brown and dried up and dead. This seemed a little early for them to be ready to harvest, but after about a week, I decided to dig in and see what was up. This is the first year I had attempted them in the ground instead of burlap bags...I built up the sides with some wood stakes and branches from the lilac tree we took down to make room for the Italian Plum tree.

The idea is to build up soil and straw and compost around the potato plants as they grow....allowing the potato plant to produce more potato's along this growth.  Mine did not do this.  I built up with straw and soil but the potatoes only formed at the base.  Maybe it is this purple variety.  Maybe the build up was not dense enough.  Maybe they did not get enough water. Gardening is an experiment for me almost every day.  Next year I will try it a bit differently and see what happens.

But having found these beautiful little purple balls of yumminess, I must have done it right enough. We roasted them along with some of the walla walla's on the grill at the farm party last weekend and shared with our friends.  They were fantastic with just some butter and salt. Success.

Broccoli and the Super Garden

We returned from camping last weekend and it was as if my garden had suddenly come alive! Everything had literally grown two feet!

Cucumbers (lemon, straight 8's and a pickling variety).

I may have gone overboard with the amount of plants, we will see.

The tomato's are finally kicking it in gear and surviving their flea beetle infestation.

There are even blooms!

The pole beans are making their way up the bamboo:

They are definitely a bit crowded, but so far do not seem to mind.

The hugelkultur is becoming a bit overwhelmed by the volunteer squash so I keep trimming back the squash and redirecting their vines. Do any of you know what that feathery tree like looking plant is in the middle of the photo? I do not recognize it from any of my seeds....it may be a weed...

Two lovely broccoli heads were picked last night:

They smell delicious, I cannot wait until the hubs cooks them up in something yummy. There are at least four more forming in my brassica bed.