growing for the future

It's planting time! And time to revive this dead blog so I can keep track of my gardening projects.

I went outside today to check my soil temperatures (they've been hovering just below forty degrees Fahrenheit for a few weeks) and I was greeted by this bastard

Absolutely bustin through the mulch layer. Burdock has perennialized in my garden, which was quite a shock considering how lamely it grew last year. But it's back! And my soil temperatures registered 45 so I'm putting things in the ground.

I started by raking off the mulch layer and tussling up the soil to get it nice and fluffed up for tiny seedling roots.

I followed that up with a good watering. I was very pleased to find plenty of moisture underneath the mulch, during an incredibly dry winter in an already arid climate.

I followed up with a litany of seeds (spinach, radishes, beets, bok choi, green onions, peas, and collard greens) on the soil surface and a light mulching to keep the moisture in. I'm testing this method of direct seeding, where I place seeds on the soil surface and then follow up with layers of mulch depending upon how large the seeds are (how much stored energy they have to fight upwards). Leaving soil bare in our climate, especially for something like a carrot or lettuce, where the seeds are very small, is not possible. Shallow sown seeds in our arid climate just can't stay moist enough to germinate, so I'm hoping this works.

The other test was a success! Onions made it through the winter. There are 4 in the ground that I am eager to watch go to seed this year. Here's hoping the beets survived the winter too!

Thanks for reading, and here's hoping they'll all grow.

A big harvest from our vegetable garden. Only one or two harvests like this left in the year. I'm honestly looking forward to the downtime once the vegetable season is done.

Compost turning steps! I'm not a very good composter, I basically just throw it all in a pile. That being said, I am happy to report that underneath the larger uncomposted portions, there is lovely, dark, rich compost!

Tomatillos and cherry tomatoes harvested after a few weeks of neglect. The tomatillos will be salsa soon and the tomatoes will be ketchup.

I'm very happy with our garden, we've seen return on our efforts in ways I hadn't imagined. Sometimes I go dig a shovelful of our soil out and just look at it, what was dry, hard, dead dirt not one year ago. Now, it's all about keeping it that way!

Thanks for following along, I have way more followers than I expected to have. I'm always on the lookout for farmland to lease so I can really get started, but it's pretty far away from what I can do.

I've been doubling down on my conviction to bake all of our bread. There are three of us in our household, they sell burger buns in packs of eight. Over the past year in this household, the number of burger buns in the trash is unthinkable. My solution is to make our own! This way I only make what I need. Top right is my sunday's baking, bottom is the buns (they were huge) on display. Top left is a worm I saw while digging out my stunted potato crop.

My phone was stolen so I haven't been updating. I'm back on my old phone with the destroyed camera, so images of our backyard garden aren't really worthwhile right now. That being said, I will be unfolding my headspace for you.

It is big harvest season. I picked my second to last batch of cucumbers last night, another fifteen pounds or so. These fuckers are dumping cukes on me this year, I don't even know how to handle it. I also picked a good basket of tomatoes from our volunteers, which have surprised us time and time again. They germinated in the ground after a winter in the soil from our kitchen scraps, and have dominated my watermelon bed, producing several pulls of high quality (Roma?) tomatoes. Needless to say, I will be saving seeds from this line, because it is incredibly vigorous.

It's also damn near time to pull my two big beautiful butternut squashes. My plants were stunted by shading from the fast growing zucchini, so I'm looking at a reduced harvest unfortunately. There are several smaller fruits that seem to have gotten the signal that fall is rolling in, and are ripening on the small side. They will be worth something, for sure, but only if they can make it before the freeze.

My first pie pumpkin came off the vine yesterday, I rolled it over to check up on it and it popped right off the vine! Guess it was ready. It's very nice and orange. The color of it alone has me longing for the fall and the cooler weather.

