Giving Thanks

Ok, so things have been going well here at the homestead.  Someone was able to make a salad for herself out of lettuce and radishes from the garden and even made kale chips for the kids.  Now I won’t name her, but she also didn’t document the amount of the harvest.  By the way, the name rhymes with Meb-Wistress.  But, we are off to a good start.

However, one area of less than stellar success has been my seedlings.  While they took off and have been under a grow light, a lack of a greenhouse to control the temperature left them looking very sorry.  We have placed cucumbers and various squashes in the ground with some direct sown seeds in the hope we can recover a harvest.  But the saddest of the bunch by far is our tomato plants.  These things are pathetic.  Let’s just say I am looking for a reason to replace these this year with store plants. 

After last night I have one.  We were visited by a special needs prowler.  He left all of the viable plants alone but dug up the tomatoes.   So I have no choice but to replace them.  Thanks!  However, it looks like a small fence is in my future, so a sarcastic hearty thanks for that one.  Oh well, have a happy and safe Memorial Day.

Andy

Cold Crops

With the frost on the ground the last couple of days I am certainly glad we have waited to put most of our vegetables in until Mother’s Day.  We did, however, get a raised bed going for some cold hearty plants.  The snap peas and radishes are up and doing well.  The carrots, lettuce, kale and broccoli are all showing signs they want to grow.  The carrots and snap peas each got their own 4x2 section of the bed, while the other 4x4 section was divided into triangular plots for the rest of the plants.

I built the bed using untreated 2x6x8s.  This gave me a nice 4x8 bed, the frame of which was then treated using boiled linseed oil.  The linseed oil helps to preserve the wood but is nontoxic, a must when working on projects which are going to be part of your food supply. 

We sowed all of the plants in this bed directly in the soil.  I do have a ton of plants started and under grow lights, more on those a bit later.  The radishes are from Ferry-Morse and the rest are heirloom seeds from Mountain Valley which I purchased at Costco.  So I will see how these brands do and let you know.

My only real worry so far has been rabbits.  I haven’t seen any signs of damage to the plants but have a trusty .22 at the ready.  One can only hope the Web-Mistress is a steely-eyed killer in the event Peter Rabbit shows himself while I’m not home.  Eventually I hope to get some fencing up when all of my raised beds are built.  Until then I can only hope that I get to share a recipe for rabbit stew in a future post.

Did you plant any cold tolerant vegetables?  How are they doing?  Send me some pictures and let me know what brand of seeds you used.

Andy