New Year, New....um, well...

I started my garden planning today. Thanks to my friend Jamie Flarity, I found what appears to be an awesome seed catalog and ordered that bad boy this morning. I have most of what I need already, but I'm looking for a specific variety of swiss chard and a couple other things. By starting this early, I'm hoping to be able to grow more from seed this year, but we'll have to see how it goes. For the past couple years, I have bought about half of what I've grown as plants and I'm really hoping to cut that back to about twenty percent. I would like to buy tomato plants, and nothing else, so we'll have to see.

I'm expanding the garden by two rows this year to make room for this really cool beam and pole system that my neighbor, Mr. Harding gave me after this past year. It's about sixty feet long and is used to grow pole beans on. Mr. Harding's wife, Ruby, passed away a couple weeks ago, so I think that I will be pretty alone on the garden front this year. I've always bemoaned that fact that he was able to produce so much more that I have ever been able to, but he has become a great friend, and I hate to see him go through this. They had been married for over sixty years and were quite the couple.

I'll figure out how to post an excel spreadsheet on here eventually and give you the 2012 layout as soon as I can. Party.

Music that has been getting me through the winter:

Ryan Adams-Ashes & Fire
The Decemberists-The King is Dead
The Head and the Heart-Self Titled
Jay-Z & Kanye-The Throne
Washed Out-Within, Without

Apologies, apologies

Man, I suck at this. Sorry.

Anyways....holy toledo tomatoes! I have been turning hundreds of tomatoes into jars of everything! Last week I made eight jars of roasted tomato and jalepeno salsa (thanks Rick Bayless) and today I've been making chipotle salsa and charred poblano chili barbeque sauce. Oh, yeah, I'll have some pics for ya.

The Next Step

Thanks to my awesomely patient wife for continuing to indulge whatever weird tangent I happen to embark upon! This being said, I got me some fruit trees! Yeehaw! I went to Lowe's this evening, and got the mother of all employee discounts. I picked up four semi-dwarf fruit trees tonight. I picked up two varieties of plum trees and two varieties of peach trees. I'm planning on putting two alongside the driveway and two in the back yard, parallel to the garden, but out of the way. In case it wasn't obvious, I'm pretty pumped. I absolutely love plums, and Kaylin loves peaches, so it definitely works out. There is only one small problem. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Oh, sweet and glorious interweb, please help thy humble and faithful servant! The few things that I could remember, I've already put in place. Thanks to the memory of college classes taken a decade ago, I did buy different varieties to help with pollination. So, there's that. I plan on digging really big holes, tying supports and finding decent organic fertilization and pest control options in the next couple days. Luck? Yeah, I'll take some of that.

On the garden front, I've got some pretty great early signs of success. Over half of my tomato plants have little green tomatoes growing on them, several little yellow squashes are beginning to develop, there are several yellow bush beans beginning to form, and jalapenos seem to be getting an early start as well.

Several days ago I cleaned out the weeds and grass along the back fence line, tilled a little earth, and put in about forty sunflowers. I have no idea whether these guys will work out, but the thought of ten foot tall sunflowers along the back of the garden is almost as good as the real thing. I dropped in a few more cucumber and squash seeds today to try and get a second run of those plants to come up. They should be about six weeks behind the plants I've already put in, so hopefully I'll be able to continue to have production through the summer. I plan on putting more in on July first to try and get a last gasp in early fall.

I've been listening to a ton of Bob Dylan lately, so I won't bore you with all that goodishness. Seems like a Bob word, doesn't it?

Behold, the power of VEGETABLES!

After hours upon hours on my hands and knees plucking, picking, scraping, hoeing, cursing, and overheating, vegetables numbers one and two appeared and I finally breathed a sigh of relief. I have my first tomato and jalapeno forming. Oh, yeah, let the bounty commence! I really haven't had a chance to go through and list the veggies (and fruit!) that I'm growing this year, so here we go....

