What I use for seed starting mix.

I save a lot of money by mixing my own seed starting mix. Not only is the pre-packaged stuff hard to find this year, like last, when you do find it, it's expensive. This is what I use and get great results from it.  

I mix this in a wheelbarrow and it can be scaled down.

11 pounds of Coconut Coir in compressed brick form. (amazon and I have found it at Homedepot and Menards)

9-ish gallons of water (you may need a little more or a little less)

1 T of plant based dish soap - like Eco or Dawn plant based (optional)

4 cups of Vermiculite 

4 cups of Perlite

(I know both Perlite and Vermiculite are hard to find this year. You can do away with one, but not both)

If you want to, you can add 2-3 cups of worm castings.

Mix the soap into the water, you aren't looking to make it foamy.

I place the coir in the wheel barrow and add about half the water and let the coir start to expand. As it does, you can start to break the bricks apart and add a little more water. It's better to add too little and need to add more, than to end up with a Scottish peat bog in your barrow. Let it sit a bit and come back to it and see if you need to add more water.

Place your Vermiculite and/or Perlite and Worm Castings (optional) on the top and use whatever method you like to get it all mixed together.

So what's up with the SOAP?!  That tiny bit of soap in all of that helps break down the surface tension of the water you add to the 'soil'.  So when you water later, you don't get as much floating bits of coir in your starter cells, supposedly.  I really can't see the difference, but it doesn't seem to hurt either.

Coconut Coir has NO nutritional value whatsoever.  So as soon as you see those first sets of TRUE leaves on your seedlings, you will want to start fertilizing your starts with half strength liquid fertilizer.  The worm castings have a little value, but don't let those seedlings starve!  You should continue your half strength feedings once a week until you get the seedlings into the ground and then go full strength at the manufacturer's recommendations. I've personally had better luck with Schultz over MiracleGrow. For that I have NO idea why.  MG always seems to burn out my plants. You're results may very.

Regardless, I steer clear of the pre-fertilized all season soils at the stores.  You have NO control over what your plants need if you get too much or too little rain, or have a season of wacky soil conditions.  You'll constantly be trying to figure out what your plants need and what's wrong with them.

Good luck with your gardening this year!

Deep In The Heart Of Tomato Season

Well it's finally happened.  I am officially up to my eyeballs in tomatoes!

Tomato plants are sneaky creatures.

You make sure their future home is rich in nitrogen, calcium, potassium, and toss in some rooting compound.

You plant them after the soil reaches 70 degrees, and then pray that you don't get a late, surprise chill.

You plant them deep, or laying down even, with just the tippy top leaves sticking out of the soil, the whole time apologizing to the once tall, lanky seedling, telling it, "you'll thank me later".

You spend the whole month of June, checking them for worm eggs, and leaf spot, and blight.  The stubby seedlings seem to mock you with each passing day despite your initial enthusiasm, which turns to begging, with then morphs into threats.

Late June finds you in the garden, buckets of fertilizer in tow, looking at scraggly knee high adolescent plants. You start to wonder if you should drag out the tie up strings, but then think against it.  Instead, you walk the rows, pinching off suckers and pruning.

July, and picnic season rolls around, and while the grocery store seems to have plenty of ruby red, ripe orbs, you have trouble even spotting a green marble.  Sigh...

Did I buy mutant, non-bearing, decorative plants?  Did I over fertilize?  Was it too wet? Too windy? Too cool?  Did I look at you wrong?  Was I singing off key? What do you want!? What!? Whaaaat!?

Then it happens.  You go out one morning and suddenly they're 3 feet tall and you find yourself running out of string for tie-ups.  Then they're 4 feet tall and you're looking for old t-shirts to shred and turn into more tie-ups. Green orbs and pear-drops are everywhere!  You look to the sky and and say "please no hail this year, not this year." And the hail passes you by (well, mostly).  The daily routine of walking the garden and pruning is now habit.  Your eyes dart to and fro looking for pests to throw to the giddy hens who so eagerly wait outside the garden fence, their voices high with excitement they pace back and forth for a tasty tidbit.  Worm after worm flies over the fence top, and are happily dispatched.

