November Gardening

The weather has been amazing for mid November. The hoses are still out for getting water to the animals which is the latest we've ever had the hoses out. Today I planted strawberry runners given to me by a friend.

The garlic is up and I also mulched it today.

The second oat cover crop I took a gamble on planting is coming up (foreground)

In October the long range forecast looked pretty good for a second planting of oats and I am glad I gave it a chance. The garden in late fall is much greener than it ever was in the past now that I am doing more with cover crops.

The greenhouse also got some attention. I have been adding composted sheep manure by the wheel barrow load and the soil is much improved. Today I planted spinach, and three different varieties of lettuce. There are also some volunteers coming up of Red Russian Kale, spinach, and red mustard.

I don't expect much from the seeding over the winter but I will get salad greens super early in the spring, way earlier than I would ever think to plant seeds.

Greenhouse Work

Today was a lovely day to get a little work done in the greenhouse.

The ground ivy was taking over the spinach and lettuce. Usually the chickens won't eat ground ivy, but it's been so long since they had anything green I think they are desperate.
Too bad I can't stay in the greenhouse longer! This is what I return to:

Greens in the Greenhouse

On this the 29th day of December the lettuce, spinach, red mustard and kale are slowly growing in the greenhouse....

amidst some weeds. They will provide a few meals this winter and then will take off sometime in the end of March and will be far ahead of anything I can plant next spring.
We were able to have a mixed greens salad on Christmas day along with our own leg of lamb, blue mashed potatoes, and roasted carrots and parsnips. That meal was in the works since at least February when I started the seeds for the onions in the salad; although I could count from the conception of the lambs in October 2013. Isn't meal planning fun when you have to start the year before!

More Gardening in November

We had a bit of snow on Thursday, but the garden is holding its own. And the temperatures are finally down into the fall range instead of the 60s we had earlier this week.
The radishes, in the foreground, and beets are doing well after the snow.

The chard is a little droopy but still going strong.

I have kale outside and also in the greenhouse.

All the kale is doing well and the baby spinach and lettuce in the greenhouse (to the left) will probably just be dormant for most of the winter. Then when the late winter sun starts heating up the greenhouse they should take off and we will be eating our own lettuce and spinach in early April.

I gave up on the cauliflower and pulled it all up today.  The heads of cauliflower were about the size of a nickel.  So the chickens, turkeys, goats and sheep all got to enjoy munching on a bit of green.

Fall Garden Chores

The weather forecast is calling for a low of 32 degrees tonight; probably our first frost and freeze together. Therefore, it was a fall chore day in the garden.
There was an annoying little garden that paralleled the vegetable garden and was overrun with lily of the valley and had many small peonies that haven't bloomed for me yet. I have been wanting to move them to a better location and today was the day. Hopefully, they will like their new location and bloom. I think the lily of the valley was a bit too much for them.
They don't look like much now, and I don't even know what color flower they have, but they should like the front flower bed better.

I received my bulb order and spent some of this afternoon planting 25 asiatic lillies and 100 crocus bulbs. The crocus bulbs were for naturalizing in the front yard. It doesn't look like much now but come late March, early April there should be 100 yellow, blue and white crocuses.

The vegetable garden got some attention today as well. This bare area is now planted in cereal rye as cover crop.

The greenhouse needed a little attention too. This tape is made for repairing the greenhouse plastic. This plastic has seen 2 growing seasons and just needs a bit of mending.

Achy muscles tonight!

Late March Gardening

Spring is nearly here.  Seedlings are starting to come up in the greenhouse.  Kale, pac choi, mustard and spinach have all begun germinating and are just starting to peak out of the soil.

The garlic is doing very well.

Inside, under the lights, the onion seedlings are tall enough to get their first hair cut yesterday.  Ground cherries, tomatillos, 4 o'clocks, and holly hocks seeds were planted yesterday.  Most of the bulbs outside have begun to grow.  The chives, comfrey and rhubarb have started to come up.  And today I planted two varieties of Sweet Peas. I love Sweet Peas but never seemed to get them in the ground early enough. They would begin blooming about the time it really started to get warm and the flowers would wilt in the heat. Hopefully this year I will get loads of blossoms before the real warm weather starts.
 
Other signs of spring are evident at our local Mennonite hardware store, Weavers.  This is the first year I have ever seen them selling chicks.  And they have quite a large selection of seed potatoes and onions.  I really can't wait to get digging in the soil again.