On the right I have yellow bush beans, which are like regular green beans, just yellow. I grew them last year, and they were better producers than the green beans that grew on vines so I decided to grow even more of them. I have alternated them with other beans that I put in a little later that haven't grown up yet, but have just started to show. They are Blue Lake Bush Beans, and I got them from a friend, so we'll just have to see. I have about twelve plants of yellow and eight of the blue lake. On the left are my yellow squash plants, which have really developed nicely. Squash is probably the easiest thing to get going, but one of the hardest to keep going. Squash beetles and slugs can really tear up a crop, so I plan on keeping a close eye on them. I have extra seeds to plant in case they rip through these, but I'm hoping I won't have to use them. The empty space in front of the squash plants is for zucchini, which didn't come up. I replanted a little over a week ago, and I'm really hoping they come up soon. If they don't appear, I can always plant some more squash, but I really want some zucchini.

On the left of the picture, are the completely massive amounts of tomatoes that I plan on growing-thirteen plants. I have pretty big salsa plans for this year, so I'm going to need the tomatoes to back 'em up. I'm growing several different varieties, including my favorite from last year, German Queen. They are absolutely huge, beautiful, and perfect for a slice the size of a steak. I put them on sandwiches all summer long last year, and can't wait to knock it out again. I'm also growing Atchison and Pink Lady which are both heirloom varieties, and Better Boy, which is a hybrid but makes great salsa because of their thick flesh and low water content. On the right hand side of the picture between the squash and tomato plants are some of my peppers. There are two poblano, two jalapeno, and two green bell pepper plants. I have marigolds planted between each plant to help deter pests, but I'll just have to wait and see how that goes. On another side of the garden I have six more green bell pepper plants, so I should be more than set there.

The back half of the garden is much more of a work in progress. Some things are coming along nicely, especially the left row. In it are six black bean bushes, nine sweet potato plants, and two hills of watermelon. This is my first time growing all of these, but they have all come up nicely so far. I am fighting the never ending, epic battle between myself and bermuda grass, and I swear to all that I holy that I will be triumphant. Stupid grass. As you can see, it's attempting to take over the upper right hand side of my garden. I had originally planned to save that space for some late plantings, but the god of spite had other things in mind. Stupid grass. On the row next to the plants that you see, I recently planted several herbs, including cumin, cilantro, basil, rosemary, sage, and oregano. I also planted acorn squash and cantelope in the back half of that row. The row next to that has.......pumpkins! I have no idea whether I will actually be able to get them to grow or not, but I really wanted to do something a little different, so I just went for it. If they come up, then I will have to figure out what to do with them, but I don't want to start thinking about it until they do. Ok, I'm thinking a little. Ok, a lot. Fresh pumpkin pie? Yes, please.

Cucumbers on the left, with some grass creepin' in. I decided to grow the cucumbers where I had my green beans last year. I'm hoping that if I can get them to grow up the fencing, and off the ground, they will be able to stay cleaner and more pest free. So far I have lots of blossoms, but the plants aren't quite big enough to start training them up the trellis. If they start to spread along the ground more than I would like, I have several bamboo poles to use to get them headed in the right direction. The grass you see above the plants is part of a little project of mine. I read in a magazine that you can fry your grass by laying plastic sheeting over it and letting the sun burn it up. I have had the sheeting in place for two weeks, but the grass just seems to keep growing. I think I'll have to try some black plastic sheeting, but I really wanted to give what I had a shot before having to buy something else. Cheap bastard, I know.



Hurley is convinced that he can help. Keeping him out of the garden has been a chore in and of itself. He has been pretty awesome about it overall, but when a bird lands in the garden he just about loses his mind. He will run up and down the side of it, barking his head off. He's an absolute blast to watch. Good dog.

What I've been listening to:

Dave Matthews Band-Groo Grux King
The Grateful Dead-American Beauty
Neil Young-Harvest
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-Wildflowers
Bob Dylan-The Bootleg Series, Rolling Thunder Revue

Don't laugh, don't judge, it's just been that kind of week.

I Get It.

I highly recommend. Highly. It's called "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" and I was pretty surprised to watch a documentary that I found both moving and fascinating. It tells the story of a man that grew up in the fifties and sixties, lost his farm in the early eighties, only to turn it all around again and become one of the first CSA farms in the country in the early nineties. I got it. I really did. The fascination with the land, the obsession with doing something that many would think completely foolish, and the emotional ups and downs. I saw this a few days ago and really haven't been able to get it out of my head. It starts out a little weird, but stick with it. It's worth it.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/realdirt/

If you have Netflix, it is a title that you can watch instantly, or through mail. I hope you love it.

