October, 2012

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Harvest festival

Monday, October 29th, 2012

The final day of the Douglas Farmers Market was yesterday, and we helped coordinate a seed exchange, pumpkin decorating for the kids, and a fundraiser raffle.

We enjoyed selling at the market this year and found that doing so encouraged us to grow more food than I ever imagined we could.

What we’re working on today

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

This morning, we planted rye in a new bed back in squashville and then mulched. Hopefully, next spring, we’ll have a big bed of garbanzos or soy beans or something else nice here.

Also, Brad is working on finishing the trench to get final electrical into Virga.

The nights and morning are getting quite cool here now, but the days are still sunny and quite warm

Garden update

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Yes, we’re still going strong. The heirloom tomatoes are at their peak, and we’re hoping the frost holds off for another month. (They’re too big to cover.)

And we harvested the first of the fall greens this morning. Hopefully, we’ll have these all winter long.

And I came home from my trip last week to find that Brad had made me 6 new beds for spring! Woo hoo. We are seeming more and more like farmers.

This week, we are getting ready for the big Harvest Festival at the Douglas Mercado Farmers Market next week. This will be the close of the season for this year. We’ll have a seed exchange, pumpkin decorating for the kids, live music, and more. Should be fun!

Garlic and Shallots for 2013

Monday, October 1st, 2012

We’ve past the autumnal equinox so it’s time to plant garlic and shallots for spring.

Last year’s crop was uniformly smaller than the previous year. There are many possible reasons:

  • Lack of a mulch layer
  • Quail eating the six inch baby plants down to zero inch nubs
  • A brutal 24 hour wind in the spring that left the garlic permenantly bent over

All these will be addressed this year. Basically, we are mulching and we are using the insect netting on everything (wind and quail protection).

This year we planted a green manure cover crop (chickpeas) before planting the garlic. A yummy way to improve the soil.

We are stepping up the production of the Maiskij garlic this year. We love it; it grows well here; it tastes great and is easy to peel. Last year we planted about 140 of these.

We are also trying small batches of two garlic varieties, Music and German Porcelain. Both of these have few but very large cloves.

We continued growing shallots this year planting both the French grey ones (small) and the standard red ones again. I could be happy just growing the red ones, but it’s good to grow a variety.

The basics numbers of what’s ing the ground are:

300 Maiskij
14 German Porcelain
17 Music
50 Grey shallots
25 red shallots

garlic-bed-2013

Here’s hoping for a big year for alliums at Kbranch