Garden 2024 Upate #6

Update on the 2024 garden progress. 

Sweet peppers will be used for roasting, freezing & freeze drying for soups & dips. 

Chives & Cherry Tomatoes

Pickling Cucumbers

Volunteer Hibiscus Plant 

The view from the lawn swing after a long day gardening 💖

Sitting alongside a crackling fire at the end of the day is a refreshment I can't recommend enough.

Take a moment. Praise God. Enjoy the fruit of your labor. 

My Urban Homestead 💖 Food Forest

The goal: fresh, organically grown food available in every square foot in the almost 1200 square foot garden space. I'm very close to that goal now so here is what's available in this small area: 

blackberries, strawberries, grapes, sweet potatoes, carrots, peppers, green beans, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, plums & apples. 

My first ever, 4 leaf clover. 😊

Yukon Gold potatoes

Bloomerang Lilac Bush

Hardneck Garlic in the DIY window well raised bed

I hope you've been blessed and encouraged by what you've seen here. 

Please feel free to leave a comment with any gardening questions you may have!

Garden 2024 Update #5

As usual this time of year, time gets away from me. There's so many things to get ready for another growing season and that keeps me plenty busy.  Here's some fun pics to update on what's been going on in the garden since the last update.

The View From the Deck. I take this same shot all year long in all different seasons to show how quickly things change out there!  You can't see them all yet, but there are multiple things growing here. Sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, carrots, runner beans, Concord grapes, strawberries, plums, apples, blackberries and garlic.  In just a few short weeks this will all look completely different as I get my seedlings out there and what's already there begins to get bushy. The raised beds here will have a variety of peppers and tomatoes planted very soon. 

Honey Crisp Apple blossoms

Italian Prune blossoms - and the old farmer's tale (sort of like an old wives tale) says: 

when your plum trees blossom (not apple blossoms or peach blossoms, it must be the plum), winter is over and it's safe to plant out your garden.  I don't know how true it is, but the plum tree bloomed and there isn't a single frost in the 14 day forecast.  Looks like the rest of the garden will be going out real soon!

Forget Me Nots

Chives

Rhubarb

Concord Grape bud (first year growing these, I'm so excited to have my own grapes!)

I bought this fire pit for this exact reason. It did not disappoint! 😀

The view from my chair after a long day of work in the garden.  

When I say I have a "wee garden plot" I really do mean it.  It's roughly 1200 square feet of space to work with so I've creatively used every space I can to make it a productive piece of land. In small spaces like this, vertical growing comes in very handy! I use what's commonly called cattle panel trellising, even though they're not officially cattle panels, they're 3.5' x 7' galvanized steel mesh panels commonly used for concrete foundations, cable tied to standard t-posts. All my grapes, beans, blackberries and cucumbers are vertically trellised this way to make the best use of the space. 

Sweet Potatoes bordering the grape trellis

My executive garden assistant, Ed

The curved branch was demanding a lovely decoration

A work in progress!  It'll look a lot different when the Dutch clover is planted and the wildflowers begin to bloom.  All the local wildlife drink from the pond so the goal was to make it even more accessable to them, as well as finally making it a pretty place to sit and enjoy time in the garden.

Garden 2024 Update #4

For many, spring is a very fast moving, things-are-changing-quickly season if you're keeping a productive garden.  Lots of work to be done both indoors and outdoors.  Plus, if you're like me, you've got all sorts of big ideas and big plans for changes and additions to your space, so that's just work on top of the work. 

This year, I'm planting the same amount (more or less) in my staple garden, but I'm not taking as much time to invest in different varieties of things, or what I usually call the "experiment garden bed" as I've done before. Instead, and it's really long overdue, this year my plan is to work hard at beautifying the space.   

Over the last several years I really haven't focused on that aspect of the garden as much as I'd like to, so this is the year to make it as lovely, comfortable and inviting as I know how to make it.  Anyway, that's the goal.  So here's a few shots over the last few days for a mostly pictorial update as things are getting busy out there!

The 6x6 wooden post the mint is sitting on: recycled old clothesline post. 

Thrifted metal window wells turned into a raised bed.

Yukon Gold potatoes in those eight grow bags. Please excuse the wheelbarrow handles 😁

Russet Potatoes in these two grow bags on the left. First year growing them so that's exciting! 

The first 4 white pots are different mints used for tea, then Lemon Balm and Yarrow at the end. 

My raspberry bush relocated for the 3rd time.  Now it's between the Peonies, permanently. 

A Bloomerang Lilac I've had for almost a year now. Easily doubled in size if not more. 

