Vegetable Garden 2013

    With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to share this year’s harvest. We had some successes like the carrots and broccoli; we also had some failures like the squashes and tomatoes. We did get some squashes and tomatoes but they didn’t do as well as last year. One of the problems we had were insects on the squash plants. By the time we got them under control, half of the plants were gone and I had to replant. Every year we learn something new and get better at it.

Broccoli
   This was our first year growing broccoli and we couldn’t be more pleased with results. I had a big spot in the garden were I planted tomatoes last year and instead of have to can bags and bags of tomatoes we decided to plant broccoli. I planted seeds directly in the ground and not starter plants. The broccoli grew well like this and made it easier on the roots not being transplanted. The first harvest we ended up with a decent crop, what we didn’t expect was how well the plants did after the first harvest. It seemed like every time I went out to the garden, I was bring back a bag of broccoli sprouts from the off shoots. Once fall came, I pulled some plants up every day to feed to the pigs. None of the plant went to waste, we even tried baking the leaves like kale chips and they were good.

Carrots

    In the early spring I planted the seeds directly in the ground. I’m not sure if I watered them enough or what, but most of them didn't pop up. I sent a email to Johnny Seeds, where I got the seeds, about my problem and they sent another packet of seeds to me free and without questions. That’s why I like dealing with local companies. The second time seemed to work a lot better; of course I made sure to water them better too. Once fall came Miss E and Mr. T helped me with the harvest of the carrots and the beets. They had a blast pulling the carrots out of the ground and making a big pile for them to admire. We ended up with about 125 lbs. of carrots. They kids love eating fresh raw carrots from our own garden.

Basil
   Basil was the only herb we tried growing this year. I tried making my own plants inside but failed due to lack of sun light. Luckily for us, a friend of ours had a bunch of extra plants and was able to give us some. We grew them in one of those patio boxes that holds water on the bottom. The plants did ok, but could have done better if they had more sun light. Mr. T helped with the harvest, we would have been lost if not for his dump truck. We store the leaves in the freezer. We found that this is the best way to keep the flavor strong.

Potatoes
   I planted the potatoes in the same place as last year, and just like last year we had the same great results. I was able to keep the bugs of the plants long enough for them to grow well. I tried not mounding the plants, and didn’t notice that much difference in the ones that were mounded. When harvest time comes everyone gets involved. All the kids put on their boots and gloves, and come out to help. As I dig up the ground they look for the little buried treasures and put them in the bucket. It’s a lot of fun. We ended up with about 150 lbs. of potatoes this year.

Lettuce
    This year I tried a type of lettuce called Tropicana from Johnny Seeds. I loved the way they came out. I planted the seeds directly in the ground and just watered. It’s a leaf lettuce that grows in a tight bunch and does very well here. I tried growing them in the spring, summer, and fall; and they grew well in every season. We’ll continue to grow them next year.










Garlic

   We tried growing garlic in old tires this year and it worked well. I bought some hard neck garlic from a local produce shop and put them in the tires with some dirt last fall. As spring came the garlic started to grow. Once the main stalk turned brown we pulled up the garlic. Each plant had five big cloves on them. It worked out so well that I made a spot in the garden to plant some of the cloves in the ground this fall. We’ll see how much we get next year.













Peppers
   When I went to the nursery to buy some jalapeño plants, I came across some habanero pepper plants and decided to buy them along with the jalapeños. They both did well in the garden and were able to harvest a lot of peppers. I tried making some pepper jelly with the habaneros and even though it came out well, the smell it made in the kitchen was way too hot to bare. I pickled the jalapeños and gave away the rest of the habaneros at work. They are way too hot to do anything with.

Ghetto Garlic

We were inspired to plant garlic this year after reading a post from a blog,
http://lallybrochfarms.blogspot.com/2012/09/garlic-planting.html, and did it just a little different. The problem we had was all the garden space was already designated for different vegetables next year, except where the potato barrel was. So we decided to use the tires that were already there and fill them up with dirt that was in a pile next to the tires. I bought some New Hampshire native hard neck garlic from a local produce market and broke them up, and planted them in the dirt. We then shoveled about two inches thick of dirt on top of them. We were able to get seven cloves in each tire. After a couple of weeks or so, we'll put straw over the tires to insulate them for the winter. Of course Mr. T helped me out with the shoveling of the dirt.

