That’s about a third – maybe even less than a third – of our seedlings. They have become family, and I hope they all make it into the ground. (Except for the okra in the very front left corner – Puck snapped it in half while running too close… oops!). I always forget the camera when we go to Morning Sky Greenery, but I’ll try to remember to bring it tomorrow.

We started hardening off the tomatoes, peppers, okra, eggplant, and brassicas. They spent about 1 1/2 hours out in the sun and wind – sheltered as much as we could shelter them. Now we increase their time outside every day, and hopefully get the brassicas in the ground next week and the tomatoes by Memorial Day.

Very unfortunately, the hand tiller that we had planned on borrowing for the summer needs to be repaired. So I reserved the biggest tiller that our local hardware store has for rent, and tomorrow Chris is going to spend the entire day – 8 to 5 – tilling as much as he can possibly till. An acre is A LOT of land to hand-till in one day, and the tiller is also fairly expensive to rent… and since it runs on gas, there’s an added expense.

I hope Chris can survive the day! Unfortunately I have other work to do, and quite honestly I don’t think I can manage a tiller of that size very easily. But the land has been broken, so it won’t be as tough as it was when we tilled up the back yard for our home garden. The immediate plan is that enough of the garden will get tilled for our three sisters planting (corn, beans, and squash/melons): our weekend project!

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I got a phone call last night with the incredible news that our new till-guy was on his way out to prepare the garden! We met him out there Tuesday evening, and he had some good advice for us, and pointed out a low spot that will likely stay fairly wet. We haven’t gotten rain for a few days, so it was dry enough for him to till.

We’re planning to go out today – we haven’t seen it yet! Chris’s graduation ceremony and after-party are today, so the pictures will have to wait. But at least we’re moving forward!

I planted two flats of sunflowers (144 total) last week. We’re sending some of these home with our weekend guests, but a bunch of them will go into the garden as well. These are Skyscraper, Lemon Queen, and Autumn Beauty – I just got a dwarf variety in the mail the other day. I also broadcast basil seeds in three flats. Next year we’ll have more time to prepare earlier!

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Here’s a picture of our dining plant room. It rarely looks the same two days in a row, with all the repotting and shifting of plants from the greenhouse and back to the greenhouse.

We didn’t realize how impossible it was going to be to get someone to work only an acre of land. The farmers are too busy, and their equipment is too big for an acre. Most people just laugh and think we’re crazy. We have been playing a game of phone calls talking to people who can’t/won’t help us and then refer us to someone else who can’t help.

I called Midwest Wildlife today, and he said he would come by and look at our acre on Tuesday evening. Of course, he said that it’s getting to be too late, it’s going to take some time because it’s wet, and that this was something we should have done last fall. But we didn’t know we would be gardening on an acre until just under two months ago!

At the very least, we’ve learned some valuable lessons: prepare your land in the fall; don’t depend on outside help; buy farm equipment; plan WAY early. In a few years we’ll have our own farm equipment, and I’ll be posting signs saying that we’ll help anyone and everyone who’s in the position we are currently in!

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We are going to have lots of okras this year which is exciting and slimy. I hope there enough people willing to buy and eat them. We don’t eat gumbo ourselves, but I like fried okra a lot and we’ll have to find some other relavent recipes. Here is a picture of the some of the okras we have that are thriving.

As you may have saw in an ealier post we had more okras prout that we knew what to do with. We ended up planting extra and giving some to Morning Sky Greenery.

Sadly, with my finishing up college, (sadly, I have to finish up college) I haven’t had time to devote to our seedlings. I haven’t planted any lettuces or herbs either and I know we are WAY behind. I have to keep telling myself this is a trial run and we didn’t even know we were getting into until a month and a half ago.

We have lots of tomatos that need to be replanted and have resorted to the quick and dirty solution of plastic cups from the grocery store. We also have some sad okra that won’t make it due to neglect:

Good news is we may have finally found someone to plow our garden for us. More as that develops…

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Photo: Okra Seedlings

The last few days have been a bit nerve-wrecking. Oh, the anticipation of starting a project that we just can’t start yet!

Our new garden plot was mowed, but we got 1-1/2″ of rain the same evening, so no tilling yet. Now we’re considering having it moldboard-plowed before tilling. The moldboard plow basically flips the soil over, so the grass dies. But, it has to be disked following the moldboarding, because the moldboard plow makes such a huge mess of the soil that it can’t be tilled. The advantage of moldboard plowing is that it can be done when the soil is wet – like today – while tilling needs to be done when the soil is mostly dry. The main disadvantage (in our case) is that we don’t know anyone with a moldboard plow, can’t rent one anywhere, and really cannot afford to buy one right now.

I did make a few phone calls and talk to a couple of farmers in our area. We’re waiting on a phone call back from somebody. If nobody calls before the Tractor Guy goes over and tills, then we’ll have tilled land I guess! Chris spoke with the other neighbor that was mentioned in an earlier post last night, and he is convinced that the tiller does a really fine job, and that there is no need for the moldboard plow. Maybe he’s right! But… maybe he is also assuming that we will be using herbicides throughout the summer. That can be a touchy subject in our area, so we didn’t ask.

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Last year we had a heck of a time getting okra to germinate. This year I lined a mason jar with sandpaper, put a bunch of okra seeds in it, shook them vigorously, and then removed the sandpaper and soaked the seeds overnight.

