Photo album: Raspberry beds, Walla Walla sweet onions, rhubarb, lettuce box, greenhouse in April, and baby chicks

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Sandy
Raspberry beds and composter

Raspberry beds and composter

In this picture you can see our two new raised beds for raspberries. Yesterday, Derek built the first set of supports for  the raspberry canes. You can also see the composter in this picture.  I’m mostly using this composter to quickly compost chicken and goat manure.  Since this composter will heat up more than a regular compost pile, the manure will break down faster and will be ready for use much sooner.

Walla Walla onions in a half wine barrel

Walla Walla onions in a half wine barrel

I densely planted these Walla Walla onion starts in this wine barrel so that I will be able to harvest young onions.  As I harvest the young onions, I will be creating space for the remaining onions to grow to their full, mature size.

Rhubarb, Crimson Red

Rhubarb, Crimson Red

The rhubarb, Crimson Red, is beginning to emerge from the ground.  I can’t wait until this plant matures (it can take a few years) so that I can make strawberry rhubarb crisp.

Greenhouse in April

Greenhouse in April

Here’s what the greenhouse raised beds look like early in April.  In the near bed, I am growing celery, carrots and brassicas (cabbage and broccoli).  The middle bed contains carrotes, lettuces and spinach, while in the far bed I have garlic and a few different types of onions.

Lettuce box

Lettuce box

I have both buttercrunch and romaine lettuce growing in this portable salad box.  I’ve already started harvesting the outside leaves of the plants in this box.  Early spring salad. Yummy!

Baby chicks, day 4

Baby chicks, day 4

The golden sex link chicks are now four days old.  So far, all seem quite healthy and spunky. Lily has been doing a very good job taking care of her babies.  The two of us have also started a baby chick video project that should be ready for viewing in a few months.  Stay tuned!

Happy gardening.

Sandy

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Gardening, Portland style…

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Sandy

Derek here…

Gardening has been a part of my life since I was very little (probably why I’m not nearly as into it as Sandy – when weeding is part of your chores, the glamour fades a bit). As referenced in the Portland Raised Beds posting, my parents have been gardeners for quite a while. Not such a stretch when your father is a (retired) landscaper and mother was raised in the country (with grandparents who were nursery owners and avid gardeners to boot). In fact, what Sandy and I have been doing with regards to the garden and the livestock is rather similar to my maternal grandparents’ mini-Farm in Yoder. In this case, those who learn from history are better able to repeat it. 🙂

Raised bed garden in Beaverton, OR

Raised bed garden in Cedar Mill, OR

Originally, my parents planted everything directly in the ground – no raised beds. Western slope West Hills soil is very clay-heavy so they added a lot of Zoo Doo (my dad worked at the Portland Zoo for a period), compost (40 years of vegetable peelings, fruit cores, eggshells and other kitchen waste), various other forms of manure and a lot of rototilling. As such the ground is very fertile now – unfortunately, the weeds love it (hence the aforementioned chores) as well as the moles.  As they’ve gotten older, and lost the low-cost manual labor of me and my sister, they’ve realized that it is much less work to plant a majority of the vegetables in raised beds (easier to control the weeds and keep out the moles).  However, there is still a fair amount of planting outside of raised beds (corn, for example and other crops that aren’t as impacted by weeds) taking advantage of that rich soil.

Unfortunately, this has led to the most recent group of pests – deer and bunnies.  As such, whenever we come to visit our dog Gala gets a good workout putting the fear of god into the local fauna.

In addition to all the annual and perennial crops, my parents also have a lot of fruit-bearing bushes and trees.  Just a sample:

  • Multiple (8-10) mature blueberry bushes, each of which are 5-6′ tall and a good 3′ in diameter
  • Multiple raspberry canes
  • Fig and persimmon trees
  • Apple and pear trees (multiple varieties)
  • Two mature grape arbors
  • Kiwi (sadly deceased)

Growing up we had the blueberries, raspberries (about 2x what they’re currently growing), apples (a 100+ year old King apple tree, a Gravenstein, and an Early/Yellow Transparent – now sadly all gone), pears (a generic pear tree – Bartlett perhaps?) and cherries (Pie and Rainier).  I hope some day that our ‘orchard’ will be as fruitful (pun intended) as what I had growing up.

Incidentally, the odd structure in the background of the photo is a 20+ year old lath-house that my father uses to cultivate rhododendron, azalia, maple, dogwood and other seedlings.  In fact, after tasting the eggy goodness of our experiment with raising chickens, he’s been considering raising his own flock in it (if he can convince my mother).

