The BT Garden Thread (Page 5)

Doh.. I forgot about herbs and those two are my favorites. I make an herb crusted pork loin that is amazing and the rosemary, basil and thyme lead the charge on that one. 

Wow, Pector, and you garden and cook too?  Ladies, take note.

here is a link to a square foot garden page.

http://www.squarefootgardening.org/

This thread will not fall off the first page:) 

I love home-grown potatoes.  They can take up quite a bit of space, but they are delicious, and my kids love digging for them.  It's kinda like an Easter egg hunt.  I will say the deep purple ones can be a little tricky to find, as they tend to blend in quite well with the soil, but they're so pretty we plant them anyway.

My asparagus is up!  Yay!  And most of the cold stuff I planted last weekend has started to sprout.  Double Yay! 

This is the time of year when the first thing I do after I make coffee (or it's brought to me by my very sweet husband) is go outside to see what grew overnight.  I love walking the garden early in the morning.  What an awesome way to start the day.

So here is my little backyard garden project.  Just some pepper variety, tomatoes, and some eggplant.  Waiting on a little more height before putting the bean underneath.  Just fed them again this morning, so hopefully they spend the week shooting skyward.  One of those boxes in the back is going to have my squash and cucumbers, the rest are just like the two up close.  This is also the first year I've done the drip irrigation thing.  Been working really, really well except we've had so much rain that almost hasn't been needed.

Awesome. We are starting to acclimate our starts so we can plant them this weekend. Our last frost date is Friday and right now the 10 day shows nothing below 48. I'm hoping we can get everything in the ground on Saturday. Some of my colder stuff is finally starting to take off. I'll see if I can't get some pictures tonight.

Mine spent about a week and a half hardening off, with the last three days being mid 70s during the day and low 50s at night.  Two days after I put them in it dropped into the 30s one night and we've been on a roller coaster ever since.  Our last frost date was 4/15, so if we get anything now it'll be a complete freak occurance.  We're looking good now though.  Rest of the week is highs in the 70s and 80s with lows in the 50s.  Maybe we'll get some stability for a brief moment.

This is what I am looking at. 

TodayMay 8

 

80^°F

53^°F

Mostly Sunny

CHANCE OF RAIN:

20%

 

 

ThuMay 9

 

84^°

55^°

Mostly Sunny

CHANCE OF RAIN:

20%

 

FriMay 10

 

86^°

57^°

Sunny

CHANCE OF RAIN:

0%

 

SatMay 11

 

89^°

63^°

Partly Cloudy

CHANCE OF RAIN:

0%

 

SunMay 12

 

92^°

62^°

Partly Cloudy

Mother's Day Forecast

CHANCE OF RAIN:

10%

 

MonMay 13

 

83^°

54^°

Partly Cloudy

CHANCE OF RAIN:

10%

 

TueMay 14

 

74^°

49^°

Sunny

CHANCE OF RAIN:

0%

 

WedMay 15

 

81^°

51^°

Sunny

CHANCE OF RAIN:

0%

 

ThuMay 16

 

80^°

53^°

Partly Cloudy

CHANCE OF RAIN:

0%

 

FriMay 17

 

81^°

53^°

Partly Cloudy

CHANCE OF RAIN:

0%

 

Those beds look sweet! Those plants look nice and big already.  How long of a season do you have with your indeterminate stuff in MS?  Can you guys harvest tomatoes for five months?  If so, I might have to get over my snake fear and head south;)

I don't have drip hoses set up, but I really, really want to do that this year.  It would make our lives so much easier and our garden so much more productive. 

We catch all of our water for our house off our roof (11K gallons of storage and water filter to .2 microns + UV for our potable), and last year with our drought we just couldn't water our garden.  At the end of the summer we put in a 4 acre pond which will take the pressure off, so we can water the garden without sweating it, if necessary--whew. 

This year has proved to be pretty wet for us so far too. Between tri training and gardening I'm weather obsessed.

Yes--please do join!  I can't believe there aren't more people posting on this thread.

You sound like you're very productive.  Gone for two months?  That would be hard, but I bet it is something good!

How old are your kids?  They'll come around.  It might take them leaving home and being forced to buy/eat tasteless tomatoes, but they'll learn:)

Here are the promised pictures.

Here are my apple tree, still tiny.

Here is my garlic, it's going crazy.

Here are some of my herbs including thyme, oregano, sage.

I had to move the mint into planters, it was going crazy.

Here is most of my cold crops, they've really taken off the last week. I have peas, carrots, broccoli, kale and some spinach/lettuce in here.

Dang, sounds like you have the set up I'm aiming for down the road.

Nice pics Josh.  You've got some really good stuff going on there. 

The water catchment has been awesome.  There are a few things I would do differently if I did it again, but all in all, it's been a "win".  The water tastes SO good.  My kids always want us to take our water when we go somewhere because they don't like the taste of anyone's elses ;)

You look pretty young (your pic).  I applaud you for being tuned into this kind of stuff and making it a priority.  It's fun stuff to learn about and it's very rewarding.

My husband and I got married in jeans and t-shirts with a couple of witnesses and the whole thing cost less than $300.  We bought land instead of having a big wedding.  A few years after buying the land we decided to move out there, and started planning our home.  We ended up moving the posts and beams of a timber frame of a barn and putting it on a new ICF foundation. 

We did a bunch of other "green" and sustainability minded stuff with the build. If you're curious, you can check out that stuff here: http://www.taprootnatureexperience.org/app/TaprootFarm/TheHouse/tabid/103/Default.aspx Some of it has been great, some of it has been a borderline nightmare, some of it just plain wasn't worth the cost and will never have a ROI that makes sense. It was an amazing learning experience.

It is so peaceful out here.  Our kids can go outside and play independently and I don't worry about them, and they are getting an education in the natural world that would be almost impossible if we lived in town.  Getting to know a piece of land intimately is a wonderful gift, and I feel very fortunate that it is a part of my life.

That's awesome. Right now the biggest obstacle to me moving out of town onto my own property is money. Idaho doesn't have a ton of jobs that pay well. I don't make that much relative to the rest of the country but in Idaho I make almost double the average wage. I'd have to move out about at least an hour from my job to get some land. That wouldn't be very good because then I wouldn't have time to work on my farm. I have hopes someday of replacing the outside ales guy who works in the farm area where I'd like to move and then I'd just be traveling around where I would like to move. Fortunately I'm still young I suppose (28 for the record).

It's possible.  I've harvested in Mid May before and had some plants still kicking into September.  Most of the time it's August that gets in the way and just fries everything I've got.  A few times I've been able to sneak in some late bush bean and squash.  I just rework the soil after pulling the peppers and tomatoes and plant some seeds.  If the weather cooperates and gets out of the high nineties in September, I get fresh squash and green beans in October.  If you like eggplant, I actually was harvesting some black beauty in early November last year.  Shoot, if you have the ability to start seed in July, you can even plant late bell peppers and tomato.  So we really have two warm growing seasons.

Since we're looking to move in a year, I'm not going to put in a rain water system, but I've got the plans laid out for when we do!