What was I thinking?

 I have spent the last few years learning about permaculture and land races and other not quite mainstream gardening ways.  And I have been learning a whole new language and way of thinking about growing vegetables.    

So this year I took the plunge and got some of these grexes, landraces, and some packets of  seed mixes that are all the same species.  The thing with all of these type of seed is to plant as many as you have room for, select the ones that do the best in your garden to save seeds from.  Of course for most of us taste is as important as how well it grew.  So this is a very different type of seed saving then I have been  doing for my tomatoes.  And really does take a huge shift in attitudes to be able to go yep that makes sense.  

For this year I have 

From Going to Seed:

Kale - blend of seeds from gardeners all over. 

Corn - blend of seeds from gardeners all over

Potato seeds (yes they can make seeds) - blend of seed from gardeners all over

Summer Squash mix - lots of different types of pepo and some hybrids with other types of squash. This should be interesting to grow out. 

From the Experimental Farm Network:

Maxidiwiac' (Buffalo Bird Woman) Summer Squash - a mostly bush squash breeding population that has been selected for squash that you can dry for winter use. 

Maggie x Provider' Bush Bean Breeding Mix - this is a breeding population of a string bean and stringless snap bean.   The eventual goal is to find a pink podded snap bean with no string. 

Wild Garden Chicory mix - this is for a friend to help give her some fresh flavors in her salads.

From Wild Mountain Seeds

Speedy Dry Bean Grex - grown on the Western Slope at over 7000 ft altitude so should work well here. 

Ping Tong shaped Grex - this is an eggplant grex that produces long thin eggplants that should grow here.  Looking forward to some fresh eggplant.,

Plus I got a couple of their tomato varieties they have been developing to grow in their growing conditions. 

From Quail Seeds

Vibrant Joy Bok Choy Mix 

Cottagers Kale

And sigh I have no idea where I am going to put all these things PLUS my tomatoes and flowers.  

Wonder how many of my friends and family will let me grow things at there place... 

A what?

Jerusalem artichoke aka sunchoke aka sun root is a type of sunflower that grows a tuberous root that can be used as food.  They are HIGHLY invasive in most area but can make a nice windbreak or privacy "fence" as most varieties are about 10 to 15 feet tall.   However there are some varieties that are down around 5  to 8 feet tall, those are the ones I looked at.  Oikos Tree Crops has a a variety they call Saint Charles that sounded just like what I wanted.  Shorter at about 8 ft tall, it takes only 90 days to produce chokes that can be harvested and has shorter stolons and smaller chokes just right for soups and stews.  4 tubers of that one hopped into my cart... 

The next a what? thing I got is called a groundnut.  Apois Americana is a vining plant that forms small tubers spaced out along a long stolon like beads on a necklace.   The vines can get up to 10 ft!  Again Oikos Tree Crop to rescue.  The have a new variety they call Clusternut Groundnut.  It is another early cropper perfect for our shorter growing season. And like the name says instead of long stolons with beads strung along it this one produced shorter stolons with the beads very close together.  It also is a shorter bushier plant.   Yep 4 tubers for that one hopped into the cart. 

I mentioned my two White Aster Dahlias in the last post, those will arrive about April/May just in time to plant them.  Not sure when the 8 new tubers from Oikos will arrive but I do need to start working outside this weekend if our snow is melted enough... 

My asparagus plants will also arrive about mid April so that bed needs dug and prepared for them.  Those of course a long term project with our first very small harvest in a year or two... 

I also settled on my new fruit tree.  I will be looking for a Mormon/Chinese apricot for the front yard.  They are hardy, late flowering, small at about 15 feet tall and best of all they are self fertile so I only need one not 2 like most other fruiting plants I looked at.   

Today is also another seed starting day or rather yesterday was supposed to be but I forgot to plant them even though everything is ready.  I will need to do that tonight before I go to bed... 

I saw this video last month so yep I got a tumbling composter like him and plan on doing this...  the tumbler is here but I need to wait for the snow to melt so I can set it up in the garden and get a batch of compost going...   I also got us a little bucket for the kitchen for our coffee grounds and tea bags plus any vegetable scraps so those can be saved to go outside in a tumbler.  

I will be a busy girl if everything goes as plans...  

We have sidewalks!

Few days ago they put in the new street curbs and now we even have a sidewalk but still no road.  Boy does it look odd.  . Once they actually get the road finished we can get to work on the deck/front steps.  Garage is nearly done and I am really looking forward to seeing how it looks.

I still have one box for the garden to get setup but the others are growing well.  I think we will have some nice salads year.   Now if I could just get the cucumbers to grow as well as the onions, lettuce and radishes. I currently have 6 tomatoes doing well and 3 struggling in our intense heat.  Beans are coming up in all the right places so we will have a nice selection of beans later and beets and Swiss chard too. 

I hate construction!

Today it became very apparent that the guy from DOT did not know what he was talking about.  Our  day lilies are not safe where they are.  We need to dig up and move all the day lilies from the bed near the cherry tree and about half of the day lilies on the driveway side of the yard.   On the up side for the first time since we moved in we have good water pressure...

