It's a beautiful spring day out on the farm. The birds are singing, the grass is green, and the blossoms are now appearing on the apple trees. This is the perfect day and time to talk about insect infestation prevention in an orchard.
We do not spray our apples. It is a tedious process, expensive, and unhealthy way to go for managing wormy apples. What we do instead is hang stockings full of moth balls to prevent the moths from coming to our orchard to lay their eggs.
You see, the worms that you find in apples start off as an egg that is laid inside the blossom by the moth. This has to happen in the spring when the buds open up into the fragrant apple blossoms we love. To prevent this from happening, we mask the smell of the blossoms with moth balls, something that the moths detest and stay away from. Sure, our apple orchard doesn't smell so nice in the spring, but we have a large worm free apple crop in the fall from year to year!
This morning I looked at my vegetable garden with its 3 foot snowbanks still occupying the space wondering how I would get my first crops planted. Cold crops are to be planted this time of year so they can ripen before the heat of summer. If you wait too long, the lettuce will bolt and the carrots will become bitter before they are ready to pick.
So, patio gardening to the rescue! That's right, I am planting my cold crops in pots this year. I decided to try this mainly with the carrots as I want fresh carrots early in the season and they are the worst to transplant. All my other seeds went into the Areogarden. This will give me the opportunity to start those crops and transplant into the garden at a later time when the soil is workable.
Week 7 down and 6 to go until we are at our frost free stage of the gardening season!
Okay, I know I am long overdue for an update on our cattle setup and garden and my continuous list of projects. But, I have been busy okay! Actually, a lot of the projects I am going to update you on have been happening over a long period of time and just needed to be compiled altogether in a video so here it goes:
I am still missing the fact that I do not have a chicken coop in the garden anymore. I miss the chickens eating the weeds, scratching up the compost pile, and keeping the bugs at bay. Maybe next year...
Have you ever had one of those days where you just had to clean out your closet? I mean the day where you cannot find anything you are looking for, you are so frustrated, and just start pitching everything in sight? Well, I had one of those days. I was looking for a pair of shoes of all things and couldn't believe all the junk that had accumulated in there. One of the boxes that got thrown out was my old AeroGarden Bounty box. The unit itself has a spot on my table, but I had kept the box for about a year as it had loose leaflets, some accessories I haven't used yet, and oh yeah, the herb kit.
I just don't cook with fresh herbs and wanted the aerogarden more to grow lettuce during the cold winter months for fresh salads and sandwiches then to have a fistful of basil on hand. To each his or her own. But, I was curious to see if those herbs would grow. I mean afterall, they had been sitting in my closet for about a year. So, another customer review video was born! Take a look:
The herb kit worked out better than I thought! I didn't check to see if I could get a guaranteed replacement of the chives being they didn't sprout. I know Miracle Gro will honor those requests when you purchase the kit. But, I didn't care to get a replacement being these would be going out in my garden outside. Like I said before, I am not much of an herb fan.
The dog days of summer are upon us and the weather is hot, hot, hot! My garden is growing so quickly and we have now begun the harvest season. One of the first items to pick were the cucumbers.
Last year, we had accidentally planted a bush variety of pickling cukes. This was problematic for us as we had a trellis set in place for them to climb on. This year, we found the right seed variety and the vines climbed up their wall. Look at how well they turned out!
What I really like about this method is how the fruits hang straight down so they are not prone to curl. This is especially important for me because I love canning pickles and want my cucumbers to be as straight as possible so they can fit in my canning jars easily. They also stay above the ground so when it rains, they are not sitting in the mud getting dirty. When a cucumber lays on the ground they a prone to rot and disease. With the vines crawling up the fence, they have more air circulation, too, to help lesson the chances of mildew setting in.
The pollinators easily find the flowers and the big leaves shade the fruit from the sun. There are so many benefits! I highly recommend trying a trellis system for your cucumber plants if you don't have one already. Just lessening the space they take up in the garden with vertical gardening is a big plus in my book!
Now, about the pickles. We can all types in our home. We have made bread & butter, sweet, and dill pickles. We have made quick pickles and fermented pickles. We generally like the quick pickles as you can use the new Ball Pickle Crisp product. It has worked very well for me to keep the pickles crunchy. I have been using this in the batches and batches of sweet icicle pickles we have been making.
These are my family's all time favorite! Who cannot resist having a pickle with their sandwich at a BBQ? And, these are so easy because all you need to do is make the brine, pack the cucumbers in the jars, and pop them into the Auto Canner. (I promise I will make a video in the future showing this recipe.)
