The seasons go round like a wheel

It's been nearly six months without blog contact. To catch us all up, Durham had a wildly mild winter. Them, last night, it snowed. But don't worry. It will be over 60 degrees out tomorrow and 70 by Wednesday. The floating row covers and the plastic tunnel experiments worked a bit, but not nearly so well as I was hoping. It was difficult to keep the plastic where it belonged, and the row covers are too much a pain in the tush to get under. But it is possible that these things extended the growing season. It is hard to tell because the winter was so warm that things grew even outside of the season extenders!
On to spring news:
The peas are in. I planted them on Saturday. Also seeded in is a very exciting experiment. My massage therapist and I share a love of gardening and she gave me Italian arugula seeds. I have decided I love European seed packets. This one is quite informative without being overwhelming.
More greens will go in this coming weekend.
Soil prep has been done with a fun new tool this year. I'm using a broad fork I received as a Christmas gift from my in laws. It is awesome to use and hopefully it will do good things for the garden.
Seed starting will begin in earnest in a couple of weeks indoors. I think I might have 10 different types of tomato seeds...thank you Baker Creek for throwing in one more as a free gift with my order! It is always fun to try something new.
The BIGGEST news ever is that we have expanded our urban landholdings, and........we will be putting in an urban orchard NEXT WEEK!!!! The orchard was designed and will be installed by Bountiful Backyards (Will and I will wield shovels as well in an effort to be helpful!). I cannot express in words how very excited I am about the orchard and the chance to work with BB.
I will wrap it up with the animals. My cat has yet to kill a vole. My 2012 bee attempt will begin (with two hives) in late April. I think I have learned enough at the wonderful Orange County Beekeepers Association's bee school to keep them around this year! I also have a house for mason bees (another thankful shout out to Anne and Tom) that I will hang on the front porch. The fowl are doing well and laying regularly and have been for about two weeks now. I am hoping to add two more ladies to the flock sometime this spring.

Fall garden time

It has been ages, blog! Late summer tends to get me down a bit. The corn didn't quite work out, the tomatoes died of wilt, squash bugs abounded and still abound, and the second bee hive fled the premises. It is too depressing to write about in the moment and the bad stuff manages to obscure the good.

And there is a lot of good.We put up beets for the first time, not all the tomatoes died (we have put up a bunch of tomato sauce and the tomatoes keep coming!), the green beans did well, the crowders are insane, and the edamame rule.

All that being said, fall is here! And I feel like I've earned some cred as a southern gardener because I am nine kinds of excited! Beans and peas are growing well, as is a TON of dill (I helped a few flowers self seed), and cilantro is up! I finally cleaned out the front yard garden and planted mustard, rape, Wong bok, arugala, lentils (we will see how that goes...) and fava beans. YAY!!!!!

There is still so much more to be done...more weeding out back, and taking up the melon/cuke patch and some of the beans so that more fall plantings can go in.

I'll wrap it up with a shout out of thanks to a storm named Lee who got me the rain I have been dreaming of for months. Thanks Lee! Now let's go fall garden!

Lost post

I wrote a long post last week and it disappeared into the TTA's ether. It makes me nervous to blog on the bus, but I'm getting back on the proverbial bicycle and giving it another try.

This has been a big week for the garden. The asparagus is coming up like crazy; we are harvesting every other day now! Yum yum yum.

The greens are growing rapidly as it warms up, and the radishes are ready. We've been eating delicious salads at every meal.

The drip irrigation system is partially in place. I ran out of 1/4 inch drip tubing, so the project is on a temporary hold. It doesn't really matter yet, as it keeps raining. Speaking of rain, it has been nine kinds of crazy out here. There were over 100 tornados on Saturday in North Carolina. Durham barely got rain, but a few miles away, there was serious destruction and loss of life.

I'm glad for a lot of reasons that the weather stayed relatively sane by us, not least of which is that Will and I picked up the bees on Saturday. I already adore being a bee keeper. Bees are awesome!!! I really really hope they survive. I had words with the bees upon pickup about their duties regarding the cucumbers. Hopefully, this will prompt them to pollinate them! I already want a second hive.

One final note: I went on CFSA's farm tour for the third time this year. I wondered, "will it still be cool? I've already gone twice....". Oh MAN was it cool. I absolutely loved it!! I am so glad that CFSA and the farmers do this every year. It's this amazing chance to see where our food comes from, to get inspired about my own farm, to see baby animals, and to eat amazing food. Thank you CFSA and participating farmers! I'll be attending again next year!

Weeding. Already.

I spent a large part of the weekend outside and it was awesome. I watched the apple tree pruning video made by the nursery Useful Plants and headed to the orchard, pruning equipment in hand. I decided to start with the hazelnut, after looking at and feeling daunted by my peach tree (how did it get so big in a year?). I think the pruning went well. I determined that I had not killed the hazelnut, it just had one dead branch. And I discovered that it already has beautiful white buds! Feeling good, I pruned the peach and the apples as well. I gave the bunnies the apple twigs. The cleaned the bark off in about five minutes.

