And today we added the electric fence around the garlic — it’s almost time to harvest the garlic and get our broccoli and cabbages into the bed
Tag: Gardening
Corn Fencing
We put an electric fence up around our corn on the farm — wanted to document what we’ve got
Corn Spacing
A note so we can (hopefully) avoid over-seeding corn in the future — we want to have a foot between the plants in each row and 30″ between rows. Scott’s seen between 20″ and 30″ row spacing — so we can go denser than this if we want to increase the number of plants.
Greenhouse Repair
Last year, we built a 26′ greenhouse in the garden. It took a few days to get everything sorted, and we tried a few different methods to adhere the thing to the ground without any stunning successes. As we disconnected our most recent attempt, our phones blared a weather alert. A severe thunderstorm was headed our way! Looking to the west, it was really close. Rain started to fall and thunder cracked. We ran inside. For the next half hour, we all stood at the front windows watching the greenhouse not budge in this storm. Until …
My lovely greenhouse went somersaulting across the yard and became impaled on a tree. We extracted it and checked it over — some bent metal tubes, a broken tube, and several holes in the cover. It was so late in the year that we decided we didn’t actually need a greenhouse for the year & left it as a project for early spring this year. We did, however, purchase a few sections of 10′ EMT last year in preparation for the repair. Well, it’s early spring!
Scott pounded the end of an EMT and bent it in the vice, then drilled it to recreate the broken bottom pole. We fastened an EMT to a few bent tubes.
He then cut a section of copper tube and cross-drilled it so it could fit across the two sides of a broken tube.
A little more bending and straightening, and we were ready to put the cover on again. This time, there are dozens of concrete blocks holding it down. It’s been up for more than 24 hours … so we’re doing better than last year! Tomorrow, we’ll move the started plants into the greenhouse.
Sprouts!
We have tomato and pepper sprouts! Still waiting for the watermelons, though … I really hope we get to eat some fresh-from-the-vine watermelon this year.
2023 Garden — Seeds Sprouting
Most of the tomatoes have sprouted, and two types of peppers. Peppers seem to take a long time to sprout! I’ve also got an arctic kiwi leafing out beautifully and several grape vines that are starting to sprout leaves.
2023 Garden — Seed Starting
We got some seeds started this evening — a lot of peppers, tomatoes, and a few other plants. There are a bunch of other peppers to get going, ground cherries, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. And, once we can start planting outside, corn, beans, peas, and all sorts of stuff for birds.
But here’s what I’ve got planted so far:
Hungarian peppers, Guadillo pepper, Pasilla pepper
Aji Lemon Drop pepper, Peri-Peri pepper, Sugar Rush Peach pepper
Black Strawberry Cherry Tomato, Brandywine Tomato, Trophy Tomato,
Rhubarb, Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon, Mary Washington Asparagus
Dirt!
I took the cart for a walk and dug up some of the really rich dirt from the forest floor … this will be our seed starting soil for the year.
Planting Garlic
I planted our garlic today — an assortment of varieties filling one of the raised beds.
I only added about an inch of mulch to the bed. The garlic I planted last year never formed heads — we had lots of green leaves, beautiful scapes that we harvested quickly … but no garlic bulbs! Evidently garlic cloves need exposure to cold temperatures in order to form bulbs. You can actually mulch them too well! Hopefully I’ve got enough mulch to suppress weeds and retain moisture but not so much mulch that the cloves are too toasty this winter. 
Corn Harvest
We picked a few ears of corn today — Hickory King fresh from the stalk:
