Let the Harvest begin!

Summer is finally here with temps in the mid 90's all week which is very hot and humid for the Oregon central valley this early in the season. The good side of the heat is that the garden loves the sun and is growing fast. I have been harvesting peas, peas and more yummy peas, good thing I like peas! The grow house is done and the aquaponic beds are coming along. With a late start many of the plants are still very small but it won't take long for them to catch up. I see the garden every day so I don't realize how much things grow until I see the pics from the last update, this time of the year there is a big difference.

Today I harvested the first potato bags, a little early so many were small but I wanted to move the bags and the only way was to harvest. I am happy with the outcome, 10.25 lbs of  Kenebec potatoes from one 3lb bag seed potatoes. Considering how they started out...a bag of rather wrinkled cheap seed potatoes from Walmart  I would say my self watered potato grow bag experiment was a success. No watering, no weeding and very easy to harvest.

Grow House frame and roof is finished and is now completely enclosed with wildlife fencing. No more racoons, squirrels or deer!

A few of the Aquaponic grow beds are in and growing, more to come but it will probably have to wait until the end of the summer when the veggies now growing are out of the way.

The hillside garden is coming along well and recovering from a ravenous attack from sow bugs and slugs.

"Always rejoice, constantly pray, in everything give thanks. For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” 

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Short grow house update

Well we have started on the grow house over the pond area and I think it is turning out very nice. We still have to put the roof panels on as soon as I can get them...hauling 12 foot long corrugated roof panels is beyond the capabilities of my Jeep so I am at the mercy of someone willing to be a go-for!  I also started on the grow beds that my wonderful kids got me for Mothers day, these will be Aquaponics grow beds. Gravel media beds on the top and I will add floating raft beds underneath for shade tolerant veggies such as lettuce.

 Enough for words...below is the pics!

Construction of the framework.

Framework, door and critter netting done with the Aquaponics getting started, lots of construction to go!

First media grow bed up and running! Just have to add the raft beds below and fix the permanent plumbing which I want hidden as much as possible.

The bell siphon was a lot easier that I thought it would be... thanks to lots of Youtube videos.

Potatoes and various starts grown in bags or pots "Growing Power" style with coconut coir and compost and I have to say the potatoes just love it!

 Growing Power is a non profit Aquaponics set up built in an old commercial warehouse in the middle of the city. For more info visit their website at http://www.growingpower.org/

Before shot of the unfinished side of the grow house. I have a jungle of very happy veggies all fed with pond water.

To Everything There is a Season

“To everything there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born, and a time to die.

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1

My hillside garden is coming along after countless wheelbarrow loads of  yard clipping compost from the local landfill and countless more loads of wood chips, there is definitely a lot more green!

 I have added two tier beds shown on the top right of the picture and am adding a third along with deer fencing around it all. Being on the edge of the city limits with an empty field at my back just welcomes the deer to have salad for dinner! The fencing also has to keep out the turkeys that roam prolifically in this area, they would scratch up every seed planted with no guilt at all. Since turkeys can sorta fly I am trying to fence off each bed individually using 6 ft fiberglass poles and  4 ft medium gauge black plastic deer fencing making a  difficult to access confined space. So far so good.

The cedar planter boxes are doing well even though they are in the shade of our Sycamore tree. They do get a couple of hours of mostly sun in the evening so I planted somewhat shade tolerant plants like rainbow chard, lettuce, cabbage, herbs along with some Jerusalem artichokes along the back hoping they will grow tall and thick to make a yard screen. The little SIP box (Sub Irrigated Planter Box) in the foreground just has a salad mix and evidently they love it in there. The little green pot next to the lettuce has a few scarlet runner beans that came free with a seed order from Thyme Garden Herb Company in Alsea, Oregon  The chard was a lot fuller a couple of days ago until I burnt some of it with some compost tea...guess I mixed it a little too strong, lesson learned.

