Showing posts with label Straw and Bale Gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Straw and Bale Gardening. Show all posts

Friday, April 22, 2011

Earth Day. Time for an update.

Earth day. Sounds like the perfect time to update my long neglected blog.

I’m not going to go into much detail, mostly letting the pictures speak for themselves.

The beautiful Max, taking a break from egg-laying to cruise the backyard for bugs…

Max

Seedlings, most of which have lost their labels. I know there is ruby chard, some cucumbers and a couple types of summer squash. Oh well…I’ll just throw them in the ground somewhere and see what happens…

seedlings

Cedar fence boards make EXCELLENT raised beds. Right now they only have decomposing straw in them that the chickens have enjoyed scratching and turning…

Cedar beds

The Freedom Rangers, which we are raising for meat, are now about eight weeks old. About two more weeks and they’ll be ready for processing. I love raising these guys…

Freedom Rangers

White potatoes growing in a cardboard box. Time for more mulch!

Potato box

Edible flowers (violas and pansies) lining the front walk. Garlic is in the bed to the left, and gladiolus and nasturtiums are coming up next to the steps.

Entry

The front beds are coming along, though I am desperate for mulch. Between a lack of time and a lack of a truck, getting it has been a challenge. Peas are up (though possibly too late), blueberries, pomegranate and crabapple are doing great, dwarf corn and squashes went in today.

Front yard

Row of red potatoes growing in leaf mold, covered with chicken wire to keep the chickens from scratching them up. I roll the wire up every evening every evening when the chickens are put to bed.

Potato row

That probably covers the garden for now. Things are looking a little ratty, but that’s because my time has been taken by many, many other projects that I need to document soon.

I hope everyone is having an amazing and productive spring – I would love to hear about your projects, too!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Home.Farm’s true beginnings!

So, today was a big day for us here on the HomeFarm. I can’t quite explain what was so special about today…maybe loading the FarmCar up with HomeFarm’s first bales of straw…maybe the finishing of a never-ending table-building project…I just don’t know.

Doesn’t matter, really – all that’s important is that it *felt* like a big day for us!

FarmCar Straw

Here she is, the famous FarmCar, loaded with five bales of straw fresh from the Standard Feed & Seed Store in Atlanta. As you can probably imagine, after unloading her FarmCar is completely head to toe in straw remnants. I haven’t had time to vacuum her out yet – that’s a job for another day.

Garden beginnings - back yard

Two bales are now in the bed seen on the right of this photo. They will stay baled, but I will be piling the tops with composted manure and watering them for two weeks. After two weeks, the straw will have heated up and cooled down (hopefully) and something, probably greens, will be planted on top.

The beautiful thing about this method is that the bales will continue to degrade and compost, and next year I will have some beautiful stuff to spread in this box.

As for the rest of the bales, they will be going toward making some new beds. More on that tomorrow!