Humble Garden

Early Blight on my Tomatoes

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:29:36 +0000

I started my tomatoes indoors many MONTHS ago with tremendous loving care and great hopes. They are being taken down by Early Blight (Alternaria solani) and its possible I might lose all 60 plants. 30 had already set out beautiful blossoms, bees were buzzing, plants were growing like crazy and then, SPLASH, New England became a temperate rain forest with near constant cold monsoon like rain for more than a month.

Those were perfect conditions for early blight. We have had sun the past few days and the soil s beginning to dry for the first time in MANY weeks. By the looks of my tomatoes, especially the few hybrid specials I had out there for the kids (mega-monster sized Zacs), they will not be able to shake the disease.

Needless to say, I am not a happy gardener right now. The entire garden has been set back at least a month, not good when you have so little time to garden in the first place.

Hard working Chickens

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:54:08 +0000

Chickens are always busy looking for something to eat. I love putting them to work in the garden, you just have to be careful how you do it.

You cant put little leashes on them, you have to put them in a tractor (like you see below). I put them in the tractor so that they can eat clover and make delicious eggs.

I am putting some other chickens to work by putting a temporary tractor on one of the beds where I have pulled out bolted lettuce and want to get rid of grubs and other excess bugs.

The chickens also scratch up the ground, sunbathe in the soil, taking dirt baths (to clear out any bugs in their feathers) and they also fertilize the garden a bit.

At the end of the day, the boy rooster, Barley, will go back to the chicken house and the girls will go to the pastured chicken tractor.

Here you can see our asparagus bed (that has started to slow down) mulched with hay. Asparagus likes to live with tomatoes, thats what you see growing there.

Here is another couple of shots of our milking Lamancha does and then some of our other goats and llama.

Cold New England gardening - an update

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:54:35 +0000

I wrote previously about our cold frames. I thought I would show you a few shots from around the garden showing those raised beds as well as the others.

Its been VERY cold here and very overcast so the garden has been in stasis. Today its sunnier and I expect our bush beans to explode this weekend!

Cabbage with companion dill

Baby kale, bok choy, chamomile, and mesclun lettuces

Sprouting organic open pollinated soybean plant

Tomatoes and peppers

Some of our tomatoes

The Backyard Homestead - A Review

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:57:27 +0000

If you have ever delved into the homesteading “how to” book world, you will find that the best of this genre is able to expose you to enough information so that you have a sense for how to go deeper into any one subject. This is because homesteading can encompass a broad spectrum of skills that each require some good amount of book reading and a whole lot of practical experience.

Today I have an opportunity to review one such book, The Backyard Homestead, edited by Carleen Madigan and published by Storey Publishing, LLC.

Carleen was born into a self sufficiency oriented family and had the opportunity to grow up eating homegrown foods. She lives this way now and brings a comfortable even keeled passion to the subject in this book.

The book has a beautiful cover, graced by some neo-primitive design that welcomes you in. The book is information dense but not difficult to read and you can quickly glean what you were after when you opened it. The illustrations are a perfect fit, filled with little details but all relevant and simple. As an artist, I tend to focus on these sorts of things and I find these pen and ink vignettes a perfect pairing with the text.

One of the premises of the book, expressed on the front cover, is that you can “produce all the food you need on a 1/4 acre”. Obviously, this completely depends on what zone you live in and what sort of diet you eat.

The back cover says that on that 1/4 acre you can yield:

1,400 eggs
50 pounds of wheat
60 pounds of fruit
2,000 pounds of vegetables
280 pounds of pork
and 75 pounds of nuts

I am not sure if thats all in a 1/4 acre or what you would get if you grew just the one thing. I like this estimation because it helps people be hopeful that there is a whole lot of possibility. Small farmers with diverse holdings are shown to have a higher productive output than huge monoculture factory vegetable farms.

If you are a novice homesteader or even intermediate - you might want to moderate your goals and start out with one or two sorts of food production, master those, then slowly add the next food. For example, start with a garden and some hens. Learn the vagaries of your microenvironment and the needs of your hens, what it takes to feed them and care for them. Learn if you can get away with hens in your setting. When you feel comfortable with the dynamics of these systems you can start adding more food to your back yard!