Around the pond green is just busting out in force with the potato grow bags and more SIP boxes and of course mister personality, a bust with a hollow head for planting in that my daughter Karina Dale made in high school. He looks like he is just floating in this picture but I just sat him in the water to give the plants a drink.

 

Harvest will be the final telling but it looks like my idea of setting the potato grow bags where they can draw from the bog water might have been a good idea. They are just growing like weeds! I made the bags by sewing up some heavy duty landscape fabric and  have already topped the bags with leaf mulch twice and rolled the bag up a little to promote more potatoes, hopefully. The bags were lined on the bottom with a couple of inches of coconut coir to draw up the water and then filled with a half and half mixture of  cheap organic potting soil from china mart and my homemade leaf, yard waste and kitchen scrap compost mix, topped off with straight leaf compost as the plants grow.  The idea  came from YouTube videos on grow bags and buckets from Larry Hall, he used rain gutters laid out on the ground with a frame or kiddie pools for his water source but I just use my fish pond water.

The SIP boxes are loving spring too with lettuce, kale, spinach and radishes in the front and a couple of tomatoes, one slicing cuke and a Bolivian cucumber to grow up the lattice. By next year this area will be under a green house.  Plans are to enclose the whole pond area in a screen/green house structure. The water should keep it warmer in the winter and in the summer the roof and fencing will keep unwanted debris and wildlife out of the pond. Thanks to help from a dad who likes to keep active by building things we plan to start on it in a couple of weeks.

Heading on up the hill the strawberry and pea tier could be better, I have to keep spraying with  a garlic/pepper spray to keep the sow bugs and slugs from having pea shoots for midnight snack. They have won a few battles but it looks like I may win the war!

So far no pests have bothered the strawberries. I think they are doing exceptional for what they were,  a couple of dried out bags of crowns from china mart planted Back to Eden garden style, guess a little tlc goes a long ways.

Happy kale : ) along with a couple of  radicchio are the biggest veggies on the hillside, planted from store bought starts and doing quite well. Most everything else up here in the cedar box tiers and other tiers were planted a seeds. I like to see all the little seeds just now starting to stick their heads out and shooting up a little green but sow bugs and slugs like to see them too, have to keep up on spraying around them with garlic/pepper spray so they have a fighting chance or they will end up looking like the poor little sunflower sprouts below.

 

Beans, corn and squash, three sisters sprouting up. For this year I planted these in between the Hardy Kiwi vines as they will take a few years to fill up the trellis. Might a well use all the space I have available.

 

The Hardy Kiwi is definitely taking off but I did discover that slugs like  the tender new leaves of this plant too. One of them was half eaten in one night, so they get a squirt of garlic/pepper spray around them too now plus I sprinkled a little sluggo, a natural slug deterrent around them and it seems to be working.

I hope to update a little more often throughout the summer... well that is the plan anyway. Somehow time just sneaks up on a person and weeks are gone and done before you know it!

Happy gardening and  Grow ON!


The verse I chose for the heading on this post, Ecclesiastes was written by a man who tried EVERYTHING available to him in his day and ultimately found that only one thing really mattered, God. I definitely won't get around to trying everything and I don't want to! I think I will try my hardest to learn what I can from other peoples failures and experiences. Not that I will succeed in always following that rule but I can live with a purpose to try.

Slow but steady gets it done!

Genesis 2:15

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the of Eden to tend and keep it.

Since i don't live in Eden it is just plain hard work to build a garden from bare earth, especially on a hillside. Sure I could just throw a few seeds into a couple of pots, call it good and I am sure I would get a few juicy tomatoes and enough greens for a couple of salads but that isn't the point . . . to have a productive garden of any size it is work. But the rewards to my land, my health and my soul for just doing what God intended us to do from the  beginning is unmeasurable!

