Hoosier Country Garden Tour

As I promised yesterday, here is a little photographic tour of the Hoosier Country Homestead Garden.

So just to preface this post, while I was out getting the pics after weed-wacking, a little mowing, a little weeding, and getting some DE on the plants that have bugs on them, the WHOLE time I was doing all that, this song I remember from the Captain Kangaroo kid's program in the 60's was running through my head.  A little Google work I confirmed the song title is "English Country Garden".  I kinda remember the "English Country Garden" on the program being much tidier than my garden and largely ornamental.  Odd how something like that pops up after 50 years, plus or minus.  Anyone else remember Captain Kangaroo in the 60s?  Here's version of the song, but I don't think it's the one from the show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H9IojB9iYY

So on with the tour as promised:

Center: All the different peppers are doing great. Right:Green cabbage is in, purple cabbage will be done soon. Rear Right: Peas still producing.  Rear Left: Beets are a bit thin, but what we have is doing good.

Pole bean bed is loaded with blossoms and just now producing small beans.  We'll be picking soon.  The brown dust is a bit of DE I put on to try and knock some bugs.

Carrots are a bit untidy but growing well.  More peas behind that.  Beets in the rear of that row.

We haven't had good tomato weather and it shows.  We are still getting tomatoes, but not like last year.

Horseradish in the forefront. Green bush beans are doing great!

The potatoes look to be doing quite well.

Sweet corn is our 'problem child.  Nice tassels, a few silks, and about 4 feet tall.  Farmers market, here we come!

White pumpkins we hoped to use for decorating Daughter #2s wedding.  The plants look healthy but no fruit yet.

Zucchini, Yellow Squash, cucumbers, and cantaloupe with another stand of troubled corn.

Spaghetti squash, and butternut squash.  More pole beans between the squash and the corn.

Finally, here's Fred.  Fred is our Golden Polish cockerel working his way into rooster-hood.  I got a couple of good pics of him, but De got a video of him crowing.  He doesn't have a really big voice, but it makes me smile every time.  If you're interested you can hear him at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN5ZOvA1ZJo

Anyway,  that's the tour.  Oh yes!  Between the time I let the birds out this morning and when we got home from church, we got our second egg.  It was the size a store bought large egg, brown, and uniform in color.  De and I suspect we have two of the girls starting to do their thing now.

All good stuff, and I still feel honored to be the steward of it all.


Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

More of the Garden, Layers Club Upgrade, and Farewell to Henry

Just an update on the garden and info on some minor improvements.

We spent a good part of our Saturday beating down weeds, like every other gardener.  The beds are pretty much set, but the plots need still some weed-bustin' love on a regular basis.  This year I'm doing the thing with potatoes where you add soil around the plants as they grow.  I'm probably the last gardener in the US to pick up on this, but I heard it on one of Scott Terry's 'Christian Farm and Homestead Radio' shows some time back.  Since potatoes grow above the seed potato you planted, adding soil above as the plant grows should make more place for new potatoes to grow and increase your yield.  I'll let everyone know how it works out.

You can see some of the soil piled up around the potatoes.

 We also added some extra rope and string for the pole beans.  By the time we got done the whole looks kinda like a cattle panel.  Duh!  Guess what we'll be using for pole beans next year?

We also made a couple of upgrades to the Layer's Club (our chicken coop). Some of the particle board was starting to show it's age when we moved the old bus shelter building and turned it into a coop.  We added some plywood to reinforce the wall below the laying boxes.  I suspect the next time I get my hands on a sheet of plywood we'll upgrade the back wall above the boxes too.  I also added a long step to get up into the 'people' part of the coop.  We did have a 2x12 wood scrap garden bench there, but it was a little wobbly and De was afraid it was going to roll out from under her.  We got them both in and painted up in just a bit over an hour.

Plywood reinforcement for an old particle board wall.

Wall and step in and ready for use.

