Taters and hay

Our family has always relied heavily on potatoes, and so we've always had a pretty large potato patch each year.  There are two main issues we generally deal with in growing potatoes.  First, there's the potato bugs.  Second, there's the weeding. 

We've largely solved the first problem in two ways.  First, we use "King Harry" potatoes, which are a variety of potatoes that, for whatever reason, potato bugs don't care for.  In fact, they leave them alone almost entirely.  From what I've read, it appears these potatoes have unusually long hairy fibers on the leaves, which deters the bugs.  Regardless of the reason, they come as advertised and the bugs basically leave them alone.

Regarding the weeds, in the past we've tried different things, with straw mulch being the best option normally.  But, I don't have straw, but do have hay, so last year we clipped the couple acres of hay and used some of it to mulch the potato patch with.  It worked even better than we expected.  We plant the potatoes, and then spread the hay over the potatoes.  The potatoes seem to pop up through, but most of the weeds don't.  You will have a few weeds get through, but they're easy to pull.  Plus, this method keeps the ground moist, and also helps protect the tubers from the sun if they happen to bulge through the surface.  Since it worked so well last year, we decided to do it again this year.

I also used the hay to mulch our blackberries and grapes.  I'm thinking of using the hay to mulch our asparagus too. 

In addition to the potatoes, we planted a large bed of sweet corn--in two batches about a week apart to stagger the harvest.  We also got some more blackberry vines (these are thornless) and raspberries, so I worked up some new beds for them. 

Last fall I broke some new ground on what I thought was some pretty good soil, but turned out to be pretty rocky.  So, we decided to put most of our melons and squash in this area.  What we did is dug out a 3 foot by 1 foot deep hole and mixed in some composted horse manure we have, and then planted in to those areas.  We are then going to cover the whole bed with black plastic to keep the weeds down and add to the heat.  For the squash/pumpkin patch, we'll probably just use hay, but we're considering using plastic for that as well.

Dump rake we use to gather dry hay

Gathering hay with trailer and tractor

New thornless blackberries with mulch in center of pic

Start of new raspberry patch

Weeds and Seeds

Things have been a bit hectic around our household lately.  A new baby, busy job, and work on the homestead have kept us moving. We're also finalizing plans for the log cabin we hope to start building in the coming few weeks.

The main tasks we've handled in the last few weeks are: cutting grass with the brush mower, cleaning up remaining sticks and firewood from trees cleared along hayfield, transplanting remaining strawberries, moving blackberry "suckers" to new home where strawberries had been, weeding and mulching blackberries and grapes, weeding asparagus, planting sweetcorn, and working up remaining garden patches for potatoes and other vegetables.

We're still hoping to get some more raspberries transplanted and I'm told I can get some more blackberry suckers from a local grower, so I'd really like to get some more blackberries started.

The asparagus is really coming along nicely and we've weeded it.  I'm guess that all but about 20-30 of the 270 roots we planted have come up and even when I weeded yesterday (about 5 weeks post-planting), there were a few small ones, which means they are still coming.

Both of our pear trees died, which is a bit of a disappointment, so I have to decide whether to replace them.  I might way until next year.  We also lost 3 out of the 6 grapes we planted last year, so I'd like to replace them as well.  That might also have to wait until next year.

We're hoping to have the electricity hooked up soon, in which case I can power the well without using a generator.  The hope then is to put up some electric fence and find a horse or a few steers to move to the land and keep the pasture areas grazed down so I don't have to mow them.

It will be time to cut hay soon, which we plan to use to mulch the garden.  We took the brown decaying hay piles from last year to mulch around the blackberries and grapes and that worked really well.

Babies and berries

My wife and I welcomed a new baby into the family this week.  It was probably a good thing it rained this weekend so I don't feel bad not being able to work out at the homestead.  Despite the rain, I did get a couple things done.  My dad brought over some corn crib sections that we put up around the grape vines that should serve three purposes.  First, it will obviously give the grapes a place to grow.  Second, it should cause the grapes to droop down through the wire and make for relatively easy picking.  Finally, it'll provide a nice shady spot in the summer to have a little bench.  The grapes seem to be very slow growing, and I think a couple died, so we'll have to replace them and then extend the hoops.