Then I decided to plant my winnings from the bulb blitz before it got any later in the year and some wild flow seeds that, if the live, should make tasty food for my bees. Preparing a bed for bulbs and one for seeds leads us to everyone's favorite activity....WEEDING!! All I have to say is, if that damn wire grass doesn't give up the ghost soon, I may give up on farming (hah! That's funny!). Hopefully the berm and the weedy hillside will soon have a profusion of wild flowers.

In other news, I have decided what to do with the weedy hillside. I am going to forage for logs, hold them along the hillside with rebar, and the fill up the terraced sections with organic matter and mycelium. In a year or two, I will have nice dirt and slightly flatter land. I will be able to plant trees and such that will hold the land in place by the time the logs rot away. I think it is the best plan in the world.

Today will be 72 degrees. Spring most decidedly started this weekend. It will be in the 50s and 60s for the next 10 days. I saw 2 daffodils flowering last week as well as forsythia starting to bloom. Phew! I've made it through another winter!

Bees

One more thing I forgot to mention. Bee adoption day is April 16!!!!! They are ordered and will be ready for pickup right after tax day! I ordered them for $80 from Busy Bee in Chapel Hill. I am so excited for them to arrive! I learned about a bush I need to plant for them ASAP but I already forgot what it is called. Good thing I wrote it down in my class notes!

Ice and snow mean it is time to order seeds!

It snowed and iced last night, so that means it is time to order seeds! I am slowly getting my act together; I took stock of the seeds I still have from the last two seasons, the seeds I saved last year, and the seeds I was thrilled to get at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's Sustainable Agriculture Conference . Next year, the conference will be in Raleigh and I will be bringing seeds to share!

I have a lot of seeds; nevertheless, it might be impossible not to buy new seeds. Everything sounds amazing- every new seed is a chance for a miracle. Kind of like Seminole pumpkins. If I don't see another Seminole pumpkin miracle until July, that will be fine with me. We gave I don't know how many away and we are still eating them! So, despite the surfeit of seeds, I did in fact just place a $90 order with Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Fully half of that cost went toward perennial onions, a new seed potato, and soft neck garlic; things that I will hopefully not have to buy again. And I didn't have to buy the potatoes, it just seemed like the right thing to give the amazing Carola some company. I am sure that I have mentioned this before, but I say it again. Potatoes are the best thing you can plant. Ever. I strongly recommend the Carola. SASE sells it. It is prolific, disease resistant, and has been pest free for two years here. Okay. Off my potato soap box.

The 2011 highlights are..... Baby corn! Lots of beans! And of course a reappearance of the never ending Seminole pumpkin. If you are hungry in September, please stop by and pick up three or four or ten of these prolific bastards. And (drumroll.......) BEES! Yes, we will be adding bees to the hive in March. I am very pleased and excited. Chickens may make their appearance in 2012.

Organic farm!

I revoke my previous posting about Darko Urban Farm going inorganic. I stopped by Stone Brothers last week to ask if I could use the cow pesticide on the alarming aphid infestation that took over the crowder peas. They assured me that I could, and in passing, mentioned that the cow pesticide (I call it that because it has a picture of a cow on the bag and states that you can apply said pesticide to livestock!) is pyrethrin!

I certainly abhor a broad spectrum pesticide, and I don't know what I will do once I have bees, but it certainly suits me just fine to use an organic broad spectrum pesticide rather than a synthetic chemical one.

Upshot: I am still killing bees, which sucks, but I am killing them with flower powder. And it really has done an amazing job of killing pests.

August in the garden

July went by in a blur of weeding and canning. We have put up tomatoes, tomato sauce, corn (not from the garden-- I find corn hard to grow), crowder peas, lima beans, tomatillos, cucumbers, and we are harvesting peppers. We also have pie pumpkins, butternut squash and a mystery winter squash piling up in the kitchen.

The house reeks of garlic as I try my hand at making pickles the fermented way for the first time. There is a huge bag of tomatillos in the freezer as I wait for cilantro's fall season before making salsa. There are about 30 jars of potatoes in the pantry. So I haven't been blogging, but I have been busy!

Squash bugs recently attacked Alexis' bed of luffas, pumpkins and butternut squash. She applied the pesticide powder with a picture of a cow on it after a consultation with Merrill at Stone Bros. We also got flea beetles on the eggplant. I am not sure if they're why we aren't getting eggplant. There is only one fruit on five plants. The flowers keep turning gray and falling off. If I liked eggplant more, I would look into it. And the crowders have aphids. I sprayed them with water until they came off a few days ago. I need to get out there and see if they are back.

Amber and Alexis came out a couple of weekends ago when we had two lovely 75 degree days and we pulled a pile of weed so huge that I was too ashamed to throw it over the fence into Amber and Tom's backyard. So it is still sitting in my backyard!

Oh and here is a great story. I harvested a bunch of dried lima beans and was inside hulling them. It turns out that ANTS will live in the pods. Eeeeewwwww. I would crack the pods open and hundreds of ants would pour out. It was completely repulsive.

There is lots more news, but I will stop with this excitement-- Alexis and Will and I built a top bar beehive last weekend!!! Bees will move in in March or April!