Irish Potato Barrel

   I took the potato barrel apart today hoping to find a bucket worth of potatoes, but sadly only found a few. The idea is that as the potato plant grows, you pile more and more dirt around it, and the plant will grow more potatoes from the base. I think what happen instead was, that the plant spent so much energy climbing higher and higher that the plant didn't have enough energy to make more potatoes. Had the season been longer it might have worked. Oh well, my wife is happy that it didn't work. That way she doesn't have to look at piles of tires around the yard.

Saving Seeds

   In an effort to save money and not buy seeds next year we have started saving our seeds for next year. We also think it's kind of cool to keep growing from generation after generation the same vegetable ever year.
   Tomato seeds take a few more steps then just letting the seeds dry out and putting them in an envelope like we've been doing with other vegetables. First you have to cut the tomato in half and scoop out the seeds, if any gel or tomato chunks come out that's fine. Then you put them in a jar and add about an inch of water. Put a loose cover over the jars and store them in a warm place out of the way. After about three days or so, mold should start to grow on top. This represents what happens in nature when a tomato rots, the mold strips the protective covering around the seed allowing it to germinate when you plant the seed. Once you got a good cover of mold it's time to rinse and dry. What you do is either scoop out the mold with a spoon or pour some water in slowly until the mold flows over. If any seeds come out along with the gunk that's fine you only want the seeds that sink to the bottom. Discard any seeds that float.  Once you get all the stuff out, pour the water out leaving the seeds behind. Then scoop the seeds onto a paper towel and spread them out. Leave them in a dry space tell they completely dry out, and then store them in an envelope. If you do more than one kind of tomato, make sure you keep everything labeled so you know what type of seed your saving.

   We're looking forward to next year, to plant all the seeds we've been saving.

Potato Harvest

   We finally harvested the potatoes this week. We let the plants die back and waited two weeks before digging them up. It was a family affair, I dug them up while the kids picked them up from the ground and put them in a bucket, once the bucket was full my wife dumped the potatoes into a pile. The next day we put them in the root cellar, that I made last year. I don't know how many pounds we have but they filled up the five gallon bucket nine times.

Big Carrot

   While working in the garden today, I noticed one of the carrots starting to crack on the top. I pulled it up so it wouldn't grow anymore, and also I was curious how big the carrots were getting. I won't pull the rest of the carrots until the first frost gets here, but the kids are excited to see if the rest of the carrots are as big as this one.

Broccoli

   After the slugs wiped out a lot of our broccoli this year, we finally got our first head of broccoli. It's not quite as big as the ones you get at the grocery store but pretty close. We have a few more plants that are pushing up the heads of broccoli but aren't quite ready to be cut. We're going to leave the plant that we got the head off of and let it grow some side sprouts of broccoli. We'll see how much one plant can produce.

First Corn

   Today we picked some of our own corn that we had growing in our garden. We had never tried growing corn and were a little apprehensive about it. When having a garden with woods around it cuts down on the amount of light the corn receives. The plants didn't grow as tall as if they were growing in the fields but, we still got some cobs to grow on them. Even some of them had two cobs growing on them. The cobs came out a little bit smaller than the ones at the farm stand but were still delicious. The kids reply to me asking what they thought of the corn was "it's so good we can't even stand it ". I guess we'll have to grow corn next year too.

Green Beans

   One of the first vegetables we get around here is the green beans, and this year has been very good. We planted them at different times to make sure we didn't get them all at once, and we also used them as fillers around the garden when other plants didn't take. So far we have picked about half the plants, and even after giving some away and eating them fresh we still had a lot left. We ended up blanching them and then put them in the  freezer.



   How we blanched them is first  put them in the sink to wash them and then snap off the ends. Then we brought a pot of water to a boil and put in a strainer full of green beans in the water for about three minutes. After the three minutes, we put them in the sink that had cold water and ice cubes in it to cool off for about three minutes also. Once done we put them on some dish towels to dry off before putting them in some zip lock bags. So far our freezer has five gallon size zip lock bags full of green beans in it, and more to come.