Before I go into deeper specifics I would like to say that I recommend this book very much. It has an uncomplicated, straightforward way of sharing an abundance of information that can help you understand homesteading and also to get started!

Chapters

Start your own Backyard Homestead
The Home Vegetable Garden
Backyard Fruits & Nuts
Easy, Fragrant Herbs
Homegrown Grains
Poultry for Eggs and Meat
Meat and Dairy
Food from the Wild

These are very broad chapter headings! Let me give you a sampling of the topics covered under each.

Start your own Backyard Homestead

Homestead production plan on 1/10th acre and projected output
1/4 acre
1/2 acre

The Home Vegetable Garden

Vegetable garden planning
Rotation concepts
Raised beds
Succession planting
How a garden develops through the seasons
Container gardening
Season extension
Seed starting
Vertical growing
Harvesting and storing seeds
Overview of vegetables
Vegetable harvest, freezing, canning, fermenting, and drying

Backyard Fruits & Nuts

Strawberries
Raspberries and Blackberries
Blueberries
Grapes
Wine making
Growing fruit trees
Edible landscaping
Fruit drying
Country wine making
Cidermaking
Vinegars
Growing nut trees

Easy, Fragrant Herbs

Growing herbs
Preserving herbs
32 Essential herbs
Herbal vinegars
Herbal teas

Homegrown Grains

Which grains to grow and how to
Corn
Wheat
Wheat harvest and grinding, storage
Cooking with grains
Bread making
Beer making

Poultry for Eggs and Meat

Breed selection
Chicken lifecycle
Egg production
Butchering
Housing construction
Turkeys
Ducks & Geese

Meat and Dairy

Goats
How to milk a goat
Sheep
Cows: milking and butchery
Pigs
Rabbits
Basic butchery and meat preservation considerations
Sausage making
Smoking
Jerky making
Cheese making
Yogurt making
Butter and Ice Cream making

Food from the wild

Beekeeping
Foraging
Maple sugaring

I have really enjoyed this book. I curl up with it sometimes, in the morning while drinking coffee before the day gets started, and just open to random pages and learn something new.

I can attest that backyard homesteading is enormously satisfying. As I write this, I look out at our green vegetable garden, watch our chickens do their morning thing and smile as I see the goat kids racing around in their enclosure, the does sunning themselves in the morning cool and the llama walking around, taking a break from being a climbing platform for the goat kids who like to jump on her fluffy back and launch into the air (she is SO patient).

With this backyard homestead, it feels like my family has become quite extended to this outside world. We love our animals, the goats are super precious beings and the chickens are always interesting. More importantly, we eat organic fresh picked vegetables, we eat homegrown eggs from chickens fed a wide diet that includes greens from the garden and flax seeds for omega 3s, and raw milk and cheese from our own goats.

With this homestead, I feel very grounded and safe as I know that much of our food is extremely wholesome and pure.

I hope that you too can find even a small measure of this feeling as you garden and homestead.

Product Details

Title: The Backyard Homestead
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (February 11, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1603421386
ISBN-13: 978-1603421386
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds

Brassicas, garlic chives, tomatoes, oh my!

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:09:28 +0000

(Early cabbage and spinach)

Today I am going to share an update of the few things that are growing out in the garden. Its been cold here until recently so only the brassicas and very well protected tomatoes have gone out!

Ages ago I started the early cabbage, kale and bok choi as seedlings inside the house.

(Cabbage seedlings)

(Cabbages transplanted to larger potlets)

Then they were transplanted outside to endure freezing temps, snow, ice, freezing rain, really cold rain, smothering under plastic.

(Tiny seedlings in bed)

(Temporary cold frames)

When it warmed up a bit I replaced the cold frames with heavy floating row cover material.

Today, the early cabbage, kale, and bok choi are thriving under the heavy row cover material! Note, I interplanted with spinach as well.

(Kale)

(Cabbages and Kales)

I also planted out tomatoes under milk jug cloches.

(Tomatoes under milk jugs)

Whole bed of 30 some tomatoes transplanted.

(Tomatoes)

Even planted some tomatoes out with the now producing asparagus patch, they are meant to be great companions.

(Asparagus and tomato transplants)

The mesclun lettuce and spinach under the heavy row covers are growing to town.