My only issue is entering them at our county fair. You see we have a pickles division, but there are many classes to enter pickles in. And, you can only pick one for each recipe. The premium list hasn't changed for decades. So, they reflect many of the old recipes people used to pickle. For example, these pickles pictured and fit easily into five classes:
Mustard, because mustard seed is used in the recipe.
Turmeric, because there is turmeric in the recipe too.
Sweet, they are not dill but a sweet pickle according to the Ball Canning Blue Book.
Spears, that is how they are shaped.
Quick, because they are not fermented but canned the same day they are picked.
Some days I would like to just enter a jar in each class and see how well I do. But, I usually enter them in the turmeric category as this is the only recipe I make with that spice. I usually make other pickle recipes that fit into the rest of the categories.
In my first seed starting video (https://youtu.be/AQvKk4XLvtw) I experimented with flowers. This time, I went and planted all the seeds I would put in my vegetable garden.
Homemade Cleaning Solution Proposed by AeroGarden:
1/4 cup Bleach + Enough Water to fill basin
or 5 cups Distilled White Vinegar + Enough Water to fill basin
To find more detailed instructions by AeroGarden for cleaning your unit please visit http://www.aerogarden.com/aerogarden-customer-service-support/cleanandsanitizeyouraerogarden.html
If you are interested in learning more about this product or purchasing it, please visit the following link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010NBJZLK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The salad green kit I used in this video can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01614SQTA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
If you are interested in learning more about this product or purchasing it, please visit the following link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010NBJZLK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The salad green kit I used in this video can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01614SQTA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
If you are interested in learning more about this product or purchasing it, please visit the following link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010NBJZLK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The salad green kit I used in this video can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01614SQTA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Canna Lilies are a bulb that are not considered winter hardy in Minnesota. So, I have to dig them up every fall and replant them in the spring to keep them alive and blooming each year. Here's how I do it!
We have the coop in the fenced garden area. I also created a paddock system in the garden to protect the tender vegetables as they grow. They will get moved around to scratch out and eat the weeds. But, for the most part, the coop is working out better than expected!
I know you are all thinking of fall, pumpkins, turkey, and thanksgiving this time of year. Some of you may be thinking of holiday shopping already! But, I am thinking spring flowers.
What?! Spring flowers! Yes, I know. I am either lagging behind everyone or I am way ahead of you. The latter is what I am aiming for. But, when November roles around I know it is time to start thinking of spring flowers in thinking of forcing my bulbs for Easter.
I save hyacinths, potted tulips, and of course Easter lilies from our church. I hate to see anything wasted or thrown out when the plants are perfectly good and healthy. So, I take the pots home and care for the plants until they start going into their dormant phase. Once the leaves start turning brown, I quit watering them and let the plant slowly die back. That is when I put the pot and all into my cool basement and forget about them.
By the time I have dug up my gladiolus, dahlias, and calla lilies, I usually find them stashed away in a corner. I then remember to keep my eye on them and when November comes they get repotted. It is so easy, and I wanted to share this video with you on how you can save and force these bulbs to bloom next spring!
Now, some of you I realize live in a warmer area than my Minnesota. And, you probably transplant these bulbs outside into your gardens, which is a great idea. However, lilies bloom in the mid-summer. So, you would have to keep them potted up to force them for spring blooming. Tulips and hyacinths on the other hand do bloom in the spring when planted outdoors. So, even if you do live in a warmer growing zone, you can do this, too!
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Thanks for watching, and have a great November month!
I had to make a video of what we do with our fall leaves just to show how easy, simple, and economical it is to reuse nature's waste as one's own rich resource. Well, I had to make it a two parter, not because it was a very long segment, but because Biscuit had to come along for the ride. Literally! :)
We use our John Deere Gator to haul leaves back and forth because it speeds up the process. Well, when she is involved with anything I try to take my video camera along and get some clips of her for my Minute of Biscuit segment on my other YouTube channel, Melinda's Closet Finds https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1YAPyUBkrWQJAtMM9e18A
So, part 1 is all about her and fall and leaves and riding a Gator...
Yes, my Mom got involved and learned how to drive and run the Gator. She thought it was fun once she got the hang of it. I mean what isn't fun about tooling around in a UTV? Everyone loves them where I come from!
The second part is where I show what we do with these crisp, brown leaves that we have gathered throughout our grove. We compost them!