We also decided to try heavy tomato cages for the blackberries.  I'm not sure it will work, as it tends to keep them kind of bunched up, and so I'm not sure if they'll get enough air around the leaves, but we had seen some of the local Amish doing this for raspberries, so decided to give it a try before we put up the permanent trellis for the berries. There are little "suckers" coming up, so once we get the strawberries all transplanted, I'm going to work that area up to expand the blackberry patch.  We plan to mulch the berries with old hay and see how that works to keep down the weeds.

Strawberries--lots and lots of strawberries

I work full time during the week, and don't work on Sundays, so Saturdays is the only real day we have to make a lot of progress on the homestead.  Unfortunately, that puts us at the mercy of the weather.

This week we had planned to do quite a bit in the garden--move strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and plant early sweet corn.  But since we got a lot of rain this week, things were still very muddy, so we had to modify our plans a bit.  

The only garden work we were able to do was transplant strawberries.  We were able to do this because we had covered the strawberry bed with black plastic when we planted the first row, and so the dirt underneath the plastic was dry.  (We poke holes in it after we get it planted).  Last spring we had planted about 75 plants, and they spread throughout the summer.  We moved about 140-150 plants to the new bed, and expect them to do pretty well.  The plastic will keep weeds down--the biggest challenge with strawberries, and will help warm the soil.  We will either clip the runners or let them whither, in order to allow the plant to maximize the energy being put in to the fruit.  We'll have another bed without plastic on which we'll let runners develop as we prepare for the next strawberry bed.  Because you should rotate beds every 2-3 years, you have to be constantly thinking ahead to the next patch.

I also mowed grass around the gardens and the various trails I have for getting around the homestead.  Next week we'll hopefully till some more ground and plant sweet corn.  In the area where strawberries were last summer, I'll work up the soil and expand the blackberry patch.  

We also cleared some more trees along the one side of the hayfield.  We're slowly getting the junk box elder trees cleared back to the original edge of the woods, and giving air and sunlight to the oaks, hickerys, and other hardwood trees.  Plus, it will give us more open area for pasture, hay, etc.

Finally, we weeded around each of the fruit trees.  This really needed to be done, so the trees to don't have to compete so much for moisture and nutrients.  When we planted the trees last spring, we put a lot of composted horse manure around the roots, so they seem to be doing very well.

    

Our oldest decided to dig a "turkey trap" in the one garden bed, but all he caught was one of our own turkeys.  

Asparagus and more

Spring is a full month ahead of last year and at least a couple weeks ahead of normal, so things are really greening and the trees are leafing out. Our fruit tress are showing more life each day, but fortunately have not decided to flower yet. Perhaps they won't flower at all this year (we planted them last spring), but since they're dwarfs and semi-dwarfs, I would expect them to try flowering. We're still getting frosts pretty regularly, so I'd prefer they wait a few more weeks to flower.

I've been waiting for a new blade for the brush hog for the BCS, but since it has not yet come, I sharpened the old one up as best I could--it was pretty rough and jagged from years of rocks, etc.--which alone made quite a difference. It feels like I have twice the power and I can go twice the speed without bogging down. Now that I have it together, I've been mowing all the paths around the gardens and around the woods, but I have a little ways to go.

As inevitably happens in fields like this, you can tell how, over the years, the woods has crept out. As a tree falls down, farmers--especially renters--will just farm around them, and so each year more and more trees grow up until you have a 30-40 foot wide strip that is taken over, often by junk trees like box elder trees. Because of this, we cut a bunch of these trees down and chopped out some of the smaller trees to try to reclaim the farm ground, and get back to the good hardwood trees. In this same area there are quite a few old patches of black berry and black raspberries, but they have a lot of weeds and cockleburs in them, so I'm going to mow them off and start fresh. Because we have rocks in our area, we have to walk through and pick out rocks, as past farmers were prone to just "thrown them down in the woods". Widening the pasture area and clearing the junk trees back to the line of oaks that used to run a long the field will be very nice.

