Planting in Late Summer for Fall & Spring Harvests

This is the year that I'm going to do it, guys- make the leap and do some serious Fall planting! I think I'm usually tuckered out by the time the end of the summer rolls around. Before I know it, the time to plant for fall has passed me by. Not this year!

I'm been direct seeding Fall veggies in my garden for the past 3 weeks now, and I will finish up the last bit of planting tomorrow. If you're in S.E. Michigan, Northern Ohio, or a place with a similar last frost date (Oct 7th), you still have a few days to hop to it!


Fall Planting list:
Super Sugar Snap Pea
Prize Choy
De Cicco Broccoli
St. Valery Carrot
Grandpa's Admire Lettuce
Winter Density Lettuce
Parade bunching Onion
Rhubarb Red Swiss Chard

I've tried to seed most everything in the new, larger bed (pictured on the left)- it's closest to the side door of our home so if I need to dash out during the winter I'm one or two steps closer, and it already has crazy, thriving Kale there.

I'm planning to put up some quick hoops over the first 8 feet of the bed, enough distance to cover up the Kale, fall onions, and sugar snaps. I might want to do another 8 feet of hoop down at the other end (by the lovely garbage bins), because there are broccoli, a few carrots, and some speckles lettuce down there!

I'll be sure to share pictures of the quick hoops once I get them put together, as well as some guidance and assembly photos. I've been wanting to do serious season extension for a long time, and it will finally happen this year! One step closer to that ideal Badass Garden that's always floating in my mind...

What are you planning on planting this Fall?

Friday Favorites

Good morning! Here are some of my favorite things this morning- things I'm loving, and things I'm thankful for!

Tomatoes!

Tomato basil & mozzarella salad- lunch or dinner every day this week!

Canning- it is pretty awesome.

The garden is still looking green, despite the heat. 

I think the straw mulch is helping!

Happy Friday! What are your Friday Favorites?

What's Up Wednesday

Heirloom tomatoes are freaking gorgeous!

Whoa- onions are popping out of the ground! I'd better tuck them in.

Ole' Faithful a.k.a. kale

These Yolo Sweet peppers are cherry-sized right now , 

but getting bigger each day though.

If you are looking for a cucumber variety, 

Spacemaster are fairly compact and they are dang good.

I see some empty spots for more veggies, don't you?

What's Up in your Garden this week?

Spring love

Our edible plants are just shooting up left and right! We have little onion shoots coming up in bed #1, and the lettuce seedlings are doing well! The Ozark Beauty strawberries are getting leaves, the All Stars are continuing to look good. Haven't seen any action from the potatoes or garlic yet, but they're under there, doing their stuff!

I posted the other day on the possibility of seed-starting indoors next year.
I am constantly amazed at how sharing and talking with people is so beneficial. I feel like if you put that energy out there, things work out your way sometimes.
I was talking with my friend Anna about seed-starting and she told me she had 4 or more shop lights that she had bought for seed-starting a few years back, but couldn't bear to "weed out" the weaker seeds once they all started to grow, so she ended up with like 200 tomato plants :) So she said she would be willing to give some supplies to me!

I really love Spring. It's time to come out of hibernation :) I've had a lot of opportunities to get together with new friends lately, and I have really enjoyed that. People at work that I enjoy but haven't made a point to extend that friendship. Friends of friends that I feel are pretty much friends already, although we've not spent that much time together! I've really enoyed the chance to do this, and I'm thankful for it.

Family time this weekend has been well-earned. There's a strong chance that we will be having a 16 year old living with us for the next two years starting next week, so a lot of relaxing this weeekend is in order...

more on that to come! :)

First raised-bed planting!

Today I picked up my seeds/plants, and planted:

• Red and yellow onions,
• Red and green leaf lettuce as well as a bit of arugula, etc.
• Allstar strawberries
• Ozark beauty strawberries
• Russett potatoes
• Red pontiac potatoes
• Garlic
• a Glacier tomato plant

as well as some sweet basil plants (in a separate planter)

here's a before picture:

lettuce:

strawberries:

garden!!!:

I still have to plant:

• carrots
• tomatoes
• zucchini
• cucumbers

and I have no idea where those things are fitting lol :)

I think I might be adding another little bed somewhere!