Ok. Long post. It's just garden updates anyway not even much in the way of spaw content. Lightning round. Kidney bean harvest, mediocre but it was a low effort planting. Tomatillos? Jesus fuck I have so many. Onions? I might get a few? Honestly I just like looking at them. Daikon radish? Get bigger please faster I'm begging you frost is coming. Cherry tomatoes? Bro I fucked up there's so many just sitting out there, cutting my planting by half. Anything else vaguely spaw? Honestly not really I haven't started repairing my clothes or going to community/mutual aid stuff (not much in my area anyway) I'm always either at work, at school, or making dinner. Listening to Rise Against doesn't really count as activism so as far as I'm concerned I'm not doing shit to back up my moral stance on ICE issues. Bad job me. Voting in November, if that means anything. If Biden sucks, catch me at the protests, if I can ever accept the things I'll have to give up (namely what little security I have) to do so.

Thanks for all the support I've seen on this blog, I fell off the wagon when it came to updating like, 3 months ago

Somebody please dear god remind me to take pictures and update my blog! It's been so long since I made a proper post.

Things are going very well in our backyard.

The eggplant is slowly getting bigger, and we harvested our first watermelon.

Quite the haul for a days picking! Now I gotta figure out how to use it all..

The forest is still a forest! Cucurbits abound and swallow the earth whole. Several cantaloupe and an as yet undisclosed trophy of pumpkins.

The other beds are doing well. They are largely dominated by tomatillos because they have had good luck.

So.. thats why this variety is called 'Marketmore'. This is one of many harvests from a 5 foot planted line that has become a 10 foot wide circle of cucumber dominance.

A freak success story. At the top of my trellis, a cantaloupe vine reaches for ever greater heights, climbing onto the nearby willow branches. When I saw this I was like wtf what are you doing. Charmed.

And finally last weeks bread, one of my more picturesque creations. Baking my own bread every week has become a responsibility with the right amount of weight, it keeps me grounded and reminds me that I'm doing what I can to shortcircuit industrial supply chains.

We've started school here. None of us want to go. But in better news it means my school job is back so I have a reliable income outside of my farm packing job. We've all been struggling to adjust to the new schedules. Notably, we are having trouble getting our roommate to contribute around the house. She's unemployed and taking far fewer classes than my girlfriend or I, but we can't get her to water the garden reliably or clean up after our communal meals. It is difficult, and managing that situation has been causing me a lot of stress. It's hard when you want to operate as a community but one person sees themself and their opinions as superior. After a while it makes you consider setting out on your own, but did you really ascribe to your purported ideals of community? If I can't build community in my own home how can I build communities that are strong enough to replace government? These questions remain.

I lost it a bit at the end but I hope you enjoyed the update! Journaling helps me but I can't seem to commit to it..

I've been long overdue for an update. My new job has kept me so tired I barely have time for things like this.

My girlfriend has been taking care of the garden in my absence, she's been doing a great job.

I harvested my radish seeds so I can sow again next year. I tried to use a jar and shake it but ultimately I just ended up doing it by hand.

Before and after pics from cleaning up the tomatoes. The difference might not be that noticeable, but I did quite a bit of pruning and cleaning up around the bases of the plants.

Another project I took on with all the sweet corn I take from my job. Hanging it to dry to make cornmeal. I don't have any kind of mill or sheller but that's a problem for future me.

The mystery gourd on the trellis is a butternut squash 😳. Hopefully it is strong enough!

Our first little tomatillo, which is turning out to be one of our primary crops. And a tiny little burdock seedling. I'm burdock both to mine nutrients from the deep soil, to break up the soil deeper than my shovel can reach, and to eat.

Our beds are very lush. Several watermelons, cantaloupes, tomatoes, and a small army of cucumbers.

We've been giving a lot to our neighbor, she's a nice old lady who, by some miracle, isn't a trump supporter. I have good luck finding liberals in my area, my new bosses also hate trump. At the end of the day I know they are really pretty centrist given their age, but it beats the alternative.

That's for now. We'll see if I can find time to update as the summer winds down.