Meet Mr. Ed.  He always follows me around in the garden. 

He just turned 8 years old a few days ago. Happy birthday Mr. Ed! 

A new, faux raised bed/border box. It sits flush with the deck without being attached. 

Future home to rhubarb & strawberries.

I really can't ask for a better view. I mean, wow! 

Garden 2024 Update #3

 I've been BUSY outside, so here's how things are looking nearly mid-April.

We've had the most unseasonably mild weather, and that's allowed for a lot of work out in the garden, getting things ready for spring planting.  It's probably one of my most favorite times of year.  For the first time, after a long winter indoors, being able to walk barefoot through the garden, hearing the birds singing, and the sound of a warm spring breeze rustling through the trees.  There's really no other feeling quite like it.  

I've been doing a little tidying up, and moving furniture around in the back corner of the garden where the pond is.  I've moved grandpa's bench to the Honeysuckle tree and will be doing some landscaping around that area with some wild flowers and mulch, just to tidy it up a little. No pics yet, since it looks pretty rough, but those will come soon.  I added these cute solar lights in the Lilac bush, and will be hanging solar string lights in a canopy from the fence to the garden cottage.  These red Muskoka chairs will be replaced hopefully sometime soon. My goal in this part of the garden is to make it as inviting and cozy as possible, so I'm hoping for some lovely, thrifted bistro chairs here, with nice waterproof cushions.  I love  having multiple places in the garden to just sit for a moment with a cup of coffee in the morning, or a glass of wine in the evening, and simply enjoy being there, in the beautiful moment.  

My garlic is coming in nicely, with a 99% success rate.  20 cloves planted, and 19 have come in.  This location for my garlic was supposed to be a temporary experiment to see how it did in this bed, but it's become rather convenient and now this is the 3rd year I've grown it here.  It's planted on Halloween then harvested usually by Canada Day or the 4th of July.  After the garlic is harvested in July, beets will take their place. I have to say that now I fully understand the popularity of those stainless steel raised beds that are up to 3 feet tall.  Being able to amend the soil, plant the seeds, water and harvest without ever bending over or getting down on my knees is rather enjoyable.  These kinds of raised beds would be perfect for anyone with mobility issues where bending or kneeling may be difficult. 

These chives I planted very last minute last growing season, and I wasn't sure if they'd survive winter at all but sure enough, they survived just fine and have made a sweet comeback this spring.  I didn't get a chance to use them much last year but I did manage to snip a few here and there for salads & baked potato toppings.  Very pleased to see them come back so strong, and so early.

My indoor growing space has been wonderfully productive. 

Nothing fancy at all, just a couple of wire shelves, a few heat mats and some grow lights. Growing here are strawberries, onions, ground cherries, tomatoes, rhubarb, lemon balm, peppers, green onions, cucumbers & potatoes.  My carrots have already been planted, and the onions will be going out as soon as this latest rainy weather system passes by, this weekend. 

A really fun new addition to the garden this year is a DIY Feeder Cam station I set up with a spare Ring spotlight cam.  A couple of years ago the lights stopped working on the camera, so instead of using it to capture the night time wild life, I'm now using it to record all the birds and other critters that venture into the yard and dine at the feeder. I've made over my old Youtube channel thats been sitting dormant since 2006 and now it will be home to my Feeder Cam videos.  Brand new content so not a lot there yet but there's a lot being edited & prepped for uploading soon.  My hope with this fun little hobby is to create enjoyable videos that are also educational. You can see that here, at Barefoot in the Garden.

I hope I've encouraged you to get out there, and get planting your own garden! 

Garden 2024 Update #2

I'm doing these garden updates mostly for myself to keep accurate records of what worked, what didn't, and why. 

I thought it would be fun to make them public, in hopes of inspiring or encouraging anyone else out there attempting to grow their own. 

I accidentally deleted the actual #2 update. Some pics from the now-deleted last update:

Since my last update I'm thankful to say overall, things are still going really well.

Seen in the pics above are sweet potato slips at about 30 days after clipping off the sweet potatoes, and there were roughly 18 of them.  Things have changed a lot since then. 

The yellow onions are still doing really well.  So far, after many years in a row of yellow onion failure (in one form or another) I'm delighted to say this is the best they've ever done for me. Since my growing philosophy is simply to grow what you eat, and this household goes through a lot of onions every year, this has been my most challenging crop. I'm hopeful this is the breakthrough year where it all goes well!  I greatly overplanted with the hopes they'd all do well, so whatever I don't use will be going to my daughter and son-in-law's garden to feed their family. 

