Pix of Sweet Gum Farm

OK, as I said in an earlier post Sweet Gum Farm has officially started the 2013 market garden for That Little Farm Stand!  

I've been distressed this winter because the weather just would not cooperate.  We couldn't get the cool-weather crops planted in February - the ground was too wet.  And just as it started to dry out, more rain.  Over and over again.  We finally got the English peas in the ground, but I'm afraid the weather is going to turn too warm too quickly for us to get a crop.  See our cute little plants?

The dark stuff is organic fertilizer.  The green stuff is not grass, (Dad, it's not grass!), it's an organic variety of oats that's supposed to provide some trellising for the bush peas.  And green manure.

 I still haven't decided whether to let some of the oats mature.  Hubby's giving some thought to how we can harvest them.  We'll have to do it by hand, but it may be worth it as organic, homegrown chicken feed.

Above is a shot of the garden plots, looking WSW.  The "North garden" is the part right in front of me.  The "South Garden" hasn't been worked yet in this pic.  You can barely see the road that goes between the gardens; look at the left end of the tilled areas.  On the far left is the S. garden.

With these two plots and two others that are fairly small, we'll have a bit over 1/4 acre in cultivation this year.

The structures are, from left to right, our house, the Big House, the garage and the barn.  Yep, it's a huge freakin' barn, almost 100 years old.

Above is a shot of the 40+ squash hills.  Three varieties.  We're going to be overrun with squash, I hope they sell!

Above is our homemade seed starting station, two sets of plastic shelving with lights and warming mats. Crammed into our 2nd bedroom-cum-office.  We have SOOOO many tomato plants - 65 total of three varieties, and 5 varieties to go!  I kind of went crazy (look at the top shelf!).  We can only grow what will grow well, and at our place we couldn't kill tomatoes if we tried.  They grow like crazy and produce like mad. 

Unfortunately we have some pretty strong local competition.  People around here go nuts for something called the "Ripley" tomato.  I can't figure out if it's an actual variety or if it's just tomatoes grown in and around the town of Ripley.  There's a festival dedicated to the damned things!  I hope some chefs cruise by our market stall and decide to try some of my heirlooms or the more unusual ones (like the white paste tomatoes called Cream Sausage).

And above is what's left of my basil.  Roscoe, the Cat from Hell, decided he wanted to sleep in the fragrant plants.  He squashed and killed the sweet basil on the left.  The Italian basil on the right survived.  Yes, I know it needs transplanting.  Badly.  So does everything else but last week we had six nights in a row in the 40s.  The soil (and the air, for that matter) isn't warm enough yet.

I never ever thought I'd find myself wishing for warm weather.  Warm weather around here usually means highs in the 90s...and the threat of heatstroke. 

It's Official: The 2013 Garden is Under Way

Date: April 7, 2013

Although we've had starts going for over two months here at Sweet Gum Farm, I don't consider the garden officially underway until something is actually growing in the ground.  I've learned not to count my chickens, so to speak. Earlier this year about $80.00 worth of sprouted seed just keeled over and died.  All of the peppers, all of the herbs except some basil, and a couple of tomato varieties - just gone.

I cried.  Then I beat myself up:  "I'm just no good at this gardening sh-t!" and "I'm a baby (plant) murderer!".

Jeff came to the rescue, reassuring me that 1. peppers are finicky and therefore easy to kill, and 2. we got bad seed.  I've struck that company off my seed supplier list.  We actually had zero germination on one tomato variety and I contacted that seed company.  They sent me double the amount of seed as replacement, but they still didn't germinate very well.

We wanted to sell starts this year and I've got a few tomatoes to sell so I guess it's OK.  Plus I got a wild hair a couple of days ago and ordered more tomato seed (who can resist blue cherry tomatoes??) and 3 varieties of peppers.   Kinda late but, dang it, I've got to figure out how to start peppers.  We can't afford to buy starts when we're growing 150 to 225 row feet of plants!


Anyway, yesterday was gorgeous.  Sunny, breezy, high in the low 70s.  So we went outside and once again checked the soil.  It was STILL too wet to till!  So...we were confounded...what should we do since we can't plant anything??

We had a discussion about the volunteer mustard plants that were already flowering.  Chop them out with the machete?  Yep.  Hmm, me and a machete probably wasn't the safest combination, but I did OK.  Still have all of my fingers and toes.  I also found out that mustard plants have roots the size and density of turnips.  Are we sure these are mustard plants and not turnips??  Jeff said yes.  (Not that it mattered, they were coming out either way.)  I left a few for the little bees that were swarming around them.  They'll get turned under when we till.

Then we moved some dirt around, filling up low spots that had developed in the garden over the winter.  (yawn)  Fill in low spots - check.  Now what?

Well, last year SOMEBODY who shall remain nameless (OK, it was Dad) ran over one of our leader hoses with the mower, ripping the faucet fitting right out of the ground and destroying one of our irrigation timers.  To prevent such catastrophes this year, we're going to run both of the leaders through PVC pipe and bury them.  Asking SOMEBODY not to "help" just doesn't work so we have to Dad-proof as much as we can.  (No, he's not senile, just stubborn!)

BUT FIRST - here we go - we had to move Champ, our '69 Dodge pickup.  It doesn't run (naturally), so we had to move it with the tractor.  Before we could move the truck, though, we had to pick up a bunch of fence posts that had been left on the ground in front of it.  I had to go get Barney (our '94 Ford Ranger daily driver) to throw the posts into for relocation.  Remember, Lisa: sometimes you can't get there from here.  Translation:  you can never, ever just go do something on the farm.  There will always be a bunch of things you have to do before you can do the thing you want to do.  It's a corollary of Murphy's Law. For us anyway.


That list of things we had to do first was mercifully short. 

So Jeff got one of the trenches dug with the backhoe and ready for the hand work of leveling, etc.  The other one is going to have to be dug by hand altogether - can't get the tractor in there to do it.  Fortunately it's only about 12 feet long...

Today is overcast but not raining (thank God).  We're going to till a strip and plant lettuce whether the ground is dry enough or not!  I know, it's very late for lettuce, but we've had cool wet weather.  Maybe it will continue long enough for us to enjoy fresh, home-grown greens.

Cross your fingers!

PS:  We have English peas and their companion oats coming up:

The oats are a special variety, recommended as living trellis for the bush-type peas.  The oats will also provide green manure when we till them under later.  I'm dithering about letting some go to seed.  We can feed them to the chickens (that we don't have yet), but I don't know if I'll have time to hand-thresh them...?