Sunday, July 13, 2014

Mid July 2014 or Dang its hot!

As a Gentleman Farmer, I can take time with my gardening. I'm not raising crop for income, nor am I doing so to feed my family. And its a good thing too, otherwise we would all be dead. :)

Its been an interesting season so far. Three things I have to take away now that it is midsummer:

1) Everything that I saved from seed last year had no problem taking root this year
2) You don't really need to fertilize to death if you truly are rotating your crops and watering them as needed.
3) I hate to say it, but tilling actually really helped break up the clay VA soil. 

So, the take root part:  I normally buy seeds from one of two seed exchanges. One I don't really like, the other, I thought up until this point, was pretty good. None of them took root. None. I made a second planting. None of those took root. I even insanely (yesterday) did a 3rd planting. Lets see if anything happens with those. Yet, everything I planted that I saved seeds from last season took root and is growing fine. Conversely, those were seeds that I had purchased from the a fore mentioned seed exchanges. I don't get it. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the seeds I get this year will also be saved. (And Monsanto can kiss my big red hoe.)

Also, I have a good deal of volunteer tomatoes that have come up from last year, as well as some volunteer pumpkins. And I'm glad the tomatoes did too, because I would have none if they didn't. (except 2 plants that actually did come up from the second planting, a whole month after I planted them).

Fertilizer: Normally I fertilize every month when I have a crop, and it is usually my favorite sea bird guano. This year I only used it when I planted. Which completely when to waste with the stuff that did not come up. Since then, I have basically just been covering my beds with crass clippings, shredded leaves, and my homemade compost. Everything seems to be doing well, as if I didn't need it.

My goal has always been to make it so that I don't have to spend any more $$ to get a crop. I might be hitting that point.

So on to pictures:

These are potatoes taken from my big potato hills in Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch. Again these were just some reds I forgot about that I purchased from Whole Foods. Reds seem to do well in my yard. Russets make it, but they get diseased and full of worms. My first batch from the potato bags looked similar. I still have 4 more plants I have not dug up yet.


One of the potato bags in the front of the house. These are actually replants, as I took the first batch. I want to see if you can get 2 harvests from the bag if the plants are still good. Who knows, its just an experiment. I got more spuds from the front bags than from the hills in the back.


What's left of the hills in Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch. Still a few more to go. 






My group of volunteer tomatoes in the very front of the Driveway Bed. The plants on the right are cherry tomatoes, and beefsteak on the left. I left this section alone planning to plant corn there. I even covered it all up with grass to prevent weeds (which it did) but these tomatoes would not be denied.


Closeup of the cherry tomatoes. Just waitin'.


Closeup of the beefsteak. Hopefully the compost/leaf infusion will help these guys out.

Yeah, so what, more dirt. This is the 3rd spot for the purchased sunflower seeds. Let's see. To the left looks the same with all the remaining corn I had. I know its 60-100 days, but this is Virginia, and I don't expect a frost until Halloween. Even last year with the Polar Vortex it still didn't frost until then.

A lonely patch of beans. These were supposed to be with the purchased variety of sunflower that I bought, but the sunflowers didn't take. These beans (mine from 2 season ago) did. These guys are in front of the newly (again again) planted corn.

Carrots, planted in early May. They are pretty pathetic. I only have ever had success with carrots the first season. I mean they look good, but I pulled one and they are teeny.

The Main Bed looking up from the driveway. Pumpkins, then beans, then sunflowers. I didn't intend a staircase effect, but its cool now that there is one. Also my water barrels sitting on the side, that one is so heavy it pushed into the ground and tilted

My tiny Pumpkin Patch. All of these are "Daughters of Bertha" from 2 seasons ago, except the ones in the back, they were discarded pie pumpkins that regrew.


My Pride and Joy so far. The largest of 6 that I have counted, and she is only 3 weeks old. Remember I have large hands. :)


The smallest of the six that I can safely say is viable. She is only a week or so old.

