Backyard Garden

The beer is going well, actually. The garden did not do so well in the end of the season. I need to make some big changes to the soil composition for next year. I feel like it was stunted and I am sure it is the soil. I spent the later part of the summer working on what we had planted in my parents garden in Sumner to try to salvage some of the time/energy. We lost all our tomatoes to blight but had about 5-6 pounds of carrots from our garden here. all the squash was hit with fungus as well, but the zucchinis made it pretty far. We lost all the turnips to wire worms, and the rest was stunted. Hope next year is better!

We picked up the stuff to brew a dry stout yesterday from the Hop Shop in Grey. One can of hopped dark malt syrup and 3 pounds of dry malt for a richer brew. We started the brewing process last night after Honora was put to bed. Things went fairly well initially. Sanitized all the buckets and equipment, no boilovers, generally a good time. We filled the brew bucket with the water and wort and took the hydrometer reading to find out how much alcohol might be at the end of the process then walked the 95 bucket into the basement. Once in the basement I noticed the seal around the spigot was leaking. Some one tightened it a bit too much. Someone who thinks you can muscle everything just a little better. I couldn't reach my hand into the bucket to fix things so we had to move everything over to the glass carboy. In the process of moving everything to the carboy the hose we were using detached and began to spill future beer everywhere. We cinched off the flow of beer and began to clean u

Still no new pictures, but all the new seeds we planted July 5th for lettuce, kale, spinach and mesclun salad mix are all coming up. I also planted more carrots and there have been no signs yet, although in their defense they take longer to germinate. The compost is going well, especially since we have had a couple hot days. I need to dig in and check on the worms. Also I need to add more nitrogen to it (probably a layer of grass clippings). The last stretch of weather has been perfect, just enough rain to water everything and just enough sun to keep it all growing. Some of the tomatoes are now flowering and have tiny green tomatoes started. Cucumbers and squash are gong to start spreading out soon which means I need to complete the rellis side of the raised beds so they can vine up. I need to reapply the aphid killer to the tomatoes, it has not wiped them out but so far it has been decreasing the numbers and the tomatoes look better for it. We have a couple of unexpected pests, these

Well, a quick update on pests and the weather. Aphids are decreasing in numbers after hitting them with "Safer Soap" from Paris Farmers Union. An approved for organic garden option that appears to get approval from lots of people. Squirrels have been hiding out and not digging in the garden, probably due to the horrible weeks of rain. Which brings me to our worst "pest" so far, the rain! We lost our melons (there is still one pathetic looking vine, but I think it will not produce melons before it gets too late. We lost our kale, lettuce and spinach to the rain as well, just started getting yellow, it did not mature correctly and got bitter while still small. We tore it all up and stared new this weekend. Hopefully this will get us going into the next weather pattern ans we will get more sun and better looking crops. The tomatoes, basil, and peppers are looking a little weak as well, but the couple days of sun gave them a boost. Cabbages, broccoli, brussel sprout

Here are a few pics of Jen and I removing labels from the bottles we will be using to bottle our beer. It was not fun and a word of advice; if you are saving bottle for brewing stick to Smithwicks and Bass as the labels come off with almost not work what so ever. Avoid at all costs Dos Equis and McSorley's as these babies are the worst. The Dos Equis has a metallic label that doesn't allow the water to soak through to the glue and the McSorley's glue is a rubbery mess that requires gloves to roll it off. We had to buy a 12 pack to get the 100 bottles we were looking for, but we have it now. Not the funnest part of the brew making process.

For my birthday I received a brew kit because a flooded garden and hunting ground hogs was not enough. This was our first kit.   And this is what it looked like bubbling. It is in the basement now waiting to be beer.

We setup the Have a Heart trap and caught our first groundhog. Jen and I came home and it was just looking at us. Every time we walked away from it, it would scramble and throw itself at te sides of the trap trying to get out. This was our first wild animal caught so we were a little lost about what to do with it; something we should have thought about prior to setting the trap. O-well... After a few minutes we decided on a dump far away from our house and a little away from other people in general. We decided on a heavily wooded ballpark. We are not sure the legality of it, but we had a ground hog in a trap and we were bringing it to a better place. Jen threw down our army tarp in the back of the Rav 4, threw the trap in the back and went for a ride. About 30 seconds into the trip it dropped a pile of scat and pee'd in the back. The smell was horrendous and it immediately filled the truck with it's stench. We hit every light make the trip even more miserable. We finally hit th