Finally, Henry the Gold Lace Wyandatte cockerel has left the building!  The family that took him has two flocks, one of which needed a rooster.  They know what they doing with chickens and are used to cranky roosters.  It's a good deal all around: We were happy to see him go to a good home with knowledgeable folks and they were happy to get him. It should be a little quieter around the run!

Take care all, and have a great week.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

Hog panels, Wheat Straw, and Chicken "Haircuts"

We are finally catching up on a few things here at the Hoosier Country Homestead.  We needed to because most of our garden is doing very well, which meant we needed to get the tomato cages up and also strings and such for the pole beans to climb. Also there was the usual weeding, weeding, weeding and we're trying to do more mulching this year.

1 - 12 foot and 3 - 8 foot tomato beds

Red wires ties holding hog panels together

I promised in a comment on another excellent homesteading blog (the comment hasn't posted so I won't name the blog yet) I would get pics up today of the hog panel tomato cages, so I'll start with those:  Like many folks who grow tomatoes we found the usual wire cages you find in stores to be not up to the task of shoring up an actual tomato plant.  Since we grow actual tomatoes we needed to find an alternative to the usual commercial offerings.  I don't remember where, but I found somewhere on the internet where someone was forming hog panel into circular cages.  We modified the idea and use them almost 'as-is.'  We grow our tomatoes in beds, but I think this would work even if you grow in rows.  We cut the panels to the length of the bed with bolt cutters then simply set the panels in the beds over the plants in a teepee.  We use plastic wire 'zip' ties(red in the pic) along the top where they join to hold them in place. We invert the panels from the way you set them for hogs, so that the larger openings are at the bottom.  This makes it easier to get tomatoes on the inside of the teepee.  Sometimes simply weaving the plants through the openings is sufficient, but we also use some of the green garden wire to guide them onto the panels.  We've done this for four years now and found it be an excellent solution.

Pole beans - Look for yellow strings...

We're doing a lot of pole beans this year in addition to our usual 3 - 4'x8' beds of bush beans.  We like
the beds for bush beans because you can plant close together (usually we put 4 - 8' rows in each bed), and still reach them from the edges.  Even in my mid-50s the miles are starting to show and I appreciate not having to get down quiet so far to pick.  Since this is our first year for more than a few pole beans we're experimenting with poles and climbing strings. Here a pic of the one bed. You can barely see the yellow string in the picture but they run from the outside edges of the bed up to the old tree branch.  The rest are in a row in a plot. I'll keep the pics coming and let you all know how the different methods are working out.

We're also doing more mulching this year. We're using wheat straw and are hoping to keep a little more moisture in and a few more weeds out.  I'll let you know how that works out for us, too.  Another thing I'm trying this year is the use of diatomaceous earth for bugs.  I dusted our potatoes with this today.  I'll should get an idea of how it works pretty quickly since the potato bugs seem to be out in force early this year.

Green beans

Peppers and cabbage

A load for the brush pile!

Here in NE Indiana we're at the tail end of "tornado alley".  Most years we can plan on a dozen or 
storms that could generate a tornadoes.  Some years less and some years double that.  We had another big storm early this week that knocked out power for us for the better part of a day and for the better part of the week for others.  This storm generated 7 tornadoes in our area. There was fatality in a local town as a tree fell into a house.  We had a bunch of branches knocked out, but no real damage.

Fred the Cockeral Pre-"Haircut"

Fred Post-"Haircut"

De and I broke down and decided to give our polish chickens a 'trim'.  They have the crested heads, and the feathers had gotten into their eyes enough it was clear they were struggling to see.  Since this is our first year with chickens we we're sure exactly how to do this, but with a little on-line research we were ready to give it a shot.  I did the holding and De was the "hairdresser".  We'd be interested in thoughts from anyone who has done this before.  Too much?  Not enough?

Finally, De and I read that chickens like to have something to do in their runs.  I took some of those branches knocked down and rigged up a little outdoor perch. It seems to be a hit, for whatever that's worth.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark