Tomato Trellis

Our garden is growing!  We are excited to have harvested our first zucchini of the season this morning!  The kale is doing fantastic, we have had several harvests from our plants so far, and are ready for another.  Last week we were even able to get a little sweet corn, and learned why it is best to start these plants outside; the growth is stunted and only a few of the kernels formed on the plant. 

We are also excited that our first signs of tomatoes are showing up on the vines!  We have already decided on a few improvements we would like to make for our garden next year. Today, however, we want to share with you our tomato trellis. Henry spent a good portion of Tuesday constructing the framework. 

Through our research, as we are continually trying to increase our tomato production, we learned a few things about how tomato plants grow. 

First and foremost that many tomato plants can grow up to 10 feet or taller when cultivated properly.  These plants are called indeterminates, as there isn't a specific hight measurement of the full grown plant. They will continue to grow and bear fruit as long as they have space and support, or at least until a frost comes at the end of the season. This explains the height of the framework. The ropes that extend from the top are fastened to pvc pipes at the bottom near the plants roots. The plant is wrapped around the rope as its support system, this replaces the tomato cage.  The rope looped at the top is to provide slack when needed. 

As the plant grows it produces what are called suckers between each fork of the branches. These suckers are actually secondary plants forming on the original stem, and take much of the nutrients from fruit production. These can easily be removed to promote better growth in the original plants. In place of some of the plants we lost we are also cultivating some of the suckers that we pulled from the main stems to get root systems. We will then plant them in the openings with the rest. 

We love tomatoes, and have yet to be able to produce as many as we eat throughout the year.  We are hoping this year we will get a little closer to this goal. 

To add to the garden update, here are a few pictures of our back garden to show how much it has grown over the last few weeks. The weather has been great, and the plants are loving it!

Note: This is glass corn, a decorative hybrid that we planted in the backyard, the sweet corn is in the front. 

Our only surviving cucumber plant, we since trained it up onto the trellace, and sweet peas are growing along the other side. 

The green beans are growing along the back of the glass corn. 

We still have a little space to fill, and will be putting some more plants out in the next few weeks for a late start. We will get more pictures from the front next time. 

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.