Yet Another Garden Update

It's been a while since we've posted about our garden. Despite letting the time slip away, we have had a few eventful moments with our veggies. Gardening, it seems, is full of difficulty and disappointment. Through all of the excitement of planting, inevitably things find a way of going wrong. We have had some discouragement in the last month, and yet we have discovered that life has a way of pushing through the difficulties. 

When we first got everything planted we were excited to finally have everything in the ground. The plants were healthy, and we were ready to see them grow. 

 

It looked great, but this was not to last. Before long the bugs and bunnies started eating our crops. Rabbits snuck under the fence to nibble our pepper plants, we hadn't realized they had such an affinity for peppers. Our squash and cucumbers soon were decimated by insects that attacked the stems. Strangely, though there was obvious damage to the stems near the roots, the squash continued to grow. Then we had a cold snap hit overnight, and by midday it was obvious that many of our plants were dying; it seemed we would have to start all over again... 

Disappointed, as all of our plants in the back apart from the kale needed replacing, we focused for a few weeks on the Microgreens indoors. After a couple of weeks, however, some of our original plants decided to make a comeback. Some of the seeds were also beginning to grow. 

And wow, the kale has been fantastic!  This picture is after harvesting and eating a good amount twice last week. 

Not everything has come back, but We are amazed at how much those that did fought to make it. We are also very grateful to our kind neighbors who provided us with a few of their extra tomato, pepper, and basil plants to replace those that didn't make it. 

We are learning so much this year. It is not always easy as we work toward our goals of becoming self sufficient and self sustaining. There are a lot of road blocks and barriers that we are learning to navigate, and many that our circumstances are not yet allowing for. We are grateful for the opportunity to learn and work toward these goals, and the encouragement we have received as we press forward. 

Thank you for reading. We hope sharing our experiments with you is helping encourage you to keep moving forward as you work on your own goals. 

Hydroponic System

As we have been starting our microgreens, we also have been preparing to begin with hydroponics.  Over the last few months we have slowly been piecing together components for our own homemade system, and today it is finally ready. 

 We started some lettuces and some spinach at the same time as our microgreens. We planted the seeds in organic potting soil to start them, and have had them beneath the grow light to strengthen them enough for transplanting. 

Here is day 1

On day 3 we saw the first signs of life. 

Day 4 most of the lettuce came up, but not much of the spinach. 

Here is day 5

And here are the plants today, after some have been transplanted into the Aquaponics system. 

Our system consists of a 27 gallon tote, with holes cut out of the lid in order to just fit our growing cups. 

The cups are filled with growing pebbles and rest on the surface of the water, which is constantly being airated with bars that are commonly used in fish tanks. 

To transplant the lettuce we carefully rinsed the soil from the roots and placed the plants in the growing containers with the pebbles for support. They were then inserted into the holes and fit quite snugly inside. 

The water is treated with a solution of fertilizer to help the plants grow.

We have been very excited to get this project done. We are looking forward to the fresh vegetables our new system will provide!

Our First Microgreens

The I've been doing a lousy job of keeping up with our gardening experiments over the last few weeks. It's time for an update, or maybe a few...

First we want to share our microgreen experiment.  This one has been exciting for us. Here is a picture of what our first batch looks like today. 

Microgreens are fascinating because they are packed with all the nutrition and the flavor of the full grown plants, as well as having the benefit of a short growing cycle. 

We started with a high protein seed mixture. This consisted of adzuki, garbanzo, mung beans, and green pea seeds. The seeds we purchased were part of a sprouting set, typically intended for growing sprouts. 

To plant the seeds, we placed them on top of a layer of soil and sprayed them down with a spray fine mist so that the seeds wouldn't shift or clump. We planted them on the evening of April 26th. 

Here is a picture of the seeds on April 28th as they began to sprout. 

Once they started growing they grew quickly. Here is the photo from the next day, April 29th. 

And then on April 30th.

Here they are on May 2nd.

Unfortunately I neglected the pictures this week, so the next I have are from today. 

The greens have grown enough now that they are ready to harvest. Once the second set of leaves just start to show, they are ready to eat. We are looking forward to adding some to our salad this evening and tasting the fruits of our labors. 

As this batch of microgreens are now ready we are starting our next batch. We are using alfalfa seeds this time. And are excited to see how well they do!

Garden Update

We planted our garden, or at least some of it, on Monday. With the weather not cooperating last week we are hoping that we don't get another late frost, however our plants were in desperate need of planting. As has been my experience over the years, the nutritional value of bagged soil is vastly overrated. The plants do well for a while, but before long the nutrients are depleted and the plants began to suffer. 

