Cool Season Crops

Spring is such a busy time here at our urban farm. There is such a flurry of activity between tilling, planting, chicks, blooms, and trips around beautiful Portland.

Yesterday we planted 3 "Hood" Strawberry plants. They are a medium growing spreading perennial. They will get about 8-10" tall with bright red berries. They like acidic soils, to they will do quite nicely near our blueberry bushes under the fir tree.

Having a freshly turned garden, I got to plant most of our cool season- direct sow crops this weekend and today. In addition to all that I planted (and wrote about in the last posts), I put more in tonight as soon as I got home form work. Here's what went in tonight:

Heirloom and/or Open Pollinated Varieties:

Alaska Nasturtium (6" bush)

Jewel Blend Nasturtium (12" bush)

Tall Single Blend Nasturium (6' vine)

Giant Winter Spinach

Winter Stem Bok Choy

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Shiraz Tall Top Beet

Flat of Egypt Beet

Amaranth Een Chot Hiyu (edible red leaf)

Wando Shelling Pea (bush type, 68 days)

Mesclun Lettuce Mix

-Rocket Arugula

-4 Season Lettuce

-Romaine Cas Lettuce

-Red Salad Bowl Lettuce

-Tango Lettuce

-Blackseeded Simpson Lettuce

-Lolla Rossa Lettuce

-Oakleaf Lettuce

-Romane Cimmaron Lettuce

-Ruby Lettuce

-Bloomsdale Spinach

-Tatsoi

-Golden Swiss Chard

-Magenta Swiss Chard

-Broadleaf Batavia Endive

-Mizuna Mustard

-Red Giant Mustard

Red Crisphead Lettuce

Hybrid Varieties:

Carnival Blend Carrot

We've decided to sow the chicken run with a mix of fava bean, dutch clover, crimson clover, and "broomcorn" sorghum, and buckwheat. We'll be seeding it down soon and covering it with a remay-type ground cover to prevent squirrels and the chickens from eating all the seed before it can germinate.

Flora and I are very excited about the entire garden this year and have just recently reached the realization that aside from fruits, dairy, grains, and baking supplies we won't be buying any groceries this summer! Further, we're excited about being able to can as much as possible. We are working closer and closer to our goal of growing as much, if not all, of our own produce!

Expect pictures of it all as soon as things start sprouting!!

-Fauna

Double Digging

We had a garden party today! A few friends came over and together with Flora, the main garden beds got tilled using the "double digging" technique. Double digging is where you dig a 1 foot deep trench along one side of the garden bed. The soil that is dug out gets set aside for later. As one person moves along the garden digging the first trench, a second person comes behind them and digs another trench right beside the one that was just dug. The soil from the second trench gets turned into the side of the first trench. And this continues until the entire garden has been tilled across. When the last trench is dug along the finishing side of the garden, the soil from the first trench is dumped in to fill the gap. After its all smoothed over with a rake, the bed should be "fluffed up" and completely tilled. This really only needs to be done for the first year or two as you are building the soil with organic matter. Once the soil has improved enough, future years can be done by just turning under the cover crops.

This will be the second summer that our garden will have been planted after pulling up sod. Already we've seen much improvement in the soil. What is here has more loamy/organic matter to it with less clay. The clumps fall apart really easily and it can be worked by hand without a trowel as well.

After the garden was tilled up, I planted our first outdoor seeds of the season. I put in Red Norland and Yukon Gold potatoes (organic from the farmers' market), Alderman Shelling Pea (open pollinated, climbing vine, 120 days), Oregon Sugar Pod II snow pea (hybrid, short vine, 60 days), and Jerusalem Artichoke (also known as a sunchoke).

Our starts from a couple weeks ago are getting taller and some are already getting their first sets of true leaves. The garlic that we overwintered in the garden is a little over a foot tall, thick and looking healthy. Our leeks from the winter garden are also getting big- about a foot and a half tall although not very thick yet (only about 3/4 inch across on the largest ones). We've been diligent about keeping dirt pulled up around the leeks to ensure the bases get well blanched.