The Garden Tour

Green Bean Bushes

Zucchini in the back, Beets in the middle, and some Carrots in the front 

Two rows of Tomatoes

Corn

Potato Bed 

Irish Potato Barrel 

Some Carrots 

Different types of Winter Squash

Pumpkins in the back, Beans, Broccoli, and last years potatoes mixed in the side garden 

   The slugs did a number on the garden this year. The spot where the carrots are was all filled up with carrots. The side garden had lettuce and broccoli but the slugs ate it to almost nothing. They also ate one section of the winter squash. I'm planting more broccoli and heat tolerant lettuce in both spots for the fall. One of the advantages of living in the woods is plenty of dead trees to make wood chips out of for the garden. They help keep the weeds down but, there is always plenty of weeding to be done.

Berry Pickin' Time

    We have 32 mature blueberry bushes, some are better producers then others, and bunches of raspberry plants along the edges of the woods around us. The berries that I can pick before the kids eat them, we turn into jams for the winter and make desserts out of them for the summer. Miss E is my best picker of them all, she knows how to pick them when they're perfectly ripe. She is also willing to share them with me, if I'm lucky.

Tires and Potatoes

   The potatoes are doing really well this year, and are growing tall. The trick of catching the potato beetles in a jar of soapy water also worked out. Only had to do it for about a week or two then they weren't around as often.

   Hang an old tire from a tree with some rope you had around the house, doesn't get much simpler then that.The kids have a blast on it, especially when I push them up really high. 

The Potato Bed

    The potatoes we planted a few weeks ago, have been growing pretty good this year so far. The warm sunny days and cool nights we've been having  this spring, have really kicked off this year's growing season.

   One of the important things to do when growing potatoes is mounding the plants when they get a certain height. The potatoes are planted about three feet apart, and when the plants which about a foot or so high you mound them. You do this by digging a trench between the rows and piling up the dirt around the plant.

   The reason you do this is to make the plant grow more potatoes. What happens is the plant recognizes the dirt and will send out more tubers to eventually grow into potatoes. The plant will also grow taller because of this.  We have ten rows with about 10 plants in each, so hopefully the potato crop should be very plentifully this year.
   Potatoes are a great plant for new garden beds, because you have to dig up the ground to plant them, then dig up the ground to mound them, and dig up the ground to find the buried treasure ( aka potatoes ). The kids have a blast with the last one. When you do all that digging you're aerating the soil and allowing nutrients to mix in. Potatoes are also a great plant for beginner gardeners. They are a very hardy plant, grow great in cooler regions, and can live through small droughts. In case you forget to water them form time to time. The only real problem you might have with them is the Colorado potato beetle.

   The Colorado potato beetle lives all over America, not just Colorado. These little flying beetles love potato plants, along with a couple other plants in your garden. The adults will eat the leaves, mate, then lay there eggs on the backside of the leaves. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae, which look like tiny slugs, will devour the entire plant. They also cover themselves in their own poop so that no bird or animal will eat them. We have tried using a insecticide spray on the plant, but found it not to be very effective due to the fact that the rain would wash it off and the beetles would be right back. I'm trying a new method this year, which is a little more organic. I use a mason jar filled with soapy water and try to knock the beetles into the jar or just grab them and throw them in. The beetles tend to have a fight or flight reaction so knocking them into the jar is pretty easy. I also check underneath the leaves for eggs and either wipe them off or tear the leaf off and feed it to the chickens. 

  Another method we're trying for planting potatoes is called a Irish potato barrel. It's not a barrel or from Ireland at all. What you do is take a tire and put it flat on the ground. Then put the potato seedling in the tire on the ground, and fill it up half way with dirt. Once the plants gets about a foot tall you fill up the tire completely. Then when the plant is again a foot tall you stack another tire on top of the other tire and fill it with dirt. You keep repeating the process until you run out of tires, or get tired of stacking tires. It look kind of ghetto, but we're going to give it a try.

    Some facts about Maine and potatoes.

• According to the USDA and the National Agricultural Statistics Service, potatoes accounted for 24 percent of Maine’s total agricultural cash receipts in 2009, the highest percentage.
• There were over 6,000 farmers devoted to raising potatoes in Aroostook County, Maine around 1930-1940.
• In the middle of the twentieth century, Maine produced more potatoes than any other state in the nation. Today, potatoes continue to be a critical part of the state's economy, with the fertile soil of Aroostook County being the largest growing region.
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  Schools in Aroostook County still take a three week long "harvest break" in late September to pick the potatoes, just like they did 70 years ago.

      And you thought living in California was exciting.