YES!

Look what I came home to today:

Finally!!!!!

 

We burned the 8pm oil a little bit, but we got it done by the light of the motion-sensor! It will probably rain tonight and then we'll have to put a bit more in. But we did end up with a bit extra- hopefully enough to fill the cinder blocks with so I can plant my Marigolds soon :) Mike was really helpful and patient, even through my uncontrollable impatience and perfectionism. So thank you, love.


I have some onion sets to plant and I need to go pick up the rest of my cold weather transplants this weekend! Woohoo!!

I little bit of progress can go a long way for your self-esteem :)

Cookies?

Our Weeping Cherry (something) tree is starting to bloom!:

Tonight is my last Master Gardener class!! That tone you detect isn't excitement that its over- just excitement that I get to learn about Composting, the topic for tonight!

After Composting, the last half of this class is devoted to having local organizations who might be looking for Master Gardener volunteers to come in and present about the volunteer opportunities they have- cannot express how psyched I am for that!

 I've been looking lately (for a while) for a way to meld my personal interest in gardening and the environment with my professional experience in social work and community work. You think it'd be an easy connection to make, but I seem to have some difficulty finding opportunities to break my way into the "Environmental Nonprofit" sector without a degree in agriculture or botany or something akin to that.

SO maybe tonight some volunteer opportunities will present themselves!!

I stopped by Growing Hope, our local awesome nonprofit that runs the community gardens in Ypsi and does some educational program, runs one of the Farmer's Markets... as I said, all-around awesomness. I went to one of their volunteer orientations, and I plan to go volunteer on Saturday... maybe I'll be building some raised-bed gardens, or maybe I'll be weeding. Who knows! All I know is that I'm excited to get out there and do something active and productive!

I need to do something with these window boxes on my house. It looks like my home has baggy, tired eyes. Other than that, it's looking quite nice!:

In honor of our last class tonight, I decided to make those delicious Chocolate Chip cookies that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago! Everyone is supposed to bring a dish to pass- I guess this is my dish?

Mmmmm!

Backyard progress aka thank you to my parents for their yard skillz :)

This week we had a big project: build our raised-beds and a new compost bin with the epic amount of cinder blocks I have, as well as tending to some of the yard, etc! There were two willing guest helpers: my mom and my dad! They love to be outside and doing projects, which is a lucky quality for us :) We spent all yesterday grooming, pruning, painting, lifting, placing concrete blocks, shoveling, and sweating! 

Here's some action shots!

 Mike laying down the landscape fabric to go under our beds:

Mom adding some leaves to the bottom of the beds:

Pose!

Finished beds (minus compost/soil that is coming tomorrow).
It's kind of an "S" shape, like the beds over at  Grow and Resist:

Another view:

New compost bin!:

Hot damn! :) Tomorrow is soil delivery! Getting projects done feels so good! More project updates to come
!

They're here!!!

Well, my crazy robot-neck is slowly turning human again.. thank you Ibuprofen 800 Mgs!

Yesterday, after much anticipation, my cinder blocks finally were delivered- 225 of them! (that's 3 pallets if you're a constructiony person). Thank god there were two 20-year-old boys to unload the blocks- it would have taken me 10 hours, no kidding!

Most of them are now resting in my driveway (see above), but Sara and I did place a few to see what kind of bed configuration we would actually be having. I think they look pretty good!

Here's some pictures of the bed:

Also, my mom took this mosaic tile class, and she made us this awesome address plaque for our front porch:

Neat, huh?!

I need to check out all the blog posts I missed while I was in Columbus for the weekend!!
Two Frog Home, IBKC, Adventures in Urban Homesteading, Mark Maynard, & Little City Gardens here I come! :)

Raised-bed update

Pardon my french, but holy shit it is so SO so nice outside today!!!! Although I have a robot neck, I am going to go outside any way and dig some things. It's so warm in my house- I turned off the furnace system completely!

On the bright side, soon I will have raised-bed gardens that look like this!!!:

This is a picture of Meg's garden over at growandresist. This is her picture, her garden, not mine! I am posting this picture, giving her full credit, because it is an incredibly awesome idea and I have decided to use cinder blocks for my raised-bed gardens too!