We had squirrels digging in the garden, mind you they are not eating anything, just digging holes and digging up carrots, cilantro, and basil. We are prepared to hang the lovely aluminum pie plates that make racket, and it might work if we have jumpy squirrels. Problem with that is we have city squirrels! Other than removing squirrels I have read ther eis not much you can do. Once they find a good place to dig and hide things, thye come back over and over and over. Since we have been in the midst of monsoon season for a couple weeks, the squirrels are staying away. Which is good, except all the rain is causing a couple of crops to get that "over watered" look. Most of my cilantro and parsley kicked the bucket (over watering, they had rot at the base of the plant) and I am in the process of figuring out what I can replace it with. I may go to a nursery and see if I can purchase some. The melons look yellwed at this point and we may lose those as well. They love the rain when t

I was hoping we would not have to do this, but we did. And it still looks good and is still easy to get to. We used chicken wire supported with hard wood stakes, I stapled the wire right to the beds so it would stay put. Now we have extra chicken wire for another project. Who knows what that will be, but we are ready.

Setback number 1 Frost hit some of our plants. I was over confident of our in the city, up on a hill status and we were hit. The morning glories, tomatoes, and peppers took a significant hit, and so did the basil. I will need to replant some of these, thank goodness we had extra seedlings. The marigolds, cabbage, and things that were in as seed did not seem affected. Setback number 2 Groundhogs ate our broccoli!  Next post....Fencing for cute little buggers getting fat on your garden.

You can not have a good garden without compost. We made ours out of old pallets and it took about 10 minutes to secure 3 sides and we left the front open for turning. It cost us nothing. I suggest that anyone who can have one do so. Plus there is nothing better for your flowers and for potted plants inside! I also have a "worm bucket" as my father calls it. They are great for super rich nutrient dense soil. You can use the dirt to make "worm tea" to liquid fertilize your plants as well. The worms are now living in the compost for the summer, and I will take as many as I can inside for the winter.

Square foot gardening is our inspiration for the raised beds. I am excited to be so organized about planting. It feels even more productive that you will use each inch to its best potential. I recommend the book if you think you would like to do some raised beds for vegetables and flowers alike. The book is "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholome It is a little corny, but there is a lot of useful information. I like not having to guess, like on soil composition, how to set up the beds, how to set up the trellis, all this information is the result of someone else doing the work first. Everything so far has been fast and relatively easy.

I started some seeds in late April: Our front porch is a perfect spot for them to stay cool and get lots of light. The basil was coming up like crazy...unfortunately a bunch was lost because it "damped off". Here it just looks super strong and awesome: The morning glories were showing off as well... We started way too much for seed, but we were very excited. I planted basil, parsley, mint, oregano, cilantro, early green cabbage, red cabbage, green cabbage, tomatoes (yummy heirloom variety called Nepal, Ace Peppers (green if you pick early red if you wait), morning glories, marigolds, California poppies, Spanish flags, hollyhocks, a weird type of amaranth (I forget the name now), and Shirley poppies. Fun!

We seeded the lawn a little early in the season, but we really wanted to get started on something in the new back yard. Jen went to Paris Farmers Union and picked 10 pounds of a conservation mix of lawn seed and two bales of straw. We spread all the seed and spread all the straw. This is what we ended up with. Now we just needed to wait for it to grow in.

There were a few events leading up to pool removal day, but they are not worthy of their own posts. We were quoted, we had to raise the money, and we had to get the ok from our neighbor because we had to go thru their yard to kill our pool. The gravel company called the Saturday before they were going to come to let us know we were slated for the following Saturday depending on the weather and they suggested we start emptying the pool by Wednesday. We started that day it it was a good thing we did. We dropped a hose in and ran it down the driveway hopeing it would siphon all of the water out by the end of the week. After a full 24 hours we were down a half an inch. We had a pump so we plugged that in and let it run. After another 24 hours we had dropped about 6 to 8 inches. We realized that in order to have that pool empty it would have to run all week. This is how it looked on Saturday morning. It was disgusting, but empty. The gravel company showed up around 9:00 and began immedi

Last summer was our 1st in our new house with a swimming pool. Our water bill was considerably higher. Our electric bill jumped up about a third of its regular rate and I began spending My Saturday mornings outside with a pool vacuum and a scoop to collect the dead things that floated on the top of it. It was a particularly rainy summer and every other week I ran to the pool chemical place to buy more non chlorine chemicals to kill what ever was living in the pool. This added a bit to the cost of keeping the pool open as well. I jumped into the pool for the first time in early June and quickly jumped out. I didn't jump back in for another 2 weeks because it was sooo cold. It didn't really warm up until mid July. I spent quite a bit of time cleaning and not swimming in the pool. One side effect of cleaning the pool is that you are more aware of all the tiny little creatures that are in the water; fat water logged worms, thousand leg centipedes, strange spiders that can surviv