Ok, ok, ok.

This update is for those scores upon scores of people that have been begging me for any semblance of an update. I mean, two. Two people, not two scores of people. That would have been forty. It's not forty. It's two. So anyway....

I have gone all out again this year, and things are rolling right along. I already have a pretty consistent sunburn on my back and shoulders, I really hate bermuda grass, and my ninety year old neighbors are looking better than me. Some things never change, I guess. My neighbors, the Hardings, were really great to me this year. Mr. Harding let me use his tiller for my garden, which was completely unexpected and incredibly gracious. I guess I earned my chip last year, and I have been helping them out whenever I can, so they repaid the favors and then some. Absolutely great people.

I have put in about 700 square feet of garden space this year, which is a little more than half the space I used last year. I kept it smaller for a bunch of different reasons, but a couple of them were pretty big. I learned last year that too much space is too much work. If I had been attempting to feed a family of ten, I think that I would have had just about the right amount of space. I produced so much more than I actually needed that I couldn't even eat it all. When the tornadoes hit and knocked out our power for about five days, I lost everything that I had in the deep freezer, including a ton of extra veggies that I wasn't even sure I was going to eat. I lost ten one gallon freezer bags of okra, ten of green/yellow beans, about 150 bell peppers, and enough habaneros to supply cantina laredo for a year. The other big reason I cut the size of the garden down was to focus on the areas of the garden that get the most sun. I found that the half I cut out really only got about three or four hours of direct sunlight a day, which was not nearly enough to produce anything but cold weather crops like spinach, chard, bok choi, etc. I can always put that stuff in later in the summer after some of my current crops have died out.

I have a ton more to talk about, including everything that I've planted, so I'll be sure and get some pictures up next time.

What I've been listening to:

Esperanza Spalding-Chamber Music Society
JBM-Not Even In July
Tallest Man on Earth-The Great Hunt
Roman Candle-Oh Tall Tree In The Air
The Seedy Seeds-Count the Days
Beastie Boys-Hot Sauce Committee Part 2

Springing Up All Around Us!

It has been absolutely gorgeous here in northern Alabama this week, and so I started to get busy a little earlier than I had planned. I mean, I've been staring at the garden location for hours now. I know that statement sounds kinda off, but when I start to think about the huge amount of day to day work that was required last year, I start to get second thoughts about going again this year. Between the constant grass and weed pulling, I rarely found enough time to just sit on the patio and enjoy the process. I figured out that I spent about twenty to thirty hours a week in the garden, and of course that was on top of a forty hour a week job. Excuse me if I come off as a little whiny and pensive, but that's just how I'm feeling today.

Luckily, I wasn't feeling that way a week or so ago, and so I started growing some of my plants from seed! I had a few leftover peat planters so, I went ahead and began growing sixteen tomato plants from seed. Yup, I said sixteen. They were the first veggies that I ran out of this winter, so I'm determined to grow a lot more than last year. I have really missed being able to walk a few feet and pick fresh dill and basil to toss in my dinner, so I went ahead and started those guys out with a little rosemary and oregano.

I have gone ahead and taken a week's vacation for this coming week to be able to till up those 1600 square feet in the backyard and begin this year's folly. Believe it or not, I really am looking forward to being outside, having dirt under my fingernails and ruining another few pairs of white socks. Oh, and I'm really looking forward to plucking a tomato off a vine and eating it while it's still warm from the sun! Definitely one of the best experiences one can have. If you've missed out, well......get started you lazy bastard! Go to Lowe's, spend $2.50 on a tomato plant, dig a hole about nine inches deep, and toss that thing in it. Water every couple of days, and get down on what I'm talking about in a couple months. Stop making excuses. This simple act is going to make you feel better about your life, make the world a better place, and ensure that we all have a part in what we eat. If you've got anything growing on, I'd love to know about it! If you want to borrow a shovel, just ask. I've got about five. Have fun, and I'll see you in a couple days-sunburned, sore back, and blisters on my hands. Woohoo!

Just to change it up...

What I've been reading-

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes
House of Mist by Maria Luisa Gombal
The Great Dream of Heaven by Sam Shepard
True Grit by Clinton Portis
Angels by Denis Johnson