 Our food was not meant to come from a giant monoculture farms full of genetically modified crops, chemical fertilizers and herbicides.  Up until recently I was one of the conveniently ignorant to what is being done to our food supply but I will no longer ignore the facts simply to have the convience. I don't need to explain in detail as there are many out there that have been trying to tell us for years. Here is a list of a few documentary films that sum it up... I can say for certain what is happening is  horribly wrong on so many levels.

Most of the documentary films below I watched on NetFlix, Amazon or YouTube. I realize and  you should too that documentary films are someone's opinion and all should not be taken as the only side of the story but the facts are stacking up, money and power is king, not the health or well being of the masses. All I know for sure now is that I no longer trust that just because a package of food has a government approval stamp on the box that whats inside it is safe to eat.

King Corn

Food Fight

Food, Inc

Farmageddon

Ingredients

David VS Monsanto

It can be done right...
The story of Joel Salatin one of many farmers and ranchers who are standing up against the giants
PolyFace Farm Pt 1
and the story of Paul Gautschi and his amazing garden
Back to Eden Film

Enough of my soapbox. At this moment in time I choose to do what I can. I will vote with my dollar by trying to buy local and non GMO where possible. I will continue to work toward being more self sustaining by growing as much of my own food as I can and I will continue to trust in God.

As for my hillside garden it is coming along, slowly but surely. Still kind of a mess and in the middle of construction but it's getting there!

By the pond I have  potatoes in grow bags, spinach and lettuce in home made earth boxes, carrots, kale and watercress in pots. I have learned from having a bog filter for years to clean my pond water that if  I sit pots in the bog to where they wick up the pond water the plants grow extremely well.

So far on the hill I have added two 24 foot long by 5 foot cedar raised bed tiers with wildlife fencing, 3 apple trees, two PawPaw trees, 6 Blueberries, Strawberries, two Rhubarb roots and Peas.

I have 4 Hardy Kiwi to plant next along with a building trellis strong enough to hold them as I have read that they can get rather huge!

Peas and strawberries are coming up!

 

 I was able to find a small pile of wood chips at a local tree service that had sat for over a year to start the Back to Eden style mulch garden beds and most of orchard area. On the paths I used  newer chips and as you see above I ran out  and am waiting on a load to be delivered.

Down in the yard I am adding cedar planter boxes and thanks to a generous neighbor I have planted  Jerusalem Artichokes and I am sure I will find more to put into them as the spring continues! Two of them done, more to come.

This is a fairly inexpensive and easy way to build large planter boxes. I used 2x4 rough cut cedar with 6 inch cedar fencing. I was able to get the 2x4's for under 50 cents a foot at a local discount lumber dealer and Lowes has the 5 ft cedar fencing for $1.19 each. The boxes are 20 inches high by 3foot square. I didn't put a bottom on them, just reinforced the corners and lined them with black 6mil plastic on the bottom and stapled it a couple of inches up the side. So for under $20 bucks I have a nice looking planter box that should last quite a while.

I have to admit that I am impatiently waiting  for the last frost date to come and go so I can put out all the little babies I have in my makeshift cold frames and hoop tunnel.

The Gold fish came up to say: Reward yourself this year with some fresh veggies better than anything you can get in the store,  get your hands in the dirt and grow some food!

Hillside garden ideas

As I searched for ideas on how to transform my useless hillside of grass into a productive garden I think I have looked at pictures of every hillside garden on the web! So far here is the basic idea of what I will aim for but knowing me will never look this neat and tidy.

Image from http://www.growingvegetablegardens.com/create_raised_beds.html#

 Easy to build as well as inexpensive, easy to add protection from the wildlife and easy to add cloches for extending the growing season much like the picture below from 

http://yearroundveggiegardener.blogspot.com/2012/02/mini-hoop-tunnels-in-summer.html.