We have tried to keep our garden as organic as possible. We used organic labeled potting soil as a starter, and filled our planter beds with composted horse manure from a local horse farm. We discovered this farm last year through an avid gardener we know, and loved the results. As we put in a new raised bed this year we were greatful to have a friend willing to transport it for us. We also decided, as a form of weed control, that we would use plastic ground cover to make our gardening easier this year. We were able to fill our 2 raised beds with tomatoes, peppers, and kale before we ran out of space. Over the next few days we will be preparing our other garden beds for planting the rest. 

It was nice to see some of the plants perking up right after they were planted, some of the others, that were suffering most from lack of nutrients in the soil, will take a little longer. We hope we won't lose any. I hope you're enjoying learning with us as we garden this year. We are looking forward to watching the progress, and keeping you updated. 

Ramps

We were able to try something new today. It is something we had never heard of before, which is found wild and in abundance in the spring in Ohio. It's called a ramp. This herb is similar to a leek, and is sometimes called wild garlic. It smells like an onion, and has a flavor all its own. It is quite strong, and if you like garlic is quite delicious. 

    Henry learned of its existence through a friend. Shortly after learning about it he went to check on our beehives which are kept at another friend's property (our neighbors in the suburbs aren't particularly welcoming to beehives), and he discovered that the plant was covering a substantial amount of their forest floor. After gaining permission to pick the ramps we decided to go out as a family and do just that. 

Here is our cute little 2 year old helping daddy with the harvest. 

After bringing the ramps home we cleaned them up, and each tried one raw. The whole plant is edible including the leaves, once the base is trimmed. It looks a lot like a scallion. 

They have a very strong flavor, the white end is more mild than the leaves which have a nice spicy kick to them. After trying them raw we decided to sauté the rest in some butter. 

They turned out great. The flavor was a little more mild after cooking, and with a touch of salt they were delicious. The leaves took on an almost spinach flavor, the spice and garlic were well combined with a hint of leek. We use a lot of onion and garlic in our cooking, so this herb had us thinking of many different ways we could use it. 

It was fun to learn about the local plants in our area. We are contemplating trying to grow ramps in the future, if we can figure out how. For now we will have to be limited to finding them in the spring when they are in season. 

Oyster Mushrooms

We have been doing a lot of gardening type projects over the last few months, one of them was a mushroom farm we purchased at Home Depot. This was an easy project that was relatively inexpensive. The same kit is available on Amazon. Here is a link:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TUYGRU4/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr0_2_a_it?qid=1460222360&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=mini+oyster+mushroom+growing+kit

Over the course of a couple of weeks we watched and waited, and for the first while we saw nothing. It said it would take ten days to grow, but after two weeks of nothing, we decided that we would probably need to soak it in cold water again.  However, the next morning the start of a mushroom showed up. 

    After some research we learned that when soaking the kit it is important to use cold water, as the shock of the temperature change is what spurs the growth.  We don't think our water had been cold enough.

     Here is a daily progression of the mushrooms as they grew. 

The first sign of growth after the two weeks of waiting.

The mushrooms double in size daily. This is the evening after the mushrooms first appeared. 

This is day 2 in the morning.

Day 3.

Day 4.

Day 5.

On day 6 they were ready to harvest. 

On day 7 we discovered that we had let them go a day too long.  As the caps start to fold upward the flavor is supposed to decrease, so it's best not to let them get this big. We figured this out just a little too late. The mushrooms still are edible however.

We ended up using this first batch in our homemade spaghetti sauce.  We are keeping the mini farm moist though, and are looking forward to our next batch.

Indoor Greenhouse Update

We wanted to give an update on how well our plants are growing since setting up our grow light. In order to support the weight of the light we decided to rebuild our frame, this time with metal piping inserted into the pvc. This structure is much more stable, and still quite cost effective. Here are a few images of the different frames. 

This is the original. 

And this is the new version with the light installed. 

The plants were doing well, but we were still somewhat concerned that that they weren't hardening up very well. Within 24 hours of the grow light being installed the change became quite pronounced. We opted to leave the plastic off to avoid it melting, or condensation on the light fixture. 

Here are some images over the last 10 days that show the progression. 

We have had to raise the light a few times to accommodate the growth, especially of the corn stalks. We are very excited to get these plants in the ground, once the weather will accommodate them, unfortunately this week has been too cold. We even have had a skiff of snow this morning. Once we have our garden in outside we will be starting our micro-greens inside. We'll post about the garden again once we get it into the ground.