Happy Farming . com

Here’s an inspiring video about a little girl helping her mom set up a Square Foot Garden, and harvesting quite impressive radishes. One word: Awwww :

Now that the snow is covering everything around here I’ve had a chance to look through the stacks of paper documenting my food growing adventures in 2009.

This is a log describing the food I’m bringing in from my garden grown in 2009. I’m using the following beds:

Raised bed, 3 m x 1.2 m
Raised bed, 5 m x 1.2 m
Bed, 6 m x 1.2 m
Bed, 6 m x 1.2 m

(Note: The list below is not fully updated yet…)

———————-

Peach:

2009-08-19: 1 pcs. (90 g)

———————-

Cucumber:

2009-08-10: 209 g
2009-08-06: 400 g
2009-07-25: 211 g
2009-07-21: 2 pcs. (439 g)

———————-

Strawberry:

2009-06-24: 173 g
2009-06-17: 357 g
2009-06-13: 36 g
2009-06-10: 185 g

———————-

Parsnip:

2009-10-15: 2 pcs. (1532 g)

———————-

Tomato:

TBD

———————-

Beans:

2009-08-06: 230 g (bush)

———————-

Peas:

2009-07-23: 30 pcs.

———————-

Onion:

2009-08-14: 1 pcs. (119 g)
2009-08-08: 2 pcs. yellow (288 g)

———————-

Red beet:

2009-11-22: 1 pcs. (194 g)
2009-10-15: 5 pcs. round (770 g)
2009-07-20: 1 pcs. round (243 g), 2 pcs. long (556 g)
2009-07-13: 3 pcs. round (743 g), 3 pcs. long (748 g)
2009-07-12: 302 g
2009-07-11: 432 g round
2009-07-03: 1 pcs. (480 g)

———————-

Squash:

2009-08-10: 863 g
2009-08-06: 1 pcs. (1500 g)
2009-07-26: 2 pcs. (899 g)

———————-

Radish:

2009-06-17: Red (112 g), white (221 g)
2009-06-11: 3 pcs. Ice (26 g)

———————-

Carrot:

2009-08-15: 11 pcs. (472 g)
2009-08-14: 3 pcs. (196 g)
2009-07-23: 377 g
2009-07-22: 5 pcs. (271 g)
2009-07-21: 4 pcs. (287 g)
2009-07-20: 3 pcs. (267 g)
2009-07-17: 5 pcs. (410 g)
2009-07-15: 144 g
2009-07-12: 1090 g
2009-07-04: 3 pcs. (267 g)
2009-07-03: 182 g
———————-

Spinach:

2009-06-17: 197 g
2009-06-05: 135 g
2009-05-30: 132 g
2009-05-22: 78 g

———————-

Lettuce:

2009-06-20: 268 g (1 head)
———————-

Potatoes:

2009-07-22: 1170 g (2  plants)
2009-07-20: 1204 g (2 plants)
2009-07-17: 1263 g (2 plants)
2009-07-12: 901 g
2009-07-11: 725 g
2009-07-07: 268 g (1 plant, 1 shoot), 1033 g (1 plant, several shoots)
2009-07-05: 606 g (2 plants)
2009-07-04: 811 g (2 plants)
2009-07-03: 670 g
2009-07-01: 724 g
2009-06-30: 860 g Asparagus

———————-

This is Magnus showing the most efficient way to harvest sea buckthorn. Well, he doesn’t exactly harvest the berries, but he only takes away the raw juice, which is good because he doesn’t harm the buckthorn shrubs:
Part 1:

After successfully saving seeds from this years tomatoes I set out to save some cucumber seeds. It didn’t go as planned.

I saved one particularly healthy looking cucumber from the plant growing up the south facing garage wall:

It was dark green when I picked it but I stored it for several weeks inside the house to let it mature, turning yellow in the process. It actually started  to smell bad, as it had a couple of spots. Apparently my girlfriend is very tolerant since she’s able to put up with things like this laying around the house. It was probably a wise decision to tell her in advance what I was doing :

With much anticipation I cut the cucumber open, only to find that it contained no frekkin seeds!:

A little miracle in itself. A lot of hard work must have gone into creating cucumbers like this. I think I have to go talk to the nursery again. Or buy heirloom seeds and raise my own plants next year.

My peach tree is starting to bend due to the weight of ripening peaches. They’re sucking up a lot of water in the process, which is good so they’ll get really juicy before harvest time. I guess I have to drill a hole in the wall to build a support for the tree. An old seat belt should do the trick for now. It will support the tree through a large surface and shouldn’t damage the stem. If only I was allowed to pick up this kind of stuff from the local recycling site, but nooo, we have to throw everything away so we can buy NEW stuff and keep the wheels turning. As you can tell I’m still worried about the planets ressources and what happens if or when they run out. And that’s why I keep growing food in my own frekkin front yard. Wonder when there will be a law against that too. Gotta keep the big wheels turning. Enjoy the frekkin pictures.

If you take a closer look at bolted spinach plants you’ll find the seeds grouped in small clusters:

The seeds can easily be rubbed off the stem although some will stay together and you’ll need to separate those. From a single spinach plant I saved enough seeds to fill at least two normal seeds bags, maybe even three:

I pay about $4 for a single bag of spinach seeds. I now got seeds worth 5 * 2.5 * 4 = $50! (I had 5 dried plants hanging beneath my roof). Amazing. If they will all grow, that is.

Spinach is one of the first crops that can be harvested in my garden. This year I let my spinach rows bolt after picking fresh spinach leaves for weeks before that. The plants grew flowers and began producing seeds on the stems. When they started turning yellow I removed the plants from the beds to avoid spoiling the seeds due to rain. I’ve hung up the plants beneath the roof in the garage in order to dry:

Spinach seeds are clustered in small spots on the stems. I’ve counted up to 10 seeds in each cluster but some only have 2. The seeds are beginning to look like “pro” seeds :

I look forward to finding out if they’ll actually germinate and what the next generation of spinach plants will look like and taste like.

Here’s an interesting video from YouTube about back yard sustainability. Janaia Donaldson is interviewing Scott McGuire from Oregon about the project he’s running in the backyard of his rented property. The picture is lagging but that’s worst in the first 10 minutes when they talk face to face. After that they take a tour in Scott’s garden and the lagging becomes tolerable.

In the video you’ll find:

• Experimenting with growing wheat and amaranth
• Growing a medicine border
• Growing sun flower seeds
• Greenhouse for starting plants from seeds
• Drying herbs in greenhouse
• Dog kennel as chicken house
• Growing food for your animals
• Crimson clover as nitrogen fixer

and some other small but interesting things:

The new potatoes are just about gone for the year and that leaves the soil bare. This is bad because rain will wash nutrients down into the ground, therefore it’s good to have something growing all the time. In the picture you’ll find six new rows of spinach ready to take over from the potatoes. This is known as successive planting, and spinach was something that would still grow according to my sowing calender. It doesn’t have to be edible plants, you can also plant something to be used as green manure. When your green manure dies later on you’ll have to compost it to enrich your soil making it possible to grower better vegetables later. By the way, raw spinach is very good with banana and water blended into a smoothie – yum!

Last time I wrote about building a good bean trellis I only posted a drawing. Now I took the time to actually build it as you can see in these pictures.

Each bean plant has its own bamboo stick to climb. Hopefully the beans will hang down on the outside of the construction because the sticks are mounted in an angle.

It’s now possible to stand beside the bed and pick the beans without reaching into the middle of the bean wilderness.