I have 3 pallets of cinder blocks coming today (225 block total). Each block is 7x7x16, so I will need a total of 208 blocks total for 4 raised-beds that are 4'x14"x12'. WoohoooooO! Mike will probably be delighted to come home and see 225 cinder blocks on our driveway. I know I would be :) I'm going to try to get them placed before he comes home. Doesn't that sound like a good thing to do with a neck injury?

We'll see what the doctor says first, I suppose. Off to get checked out! I'll posted some updates once the massive delivery gets here! 

Rasied-bed support group

I'm getting ready to build my rasied beds this weekend and next week, to prepare for all the plants I will need to be picking up in a few weeks!!

I'd love input from you all if you have built rasied beds before.
Am I doing it right?

• Looking to get 8 boards that are 1"x12"x16' # 2 Pine from a local lumber place here, in Plymouth.
• Seems like the boards themselves will be about $190.00, including tax. Does that seem like a lot of money? I compared to Lowes and Home Depot and they seemed to be right about the same price.
• Can I seal the boards so they last longer if I line the inside and the sides of the bed with landscaping fabric like so?:

I don't want chemicals leeching into the soil, but I also don't want to re-build my bed frames every 4 years. That could get pricey! My goal is to get the beds built by next weekend, March 20th!

My spring plant order

Here's the order I placed yesterday for my plants! I plan to pick them up when they are starter sized- not fully grown, but bigger than plug-sized. I am so psyched! I'm getting 6 Flats total, plus some other loose plants. The flats are 18 2.5" x 2.5" x 3" containers:

• 64 strawberry plants
• Flat 1: loose-leaf Lettuces
• Flat 2: onions (yellow/white)
• Flat 3: 8 zucchini plants and 10 garlic bulbs
• Flat 4: 8 roma tomato plants and 8 cherry tomato plants
• Flat 5: 8 better bush tomato plants and 10 salad bush cucumber plants
• Flat 6: potatoes
• 4 basil plants, 4 cilantro plants, 2 chive plants, 2 rosemary plants, 2 jalepeno pepper plants
• enough carrot seeds for a 4x4 bed worth of carrots

 
Also- the turkey from Karl Baer's farm was absolutley delicious. I got smoked turkey, and sliced it into pieces small enough for a sandwich- right now I am eating a sandwich with local munster cheese, Baer Farms smoked turkey, and my homemade bread. I will never buy the pre-packed turkey from a grocery store again. This is delish!!
 
I'm going to make some bread tonight. What kind should I make? Suggestions?
 
Although it is cold and snowy and dirty outside, we are moving towards Spring! Or at least that's what I keep telling myself..

Holy garden plan, batman!

           Lycan-Fry Garden Plan 2010!!!

As you see, the main theme in planting this year is "TOMATOES!". I want to have enough to eat fresh (love love love fresh tomatoes), and a lot left over to can as well- I'm going to get Romas, and some type of cherry I think. Also some zucchini, strawberries, onions, potatoes, lettuce, garlic, and carrots, along with some herbs for an herb garden as well! Let's just ignore the fact that right now, these raised-bed gardens are not yet built.. :)

I'm looking into buying all my starter plants from Destiny Farms in Brighton, MI. I called and spoke with Mike there today- they seem to have pretty good deals on flats of 18 3" container plants, but I don't know.. maybe I could get a better deal on a flat of starters? At any rate- very excited! If you garden in lower MI, check them out- they have some deals if you get your order in before Feb 15th!. Also they build chicken coops and raise chicks that you can buy for nesting or for eventual eating. When Mike let's me take over the yard and turn it into a farm, I will be getting chickens... whenever that might be. I'm going to take a trip up to Destiny Farms this weekend to check things out- I'll report back once I see it for myself!