A local guy that raises a great deal of organic produce every year asked me recently if I wanted to buy some asparagus, as he was ordering some 5000 roots because he gets a good deal on the quantity and I agreed to take 500, even though I wasn't quite sure what I'd do with all of them. In the end, he only had about 280, which we planted in last year's potato bed because the soil is so rich and has been worked. We created the trenches by using the rotary plow to kick the dirt each way and laid the roots down in the trenches. We then back-filled. Hopefully they come up decent.

We also laid out an area with black plastic that we are in the process of transplanting strawberries from last year's bed. The place we put them last year seems to shady, so we're going to move them up on higher ground where they can get full son. Hopefully they do well, as our kids love strawberries.

The one thing that has done really well in the shadier garden area we previously used has been the blackberries, which were planted last spring. They seem to like a little less sun and the old soil seems to be treating them well, so once the strawberries are gone, I plan to work the area up again and expand the blackberries.

I also solved one of my dilemmas for the spring regarding the 4-5 acres of farm land on the adjoining 9 acre piece we purchased last fall. It has been in conventional corn (meaning sprays and fertilizers) for the past few years, so I'm anxious to get it back to organic. I don't have the equipment to do it myself, and I had considered seeding it down to a hay/pasture mix, but in talking to one of my neighbors down the road (who once owned and farmed the land we have now), he's going to put corn in the land again this summer. Fortunately, he's organic and is small scale like me, so it will be a win win.

I'm going to attach a few videos that show the main parts of the homestead. I'm sorry if they're a little bumpy to watch. I just snapped them with my phone while walking through the gardens. Enjoy.

Spring is here

It's been awhile since I posted, so I thought an update is in order. Spring came early this year. It is now the end of March and the snow is gone and grass is growing. I started a new job with a firm about 20 miles away, but I drive right by the land every day, so stop in often to check on the progress. Most of the fruit trees have started greening up. We may have lost one pear tree, but otherwise things look good. The grapes are slowly coming back. We planted 6 last spring and one died during the summer. Of the remaining 5, I think 3 have started to bud, but am waiting to see if the other two made it.

The berries are also starting to grow. The blackberries are starting to green up, so I need to get a trellis made to hold up the vines. The strawberries are starting to grow, but we need to weed them and get some new beds made.

A friend that sells organic produce convinced me to buy 500--that's right--500 asparagus roots (he wanted me to take 1000), so we'll have to get them in when they come. That's going to be quite a chore, but the price was right given the quantity.

On even happier news, we're ever so close to finalizing a contract for the construction of a log cabin for our place, which means that we'll soon beginning construction on our first dwelling on the land. We hope to have it completely finished and ready for living by fall.

I'll post some more pictures as time permits, but ready or not, it's going to be a busy year.

Fall tilling and next year thoughts

Today, amidst snow flurries and light rain, I finished the fall tilling of next year's garden plots. I'm normally not a fan of fall plowing, as I don't like the erosion, but our soil is a heavy clay, which has been in hay for a number of years. No organic matter has been put back in the soil, and there are some large alfalfa and grass roots well established in the soil. Years of farming and tractor traffic have packed the soil. So, I decided to work up the soil with my rotary plow to let it "mellow" over the winter, and hopefully use the thawing and freezing to help break up the soil and the roots. In the spring, I'll have to work the soil up again.

I'm still tinkering and will probably experiment with how I want to approach tillage and planting in the future. In the past, I've had quite a bit of success using a type of heavy mulch tilling, which generally involves keeping the soil covered, especially in the fall/winter, with leaves and grass clippings, and building compost heaps in the gardens themselves. I found this method really helps keep the weeds down, and the soil was so nice and loose--seed ready--when I pulled back the mulch in the spring.

However, this method requires a great deal of organic matter, I've heard it can eventually result in imbalanced levels of certain minerals--potassium, I think--and does seem to create a breeding ground for certain bugs that like to live under the moist mulch if you keep it on during the growing seasons. I'm not sure how feasible this will be on the size of gardens we have (probably 3/4 of an acre or better this coming year), but we do have lots of hay that I might clip and simply fork on to the gardens like we did this year with potatoes. I also want to experiment with organic material out of our woods--the top 6 inches is often really nice, broken down compost. The important word is "experiment" this year. I'll leave some of the garden in more traditional style, and will till and hoe the weeds, but I want to try different things.

Attached are a few updated pics that show the finished garden plots, or nearly finished plots.