We have gotten our side of the garage primed and ready for paint.  Toli decided not to paint it pure white but rather a very pale lavender similar to the color we have in the breakfast nook.  That color changes throughout the day from "white" to grey to very pale lavender.  Like the breakfast nook we will be using a greyed green for the trim.

I am going to be job hunting later this week.  After being seduced with pretty photos of bunnies and low prices I weakened and ended up saying yes to a total of three new angoras.  One is an adorable lilac tort English Angora.  He will be for display only I am NOT getting into the Fraggle Rock bunnies.  The other two are both Satin Angoras.  Do si do is a chocolate agouti doe that will hopefully make some chinchilla babies when bred to d'Artagnan.  The black buck needs a name yet but he will be a good match with Cloud Flower my sable pearl.

More garden changes

OOPS!  I forgot both the cucumbers for Toli and our first attempt to grow potatoes when planning the garden.  Thanks goodness for this online Garden Planner.  It let me play around online with box sizes and placement as well as plants and plant placement.  Really found it handy.

So drum roll please Here is what we are planning for the backyard "garden" area.   Notice how many boxes I ended up with.  5 big boxes is not what we had in mind when I started this year but it was the only way to fit everything in.  The biggest problem was fitting in my squash and his cucumbers...

Toli has been busy making the extra boxes needed and I get to do the heavy work and blend the soil for the boxes.  He is at least helping me put it in the boxes.  I also want to move my compost pile out of the corner and over near the wooden fence.  I am hoping to actually find  room for a 3 bin setup which will make life easier next year when I need compost for the garden boxes.

Slowly but surely the house and garden are getting done. 

Toli has all of our side of the garage ready to prime and paint.  He still needs to work on our neighbors side of the front.  He has to repair their door and sand down that side then all the prep work will be done.   Grin yes we are doing the FRONT of the neighbors side of the garage.  They paid for him to do it and will buy any supplies needed for their side.  It actually is in our best interests to make at least the front look cared for since our garage is one building shared with the neighbors.

The back door is done but I still need to scrape the bathroom ceiling and paint it.  Then there are those front steps...

Two of my four garden boxes are in place and filled with something like Mel's Mix. Toli will be putting on their grids today and then I will start to plant.  The smaller 3 by 3 box and the 1 x 4 box will have to wait until the wind dies down so I can mix the "dirt" for them.   Grin I did way overbuy some parts of the dirt mix so may have to sweet talk Toli into another long narrow box to plant tomatoes in since I have ended up with more indet mater plants then I have room for if I want pole beans...  Actually I have lots of room for plants it is just those climbing plants that I am lacking room for.   When all the boxes are in place and ready to each box will have a trellis on one side so there will be a total of 15 ft of trellis space unfortunately with at least 8 mater plants in there that will take up most of that room leaving me none for cucumbers or pole beans or other climbing plants.

Garden changes

As posted before the boxes were all laid out then along come Toli...

The boxes got moved now three are along the garden fence line and one is out in the middle where the old trellis is.  Together we got landscape cloth under all 4 boxes and they are ready for the soil mix.

We will do that tomorrow as we got all the ingredients for it today.  Unloading all the bags took some time and Toli was like that is a lot of soil.  Told him I have a lot of space to fill in the boxes and that any left over could be used in the day lily beds.  Now I need to figure out how to measure out and blend the right amounts of each ingredient to get close to the right percentages for Mel's Mix that I am trying to get close to.

Well the boxes are all laid out in the garden area where I want them to be but now they are waiting for me to find a way to buy dirt or in this case the ingredients for something like Mel's mix for Square Foot gardening.  The boxes are all deeper then his 6 inch depth so will take a lot of soil mix.  I think I figured to fill them to the top they would need nearly 48 cubic feet of soil.  I think this year I will just put in a 6 inch layer and add more soil next year.   

Hope we get the dirt figured out asap as my little home grown seedlings need to go in the ground.  I have a few tomatoes, a couple of eggplants and some flowers.

My tomatoes are not all the normal red maters most are used to.  I have loads of Lime Green Salad which is a little dwarf with green when ripe tomatoes, a couple of Matina and of Gregori's Alti which are both red heirloom that handle cool temperatures and ripen early. I even have a gasp hybrid I have raised from seed called Oregon Spring.  This is a red early ripening, cool tolerant hybrid. I lost my Taxi seedlings so bought a yellow hybrid called Lemon Boy.   I have not tried Lemon Boy before so that will be interesting.

No peppers survived the can't reach them time so if I want any in the garden I will need to buy some.

Boxes, boxes and more boxes

Rain is threatening today so no painting on the outside door as planned.  Instead Toli and I sorted through his pile of untreated scrap lumber and found wood for a total of 4 garden boxes. He is working on the boxes right now.  Once they are built we will have to find places for them and get them ready for planting.  One is a narrow box that will go near the fence and be planted with pole beans and maybe a tomato or two.  The other 3 are squares and will get my bush beans, lettuces, and other salad fixings.  My squash will actually go in the front yard this year since the day lily beds are in need of being redone and that will leave room for a couple of bush squash.