If the weather holds off, we'll be sowing our first rounds of cool season chards, spinach, carrots, and beets.

Also, asparagus are starting to come into season! We picked up some great looking stalks from the farmers' market this morning along with some nice raab. Spring is already shaping up to be a very productive summer!

-Fauna

Ready... Set... Starts!

Today was a day for planting starts and starting starts. What started off as an innocent trip to the farmers' market turned into picking up 10 herb starts. (Oregano, Thyme, Marjoram, Savory, two kinds of Bee Balm, Betony, Woodruff, and Myrtle).

Once home, we had a visit from a little friend, Willow. Willow is 8. She will be 9 this December. She dislikes figs but loves cherries. She enjoys watching the chickens but would rather pick at the aphids and ladybugs. She learned how to plant starts by watching Flora. With only 2 starts left to plant, Willow asked if she could put one in. She ended up planting the last two and then asking if she could plant more or if we had any weeds to pull. None of this was in the plan for the day.

Thankfully, we had the materials handy to put together some starts. I pulled out the start trays and dirt. With Willow's help, I planted one flat of seeds. I was so excited about planting again that as soon as Willow left (taking a garlic chive plant with her for her garden), Flora and I ran to Portland Nursery to pick up the last few seeds we needed for the season but didn't have. Flora and I planted 2 more flats of seeds.

Here's what we planted:

Heirloom Varieties

Black Beauty Eggplant (80 days)

Italian Dark Green Parsley

Serrano Chile Pepper (78 days)

Yolo Wonder Sweet Pepper (75 days)

Straight Eight Cucumbers (63 days)

Di Cicco Broccoli (48 days)

High Carotene Tomato (76 days)

Brandywine Tomato (85 days)

Basil Blend (lemon, anise, cinnamon, red rubin, dark opal, thai, genovese)

Chervil

Cleome Spider Flower

Non-Heirloom Varieties

Purple Sprouting Broccoli (220 days- will be overwintered)

Rubine Brussels Sprouts (85 days)

Superschmeltz Kohlrabi (60 days)

Sugar Baby Watermelon (80 days)

Improved Dwarf Siberian Kale

-Fauna

Happy Spring!

Things at the farm are starting to pick up again- we've gotten the chicken coop into place and are almost done painting it, we're thinking about where we want to plant things, and we got our baby chicks (Flora is going to write about them soon)! The rhubarb is coming up again and has spread since last summer. The poppies have reseeded all over the place (Flora thinks they're weeds and should be pulled, but I think they're beautiful and should stay). We are planning to put in a series of Goddess gardens- herbs and flowers placed together with artifacts designating them as sacred to various Goddesses (we'll write more about that later too).

The weather is warm again and the sun is shining! Its been really tempting to just jump on our bikes and disappear into the wilderness. Alas, we haven't done so.

Flora sold her car last weekend, and we now are living completely car/motor free! Its been exciting and annoying all at the same time. Its nice not to have that responsibility of a vehicle, and its nice to no longer be able to take the easy way out and drive. Its been annoying in that we now have to plan our trips a bit more now. If we want to leave town, we have to plan for a zipcar. If we want to attend an event on the other side of Portland, we have to think about the best ways to get there. This might seem simple for many bike riders, indeed it used to be simple for us too... we have been part of the bike community for a while now. Unfortunately, in mid-January we had a wrench thrown into the works when a car struck me while I was on my bike. Thankfully my bike only sustained a scratch. Sadly, I was not that lucky. Recovery has been slow. So while I want to, I'm just now able to get back on a bike for light, short rides. It would be easy to write this off as an inconvenience of being a full-time bike rider, but that attitude scares me. There are far too many bike/auto accidents and close-calls that happen, even in bike-friendly Portland.

So yes, there is lots going on. And we'll be posting on here more often again now that there is stuff to write about. Expect more soon!

Fauna