For the last several years I've gone between a growing station in my dining room to a cheap plastic/aluminum greenhouse on my deck. I loved the greenhouse (and it held up impressively well, but wasn't designed for the harsh, southern Ontario winters)  but it was too much work to dismantle & rebuild every year. This is my set-up now in an almost 0% traffic location of my laundry room.  It really didn't take much to re-imagine the space, move a couple of things and create a very convenient indoor, temperature & light controlled grow room for all my seed starting needs.  What's growing here currently is sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes, yellow onions, Alpine strawberries, 3 varieties of tomatoes, 3 varieties of peppers, ground cherries and a pot of lemon balm I planted from seed last spring. 

In a couple more weeks I'll start my zucchini and that will be it for the indoor seed starting this year. One major change is not growing my pickling cucumbers from indoor seelings.  I'll be direct sowing cucumber seed this year, and seeing how that works out over starting them indoors.  

Overall, germination has been really successful except for a couple of things I used older seeds for, that were purchased last spring. That was sort of an experiment to see if year old seeds did as well as recently purchased seeds.  Results: they do not. Lesson learned.  This year I'm also going to be more geared toward seed saving with all my most common crops. 

This is my kitchen window shelf now, where the sweet potato slips live in their jars of water, while they develop their lovely roots.  I've lost an accurate count but after I snipped more off the potatoes today and added them to the jars, there are roughly 60 slips here. One slip will produce roughly 6 sweet potatoes so, assuming each one remains healthy until time to plant ... you're looking at roughly 360 sweet potatoes here. 😲

I don't have nearly enough room prepared for that many slips so all the extras will also be going to my daughter and son-in-law's garden.  One of the coolest things about these slips is that they all came from only 3 medium sized sweet potatoes. If this is something your family eats a lot of, this is a fantastic way to save money on groceries. 

All of my tomatoes are doing well.  I'm growing sauce tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.  Germination rate has been really good for most all of them except the sauce tomatoes.  Only around 50% there, so I re-seeded a few days ago and we'll see how it goes.  If I don't have what I have already planned for by outdoor planting time I'll pick up plants at my local organic greenhouse.  Which is always a dangerous trip since I tend to then come home with extra peppers, some different herbs, and sometimes another fruit tree. 😂

I have experimented enough over the years to know for sure now, that I need to toss out any and all seeds over a year old.  Every time, they've proven to be very low producers in germination rates so it's time to get rid of them.  I'll only be keeping any flower seeds I have, and creating a spot for those in the front yard.  I have some really big ideas of turning my front yard into a Pollinator Paradise, so this will be a fun step this year to see how that goes. 

I hope this blesses you and encourages you to be a good steward of God's awesome gifts.    

  
 

Spring 2024 Garden Update #1

It's the last week of February and here in Southern Ontario what's called the "hardiness zone 6a" there is still plenty of winter, and winter weather left before our estimated "last frost" of the season in mid-May. 

So while winter is what's still happening outside, here's what's happening inside.  Mostly with 2 crops I haven't had much success with!  So this year will be more experimentation to see what works best. 

Sweet Potatoes

Best practice is to start your slips roughly 8-12 weeks before the last frost date, and I grow mine on a heat mat & under a grow light for 12 hours a day. I've never tried growing them in water, but growing them with the sweet potato half covered in rich, well watered soil works well for me. I'll be spacing 4-6 slips in 20 gallon grow bags this year, to see how container growing works in my zone. (I'll be documenting that and sharing how that turns out!) I've experimented with growing in conditioned straw bales before but it was a big disappointment despite sticking with the protocol suggested. Suffice it to say, I ended up with plenty of fantastic mulch!  

So this year it will be grow bags (which I've had great success with, with other garden plants), and a brand new locaton with more direct sun than the last location.  

Yellow Onions

Onions are another crop I've struggled with over the years.  From old seeds that didn't germinate well or were just weak and puny, to squirrels, chipmunks and various other garden visitors, I've struggled to keep my onions growing & thriving.  This year, things look far more hopeful, at least initially.

I planted these seeds on the 8th of January to give them a solid 16 weeks jumpstart to the growing season. I've read that each onion stem should be the size of a pencil by the time you transplant outdoors, but to be honest, mine have never been that large by the time I planted them outdoors. Chopstick size, at best. 😊

In the past I've tried various options such as "over seeding" where you grow a condensed number of seeds in one space and then thin them all out before planting, a condensed row planting, and then single cell planting of literally a single seed in each plug tray.  This year I'm trying a single seed per cell approach as well as a "middle of the road" overseeding with roughly 10-12 seeds per 3 inch pot.  