By the end of July, your daily mosey through the rows, becomes an expedition.  You start to wonder if you should have purchased the giant roll of twine instead of the single.  You begin to consider a pith helmet and a machete purchase from Amazon.  You add a black light flashlight to your arsenal to find the greedy hornworms and brown eyed tomato moths at night when they come out to devour whole plants and fruit while you sleep. The deep green fruit is becoming lighter, and lighter, until one morning......

There she is! Is it? Yes, it IS! Your first red tomato.  You can hardly believe it.  The unforgiving heat and humidity of August, which is the 7th level of Dante's inferno to all other living things, is the very weather the tomato plant lives for.  You pluck your treasure and take it inside.  Some consume this first prize warm and dusty right there in garden.  Was it an apple that tempted Adam? Or was it a Tomato, fresh from the vine?  Others carefully coddle their Precious close to their breast, hiding it from view of the hens, the neighbors, and even hovering spy satellites to gently wash it and place it on the counter.  It's thick red hide glistening under it's perfect green top hat as you contemplate it's demise.

The first week of August provides you enough for a salad and some beefy cuts on a roast beef and bagel sandwich.  Slow and steady wins the race they say, but this is silly. You find yourself addressing the entire garden, tapping your foot as you spray them with their weekly dose of food.  "This simply will not do!" Your pep talk comes out loud, unrelenting, and unforgiving, yet understanding.  You don't even care that passing bicyclists and walkers are listening in.  The troops MUST be told what is expected of them, what they can accomplish, and what their reward will be. (Although I don't know how much of a reward it is to them to be cut up and dropped in a pot, but it is their destiny.)  Patton would be proud.

The troops rally.  By the second week of August you're taking a small bucket to the garden in the morning to harvest.  By the end of the week the bucket has turned into a strong box.
  By the third week, the box has turned into a lug.  Processing tomatoes is turning into a twice a week project.






Almost ripe tomatoes are picked and covered with dark towels on every flat surface in the kitchen to prevent them from splitting after the overwhelming summer downpours.  The poundage tally board keeps climbing; 20 pounds, 40 pounds, 65 pounds, 110 pounds, up and up it goes.

The canning recipes come out and the pressure canner becomes a permanent resident of the kitchen stove top.  Pasta sauce (with and without meat), pizza sauce, ketchup, bbq sauce, and tomato soup, it's all fair game.  As of this posting, the garden as blessed us with 185 pound of tomatoes.  I planted indeterminate tomatoes, so barring hail, wind, blight, fungus, locust or plague we'll keep going until frost, which is usually about October 3-7th.  Even then, I'll work before the frost to harvest any and all light green tomatoes and put them up in the basement for further ripening, which usually nets me another 40 pounds after frost.  It is a crazy work load, that gets insanely tiring by the end of August, but in the dead of Winter, with the North winds howling, popping open a quart jar and hearing that familiar hiss of the seal breaking on a jar of your own tomato soup, is comfort food at its very best. It's the fuel that simmers the fire of the endless planning, blood, sweat, tears, bug bites, sunburn, and manure under the fingernails that the summer season brings. That warm bowl of soup helps set in motion the gardening amnesia that allows you to do it all over again, and again, and again.

That said, here is my recipe for Tomato Soup.  ( I have taken to canning tomato puree made with my KitchenAid puree attachment, which removes the skin and seeds and core and leaves me with nothing but juice and meat in the bowl.  I can do more at a moments notice with puree and I'm not stuck with too many of any one finished product at the end of the season.  So the majority of my processed tomatoes go into cooked down puree.)

• Simple Tomato Soup
• 3 cups chopped white onion (or one LARGE onion)
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic (about two large cloves) OR 1/2 teaspoon of garlic POWDER
• 3 cups water, divided
• 1 quart (32 ounces) of either your crushed (no skins, no seeds) tomatoes  OR 1 quart of skinless, seedless tomato puree 
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano or Italian Seasoning
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt - NO IODINE salt 
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
• 1-3 teaspoons of granulated white sugar, divided
• and have some baking soda handy.