Well, shit. My healthy eating plan to avoid the US mass-production food system

Thoughts I am thinking today, after watching Food Inc yesterday:

• I need to find a local farmer who grows meat in a humane way- I do not want to be buying into the Tyson-Perdue, etc. structure of cruelty to animals, farmers, and human workers at all
• If I do not find a local farmer and commit to eat meat of this standard, I need to just buck up and be a vegetarian again
• I want to continue to focus on eating seasonally and the methods that enable folks to do that, like freezing, preserving, storing, and drying food. Since I don't have a lot of storage from last year, I will focus on learning more and developing my strategy this season, and then I will really get into in on April 1st, like Barbara and her family did in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

I want to cut down shopping at chain grocery stores, such as Kroger, Meijer, Whole Foods, and Trader Joes. Part of this involves analyzing where my food is currently coming from.
Right now (in the winter) I would say this is where my food comes from:

50% Ypsilanti Food Co-op
20% Kroger/Whole Foods/TJs
30% Restaurants, (which means I don't know where the food comes from but I can assume it's most likely not from local growers and farmers)

In the summer, my food consumption looks more like this:

70% Farmer's Market/Ypsilanti Food Co-op
30% Restaurants

My overall goal is for my average food consumption to look like this:

15% home-grown
75% Ypsilanti Food Co-op/Farmer's Market/CSA
10% Restaurant


I'm not sure how much food I can actually grow for myself in my own yard. I've been thinking a lot about what I want to plant, etc. I need to get my soil tested @ the MSU Extension office before I plant anything because I could have led in my soil, etc. and a soil test will tell me what the pH is of my soil and a bit more about the composition.

Assuming I don't have poisionous lead-filled soil, how much food can grow in 500 sq feet?
250 of that is already devoted to raspberry & blueberry bushes that are small and will not produce a lot in the first several years.
Another 50 of that is devoted to the tall, skinny, deranged looking apple trees that we have. If we treat them with some pesticides this year, they might produce edible apples... (last year they were all wormy and chomped-up)
So that leaves me with about 200 sq feet of space left for veggies and herbs. What I can't seem to get a gauge on is how much food do I have the potential to grow, and how much of my total diet could that actually account for?

I'm doing research now on what I can plant and how much light it needs and when, etc. From all this reading and watching and learning, one thing is clear: Making healthy eating choices that are also healthy for your community and the earth is a lot of work, and it's definitely a concious choice you have to make and stick to.

I need to hop outside and get my soil sample together too, so I can get it back before I plant!! It looks nice outside- and I guess it IS nice outside, if you consider nice to be sunny and 15 degrees. :)

Thank god for family!

Whew! just coming off of a LOong long weekend of home projects! Whenever my parents come to visit, we always have to have activites planned for some reason- by the time they get here we've usually got a full weekend planned! They're so experienced with house stuff too, which also makes it easy to schedule a million little fixer-uppers to do!

We worked on the yard this weekend- we put mulch on the front beds and then we edged-out a border for what we want the backyard "pit of despair" to look like. We have an area to the right of the garage that slopes downward and is covered in complete shade by a huge Norwegin Maple tree. Right now not much is growing there but my hope is to get some shade and drought-tolerant ground cover in there that is native to MI!

We also weeded and clear some additional beds in the back that were looking a bit scary!They were pretty prairie-like, which is cool, expect that area in going to be part of my edible gardens now! Here's a before:

Once we clear the garden, we smothered it, using about 8 sheets of newspaper, and then we put some half-composted leaves on top. I'm going to leave that mixture on there until the spring, and hopefully the garden will be all awesome and weed-free by then! My aunt and uncle own a farm, and they gave me some llama poop to use as compost/manure- I hear it really helps plants grow strong!

My dad also helped us sand down a few things that needed sanding, like our dining room table, and that cool canning cabinet I'm going to be using to hold all the food I put up for the winter!

Painting is coming along well. Here's what we have to finish up still:

• finish the Basement Bijou Red (Behr) and Radiant Sun (FreshAire)
• paint the bathrooms (1 upstairs, 1 downstairs) Treasured Jade (FreshAire) and Radiant Sun (FreshAire)
• paint the hallways Radiant Sun (FreshAire)
• paint the Mudroom Radiant Sun

I think I'm just going to wait and clear the beds for the Raised-bed gardens in the spring. I don't get the paper so I don't have any newspaper to smother the grass with anyway- so I guess I'll just dig it up in the spring?

Other than that, I have apples left to can sometime this week, and I'm thinking applesauce, applesauce, applesauce!