We planted the okra yesterday and today here’s what I found in the jar full of unused seeds! Plus, the tray of okra seedblocks are already starting to come up! Scarring, soaking, and a night in a room with a space heater does the trick.

Here is the list of what we have planted in the last three days: (One tray = 50 soil blocks… 50 plants)

Peppers (4 new trays, the list includes a bunch from earlier plantings)

• Purira Chile Pepper (heirloom, saved seeds)
• Czechoslovokian Black (heirloom, saved seeds)
• Cayenne (heirloom, saved seeds)
• Random seeds from an Easy Bean pepper (2nd generation… from 2005 originally)
• Sonora Pepper
• Giant Szegedi Pepper
• Ancho
• Early Jalepeno
• Jupiter Sweet
• Emerald Giant
• Ace F1

Plus…

• Cauliflower (3 trays)
• Broccoli (3 trays)
• Eggplant (1 tray)
• Okra (1 tray)

We have more than 500 blocks of soil with seeds/seedlings in them in our little dining room! I don’t know where we’re going to keep all of this stuff – we figured that we need to start at least 1000 of our plants inside!

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April 10th we got an inch of snow. The same day, a box from Jordan Seeds arrived with… well, at least tens of thousands of seeds. We’re playing in the big leaugues now I guess – if you don’t want packets of NK seeds from the hardware store, then you have to buy seeds in one thousand packs.

So, any home gardeners that may be reading this… if you’re interested in cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, peppers, squash, or other vegetables… we’d be happy to sell you an assortment of goodies!

It warmed up quite a bit today and the snow is starting to disappear. We had hoped to get the garden plot tilled before April 15th so that we could plant the first round of radishes, carrots, lettuce, and greens… but it looks like it will be at least another week before the ground dries out enough to till.

Morning Sky Greenery, a native prairie plant business in Morris, has been helping us out a lot with our garden project. We don’t have much room in our converted dining room (see above picture), so we brought most of our tomatoes out there this afternoon to keep in their greenhouse until we move them to the garden. We get to use some of their greenhouse space, and we’re getting some potting mix from them. We will have to store a few more seedlings out there this spring.

Lots in store for tonight: we hope to plant all of our peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant, okra, and brussels sprouts.

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Here we have a half-tray of cabbage and a half-tray of brussels sprouts planted in soil blocks.

Chris made these soil blocks, and they are exactly what they sound like: blocks of soil in which you plant seeds. We ordered a Soil Block Maker from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, and have been trying our hands at this plastic-free method of planting seedlings. With about a thousand seedlings that need to be started before the garden is tilled (!!), these should save time, space, and headaches.

These blocks are made out of mostly a soilless mix that we got from Morning Sky Greenery, and also some plain old “dirt” which helps the blocks hold together. Peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite gets a bit too crumbly when it dries out, so we had to add some dirt to the mix. We also added a bit of lime to help balance the pH (as peat moss is quite acidic). Most things we’ve read say to mix fertilizer and compost in with the soil block, but we have no fertilizer at this time and our compost pile that froze over the winter is slowly, slowly working. So we made some manure/compost tea, which we’ll start watering our seedlings with once they get their first set of true leaves.

It’s a really simple idea, and a simple machine makes the blocks. Soil blocks are spaced with just a bit of air between each block – the plant roots stay in their own block and don’t cross the air gap into the neighbor block. If you’ve ever bought annual flowers from a department store greenhouse before, you know how terrible it seems to rip root systems apart to separate your flowers for planting. The soil blocks are supposed to reduce transplant stress as well.

Once the roots fill the entire block, the blocks get placed into the center of another block of soil, which is made using a larger hand-held machine. We’ll have to do this with some of our seedlings, but many can probably stay in the 2″ block until they are ready to be planted outside.

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Seedlings planted March 5th: Tomato, Jahrdale blue pumpkin, and Brussels Sprouts

It’s that time again! I’m excited about this year’s garden. We saved a lot of seeds from last year – various chili peppers, amana orange tomatoes, and jahrdale blue pumpkin seeds (from my uncle’s pumpkins). We also ordered some seeds from Amish Land Seeds, which arrived last week. We planted them yesterday: Great White Tomato, Pineapple Bi-Color Tomato, and Heirloom Eggplant Mix.

… Tomorrow afternoon Chris and I have a meeting which may lead to an incredible change in our gardening this summer. I am both excited and nervous, but will have to wait to post more details later.

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These are flowers from squash and/or pumpkin. This morning while watering the garden one fell off and it made me think I should try picking a bunch and frying them. I picked about 6 and put them in a paper towel and jessi thought they were garbage and threw them in with the dog business (can i say crap? i don’t think thats offensive. i apologize if my grandma or someone ever comes across this)! maybe next time.

it is a law that i take pictures of the garden to post about. whats frustrating is how bad i am at taking pictures. this kale sprout is case in point, but we all get the idea – the kale i planted is sprouting.

the idea of this picture was to illustate that lots of my green onions got ruined from the dudes who came and put in a new gas line. it turns out they also broke a shovel. i saved the metal part cause it looked like it was a good shovel. also they like to eat beef jerky and drink squirt. even though i will have less delicious green onions to eat and it is their fault they were nice guys on the whole. they did move all our eggplants in containers out of the way.

today i bought some more seeds. its mostly cover crops for winter/spring and some herbs to plant inside! for this weekend i hope to get started on making my cold frames and/or dig up some grass for a new garden area next year. its been warm the last few days, but i’m sure fall will sneak up on us.

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