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Saturday, March 3, 2012

1st Big Planting Day!

Well we have had a nice day today getting a nice bit of plantings done, also we are dealing with a minor animal issue. Now we had a couple of Polish crested roosters that we left to free range once we discovered they were roosters as, one... they are scrawny. Also they are very cute looking, now just recently we received two more roosters from a woman who needed to get rid of them. So we set them lose with the other two.


Well that worked for a bit, but this morning we discovered a small problem. They are eating our seed potatoes, well the ones we had already planted anyway. We have decided they need to be dinner guests. We have managed at this point to catch the two newer ones, the Polishes seem to be a tad harder to locate. Yes I said locate, we had an issue catching them in day light hours so we waited for “roosting time”. WE have not been able to find yet where the Polishes are sleeping tonight.


OK, not onto my plantings for today; we planted the 2nd half of our potato plot (11lbs worth). I have planted 6 yard stick long rows of yellow onions and 1 of red. Planted some Swiss chard Fordhook Giant. Hot Peppers; two types... Lemon Drop, Craig's Giant (Jalapeno) in two peat pots each. 12 peat pots each of Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge, & Amish Paste; tomatoes. I also planted 3 peat pots with Purple Beauty sweet pepper. Then plant wise I put in four Pacman broccoli, and 6 of my cabbage plants that I started myself.


I picked up yesterday some fish emulsion and gave each transplant a small feeding after planting, I am hoping it will help them; I've never used it before. My soil this year is wonderful compared to last year. The “bed” I have my cabbages, etc... have the remains of last year's soil, overwintered straw blanket, my finished compost, and chicken manure from our coop. Now that chicken manure of course has some straw in it. I was able to gently push the extra onion sets straight down in the soil, that makes me a very happy camper.


Our potato bed is in a new spot this year and is much larger, the plan is; because the straw did a nice job as a “late compost pile after potatoes. We had noticed when we dug out the “finished” compost that the ground under the “pile” was very pretty looking that it might be a nice way to “clear” land for future garden spaces. We will see if this idea works or not.


I am for the first time going to be growing eggplants, and I hope they grow good. I have three very small started plants and I hope they grow bigger before transplant time. I picked a drought resistant variety, I'll list the name later as I have to look it up. The plan for the tomatoes this year is to only grow them in pots in different locations. Three plants per “pot”, and we are going to use straw then a mixed soil over that with some oyster shell mixed into as the soil for them. After the plants are spent I'll remove the plants and move the soil into the garden beds. Then the following year(s) we will just redo the pots.


Well that's it for right about now, the only other thing on the “near” horizion for me is that we have a very good possibility of getting our fruit trees and berry plants this year if every thing goes the way we are planning.


Happy Planting Folks!


Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

2 comments:

  1. It sounds like you all are really revving up for spring. Chicken manure is like gold on this farm so your dirt must be lookin' good. I can't wait to hear what you all do next.

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  2. I can't wait to be able to plant outside! We still need to wait until April to plant potatoes- or anything else for that matter- in the garden. But I've got some little seedlings up under my grow lights in the back. I can't wait.
    Judy

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