By spreading the leaves out now and mixing them in with the soil, they break down easily and I don't have to wait next spring for the garden to dry out to mix in my compost to then plant. It saves me a bunch of work in the long run to do tasks ahead of time when I have the time.
So, I hope you take this simple task and short video to heart and give those fallen leaves in your yard a good rake, haul, and mix with some soil in your garden!
If you have any questions, please leave me a comment! I love hearing from all of you!
Sorry that I haven't been on here for awhile. But, I live in the Midwest where corn harvest season is in full swing. We farmers are trying to beat Mother Nature in getting our crop out before the snow. So far we are succeeding.
We had a corn field we just harvested located around our farm site. Usually, corncobs from the combine are shot into the nice green, grassy yard. I usually rake all those corncobs back into the field. But this year I got a different idea.
We all know that gardening can get to be expensive so we as gardeners try to cut costs when we can by composting, gathering our own seeds from plants, and taking advantage of greenhouse sales. Mulch is another one of those items that can get to be expensive and I found a way to cut on costs by using corncobs.
Yes, corncobs might sound unusual but this kind of mulch has been around for years. I found a paper from the 1940s that boasted how corncobs was the best mulch Americans produced annually. My Mom also had a Better Homes and Gardens book, "Complete Guide to Gardening" published 1979 that gave corncobs a thumbs up review for being mulch. Of course, there are many more mulches to choose from and if you are not mulching yet, you should be as it saves on water loss, weeds, and rain-packed soil that is hard to hoe.
Corncobs are best used when dried and ground. If you do not have a cornfield near by to snatch a few of these gems, you can also use sweet corn cobs from your garden. Just make sure to leave the cobs in the sun to dry for a few days after the corn has been eaten. The cobs will become lighter as they dry.
Ground corncobs should be applied to the garden in a depth of 2-3 inches. They help improve soil structure, fertility, and don't blow away as easily as some other mulches. They are especially good for roses or other plants needing a medium acid soil. Just make sure to apply the fertilizer and compost to the garden bed before laying the corncobs on top.
I have a rose garden on the south side of my house with very dry soil. So, I decided to scoop up the corncob pieces from the yard and dump them in the flower bed. The cobs will hold the rain water and give my roses the root protection from the cold winters by providing a nice layer of insulation. I am hoping for good results from my new mulching technique.
The weather here has turned cold and the wind makes it feel even colder. However, everyone knows that nothing beats the cold than doing some home cooking and baking indoors. We, at our farm, are also finishing up our canning. We had many items left in our garden that we picked before the first frost set in and we need to get these foods preserved! Now that everything has been harvested, the garden looks bare and lifeless as the leaves have withered away. So, what do we do now?
For starters we planted our winter garden indoors. Our lettuces, tomatoes, and herbs all sprouted in a couple of days due to the nice warm temps in our sun room and fresh seed we purchased earlier this spring. Now that we have the garden growing, we need to turn our attentions over to winterizing our outdoor landscape and farm. Of course, the procedures I am doing will not necessarily effect all of you as I live in zone 4, but hopefully you will find most of this information useful.
The first items that we took care of was our pond garden. The elephant ears, Hardy Water Lily, Calla Lilies, Glads, and Dahlia bulbs all need to be dug up and stored over winter indoors. Elephant ears in particular cannot have any frost, so these were dug up even though the leaves were still green. We cut the leaves off about six inches above the soil line and composted them. Next we dug a hole 12" away from the roots and helped pull up the bulb with the stem we left. You must thoroughly wash all the soil away from the roots and allow the bulbs to dry on newspaper out of direct sunlight for a few days making sure to turn the bulbs every 24 hours. Once dried, we store them in our basement in a cardboard box nestled in a bed of peat moss. We did this last year and were successful as all our bulbs sprouted up this spring and multiplied. So, we have double the plants we started with!
As for the water lily, we have a local television program that gives an excellent tutorial on how to winterize your pond. I cannot improve upon this, so you may watch it here:
Finally, the glads, dahlias, and calla lillies are all treated the same when it comes to winterizing those bulbs. After the first light frost when the leaves begin to turn yellow, I dig up all the bulbs, shake off the loose dirt, cut the foilage off right to the crown of the bulb for composting, and store in cardboard flats in our basement over the winter. They sit out in the open and I check them weekly to make sure they do not shrivel up. If the bulbs do show signs of shriveling up, I just sprinkle a little water over them. Our unfinished basement is actually quite humid in the main room, so we have not had problems with this. It is also a good idea to flip the bulbs over once in a while to make sure that moisture is not building up to cause rot and mold.