In a three to four quart pot, toss in your onion and about a half a cup of water, and cook at medium to medium high heat,  until the onion is translucent.  At this point, add your garlic and cook for about one minute, stirring to prevent the garlic from scorching.  Add the remaining water, the tomato product of your choice, the oregano/Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and ONE Tablespoon of the sugar.  Mix and lower the heat and bring to a simmer for 15 minutes.  I then take an immersion blender to make it a homogeneous, smooth soup.

At this point it comes down to personal taste. And you will need to take this in stages, and just don't dump things in all at once.  Each batch of tomatoes, even canned from the store will vary - some are sweeter, some more or less acidic.

If it tastes too metallic- add a little more of your reserved sugar, mix and cook another 5 minutes and taste again.

If it is too acidic - add 1/8th of a teaspoon of baking soda.  It WILL fizz as you mix it in.  Wait another 5 minutes and taste again.  

You can also add more of any of the seasonings to include more onion (in the form of powder), more garlic (in the form of powder) or any of the seasonings above. 

EVERY batch will require a different amount of everything and every person has a different idea of how it should taste.

SO make it yours! Serve with toast, or an ooey gooey grilled cheese sandwich.  Sprinkle it with parmesan cheese and croutons or a flotilla of oyster crackers!

But most of all, sit down with a seed catalog and a notebook and start planning!

The Potting "Shed"

When Mother Nature hands you this...

in LATE Februrary, all you can do, besides swear at the ditch rat for getting it all wrong, is hope and plan for Spring.  Spring that you know will come, you just don't know when.

It's rather difficult to do when your garden, which you should be filling with grand heaps of compost is under this...

Yes, that's the path that Doc has been keeping open for us with the snowblower between the coop, barn, and workshop.  The garden is under all of that, and it's not a fluffy drift.  Most of it you can walk on top of, until you can't.  Which is why we've had to make a cut in it.  Walking on top of it hauling 8 gallons of water is fine, until you hit a soft pocket and the drift eats you for breakfast. 

We are still in the deep freeze, which we shouldn't be, but the temps should start warming up into the 30s.  That's still 20 degrees colder than we should be, but I'll take it.

It does hinder the garden work that should be going on this time of year.  But to keep on the gardening track I came up with a project.  Inspired by a post on the Old World Garden blog where she builds racks for seed starting.  She also sells the plans for them for those less hands on.

So where could I create this safe space for my seeds?  Previously I was sprouting seeds in the kitchen.  But the light source from the windows was too high and caused the plants to get leggy before their time.  I have plenty of room in the unfinished warm area of the basement, but really didn't relish having moisture laden seed racks down there in a part of the house that has no moisture issues. 

So where......

AH HA!

In front of Doc's car space in the garage is this odd little nook.  It forms the ceiling of the staircase below and I suppose was meant to be an awesome area for little used storage.  Although without shelving, it became a seasonal dumping ground that never got cleaned or emptied.  With the 18 inch step up, it also wasn't very convenient.  (Had I built the house, I would have enclosed it and put a door on that back wall and made it a walk in pantry for the kitchen.)

I was then able to get great measurements and take care of the hardest part, the planning and the list making to pull it all together. 

I already had a potting table that I was using for cooking in the outdoor brick oven, so I made sure it made it in the room. I figured out the best placement for shelves and made my list of supplies needed.  Then I was off and running.

Behr Tidal Blue in SemiGloss

I removed all the goodies in there and set them aside to find new homes for it all later.  I swept it clean and removed most of the cobwebs, and slapped on a coat of fresh paint. Of course, doing this made the rest of the garage look terrible. (project for another time)

Then came a scrap piece of vinyl flooring in a nice slate stone print.  It was that or looking like a wood plank floor.  Since it's a potting room, and one of my favorite movies is Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, it had to be the slate.

I put back the trim after installing the floor and set to work building the shelves from 2x4s.

Several trips up and down the 18 inch step later, I decided I needed to build a step.  I used a pair of cinder blocks with a piece of plywood attached with construction adhesive and topped with another scrap of vinyl.  That made the work easier.

Plywood was secured to the frame tops and then covered in more scrap vinyl and rubber matting. 

I capped the end of the shelving unit with an opaque roofing panel to block the winds and cool drafts when Doc open his door, and also a curtain across the front on a rod for the same purpose.