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Portland raised bed garden and baby chicks

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Sandy

Gardeners in the Pacific Northwest eagerly take advantage of every nice day during the spring.  Last weekend was absolutely beautiful — warm and sunny — and I missed the whole thing! Well, I didn’t exactly miss it, but I wasn’t at home to enjoy the nice weather in my own garden.  On Saturday we left for a family road trip to visit the kids’ grandparents in Oregon.  We stopped first in Portland to visit their paternal grandparents and then headed to Medford to visit my parents.  By the time we arrived in Medford on Sunday, it felt positively like a summer day.  In fact, it was so warm the kids started complaining that they were too hot.  Growing up in Seattle, they just aren’t used to it.

Raised bed garden in Beaverton, OR

Raised bed garden in Cedar Mill, OR

My husband’s parents are avid gardeners and I wanted to share this picture of their vegetable garden.  They have a serious vegetable garden with many raised beds. According to Derek, they’ve been using this space (approximately 1/5 acre) as a garden for 35+ years although it has changed dramatically over the years.  While they are just getting started with their spring planting, by summer the garden will be bursting with a variety of fresh vegetables, berries, and fruits.  One thing you might notice in the photo is the long poles surrounding the perimeter of this set of raised beds.  Even though they live in Cedar Mill, just outside of Portland, OR, they have trouble with deer.  So they erected a tall deer-proof fence.  We live in a much more wooded and rural area than they do and we’ve never really had much of a deer problem, but I saw for the very first time last week two does in our yard.  This caused me to think about doing some deer proofing myself, as the raised beds outside of the greenhouse will likely become targets for the deer.  Not sure what I’ll do yet, but I do think something will be required or some of my plants will likely become ungulate munchies.

We came back from our road trip last night and the kids had one thing on their minds this morning:  baby chicks!  I promised them they could get three baby chicks once we returned so it was off to the feed store first thing in the morning to pick the new girls up.  We picked out three Golden Sex Link chicks, which are apparently a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a Rhode Island White. The nice thing about sex link chicks is that male and female chicks are different colors when they hatch, making it easy to tell potential hens from potential roosters.  We’ve got the new chicks all set up in a cardboard box brooder, with a heat lamp light, chick feed and water.  The biggest challenge with them right now is getting the kids to leave them alone for a few minutes. They are just so excited to have the baby chicks.  My Pet Chicken has a useful baby chick “how to” page that is helping us get them off to a good start. Here’s a quick video of the new babies:

And a question. I just noticed that I have harvester ants crawling on my peach trees. They are in the blossoms, and I mean literally in the blossoms. Are they helping to pollinate or will they ruin the potential peaches before they even start? Does anyone have any idea?

I hope everyone has enjoyed the nice gardening weather.  I’m looking forward to getting back into the garden, even if the weather isn’t as nice this coming weekend as it was last.  Happy gardening!

Sandy

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Chicken tractor and call for advice

Posted on March 29, 2009 by Sandy

After days of rain, the sun came out this afternoon. Yay!!! It can get pretty dreary in the Seattle area during springtime, so sunny days are greatly appreciated. The nice weather today gave us (well, Derek) the opportunity to finish and deploy the chicken tractor. You can see the tractor in this video. The great thing about the video is that Lily (my 5-year-old) spontaneously decided to help me narrate the video. Apparently, she really has been listening to me when I talk about all our sustainability projects!

The chicken tractor was the big positive event of the weekend. Some other things in the garden have not been going well, or are at least raising questions for me. So on to my requests for advice:

  1. I have mushrooms growing in the soil in my greenhouse.  The soil in the greenhouse came in a huge batch I had delivered last fall from a landscaping company.  These are small brown mushrooms that I can easily remove, but what does this tell me about the soil? Good, bad, or indifferent?
  2. Ants have made their way into the greenhouse.  These are red and black harvester ants, the kind that build large ant nests.  Any suggestions for deterring them from the greenhouse?
  3. I think my LED lights are a bust.  I selected the LED light panels because of their low energy usage.  I’ve been keeping track of the progress of my plants compared to Sinfonian’s and DoubleD’s and my plants are definitely behind in their growth. So I am thinking about a new system, but want to keep the energy usage as low as possible.  Any suggestions?

Here’s hoping everyone caught at least a few rays of sunshine this weekend. 

Sandy

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Animal smackdown: Harry the goat vs. new neighbor dog

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Sandy
Harry, our Pygora goat

Harry, our Pygora goat

On a bit of a down note…one of our goats, Harry (the Pygora) got chomped on the left foreleg by our neighbor’s new Australian shepherd / corgi mix.  The dog was short enough to squeeze under the gate and proceeded to cut Harry away from Lucy and then attempted to take Harry down.  Our large animal vet, Dan Kennedy, patched up Harry and told us we were lucky:  this wasn’t sheep herding behavior – based upon the bite damage it was an obvious attempt to hobble Harry with potential foul play in mind. 