So far, they're all doing really well.  Almost 100% germination, and the 10-12 overseeded pots are the strongest of all of them.  My goal this year with yellow onions is to be planted in a 16 foot long raised bed along the south facing fence line. Hoping for some beautiful, delicious yellow cooking onions by the end of the season.  I'll also be covering them at least initially, with some format of pest cloth. 

Tapping Maples 

Something brand new to me this year, is Maple tree tapping for turning sap into syrup. I've been researching this subject for about a year, but I only have 1, single Norway maple on my property. 😊  

It's a massive 35+ year old tree , and can easily take 2 taps and I figure... it's there, why not use it? 

I purchased plastic spiles (commonly referred to taps, the black plastic part, seen in this image to the left) that came highly recommended but they've turned out to be a a really big disappointment. The first two broke while tapping into the tree and had to be replaced.  

Tapping maples and collecting sap is weather dependant so it varies from year to year. The season is generally late winter for about 4-6 weeks of good sap flow before the buds on the branches begin to swell, and then the syrup turns "buddy", meaning it takes on an unpleasant starchy flavor of the budding branches and is no longer useful for making sweet syrup. 

My single Norway was tapped last week, and the sap began flowing greatly yesterday, but there are some big issues with leaky tap holes so I'm troubleshooting and will be replacing the plastic spiles with stainless steel spiles.  I'm sure at this point there is the same amount of sap flowing down the trunk of the tree as there is collecting in the sap bucket, so my goal is to seal the leaks, and collect ALL the sap for maple syrup production. With only one tree for tapping, I need all the sap I can get. 

One more fun project that will be updated as the season progresses. 

Wishing for all of you, God would bless the work of your hands that you might grow in abundance for yourself and your family.  💖 

Growing Onions from Seed

In the world of growing your own food, the best advice on the very common question of "what should I grow?" is simple: grow what you eat.  

You'll be saving money on your grocery bill by eliminating those things you're paying for at the grocery store and you'll be producing crops that taste a million times better than anything store bought.  

Now if you live in Alaska and you're always eating pineapple, your expectations will have to be slightly adjusted.  😉

But in a more practical sense, what you're used to eating on a regular basis will often be the kind of food that grows natively in the soil in your area. Thankfully, onions are one of those crops that can be grown in a wide variety of areas (as well as being used in a wide variety of ways) so it should fit nicely into your crops. You'll have to determine based on your location if you should be growing long day, short day or intermediate onions, and that's important for success for where you are.  I'm in zone 6a, and we grow long day onions here.  

This is my 3rd year of attempting to grow my own onions from seed. With most new projects, a period of trial and error comes into play and that is no different here. 

Year 1, the germination rate was brutally dismal.  After a few weeks and zero progress I dumped the entire plan.  I've since concluded that the seeds I had were past their "best by" date and that was most likely the reason for failure.

Year 2, I followed some advice I'd read online about planting, specifically overseeding and thinning out before planting and at first that seemed to work out pretty well. I used a different seed company than the first year and germination was nearly 100%.  They grew fairly well but once I finally transplanted them outside after the last frost date passed, they failed miserably. Strong start, but failure after going into the ground. I'm still not entirely sure why, but I suspect they weren't strong enough to go into the ground, and that heavy squirrel activity had something to do with it.  

This year I decided to do an experiment.  Two different trays of seeds (same seed company) and two different types of planting.  

Method #1:

In Tray #1, I have 36 plug cells, and 1 single seed in each plug. Germination rate for this tray was astounding as I ended up with 33.  So the germination rate this year, for this method, was very impressive. 

Method #2:

In Tray #2 I have 16 pots with 8-12 seeds in each pot.  Germination for this method was equally impressive with almost 100% germination rate for all. I used about half the seeds per pot as I did last year.

The most noticeable thing, is the strength of plants in the individual plug trays, as opposed to the ones in the overseeded pots. As of today, 3 weeks after the seeds were planted, the ones in pots, are much taller, and much stronger than the ones in the individual plug trays.  

I will keep documenting this process as the weeks go by and it will be interesting to see which onion plants do better. My hope, of course, is that the plants will continue to grow well, and then thrive once outside in the native soil.  If squirrel activity remains an issue, I'll be investing in some pest netting to remove that from the eqation. 

As of today, with all the plants, a "haircut" was in order and they were all cut down to roughly 3 inches.  I will keep documenting this Onion from Seed journey to see where it goes and my hope is, it serves to help anyone else on the same self-sufficient journey to growing their own food for their families.