There is so much clean up outside yet to do.  The cinders from the road crews need to be raked back into the road.  Last year they came around and swept up the cinders on the road, but not the ones on the grass next to the road.  I wanted to have the cinders in the road when they came around, but I just missed them today. I guess I will just have to shovel them up myself.  There is major pruning needed on most of the arborvitae, especially along the stream.  And there is still clean up from Sandy. We have been working on clearing things away from the areas of the new barn and access road.

Thank goodness for pole saws!

More on the hoop house

I wanted a greenhouse for many years but they were always out of reach of our budget.  Then I started seeing people making their own out of cattle panels.  The cost was certainly reasonable, the construction looked straightforward, and there were no zoning issues as it is a "temporary" structure.  Moving the hoop house shouldn't be too difficult.  We will take off the plastic and load it up onto the trailer and away it will go.  I just have to decide if I want to make it larger by adding another panel or two.  And I am still not sure exactly where it will end up at the new place and how much more room we will have to make it larger.
Here are some pictures of construction details (of course we forgot to take pictures as we were building it):

 This is a view of the back wall.  The framing is 2x3s.  An old storm window sits in a track and tilts in for ventilation.

 View from inside looking at the reclaimed storm door.  Pipe insulation sits on the edge of the cattle panel to protect the plastic from rubbing on the metal.

 My husband likes to weld so he welded the two cattle panels together to add rigidity to the whole structure.

 U nails hold the cattle panel ends to the cedat base frame.

 The back window from the inside. The black arc above the window is the pipe insulation protecting the plastic from the metal end of the cattle panel.

The front view from the outside.  The whole structure sits on railroad ties that used to form the border for the old swing set area.  It was fun to dig up the old concrete supports with the kids hand prints cast in them.

Moving the animals and the hoop house

The one part of moving that I am not looking forward to is moving all the animals.  Thankfully all of our animal housing was made with an eye towards portability.  Our first chicken coop was built on top of a 4x4 plastic palate.  Two people can easily move it.  The hardest part will be getting it out around the lilac bush and small oak tree. 
When we bought our newer chicken coop we had recently acquired an old trailer missing its decking.  The coop fit perfectly on top.  All we need to do is winch the trailer onto our road legal trailer and drive away.  We might even move the coop with all the birds inside.

The goats themselves won't be as easy to move as the chickens, but their housing won't be much trouble.  Their first home was a calf hutch.  As they grew my husband made them a "run in" which gives the goats a covered area outside their hutch.  With all the rocks around they are quite content.  Too bad we can't move any of the rocks; I know the goats will really miss them.  Temporary fencing won't be too difficult either.  Right know our entire goat pen and most of the chicken run is made from 16 ft cattle panels cut into 8 ft sections.  Two trailer loads should move the goat housing and all the cattle panels.

We have also used cattle panels to make a temporary hay storage area and a greenhouse.  Surprisingly, our tarp covering the "hay hut" has lasted 3 years.  All we'll need to do when we move the hay hut is throw away the tarp, disconnect the boards along the bottom holding the shape and load it up on the trailer.

The greenhouse or "hoop house" was a fun project and one I am definitely not leaving behind.  Right now it is approx 8x9, but I would like to add one more cattle panel and make it 8x14.  Hopefully we will be able to reuse the plastic.  When we first built the hoop house I used regular plastic because I had a bunch left over from another project.  That lasted one year and then disintegrated in the sunlight.  Greenhouse plastic was really not any more expensive than regular plastic and has held up beautifully.  I could probably get another couple years out of it but we'll see how the plastic survives being taken off then put back on.  If I end up making the hoop house larger then I'll probably get another whole sheet again and use the older plastic for some smaller hoops for seasonal protection in the garden.

Cattle panels are useful for so many things.  I am glad we have purchased so many over the years.  Cattle panels are nearly indestructible by the goats, although a few are a little bowed from the goats rubbing along them.  Chickens and baby goats can easily get through the panels but we have put chicken wire along the bottoms of the panels in the chicken run and coated 2inch by 4inch 2ft tall wire on the bottom of the panels in the goat pen.  Moving the animals is something that will have to be done fairly quickly once we get started, and is the main thing that must happen before we can start staying at the new house.