It looks basically the same angle slope as my hillside and I like the idea of  the clover in the top picture between the boxes too. I probably will do more wood chip mulch in the high traffic areas as well as lots of mulch on the beds to keep the mud down in the winter and hold in the moisture in the summer but the nitrogen fixing clover will be a great addition to areas waiting construction as well as those that are not traveled much. Clovers will also draw in pollinating bees, provide nutrient rich mulch and will not need to be mowed. After researching many ground covers a low growing clover seems to be the best choice for my application.

I also am going to be practicing the no till gardening somewhat like you can see on the documentary film Back to Eden. It just makes sense, and I like common sense ideas. If you haven't watched it I feel it is a must see for any backyard gardener. It would take a lot of hauling of mulch up to the beds to start with but to haul mulch, place it, tend it and never have to till or turn the ground again would in the long run make this lazy gardener very happy!

You can find the Back to Eden film here: http://backtoedenfilm.com/  There are also a lot of interviews with Paul Gautschi, the gardener I really enjoyed listening to on this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/L2Survive.

I like the Back to Eden style because I am a common sense but rather haphazard and lazy style gardener. I don't like the look of all perfect even rows or the messy permaculture food forest styles either. So I will shoot for somewhere in between and have a CS garden... Common Sense, Cathy Style as easy as I can make it and still get lots of yummy and organic veggies gardening!

In the beginning...

Well to be honest with myself and everyone else this is not the beginning as we have lived here over a quarter of a century. We tried to move twice but both times events transpired that forced us to move back.Yes, God I finally get it, this is where we belong. I am not always quick to hear but always try to be willing to listen.

I have always loved to garden but our busy consumer lives got in the way. Recent personal event slowed us down and recent global and political events made me stop and listen. There is a promise God made that plants hope of a bountiful harvest in the heart of any gardener and that promise can be found in Genesis 8:22: 

 “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease.”  

So I will do my best to create a productive forest of vegetables and fruits on my little plot.

January 2013-Here is what I am starting with, a more than slightly sloping suburban lot on the very edge of the city limits. I will have to address the problems of erosion, deer, raccoon, feral cats and shade from our enormous Fir,Oak and Sycamore trees. BUT I do have wonderful soil as the previous owner was an avid gardener and I have placed leaf mulch on the soil all the years I have lived here. 

A few years back I put in two ponds and a bog filter which I will keep and somehow transform the space above them into a greenhouse. The above picture was taken after I mostly cleaned the middle pond. There is an abundance of duck weed and native pond plants in the summer for wonderful compost materials.

I wish I had taken before pictures of the bog, it was a jungle of water filtering plants that worked very well to keep the water continuously crystal clear but sadly none edible so out it came and this is a during photo as I transform it into a multi purpose water filter. For this summer as I work to transform my hillside I plan to grow in earthbox style planters some sitting atop the lava rock for drainage and moisture and some scattered around my patio and front yard. Edible water plants will be added to the bog for filtering.  Please comment any suggestions on bog plants that you may have experience on. Note that we are in  the zone 8 climate of the Pacific Northwest but also this is a very protected SouthWest facing site that will eventually have a greenhouse cover over it not only to enhance the sun for off season growing but to help keep the leaves and needles out of the ponds.

Leaf compost and wood chip mulch are prolific not only on my small site but as a community resource too. I am getting clean slightly composted wood chip mulch from a local tree service. I have no place to pile it by the street as my front yard is much steeper than the back and I doubt the neighbors would appreciate a big pile in the middle of the street! So my wonderful helpful Dad gets me one pickup load at a time from a city storage lot that I dump in my driveway. They will load it for me with their bobcat for a very small fee that worth it for me since I already have to haul it by bucket to the garden tiers. You can see the neighbors carport behind my piles of yard compost...that is how steep my front yard is, a 4 to 10 ft retaining wall.

Well as the old saying goes "make hay while the sun shines"  As for me I am going outside to make use of my never ending Sycamore twigs and my new toy, a Sun Joe electric chipper and make wood chips as the sun doesn't shine here in beautiful moisture rich Oregon.