The lights are full spectrum LED lights on a timer.  They are adjustable in height from the seedlings.  I also had room for a Blue/Red LED grow light on the potting table.  This one is for lettuce, the lights are color adjustable for seedlings, and the plant stages.

I am hoping to not only get seedlings started for the garden, but also perennial and self seeding annual seedlings for the pollinator beds.  I invested in a potting cube maker and am looking forward to seeing how they compare and stand up to use as compared to using commercial soil and plastic starter cells.

I also walked into a clearance sale at the local big box store.  They were discontinuing colors from last year's pots, so I took full advantage of that.  The long trays are extremely heavy duty plastic liners for window boxes.  I guess they no longer sell the boxes that they go into, or people just didn't want to spend 9$ on a tray.  But I'll spend less than 2$ for a home for rows of cherry seeds.

The large planters will start asparagus, and the squares are saddle belly planters for over bricks or railing.  Those I will fill with lettuce for the deck and maybe flowers for market.


Hopefully, in another week or so, we'll get everything going.

The Insanity of Spring

April 2018 Blizzard coated the windows in ice.

I was reminded by a good friend that I haven't been around for a while.  I was actually aware of the fact, I just simply haven't had the time to sit down and write.  Luckily for me, and you, we had a blizzard yesterday. 
Yes, that's right, April 14th and instead of planting cool season veggies in the garden, I'm huddled inside avoiding a day where the high was only 30 degrees.

3 bin composter, 4x15 feet, large enough for the tractor
bucket to mix and move the materials

The past two months of internet silence has flown by.  I have been doing the work of three people for weeks.  Every moment that was nice enough to be outside, I was outside working on the acreage projects that need to be accomplished to bring home the two mini donkeys I bought in January.  On miserable days, I was inside catching up on all the small projects that pertain to the barn or to the ever growing list of household chores.

I removed the concrete curbing and stones around the well head,
Added compost and soil and planted 800 sq ft with wildflowers
in a new pollinator garden.  It will be allowed to go wild and self seed.

Ducks at the annual Saline Center Auction.

I built a slow feed hay feeder for the donkeys.

The cedar tree seedlings
have to be tackled every Spring
when they are orange and
easiest to spot in the pasture. I still have
3 acres to go.

The 'to do' list is endless.  Worse than the Great List, are the endless hidden little things that should have been on the list, but never seemed to make it ON to the list.  And the amount of time all the little projects take was shocking.

Fresh yeast doughnuts.

I finished the interior of the stock barn with kick panels, gravel, sand, and crushed limestone. It took 5
gallons of paint to cover the whole area.  Lights have been installed and run off of a portable power supply.
I built and painted two large wind break panels for the paddock and painted the wood fence in the paddock, and installed
an owl nesting box. (Thanks Doc for holding that ladder.)

But here we are, the middle of April, and I am waiting on the frames for the stall walls, and need to string the pasture fence.  The rubber mats need to be slapped on the floors, and the wood installed into the stall frames, and all the little things need moved into the stock barn, but that's it.  Can you believe it?  The frames are late to arrive, so that is holding me up.  Instructions for the fences should come tomorrow, so that looks like that's where I'm heading next.

Ellie being Ellie.

Last week, being that I was in a barn project holding pattern, I decided that it was the week that I was going to tackle the garden.

Those that have been following along for a while are saying, 'Wait! What garden? We thought the lovely, lush, productive garden was bulldozed and now resting peacefully under the new barn.  OMG! Is it a zombie garden?  Do you have to lop off the cabbage heads to kill a zombie garden?  CAN you kill a zombie garden?'

It's OK dear followers.  Zombie vegetables will not be taking over the central US.  The old garden, is still deep under the new barn.  You will recall that the new barn was finished this time last year, but I just didn't have the brain power, time, or physical motivation to plan, locate and build up a new garden after the barn was completed in time for planting.  So I resorted to container gardening for the summer.

What a disaster.  Big money on good containers, quality container mix, and plants, and I think we managed a dozen cherry tomatoes, one horn worm, and three containers of plants that did nothing before they died.

