The Blog Farm

Sunday, May 3, 2009

We're almost all in...

We spent the better part of Saturday planting "Our Family Garden." We have almost everything in as far as seeds go. But all our starts are still waiting patiently in greenhouse for Old Man Frost to call it a season.

So far, we have put in the corn, carrots, peas, beans, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, onions, beets, radishes, and the strawberry plants. The onions are starting to shoot up new greens, and the potatoes were just beginning to peak out of the soil yesterday.

We have hundreds starts in the greenhouse, and it's getting crowed in there. I should have shot a picture yesterday. We have broccoli, cauliflower, celery, several tomato varieties, a couple of different cucumbers, and several varieties of peppers.

Oh, and we are going to try baby corn this year. It is supposed to be a fast crop, but a touchy one. You have to keep it far enough away from your other corn to prevent cross-pollination. We put ours about 40 feet apart.

We are also trying the square-foot gardening method with two raised beds this year. It is a interesting concept for growing more crops in a small places. Check out the web site: http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ We bought the book and it is a great read -- especially if you have limited space to work with. I'll get some pictures and blog about that next time.

BTW, as I said in an earlier post, Sunny's dad has a collection of weird farming and gardening tools. Like the one that I posted at the top of this thread. That is a corn seeder. You fill the cylinder with corn, and sink the planter into the soil. Then push the handle toward the foot and mechanism inside the cylinder (similar to a gumball machine) dispenses two or three kernels of corn into your hole. It is a pretty nifty machine when you have a lot seed to plant. We put in ten rows this year. Anyone want to guess how old that is?


2 comments:

  1. Hi Marmite, you might be close, but I suspect it's older. It first belonged to Sunny's mother's grandfather. So I would say at least 100 years old. It's an interesting toll nonetheless.

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