Garden Friday On Hiatus

 

 

 

 

Garden Friday is on hiatus for one more week.

I'll be back home later today,

so we'll have it up and running again next Friday.

Until then,

may your garden be blessed with abundance.

"A" Frame Trellis

A few weeks back, I got the idea to find some space 

for some runner beans and cucumbers.

With no more space in the raised beds,

I decided to go UP.

A neighbor had given me some bamboo,

so I fashioned an "A" frame for the beans and cukes to climb.

With just a few materials, I was ready to go.

This was a one-woman project,

although it would be easier with two willing hands.

A sawzall, tape measure, scissors, hammer, baling twine or jute,

and some conduit are all that are needed, along with the bamboo poles.

I first decided where I wanted the frame.

The garden has full sun most of the day,

so I just tucked it in next to one of the raised beds.

After measuring out the distance between the end supports,

I hammered in some pieces of conduit,

which were cut in half to 2 1/2 feet.

The length of the frame will be determined by the length 

of your longest bamboo pole.

The bamboo was slipped over the conduit and tilted toward the center,

so that it could be attached together.

Some of the bamboo was plugged up at the end,

so I just hammered the material out.

Here are the two pieces of conduit in the foreground.

I laid the longest piece of bamboo across the ground

so that I would know where to install the conduit on the other end.

The piece that spans the top should overlap on the sides.

The two end poles are crossed (like an "A") and the baling twine is used

to bind them together.

The longest bamboo pole is then laid across the top between the crossed poles.

Baling twine was again used, this time

tied from the horizontal pole,

to offer a place for the beans and cukes to climb.

Soil was added at the bottom, and the seeds were sown.

I love how much growing space this gives me,

without taking up much room.

I can see another one of these in our future.

Now, let's get growing!

 

Garden Friday or Not

 

While I’m away from the homestead pup sitting,

I don’t have access to a computer,

and I can’t figure out how to post on my tablet,

so Garden Friday will be taking the week off.

I hope to someday share this lovely veg garden with you.

Hint:  I work here!

"Spooning" Onions

 

newly planted onions

 

This was the first year that I grew onions in earnest.

There's always a learning curve when trying new ventures,

and I'm just beginning to find out what's entailed with growing this crop.

It doesn't require much, but it's satisfying knowing that should I master this crop,

I'll never need to buy onions again.

 

These are the Walla-Walla variety,

which were acquired from Sow True seeds. 

They are a sweet Spanish variety that can be planted

either in the late summer for a June harvest,

or in the early spring for a late summer harvest.

I enjoy growing year-round, so this variety fit right in

with my plans to overwinter a few crops like garlic and leek. 

These seeds were planted in early fall and pretty much

left to their own devices.

I mulched over them with our own leaf mulch

and just checked on them once in a while to see how they were doing.

I didn't know about spooning, 

which helps the onions grow better.

 

 I've been watching a vlog called,

That 1870's Homestead,

where Rachel talked about

spooning onions.

(Click on the link above to watch her video).

It's a new concept to me, but she swears by it.

Instead of allowing the mulch and soil to envelope the bulb,

the soil around the base of the bulb is moved aside,

so that only the roots are buried.

(It has been said that a spoon was used to do this.)

This is supposed to promote a larger bulb.

 

Although I'm a little late to the party this year,

(what else is new?),

I went ahead and spooned the onions ,

and will keep this in mind for next season when I start anew.

It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference

compared to this year.

 

 

Many of the onions look just fine already,

and I'll harvest the larger ones for processing,

but it will be fun to see if the spooning

will make any difference by the end of the month,

when I will need to harvest them all.

This onion is supposed to be good for storing

for just a few months,

so I may need to research another variety that can be stored long term.

Do you have any experience with onions for long term storage?

Have you heard of spooning?

Garden Friday

 

 

Welcome back to Garden Friday,

where we share what's happening on our homestead.

 

Don't you just love echinacea?

This summertime bloomer just fills my heart with joy. 

Here, it happily skirts one of our crape myrtle trees.