As for the rest of our gardens, we allow the foilage of the pernials to die and remain in the garden so they can help insulate the plants' roots over the cold winter. We remove the foilage in the spring to allow the plants to grow. The annuals we pull up and compost on the other hand, unless you want them to stay in the beds and naturally spread seeds for the next year. We did this and had seedlings sprout up all over our garden, so I would not really recommend this if you want a particular plant in a particular spot. However, if you are into natural, native gardens, this would be a great way to save money on seeds.
The vegetable garden also recieves a good cleaning where we pull all of the old plants out of the garden. We compost them and then hoe the entire garden to prevent weeds from overwintering. This gives us a great jump start on our weeding chores the following year. You may also lay down black landscape fabric at this point to help keep the soil from eroding and allow the soil to warm up faster the following spring after the snow melts.
Remember to take in any garden ornaments, planters, pots, and patio furnature. Clean them up and store them indoors for winter storage. Next, we give our lawn a final boost of fertizler, before the hard freeze, to help boost root growth for the coming winter. This will help your lawn be prepared to sprout up early and thick in the spring before the weeds.
Finally, we sit back and relax knowing we are prepared for the first snowflake to fall. Well, the relaxing step may last all of two minutes as everyone knows there is always a lot of work to be done!
March came in like a lion for us in Minnesota. And that made me think about spring like its fresh breezes, warm sunshine, green grass, and gardening. Well, gardening is already underway in my household. No, I am not planting seeds out in the snowdrifts that fill my backyard. I am talking about starting seeds indoors. You experienced gardeners already know that March is the perfect time to get those seedlings growing to plant outdoors as soon as the soil is warm and dry.
But wait... you probably thought this blog was devoted to living gluten free. Well, gardening is one item that is very important to living a healthy gluten free lifestyle. First of all, you get your exercise as pulling weeds, dragging a hose between garden beds, and trimming trees and shrubs is hard work! But is also a labor of love and passion that helps distress and calm the body from everyday hassles. Who doesn't need that? And, have you seen the prices of fresh produce in the grocery store lately?! We already are on a tight budget when it comes to purchasing processed gluten free foods already. So why make it worse by foregoing growing your own fruits and vegetables? If I haven't convinced you yet to start gardening let me tell you anyone can do it. If you have room to breathe, you have room to garden. So let's talk tomatoes...
Tomatoes are what I start the first part of March. These are easy for beginners to grow and they are used in everything from sandwiches to soups to salsa. They can be grown in pots, a bed of flowers, or even upside down. (Have you seen the Topsy Turvy Tomato commercial on TV?) There are many varieties of these fruits to suit your pallet and here is the lowdown of what you may be looking for:
Traditional Red Tomato: These guys are great sliced in a BLT, diced in a salsa, or layered on a pizza. These are the common ones I grow as an indeterminate variety of Early Girl and Independence Day. Whoa, I know that indeterminate is a big word. It means that if I snip off branches or pick the fruit, the plant will still continue to grow and produce more and more tomatoes unlike determinate varieties. Indeterminate plants get very large and tend to vine and trellis. If you do not have much space and do not want many, planting a determinate variety will be best for you.
Roma Tomatoes: These are the tomatoes for sauce. If most of your cooking centers around pastas, pizzas, and ketchup, this variety is for you. They have fewer seeds than the traditional tomatoes, which is a big plus when it comes to juicing and pureeing. If you like to can, these tomatoes are superb. You will know these by their plum or egg like shape and size.
Grape or Cherry Tomatoes: These little guys are packed with a punch of flavor for any dish. They are the perfect size to toss in a salad whole, sliced for petite tea sandwiches, or a joy to just pop in your mouth as a sweet snack. They also come in an array of colors of reds, oranges, and yellows to bring that summertime bliss into your kitchen.
Heirloom Tomatoes: These range in all sizes, shapes, colors, and flavors. These may be a little trickier to grow than the hybrids as they are not always resistant to common tomato diseases such as blight. But, they are cherished among farmers markets. Each variety has its own purpose and specialty dish. Make sure to read the instructions on the seed packets for growing and look up some new, fun recipes to add some boost of flavor to your daily menu.
I hope you try some of these in your own garden this year and savor the fresh taste of a red, juicy tomato. I know I will!
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