In defense of weeds....

So, after taking a bit of a break because of weather and family/scout stuff, I'm back.  And I'm going to jump off the edge and say nice things about my second most hated thing.  I've sworn off politics so my MOST hated thing won't enter the conversation, but I will be singing the praises of Crabgrass, Digitaria Haller.  Yep, that thing we hate almost as much as we hate the Donald.  (Ooops, sorry.)

Here's what happened.  A few years ago we built a bank along the driveway and planted some fur and blue spruce trees to provide a barrier from the road.  We also planted a row of our favorite rosa rugosa.  Everything settled in and started to grow.  The next step was to control the grass and weeds on the downhill side.  This is where my favorite thing (mulch) comes into play.  We mulched with old carpet, grass clippings, and wood chips.  That seemed to control everything except the crabgrass.  Last year I worked on pulling out crabgrass on a good portion of the hill, but I didn't get it all.  This year, late winter rain flooded the whole site, and I saw some interesting results.  Take a look.

mulch washed away from the rain

mulch and soil held in place by the extensive mat of crabgrass roots

I still hate crabgrass (almost as much as he who will not be named...) but it seems that it evolved to do a job, and it does it well.  When we rip it out we need to fill the void with something that does the same job, or it will just come back.  (There may be a political lesson here...)

Nature's surprises

Most of the rose hedge is trimmed.  Only one more 100 ft section to go.

We use rosa rugosa "sandhill" in our hedge.  They grow well without a lot of effort, spread a bit, but not as aggressively as the multiflora rose that got planted in Ohio earlier.  They bloom from late spring well into the fall, and the bees love them.  They also produce giant rose hips which we use for jelly, syrup, and other fun things.

Part of the rose hedge runs past the two Heartnut trees we planted 7 years ago.  When we bought this property there were no trees.  So we have been planting some, and allowing areas to revert to native forest (not mowing, and letting what ever happens, happen.)  The catalogue said we should see nuts in about 5 years. 9 years in I decided that they were just going to be nice ornamental but not much more.  While cleaning up the roses and the ground under the heartnuts, I found a handful of nuts.  Guess I wasn't paying attention.  Not a grand harvest, but a start.  Smiles all around.

Another smile moment happened while hauling rose trimmings to the goats.  The path runs along a perennial bed where we had added a couple of rhubarb plants last year.   The first of the plants promptly died, and the second struggled the whole summer.  I'd written both of them off, but as I walked past I noticed this where we had planted the first rhubarb.

Yep, that's the dead rhubarb sending up a new sprout.  Nature is quite amazing.

Baby onions

On January 23 I planted several hundred onion seeds to start as sets to use this spring.  Today the first of them has sprouted.  I guess we are in full on garden mode already.

Planted Jan 23rd

First sprouts Jan 27th

Gardening on paper

Today the garden looks like this ...

                                                                                                                    ......so I'm not going to be getting a lot of outside work done.  Instead I'm at the table with a calendar, my garden notebook, and my seed catalogs planning out planting dates, successions, and quantities.  Tedious, but necessary for the success of our main project this year.

Our big project in the garden this year is to produce the fresh stuff we use every day in a way that we have it fresh from our garden in the right quantity every day.  Its different from planting a row of something and using it all when its ready.  We want stuff every day, week after week, for the whole year.

Here are some of the things we use every day.

Salad - lettuce, arugula, spinach, scallions, radishes, etc.
Cooking greens - spinach, swiss chard, kale, etc.
Carrots
Cooked root vegetables - turnips, parsnips, beets, sweet potatoes, potatoes, etc.
Garlic
Onions
Tomatoes
Peppers

These all present different challenges.  For us, garlic and onions are the start of almost every meal.  We use a lot.  But, garlic isn't a succession crop.  What we have now was determined by what we planted in November of 2016.  Knowing how much we eat, how well things store, and factoring in crop variability we seem to have hit the mark pretty well.  Our next garlic crop is already in the ground, and we are hopeful it will also be a success.  Onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes should work the same way (in theory).  Some things don't store as well for us, so we are going to try a different approach. 

Carrots. We use about a dozen carrots a week.  So my plan for carrot production looks like this...

I'm using a variety of carrots that takes 56 days to maturity.

8 24" rows planted one week apart.

Harvest one row per week and replant the row immediately after harvest.

I'm planting in a raised bed with irrigation and cover so I can plant intensively.  I should be able to get the first seeds in around April 1st and first harvest around May 28th.  This succession will continue with the final harvest around November 5th.  I'm planning some winter production in my hoop house (once I get it moved), but that is another planning process.

I'll use the same process with salad crops and cooking greens. (Good thing we are still in snow season.)  Tomatoes and Peppers are a different challenge that I'm not sure how I'll solve. 

Charcuterie - A new skill to learn for 2015

Feeding ourselves from the farm is one of our main goals for 2015.  We have many of the pieces in place to do this, but there are some things we need to add and some new skills to learn to make this really work.  Charcuterie (the craft of salting, smoking, and curing) is one of those skills. 

Last year we raised 2 pigs on pasture.  First time for us here at The Roost.  We learned a lot, and the whole process went better than expected.  Now we are enjoying having a freezer full of pork.  BUT... we still find ourselves going to the store to buy pepperoni, salami, and other cured meats.  There are many types we cant get easily here in our part of the world.  We have been pleased with our meat processors smoked bacon and ham, but we want more types and more control that they can give us.

This year we are planning on 4 pigs.  Two for family, and two for us.  To make the most of our two pigs, and of other meat we will be producing we will be adding some additional infrastructure (a smoker, and a drying room) and a new set of skills to the mix.  First in our resource list for this project is this book

 

There are some blogs, podcasts, and other sources that I also like and will feature later.  More on this as we get further into the adventure.