For the first 24 hours, Harry was pretty lame, but after injections of steroids, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories / painkillers as well as spraying the wounds (both sides of the leg) with artificial skin, he perked up quite a bit.  He’s more-or-less back to his normal self, although I’m keeping a close eye on his leg – I don’t want him to end up with an acute infection.  Dr. Kennedy also is having me give Harry antibiotics over the next seven days as an additional preventative measure.

Our neighbor has been great about the whole situation.  Yesterday, she had someone over to dog-proof the gate. We are good friends with this neighbor and appreciate her efforts.  It is also a very good reminder to us to be more diligent about predator proofing the pasture.  As an additional measure, I will be stringing barbed wire around the base of the entire goat pasture.  Dr. Kennedy recommended this to keep dogs as well as coyotes out.

Derek

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Potatoes and weekend plans

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Sandy
Potatoes, labeled and ready to sprout

Potatoes, labeled and ready to sprout

The potatoes arrived last weekend. Since I needed to place them in indirect light so they can begin sprouting prior to planting, I decided to use the top of a plastic storage bin to hold the potatoes while sprouting.  After I settled on this idea, I had a vision of my kids becoming interesting in the potatoes on the lid and mixing them all up.  So I decided to label each potato with a marker to make sure that even if they get handled, I’ll still know what is what. Just a week has gone by and the potatoes are beginning to sprout.  Now my question is how long the sprouts should be prior to planting.  Today would be an excellent day to plant potatoes, so if anyone knows if I should go ahead, let me know.

Also on my list this weekend is to draw out an actual plan for the garden.  I’ve purchased all my seeds and have started a number of crops already, but I haven’t built a master plan of what to plant where and when. The risk I have is that I will under utilize the space I now have in the garden.  Last year, I had one raised planting bed.  Now I have eleven raised beds and sixteen wine barrels.  I also have the lasagna bed planting area. As you can see from the video tour, this is obviously way more space than last year and I want to be sure to get the best use out of it as possible.

Also on our list today is to build a chicken tractor.  The chickens are set up nicely in their coop, but we want to build a portable chicken run so the chickens can spend time grazing on grass. Unfortunately, it isn’t feasible for us to let the chickens go completely free range.  Between neighborhood dogs, local birds of prey, and raccoons, we would be sure to lose birds if we allowed them to roam free.  So a chicken tractor will be a good compromise.  Maybe we’ll build something like this.  To give credit where credit will be due, Derek will be taking on this project.

And finally, I’m really excited to report that we have some actual sun today.  The weather reporter had threatened us with rain all weekend, so it was a great surprise to wake up to sunny skies this morning and an updated report of mostly sunny weather.  This means I will definitely find some time this weekend to hang out in the greenhouse with no other purpose than to soak up the warmth and read a book.

Happy gardening!

Sandy

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Recycled trellis, the peas hold up, and the potatoes arrive

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Sandy
Recycled windmill becomes a pea trellis

Recycled windmill becomes a pea trellis

In spite of the miserable weather this weekend, we did make some progress. Having a 14-year-old nephew willing to work in inclement weather for cheap definitely helps! As you can see, we added a second raised bed right off the patio. This is a small bed, 3 X 5, and I am planning to grow peas in it. One of the varieties of peas that I purchased, Alderman, grows quite tall, 6 – 8 feet.  Luckily, I have just the thing and it is free!  I have a small decorative windmill in my yard that has seen better days.  I kept it, though, thinking I might find a use for it in the garden. So here it is all set up in the new bed, ready to support pea vines. BTW, the peas that I planted a few weeks ago, before the last round of snow, are still looking good and growing.  Well, at least one variety is.  The Oregon Giants have emerged and held up fine under the snow.  The Canoes still haven’t emerged.  I’m pretty impressed with the Oregon Giants so far.

Today I also planted the rhubarb that arrived from Territorial Seed yesterday.  Along with the rhubarb, I received my order of seed potatoes.  I bought a four-variety collection of early, mid, and late varieties.  I didn’t like spending $40 on seed potatoes, so hopefully this is the only time I’ll spend that.  If I can effectively store some of the potatoes over the winter as seed potatoes, I shouldn’t need to buy them again next year. After receiving the potatoes, I went over to DoubleD’s site to go over her potato planting instructions.  The one thing that surprised me in the instructions was that she planted whole seed potatoes.  For some reason I thought they could be cut up prior to planting.

The potatoes had me thinking about food storage again.  I’ve been perusing Root Cellaring and thinking about different cold storage options. We do have a great location where we could build a partially underground root cellar. I keep hinting to Derek that I’d like to start planning this. My hints are being rebuffed and I might need to come up with some other solutions for this year, potentially leveraging part of the garage or a crawl space area off the basement. If you have any great ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Finally, we are going to look into the green energy rebates included in the stimulus bill.  It would be cool if we could take a first step into solar this year, which would probably be a solar hot water heater. 