My "Bean Trellis" which is just twine strung back and forth between 6 poles. I have no idea how many plants have sprouted, but there is a lot. Also, I have to admit, I have never eaten this variety before (grown from pods 3 seasons old), and this was just to fix some nitrogen. I hope they are tasty cuz I'm going to be up to my neck in them.

The sunflowers. Grown from 1 head that I saved from last season by hanging it on my back porch. This one is easily 7 foot.


The 7 footer from the front with the head just about to open. Not as big as its mother, but they keep getting bigger after they open so hopefully I will have enough.

That's it for the July update. Planting late seems to have helped the pumpkins stave off powdery mildew, and I think the cold winter beat the crap out of pests, because I have not seen any. I was having the worst aphid problem last year.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Nest, Google, and the Rise of the Internet of Things

As a lot of my loyal readers know, the renewable giant often tests out new products and gives reviews on them. My readers also know that I don't always have the time to write as often as I would like. I'm not into self aggrandizement and sometimes I just can't articulate things in a way that's interesting or enjoyable. And frankly there are a lot of things that I just don't feel are worth the trouble. 

I was remiss in writing one particular review that should have been done last year. For my birthday The Wife purchased for me a Nest Thermostat, and it promptly changed my life. Gone was my venerable yet dated programmable thermostat that came with the house. To be fair it was a good thermostat, easy to program, told the time, kept the climate controlled. But it was old, developed a short circuit, yellowed, not sexy at all, and was, well dumb. 

Not dumb in the sense that it could not speak, but rather that it did nothing else but sit on the wall like a beige, tilted on its side version of The Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Then came the Nest, unabashedly styled like the HAL-9000 of the aforementioned movie (BTW the greatest movie ever made.) It was cool, sleek, minimalist, unobtrusive, and knew when I was home, almost as if it were sentient. (I know though, its just a motion detector like a automatic door). 

Its strange in the Brave New World of "The Internet of Things" I loved that I could hit the thermostat from anywhere on using my iPhone. I could change the settings, turn it on and off, have it turn on the fan etc. I can even check on my family when I am away simply by knowing if the thermostat has turned on recently.  I don't want to run though all of the specs here, but if you want to see all the cool features it has you can check out their website.  

As you can probably tell, it was designed by a couple of guys who worked at Apple, and left to make one of  the myriad Silicon Valley Start-ups that we hear so much about. I loved that it was a start up, I loved they were ex-Apple, I loved that it didn't have a clock (just to be an awesome thermostat and nothing else), and it would light up when I walked past it. 

What I didn't love was that it was bought by Google. 

Yes, the mega giant that I once swore my loyalty too in its attempts to stick it to Microsoft. Which has now gotten so fracking big and pervasive that it just knows everything. Hell, even this blog is written on a wholly-owned Google site. As soon as that happened (just before the sale of the Nest Protect) I cut my thermostat off from the cloud. It became dumb. It would still glow blue when the AC was on and orange when the heat came on, and I could do everything if I was standing in front of it, but I couldn't collect any data that was crucial to saving money and analyzing my patterns of use.

I had mixed emotions. I took back control of my device, but then I couldn't do all of the cool things that were a 'convenience' for me. It made me think, what then, is the price for the convenience? And is that what I paid for apart from a cool design? Does the whiz-bang factor really trump the fact that Google (intentional or not) now knows when I am home? Or at least when I haven't walked past it to go to the bathroom? 

In the end I hooked it back up to the cloud and it rejoined "The Internet of Things". I bought it for the convenience, and if I want that I have to suck up that I will be giving away some data on my habits. Google already knows everything though my email, and my maps... but this far and no farther. I probably will not buy the Nest Protect simply because it is designed to talk to the Nest. Who knows when insurance companies will get hold of that data and see "Hmmm, the Giant household had 2 alarms go off last month. We are raising their rates."

