I sort of knew something would be amiss when I saw the big tractors spraying the neighboring soybean fields. There was a pretty stiff breeze blowing the spray right toward me. Well, my fears have been confirmed. Looks like herbicide damage hit my tomatoes and beans pretty bad. The eggplant isn’t doing too well either. Could be dicamba? Whatever it is, I’m not very happy about it. I think the land is owned by our governor. I’m not sure yet how to find out who is working the farm.
Bugs Bunny is my enemy
June 3, 2012 by 1 Comment
Yes, that WAS a brand new Brandywine tomato transplant. It lived one day in the garden and my arch nemesis got to it. Not only that, they’ve been nibbling on my peppers and new bean sprouts. They completely decimated all of my zucchini, pumpkins and acorn squash. Oh, and the watermelon plants. One may survive, but maybe not. I tried to use one of those sprays made with putrified eggs. That’s supposed to keep the varmints away. But they just laughed at me and munched away anyway. I guess they wore nose plugs or something. So I had to resort to the big guns. This is WAR, after all. I barricaded my poor plants behind a fortification that Bugs will surely not breach. Let’s hope the fortress holds. Here are some pictures of the fortress and some of the good things going on in the garden at the farm.
First Harvest of the Season
May 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The city garden vegetables are really coming along nicely. This evening I harvested my first produce, a nice basket of fresh arugula. It was perfect for my whole wheat penne with chicken sausage and arugula/cilantro pesto.
Here are a few more photos of the garden.
Peas:
Spinach:
Beets:
Onions:
Carrot (and weeds):
On May 17 I planted the warmer weather seeds, kale, collards, fennel, pole beans, basil and Asian cucumbers. They are all sprouting nicely. Here’s an updated garden map.
Farm Garden Progress
May 21, 2012 by 1 Comment
Creating a 30×90 garden plot from an old horse pasture is no easy task. But I am getting there! It all started around the beginning of May. I chose the spot south of the machine shed where the barn further to the south does not shade it during the day. It should get plenty of sunlight. I sprayed the whole lot with glyphosate to kill off the weeds. Here’s what it looked like one week after spraying – the weeds are starting to yellow.
I let it sit another week and it turned into this:
I tried to till it up with my walk behind tiller, but the ground was so hard. One row took me over an hour.
Fortunately my good friend Mark lent me his pull behind tiller. It did a bang up job of breaking up the dirt.
We’ve had a few weeks without rain and the ground was so dry. I decided to water the newly tilled plot for a few hours. I let it sit overnight and then did a couple more passes over it with the tiller. Worked like a charm. The soil was loose and ready for planting. I spent the good part of a whole day planting seeds. I should finish it up by the end of the week. I’ll update with new photos after I get it all planted.
2012 Garden in the City
April 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Although we had a very early spring and I had the garden tilled weeks ago, a cold snap and rain has kept me from getting thing planted. I finally got around to getting my cold sowing seeds in. Here’s a map of the garden.