As winter projects started eating my soul, each walk to and from the stock barn I would survey locations and dream of my rich green garden again.  I really enjoyed the deep mulch method of the old garden.  It worked remarkably well the first year, and fairly well the second year. (The second year was my mistake.  I pulled out all the frames, which had exposed soil and piled the hay on 12 inches deep to over winter. The seedy hay found the dirt and weeds went wild and rooted deep.)  The method was sound, in practice, I screwed up.  But all-in-all it was fabulous.  The whole garden was essentially an active compost pile, making new soil for future years, and the depth of the mulch discouraged weeds.  Even those that took root, weren't rooted into anything but hay, and pulled out easily.  You did have to keep up with it, every square foot of it.

April is burning season.

So while I liked the old method, if I was starting from scratch (AGAIN), I was going to improve upon what I had learned.  I kid you not, this is when a blog I follow had a book published.  (Old World Garden)  WHAT TIMING!  I was looking at an incoming snow storm, and Amazon Prime could have it at my door in two days, perfect for weekend reading, pondering, and if I liked it, planning.  Now I have no affiliation with OWGarden, nor do I make any money from you buying the book, Raised Row Gardening ,or am I compensated in any way.  I'm just letting you know where I drew my inspiration.  (By the way, try their recipe for Beef and Noodles! It's how I found them to start with.)

The book is laid out in chronological order and is very clear and easy to understand.  The authors not only take you through the process, but inform you on why the process works.  They then go a step further and give you a clear list of companion plantings, composting tips, material selections, and instead of just taking you from planning to harvest, they wrap you clear around to winterizing, planning and planting for the next Spring, so you aren't left wondering if you are doing the whole process correctly.  This is, after all, a perpetual garden.

It is based on the same compost in place system as my previous garden, but it has dedicated maintained growing areas, and dedicated heavily mulched walking areas.  The benefit to this is that you are severely limited the areas exposed to even possible weeds, and those areas, being mulched as well, will also limit the number and tenacity of the weeds.  All of that reduces the amount of maintenance time spent in the garden.  BONUS!

The flat enough area between the orchard and the workshop.

I read the book.  Ideas started swirling about my head.  I found a level-ish spot in the yard and I dug out the project book and started planning out my rows.  I remembered I had 104 feet of portable, electric poultry fencing that I ordered a couple of years ago from Premier1 fencing, and never put into use.  So easy decision on the size of the garden 25x25 feet.

Now here's the only place I deviated from the book.  It calls for placing the working/growing rows out first, with layers of straw and then soil.  Then filling in the surrounding area with a thick layer of mulch material for the walking zones.

I was starting from scratch and the ground was still mostly dry, so the opportunity for the dump truck hauling 16 cubic yards of mulch to back up to the actual garden location was not to be passed up.

Quite the heap of mulch.  To be matched a week later by
a heap of soil. (most of which was used to re-grade areas
around the lawn.)

  My mulch/dirt guy thought I was nuts, but I'm a regular customer, and I'm used to his "she's nuts" smile.  He was interested in the process and promised to come back in the summer to see the progress.  The hens were quite interested in the massive pile of hardwood mulch, but there really wasn't anything in there for them and they quickly lost interest.

Inspection crew hoping for a new hunting ground.

The tractor made quick work of the pile, pushing it to the pre-measured, painted lines in the lawn, and leveling it.

I pushed the mulch out another 4 feet on a side so that I could place the electric fence into mulch and wouldn't have to mow against the fence, and the mulch would inhibit weed and grass growth along the fence.

I only used weed control fabric under the mulch which is outside
of the electric fence.  5 inches of mulch IN the garden
will keep any of the sad lawn that wasn't really there to start
with from growing up through.

I then installed the fence.  It was here that we found the fence was not 100 feet, but 102, and the gate added another 4.  So the finished size ended up being 25 x 28 feet, which allowed me to add a LONG wide row at one end for sorghum, sweet and decorative corn.

I mapped out my growing rows and removed the mulch from these areas and moved it to around the electric net.

All the mulch removed from the growing areas.  I forgot to take photos
of the next step, which was a central mound of compostable
material, in this case, straw.

I then followed the instructions in the book to build my straw mounds and then good , pulverized garden soil, and then I augmented that with pure compost soil.  I will add more compost to each planting hold when it comes time to plant and then top mulch with straw.

Straw covered with pulverized garden soil and settled. Note the
start of the potato towers in the back left.