So now when I walk past it on the way to the bathroom, I still think it looks cool and was worth the purchase, but somewhere, in the back of my head, I warily wait for the day when the cool blue light turns to red.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

So yeah, that didn't just happen

Well out of everything I planted in early May, virtually nothing came up. It must have been that cold snap. I also have never had really good luck with Johnny's seed exchange. So in desperation I went to whole foods, I usually do well with their seeds. Nada. So I went to Home Despot cuz I was desperate. Get it??? Haha.

The potatoes I got for whole foods are going insane in Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch and in the bags out font. The seed potatoes I bought in March? Nada. These were just some reds that I bought to make mashed potatoes and forgot about.

Anyway, did you know Burpee had heirloom seeds? I didn't either. So I bought all the ones to replace what did not come up and I replanted. It's suppose to rain all day tomorrow and the soil is nice and warm, so we shall see.

This will also be the last year the Main Bed is planted in succession. I'm switching to a 2 field rotation and the old bed will be taken out of service for the 2015 season. I should also have my biochar in the ground as well, and figure giving it a season to settle might be beneficial. I'll keep you posted.

Monday, March 10, 2014

And so it begins...

The 2014 season is underway. With the help of The Littlest Giant, the green leafy veggies (lettuce and spinach) are in the ground. Also the potato bags in the front of the house have potatoes in them this year (instead of pumpkins). They are red potatoes donated by my neighbor's son who had more than he needed. Eyes sprouted and planted.

There is a good deal of work that I need to do on the driveway bed as the wood has rotted or eaten away. Good thing I have all that extra plank wood lying around in the shed. And they said I was mad for keeping it MAD I TELL YOU!!!! MUAH HA HA!!!!!

Here are some pictures, they are in Ye Olde Pumpkin Patch this year as there were pumpkins in there last year:

The lettuce is to the right, spinach to the left. Littlest Giant to the top. :)

Everything bedded down nicely

Monday, March 3, 2014

Baby its cold outside

Ok here it is March 3rd, 2014 and we are getting 8 inches of snow. The strange thing is this is how winter is supposed to be in the Virginia Suburbs, not the warmth that I had grown accustomed to over the last 14 years. Its amazing how climate change makes you start to think that warm is normal. In years previous I had already had my beds made and the grow-house out. Its supposed to go down to 3 degrees tonight.

So with that having been said, looks like I'm going to wait until April to start everything. Its just too cold and I am afraid that if I proceed as normal (read: what climate change has led me to believe as normal) noting will grow, or everything will be stunted like they were last year. I just ordered my seeds, and I got some seed potatoes yesterday from my neighbors, but we're just gonna have to wait.

Maybe I have been planting too early since my garden essentially goes to seed by late August anyway and the first frost isn't until November. So let's play Mother Nature's game her way and I will wait until April 5th or so to start the grow-house. Hopefully the soil will be warm enough for planting in May. Except the lettuce and spinach, those guys go in as soon as the ground thaws.

And yes, looking into chicken coops. Its already too late because the chicks won't give me any eggs until October (which means none), but if I get them in October, then they would be ready by next spring. I think I'm going to need 4. I already picked out the name for one of them: Billina.


Monday, February 10, 2014

Version 7??

Here it is, the layout for the latest version of the garden.

I'm not exactly sure the no-till aspect really helped last year. The garden was pitiful. Also, no matter how much fertilizer I put on it, I hardly got anything. Looks like I have to test the soil again and see what's missing. Also, I really do need to till it. The crabgrass is just insane and is taking over all my beds. It needs to get shredded. I also need to do a better job of weeding. I'm trying to find lower intensity means of doing this, so I think I will be adding some of that black bedding cover to keep the weeds down, still deciding. Or at least some way of making it much easier to weed.

The driveway bed downslope side is also collapsing, so I'm going to flip it over, and then think about how to replace it with something more sturdy next year. Some kind of low retaining wall. 

So without further ado, here is the plan: