Tag Archives: ordering seeds

What We Did This Week To Prep 3/2/12

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This week Ryan and Chanse built a T-bar trellis for the raspberries. Last year was the raspberries first year so, of course, there was a lot of growth–with shoots coming up all over–but very little fruit. This year we plan to trellis them, over wires connected to the T-bars, to keep them more organized and maximize the space. We’re going to allow them to spread out some more, but at their perimeters I had the boys bury pieces of plywood (vertically 15 inches deep) to keep them from getting out of their allotted space. Hopefully, this the raspberries second year, we’ll get a good harvest.

I borrowed a truck from a friend (can’t wait to get our own, it’ll make these jobs much easier) and returned to the Landfill Compost Factory. The first day Ryan and I got two cubic yards of fine compost (I describe it as ‘fluffy dirt’). The following day I went back, by myself (Ryan started track practice), and got another two cubic yards, this time of the coarse compost (it’s more like slightly composted mulch). Between the two days we added about five inches of new compost to the garden areas, both front and back; it’ll have about three months to ‘settle in’ before we plant into it in June. The soil in this area was initially just clay and rock with about an inch of topsoil, so hopefully the soil improvements we’ve made the last couple of years will pay off.

Sarah and I finally made time to get together and finalize our seed order. Sarah had mapped the garden area, labeling what would go where, to make efficient use of the space available. As mentioned, last year was our first real garden and we had deliberately kept it smaller (and only had limited success); this year we’ll be planting about twice as much space. After looking at her garden map and making a few additions to the list, we got our seeds ordered. Ryan and I will build the greenhouse in the next couple of weeks.

What did you do?

(Monday: What Bridges?)

 

Sarah’s View: Time To Order Seeds

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Even though we’re still in the dark of winter, now is the time of year when we peruse the seed catalogs and start planning our garden.

Last year was our first “real” garden, and it did okay. It wasn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t horrible either. Part of that can be blamed on the weather – it was a very cool summer and plants that normally do well around here, like tomatoes, struggled. But much of the garden success, or in this case failure, was directly related to our inexperience. It was the first year we started our plants from seed (instead of seedlings) and we tried items that we had no previous experience growing. We also do not have the best soil… okay, the soil here sucks. Our subdivision’s “soil” is mostly rocks and clay.

Trace has been actively working to improve our soil. He built up our back yard compost pile, brought in additional compost from the local landfill, and expanded the space for the garden. We hope to continue the soil enhancements this year. We will bring in more compost and are selecting specific crops with soil improvement in mind. Trace is also pursuing a lead on donkey manure.

There were a few plants that did well. Of the perennials we planted, the strawberries, raspberries and asparagus all survived. The rhubarb, on the other hand, didn’t go so well. And we were able to harvest some tomatoes (albeit mostly green) at the end of the season. This year we’ll again try tomatoes, green beans, and zucchini. I’ll have to check on the herb garden and see what survived the snow, but we will have – either from seed or carried over from last year – basil, rosemary, thyme, sage and chives.

Besides the “regulars”, we are hoping to branch out (pun intended) a bit this year. Trace has requested cabbage; luckily I’ve heard it grows well around here and shouldn’t be a problem. I would also like to grow potatoes. We found a potato box diagram online that will allow us to grow them without using a huge amount of space.  We are also going to add butternut and spaghetti squash, radishes, onions, garlic, black beans, and peas to our garden. None of those are all that uncommon, but will be “new to us”.

One, more unusual, plant we’re going to try is garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas). We regularly fry them on the stove to make a snack and would love to have enough to do this and make our own hummus. In addition, the other uncommon plant we are going to try is comfrey. We are specifically planting this with soil improvement in mind as it is known as a valuable fertilizer and will pull nutrients up with its long tap root.

This year, after having more time to look over the many many options, we are going to go ahead and order from Bountiful Gardens again. Their catalog has a plethora of information on each plant and I truly value their philosophy: “For the benefit of all farmers, gardeners and consumers who want an alternative, we pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants.” As preppers, I feel it is important that the plants we grow have seeds that can be saved and successfully planted in future years.

What are you planting this year?

(Friday: What I Did This Week To Prep)

note: This is my wife Sarah’s second post (first post: “What Do You Think of All This?” – A Prepper’s Wife’s Point of View). She will continue to post under ‘Sarah’s View’ the second Wednesday of each month. I’m excited to have her regularly writing for us!