I added heavy duty support posts and will add tomato posts and support frames a little closer to June 1st, the earliest I will plant them.

Herb seeds started, potato starts drying, onions and garlic waiting
for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Compost soil added to the garden soil.  Large support posts installed and
potato towers started. (We are two weeks behind on potato season here.)

The two towers are for potatoes.  I accidentally came across an old archived blog post on building them, and am going to give them a try.  They are supposed to cut down on weekly soil mounding and increase the planting to harvest ratio.  We shall see.

Cedar Creek Pottery  A hidden GEM!

So there you have it.  I will share all the other build projects, trips, mis-adventures, and baking

Built two lids for the wine barrels and hooked up the rain/downspout
diverters.  They work great.  It doesn't take much rain to fill a 50 gallon
barrel.  Also hooked up a runoff from the barn to the stock tank, and ran
an overflow pipe down into the pasture.

adventures teased in above photos in future posts, but I wanted to get the garden post out there for anyone else out there figuring out what they're going to do this year.  The great thing about this method is that you can start small and try it out and build on to your plan as the years/ needs/ budget allows.

Chicken Update-

The two speckled Icelandic cockerels have gone to live about an hour away.  I simply did not have room for 4 boys.

Extra eggs?  Deviled eggs!

Delmar, Astrid, and Freya have all joined the ranks of regular layers. Their eggs are barely champagne pink, almost white and still small.

Our remaining Icelandic boy, Ari, is turning out to be a kicker.  It remains to be seen if he is staying.  I will not tolerate being stalked and flogged by a rooster.

Egg laying was going gang busters until Easter, when the Broody Prison Opened, and has had a revolving door ever since- Daisy, Violet, Princess, Ellie, Flora, Donder have all been inmates, so far.

I'm Stewing!

Tomatoes that is!

I mentioned in yesterday's post that the garden is winding down.  I guess the definition of that would be that I haven't been in the garden for FOUR days and took out 25 pounds of tomatoes, a gallon of cherry tomatoes, three cantaloupes, and several pounds of banana and jalapeño peppers.  LOL.

This doesn't den count the three overloaded cherry tomato plants I didn't even bother picking because it gets dark quickly now. I also gave a few pounds of tomatoes and a splits, overripe cantaloupe to the girls.  Boy, oh BOY, were they HAPPY!

I brought the large harvest basket in and let it sit for the night, deciding to sort and clean the basket the next morning.  Lucky me, my basket had a large field cricket in it.  It drove me nuts all night long chirping, moving somewhere elusive, and starting over just as I would give up looking and crawl back into bed.  He stopped chirping on night #2, so I think something else, larger, in the house gold ahold of him.  This is both a happy and scary thought!

I digress.

What to do with even MORE tomatoes?!  I have plenty of puréed.  We love salsa, but we love my FRESH made salsa.  We also can large bottles of a favorite national brand for about the same amount as I can make it.  So I took a pass on making and canning salsa.

I opted for a double batch of pressure canner stewed tomatoes.  I use one large can of a national brand with a large red shield on the green can every time I make spaghetti, so having pint jars in the Hoosier cabinet would be great ! 

I dug out my recipe and sorted my veggies.  I did have to go purchase a sweet green bell pepper, as we are past the season here, and the celery, I had everything I needed on hand.

Again this is a PRESSURE CANNING RECIPE.  You CANNOT safely steam or water bath this recipe.

Peel and quarter enough tomatoes for 6 quarts (12 pints)- about 4 pounds per quart

Add them to a large, heavy pot and add:
2 cups of chopped white onion
1 cup of chopped celery
1 cup of chopped green pepper
2T of white sugar
2T salt
1/2T powdered garlic
1T of spaghetti seasoning

I slowly simmer this until it reduces by one third.  At this point I hit the whole thing with my immersion blender and blend about half of the mixture, making sure to break up any large pieces of tomato, but leaving plenty of chunks.

Then carefully pour into prepared PINT jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace.

Then process in your pressure canner following its specific instructions for 15 minutes.

10 pounds of pressure under 1,000 Ft
15 pounds of pressure if you are canning above 1,000 ft.

I hope you enjoy this recipe.  Now what to do with the next load of tomatoes?!