(Mesclun lettuce)

Garlic chives that over wintered are growing to beat the band.

(Garlic chives)

Here s one of our 5 cats, Bass, looking for any spare pastured poultry that may be in the chicken tractor.

(Bass with a distinct lack of chicken)

Next post will be more on our diary goat herd!

Video of our goats and kids!

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:47:55 +0000

Took this video out in our goat shed in our backyard the other day.

Enjoy!

Cold frames, in the cold rain

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:36:58 +0000

(KD with fast growing kid)
.
Wow, lets talk about hardy plants, yikes! I made or rather, I jury rigged, a cold frame on the raised bed that will hold brassicas (early cabbage, kale, and bok choy) to see if I could get them out there before our last hard frost date of May 15th.

I bought some 4 mil clear plastic and 2 ten foot 1.5 inch diameter plastic pipe. We cut the pipes in half to make 4 five foot lengths for support, in theory that is.

This thickness is strong enough to deal with the elements but clear enough to get solar gain.

I stuck the 5 foot length pipes into the bed, as you see below.

And then KD, seen above, and I made holes for the seedlings (I peeled off the peat pots when planting)

And then, using duct tape and varying levels of angry kevetching not rated for young ears, I draped the pipes with plastic.

One important part of this plastic is to keep the darn chickens who are still free ranging off my plants. As I was planting these seedlings, I turned my back for a few moments and the darn rooster jumped right up and ate 5 bok choys!

As soon as I finished enclosing this bean trellis with plastic and stepped back, that evil rooster jumped right up and proceeded to menace my cold frame. He very deliberately worked hard to find a way in.

I hope you can see him in the photo above. I also have a few other shots below.

After that beautiful day when I built the cold frame, it has been raining and blowing non-stop. Those poor little seedlings have been subjected to sub-32 weather at night and direct weather exposure because the high winds continue to blow everything off the raised beds! This includes having the plastic directly ON the seedlings with a load of icy cold water pooled above them.

I figured I had lost these poor seedlings but today I ran out in the rain and looked and saw that they had already grown new leaves! Crazy things!

I guess they like this sort of weather (I know they are cold hardy but this is just crazy)

I am very thankful for their resilience and I am looking forward to some VERY hardy cabbages, kale, and bok choy!

My next project is broadcasting carrot seed (with sand) and also getting some broccoli going out there.

Frugal seed starting

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:57:17 +0000

Like diapers for babies, it seems like there is no end to the doo-dads and supplies one needs when starting seeds indoors.

My brassica seeds rocketed into sproutdom WAY faster than I imagined they might and I was caught without a means for transplanting the soil blocks to a larger size. I cant really afford to get the larger soil blocker and I didnt have any larger containers right away so I figured I could use an excess diaper box to jury-rig something to transplant the seedlings into.

I was exhausted by the end of this DIY project because I could not find my exacto-knife (DH put it somewhere “safe” and now lost) so I used a pair of KID scissors.. use the knife.

The main hack here is to cut skinny rectangles and then some slots so that they for a grid that fits in the black tray.

Add soil.

Plant.

White House Victory Garden, Victory!

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:54:25 +0000

The White House made a splash yesterday by announcing it’s plans to grow a victory garden on the White House lawn!

“Obamas to Plant White House Vegetable Garden” - NYT

If you surf the garden blogosphere you would know that there has been a web based campaign for this very outcome for a couple of years now!

Namely, the Eat the View effort over at the Kitchen Gardeners International site, by Roger Doiron!

Its exciting times and I could NOT be more proud of our first family. This will really be a beautiful beginning to an even more widespread movement to grow your own!

Rye’s newborns!

nika.boyce@gmail.com (Nika Boyce) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:57:03 +0000

So for the past week, we had been watching Rye VERY closely but she seemed to be taking her own sweet time.

Last night my husband had to go to a school board meeting and I was feeding the kids. When he got home he checked on the goats and found that Rye had given birth to two little guys, with no help at all!

She did a fantastic job!

One - who looks just like his dad Flax - is named Flax, Jr. and the other goatlet is called Frederick (I have no real idea why). They are both just too darn cute.

Enjoy the photos!

(Daddy Flax)

Flax, Jr. was being shy, will get more shots of him another day!