I'm a week into my new job. It's more like working in a warehouse than working on a farm, but I suppose that's industrialized ag for you. The foremans a real prick about everything, his version of training is to stand there watching me fail for three minutes at something I've never done and then to call me an idiot and do it himself instead of just explaining how things are done prior to sending me onto a new task. That's having a job, nothing new to report.

Harvested and tied off the garlic today! It was my first sprout of the season, and now as they come up, my yard is lush with cucurbits and solanos.

Walked down to the ARC (a nonprofit thriftstore in my area) and looked for library books to write down. Did some direct action.

My other recent project was tying up my beans! Now they can grow up the string trellis I've made and be happy. I'm growing red kidney beans primarily for chili, but if I find out you can eat them green then I may well do that because I love a good green bean.

I'm regularly harvesting zucchini, on the order of 4 or 5 a week. I've got a grapefruit sized watermelon coming along and a slightly smaller cantaloupe. Cucumbers are just starting to be visible. Kabocha is still growing wild, I have no idea how many I will be able to harvest. The tomatoes are just beginning to ripen, slowly.

I wish I had been right, several months back, about the coronavirus being history before I even get to start harvesting. My county has seen a 50% increase in cases over the past few days, likely due to nobody following the guidelines and the fourth of july just passing.

I'm going to try and keep my head up through this job. 13 an hour isn't worth being degraded for 8 hours a day and being physically and emotionally exhausted during every spare moment with my SO, but I don't really have a choice. The owner is actually cool and he said that I can take home anything we grow, so I'm going to abuse it as much as I can in hopes that I can spend less on groceries, making up the gap between where my pay is and where it should be. The only trick will be getting a spare second to myself to pack away the vegetables I'm washing without the foreman taking them for the farm store, as he did today.

I have some job prospects now. A farm is trying me on for a week. Now I just have to not fuck it up!

My girlfriend and I went on an eleven mile hike, and there were so many wildflowers! We also saw quite a bit of wildlife but I never can manage to get a good picture of them.

Back to the garden! The seeds I sowed last week are starting to show. Including beans that I planted a few weeks ago. On the right is an onion coming up. On the bottom is what should be daikon radish.

The roma tomatoes from the nursery are still recovering, but I really think they are going to make it.

Melons! I've been agonizing over the low fruit set on my watermelon. I went looking a little deeper and I found a big boi (pictured top left) and then went looking for little cantaloupes on my trellis.

It seems I'm at my ten image limit. Things are growing well. I'm very happy to have found a watermelon that made it past the early stages. The rest all get about sunflower seed sized and then fall off. I started a bunch of onion starts from the nursery last week, and so far they've all lived! If all make it, I'm gonna have to find some way to store them all

Damn I'm bad about updating my blog. Probably why I've never had one before.

Two zucchinis in two days! Meanwhile, my mother's zucchini on the other side of the mountains barely has blooms.

Another fermentation project, pickled jalapenos. A special at a local farm store had me buy a huge bag of jalapenos. My roommate made jam and I'm pickling a quart.

Speaking of pickling, my pickled beets were done so I whipped them into a paste and watered down the lactic acid brine into a beverage. It's quite the tonic.

More firsts! Garlic that was a little roughed up so we pulled early and a tomato. Both were delicious.

I have a LOT of tomatoes and I'm very impatiently waiting for them to ripen. I planted a row of romas for sauce and have been nursing them back to health (they were a little rough from the nursery). I also planted out the rest of my beds and have been fighting to keep them watered enough. Pics of the seedlings next time.

Here's my messy ass bed a few weeks ago. Now, it's even crazier. The watermelons are engaged in a turf war with the cucumbers, cantaloupes, and volunteer tomatoes.

That's all for now. I've had some successes out here, I'm a little proud of it. Still have some things in the works.

It's time to talk about pickled beets.

Harvested and processed the bulk of my beets. There's more that aren't ready but I think I'll let most of them go to seed.

Washed, cut, and weighed! A 2% salt solution and tightly lidded. One has a knot of green garlic for flavor.