Happy gardening!

Sandy

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Photo album: Limes, onions, garlic, lettuce, peach trees, and goats

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Sandy

The longer days are evident in the new growth happening in the garden. Seeds are emerging, plants are greening up and growing, and buds are beginning to emerge on trees.

Fruit setting on lime tree

Fruit setting on lime tree

Before looking outside, here’s a shot of the lime tree I have been overwintering in the basement. Limes need a warm environment year-round, so I brought the tree in from the greenhouse when the weather turned really cold. Apparently, the lime is pretty happy. It is setting fruit. Hopefully some of it will survive and grow to maturity.

Oregon Giant pea seedlings emerging

Oregon Giant pea seedlings emerging

I noticed this morning that the pea seedlings emerged. They are a bit at risk this year because I planted them a bit early. Yes, I got a bit overly ambitious on an uncharacteristically warm day. I have to say I’m surprised to see them sprouting so quickly. We’ll see how they do and I’ll be on the ready to start over if pea disaster strikes.

Radish and carrots in wine barrel

Radish and carrots in wine barrel

In a wine barrel under a clear umbrella used as a cloche, I planted radish and carrot seeds. The radish are sprouting nicely and the carrots are just starting to emerge. I’m doing several successive carrot plantings this year because the kids love carrots.

Garlic and onion plants

Garlic and onion plants

Inside the greenhouse, the onions and garlic are going strong. This is a batch of bunching onions I started last fall. I also have chives and green onion seedlings that didn’t do anything last fall when I planted them, but have now sprung up and are doing well.

Spinach and lettuce plants and seedlings

Spinach and lettuce plants and seedlings

The spinach and lettuce are showing new growth as well. I also planted new spinach and lettuce seeds directly in the green house a few weeks ago, and these have emerged nicely.

Dwarf peach and nectarine trees

Dwarf peach and nectarine trees

Here you can see the extra dwarf peach and nectarine trees. These trees will stay small enough to live in the planters even at maturity. These trees are new, just planted in the last few weeks.

Harry and Lucy in the pasture

Harry and Lucy in the pasture

And last but not least, in my last post, the video tour, I neglected to include Harry and Lucy. Here’s a shot of them out in the pasture this morning.

Oh, if you didn’t notice I changed the design and layout of this site. Let me know what you think!

Happy gardening.

Sandy

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Video Tour: The garden in late winter

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Sandy
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Digging in: Fruit trees & asparagus

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Sandy
Strawberry bed, compost pile, and orchard

Strawberry bed, compost pile, and orchard

A big box from Raintree Nursery arrived yesterday. Perfect timing! It arrived just in time for planting on a lovely, sunny day, plus my in-laws were in town and available to help kid wrangle and dig holes.  The order included a 4 X 1 grafted Euro Pear tree and three apple trees, Greensleeves, Queen Cox, and Pristine.  Also included, dwarf Necta Zee nectarine and El Dorado peach.  Since we have mild summers, these two will live in the greenhouse to ensure they have enough warmth in the summer.  Sadly, the anticipated White Doyenne pear tree was missing from the order. Raintree tends to have good customer service, so I am sure the pear will arrive shortly. In addition to the trees, a few fruiting shrubs were also delivered, including a black currant and two Highbush Cranberry. 

All of the above required a lot of digging, most of which I was able to avoid.  My husband and father-in-law did the bulk of this work, but I did not escape hard labor today.  I took on two tough projects.  First, I planted 25 crowns of Jersey Knight asparagus.  I planted these in a raised bed that I prepared last fall.  This required a lot of digging and stooping over to plant.  The bed was heavily amended with goat manure, leaves, and straw, so it should be an ideal environment for asparagus, which is a heavy feeder.  After this, I tackled the strawberry bed.  I snipped off all the old growth, weeded the bed, and then applied a good covering of composted goat manure and straw.  The strawberries should be very happy this year.  You can see the finished strawberry bed in the photo above.  Behind it, you can also see a compost bed.  The white material on top of the bed is the shredded paper used as packaging material for the Raintree order.  I am recycling this via composting.  I also took the large cardboard box, flattened it, and am using it to extend the lasagna garden planting area.  These projects were a lot of hard work and I am certainly happy to have them done.

Finally, a quick update on my seed starting efforts.  As I wrote previously, I was having trouble with leggy seedlings.  The consensus was that the grow lights were too far from the seedlings, so I adjusted my system and am having much better results.  The leggy seedlings don’t appear to have been a disaster, though. I planted them in the greenhouse (a bit deeply because of the legginess) and they seem to be doing fine.  I continue to follow the seed starting schedule published by DoubleD and am happy to report my tomato seedlings, planted last weekend, have already sprouted nicely.

Happy gardening!

Sandy

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