 

The front porch is bursting with blooms

including Black-eyed Susans, marigolds, milkweed,

salvia, Shasta daisies, and even some leftover pansies from winter.

We have volunteer milkweed each year springing up in this bed,

and this year I potted some up to give away on Craig's List and Next Door.

 

The pollinator bed near the veg garden is filling in.

The irrigation really makes the difference here.

All of these plants are drought tolerant,

but by keeping them well watered, they really thrive.

There are several sunflowers beginning to make their ascent into the sky.

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A friend gave me some cardboard, so I used it

to line the sides of the chook run.

It will be covered with mulch, so that weeding won't be necessary.

 A neighbor gave me some bamboo he wasn't using,

and I fashioned an "A-frame" on which to trellis the beans and cucumbers.

The vertical element makes the garden more interesting, no?

 

The strawberries have now been hooked into the irrigation.

They have not produced fruit for a couple of weeks,

so I'm not really sure what's going on with them.

 

These scapes were found on some of the leek and onions,

so I cut them off to use in cooking.

Until I saw these, I had only heard of garlic scapes.

All being in the allium family, I guess it makes perfect sense.

 

Speaking of garlic,

the yearly harvesting of this crop took place earlier in the week.

Although we had a good amount of bulbs,

the size of the bulbs was fairly disappointing.

 

This is what our garlic usually looks like at harvest time,

but we only had a dozen or so that reached this size.

Most are smaller bulbs, and one good thing about that

is that they are easier to fit into the garlic press.

We're happy to have another year's worth of garlic curing in the garage.

 

The sweet potatoes got planted as soon as the garlic was pulled up.

We amended with some compost and worm castings,

then tucked our home-grown slips into the soil.

Having started early enough in the season led to plenty of slips to plant.

 

Just for fun, I also planted two of the potatoes from which we grew the slips

into the raised bed.

It'll be interesting to see how well they grow.

These were organic sweet potatoes I had gotten from our Misfits order.

 

Another two whole potatoes were planted in buckets

right next to the sweet potato bed.

Another experiment, because, why not?

 

The melons are looking mighty sad.

They seem a bit anemic, although they have been fed once already.

This is one crop I try to grow every year, without much success.

I'm not giving up though.

This may be my focus crop next summer.

Each year, I pick a crop to really dial in and learn how to grow well.

 

The onions are looking better.

A few weeks ago I was noting that they had not formed large bulbous shapes,

and this week it seems that they're coming along.

I also learned a secret that I'll share next week

about how to get them to really plump up.

 

We'd gone to the IGA near our house to pick up a few things

and I took the opportunity to purchase a couple of bags of this mix.

I had seen it the last time we were there and thought I'd give it a try.

It's half compost and half cow manure.

I thought it would be the perfect material to try in my flower beds.

 

What great timing on our part!

The day we went, I spent some time browsing their plant selection.

How could I not?

I was hoping to pick up a few things to add to my flower beds.

When I went to check out,

I asked if the plants were discounted,

as they looked a bit peaked.

Unbelievably, the gentleman gave me the whole kit-n-kaboodle!

I sure wished I had filled my cart to the top!

 

 Here's what some of them looked like 

when I took them out of their pots.

Poor souls.

They should be mighty happy once they get to spread out a bit.

I simply cut the bottoms and teased the roots.

 

 

I planted out three bushel baskets with my treasures.

Here are the materials I used to fill up the baskets.

 

There were enough plants left over from my haul

that I was able to add a few more to several flower beds.

A little goes a long way!

 The volunteer sunflowers (thank you, Mr. Squirrel!)

along the chook run are sizing up, despite the lack of rain.

With any luck at all, we are supposed to be deluged later on

(I'm writing this on Thursday afternoon).

These plants will not only add a bit of cover and shade,

but will supply the chooks with tasty sunflower seeds

(if Mr. Squirrel will share).

 

 

Me and this sweet boy will be spending the next little while together.

I love taking care of him while his folks are away.

I will make an effort to write up a few posts

for the time I'm away from home,

but I make no promises.

If things are quiet here,

we're busy playing.
 

Here's hoping your garden is blessed with just what it needs.