And here they are. One week later, and I'm ready to try them. Turns out they are still tough. I've found varying sources, some say to ferment no more than two weeks, some say no less. I'm going for mushy paste style here so I've let them go awhile longer.

Garden update should come soon. Things are really happening out there. Here's a week old picture of one of the green pumpkins.

I'm still unemployed. The city restarted their hiring process for the job I was applying to in February, I interviewed and didn't get it. The aquaponics guy hasn't gotten back to me yet, despite telling me he would around the end of May.

Had a bit of an experiment this week. Before our trip to the mountains I thinned and replanted our carrots. They were far too bunched up and I knew I had to thin, but couldn't get around the idea I was going to lose so many tiny dudes.

Replanting process and the final. I gave them all two inches or so just like they say to. I knew there was some danger in moving the carrots, since they have sensitive roots. But, I figured if I was successful, I would drastically improve my carrot harvest.

Unfortunately, I was not successful. After a few days, it became clear that they weren't going to bounce back from the transplant. So, I pulled all the fully dead ones we had a lovely snack on them. They had a very strong flavor, that I think would've been improved by having the space to properly grow.

Another important update, of my surviving pumpkins post-bug, the biggest (and self-seeded) plant has some lovely flowers.

That's all for now. I'll post about my beet adventures soon.

A tumultuous day in the garden! I discovered some hungry lads had eaten an entire pumpkin plant! He was two weeks old and they murdered him. I've been trying to identify the culprit, I think they are cucumber beetles.

Based on the skeletonized leaves, and one specimen that I found and think was a cucumber beetle.

I immediately set about trying to figure out how to stop the brutality. I sprayed and wiped down all of the affected plants with the same wood oil soap and water mix I use for my rose aphids and pesky house ants.

I stumbled upon a great article by Purdue University about making homemade traps for cucumber beetles. I was astounded by the simplicity and effectiveness.

I set about making one to test it with what I have laying around.

Get some holes!

They like yellow. Fake squash in the making!

Mounted on our trellis. Hopefully, this will help. I'll check back in the morning to see if any bugs have fallen in our soapy water to their watery graves.

What a weekend! We packed up friday afternoon and drove across the Rockies to participate in the Denver protests. We left at around 4 or so, tear gas started less than 3 minutes after we left. In my opinion, it was unjustified. Anyways, when I came back I figured it was time for a garden update.

Lovely fruits on my sun gold tomato! About half an inch across. We are very excited.

Here are some flower buds developing on our mystery gourd. Still no idea what it is! We're closer though.

Some lovely radish flowers starting to bloom. I hope to get enough seeds to replant from this and a few other plants.

Beans! Blue lake bush beans, to be exact. We've had a fair germination rate and I am very excited to have some beans coming up.

Watermelons on the left and the gourd squad on the right. We are growing! Slowly, relative to my frame of mind. I have to be patient.

Cucumber relocation! I've had crazy success with cucumber germination. I moved a couple down a bed to fill in the sparse zucchini germination. Final results from the thinning on the bottom!

It seems I've hit my picture limit, so I'll just type out what else is going on. We shared a good handful of raspberries earlier, our bush has recovered from it's early shock.

Our garlic is still going strong, and I am still resisting the urge to rip one out and look at the bulbs. Our transplant tomatoes are recovering from their bug action earlier, but at least one is seeming sure to make it. For free tomatoes, one is good enough for me.

Our seedlings are still slow growing, I'm doing all I can to encourage healthy growth, but I'm not sure if they'll end up making it to the garden. I sure hope they do, I want some peppers!

The potato crop that was never meant to be has recovered from my roommate ripping out the first set. There is now a huge plant chilling next to the raspberry! I doubt I'll get any food out of it, but I might get some seed.

That's all for now. Remember, these times are crazy. Sometimes, it seems like no matter how much evidence their is, some people will never change who they support. The garden can provide some solace from the rapid pace of things. By the time I am eating zucchini on the daily, maybe things will be better. Maybe this zucchini will live to see the end of coronavirus, systemic racism, and DJT. Hopefully, it's at least some of those.