Composted Horse Manure

Good friends drop off 3 feed bags filled with composted horse manure for our vegetable garden and fruit trees. 

Jennifer and her husband have a ranch and Mustangs. More poo where that came from.
Thanks Jennifer. We'll give you some yummy produce in return.

Backer Creek Trial Growers - Peas

Backer Creek Trial Growers - Peas

Planted March 23, 2019

Variety - Improved Maestro.
Direct seed in improved soil bed.

Every morning we run out to see if they have popped up yet.
When we had our Urban Farm in Virginia the peas popping up was the official start to the growing season.

Peas Improved Maestro

Peas Improved Maestro

Peas Improved Maestro

Garage Sprouting and Microgreens Setup

We installed a rack on the garage wall as part of our indoor growing area.
The rack is just the normal closet hardware from Lowe's, or Home Depot.

This allows us to change the spacing of the shelves and lights as plants grow.

One thing we did different this year...
Is I had some Styrofoam laying around to be thrown away. We use heat mats and thought it may be a good idea to put the heat mats on them to help the heat loss. So, I had to check the melting point of Styrofoam, but it is very high. We think it does make a difference, as the cooler air does not circulate under the heat map stealing the heat from the mats.

This year I am growing Microgreens for us. Maybe could be a commercial thing one day, ya never know.

Rose has her seeds sprouting on the bottom racks and the top racks are for the Microgreens.
So far it has been a great success.

We have had Salad Mix, Radish, Sunflower Seeds, Pea Shoots, and Beets.
On the bottom racks are the vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, etc... that will get transplanted outside at some point.

Just in front of the rack you can see a limb of one of our fruit trees. They have their own lights. We wintered them in the garage and they did very well.

Micorgreens and Sporting Racks

Pea Shoots Microgreens

Sunflower Microgreens

Backer Creek Trial Growers - Carrots

Backer Creek Trial Growers - Carrots

Planted March 24, 2019

Kuttigen Variety. We planted over 100 seeds. 20" x 20" x 16" high container.
The containers is a recycled compost bin that my brother gave me. I split it two, so we have 2 carrot bins.

Growing root vegetables is best in very loose potting soil where they can grow strait without hitting any rocks or compacted soil. This helps them grow straight and pretty.

Kuttigen Carrots Container Gardening 20" x 20" x 16" high container.

Baker Creek Trial Growers.

We are very excited to be chosen for the Baker Creek Trial Growers.

Our seeds arrived today. We are already planting and will be reporting progress on their FB page. Nice to watch and interact with all the other trial growers. I think we'll learn a whole lot from this. Fun, too! Food, too! (Maybe there is a use for Facebook - No way, close call.)
Rose and I are Urban Farmers at heart. Well, for us that means growing fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers in our yard - NO Grass...
Neighbors all love it. Stop by to see what is new. They had a bet going on how big the watermelons were going to get last summer.

Pepper Helps at Lowe's

Funny thing.... Pepper really loves going to Lowe's.
I guess she likes going out anywhere really, but seems to really like Lowe's.

She gets to go for rides, meet people and other dogs, and they give her dog treats at check out.
What not to like.

I like having here along, she is a blasts.

Pepper shopping at Lowe's

Meyer Lemon - Wintering in the garage

We freeze here in Portland, so can't leave the citrus trees out.
Last year the tree was much smaller and we kept it in the living room. It was warm, but not much light - it did OK.

This year we brought it into the garage. And although it is not heated much I rigged up some lights on a timer and gave it 12 hours a day.

Wow, the tree loved it and I thing may have doubled in size and the 5 lemons look great.
The 1st year Seville Orange, to the left, seemed to stay green and grow, as well.

Meyer Lemon over wintering in our garage. 

Potato Plants and Bags

This year we are growing three fingerling types of potatoes.
I love potatoes. We grew them in Virginia a couple ways.

1st I grew them in old tires.
The deal with potatoes is you "hill" them. Basically you plant them shallow and as they grow you keep adding dirt covering the stem. The stem responds by growing more roots and potatoes. As you keep hilling further up the stem as it grows, the more potatoes you get. So back to the old tires. I started with one tire, then as the plants grew added another tire and more dirt, and so one and so on. Ready to harvest, just take the tires off. Yep, lots of good potatoes. Good for small areas.

2nd, I like potatoes so much I planted them in a 4' by 16' raised bed. We got 30 lbs.

This house, we don't really have room for a whole bed of potatoes, so we thought we would try the bags. Sort of like the tire thing, as they grow we "hill" by adding more soil. They other good thing about the bags is the are 7 gallon size with handles, so we can move them around for sun. Ready the harvest just dump the bags over.

Pepper is helping Rose fill the bags and plant the potatoes.

Mason Bees

We got some more Mason Bees at the HOS event.

They are good for pollinating fruit trees and everything else really.

They like living in holes or tubes that are 5/16 of an inch - picky little critters.

I plan to attached them under the eaves where they will be out of the wind, sun and rain.

The setup...

The tubes get bent in half and then grouped up with a rubber band.

After that, I wrapped the coffee cans in grey tape (not shown), so they were not so, well red. Not sure if the red color would be off putting to the bees or not, or attract predators.

After mounting them, I used some electrical tape to attach the bees to the cans so they can find the tubes. The bees are in those clear tubes. You just open them up so the bees can come out when they want to. 

Captain Dave

Home Orchard Society Fruit Propagation Fair

Wow! We were blow away by this event and the Home Orchard Society.

So, in the fall we went to their fruit tasting event. Kind of strange, as it was a huge hall of tables with tones of fruit to taste. OK, nice, but didn't really get the point. We did attend a Bee Guy telling's us all about bees in the area, which was fascinating.

OK, so this event made it all clear. Last fall you taste the fruit and make notes, then in the spring you go and pick up the root stock and scions to grow your own!

Hundreds of fruit tree excerpts and fruit tree lovers. Really nice helpful friendly people. I'm very rarely impressed with the human race and this was great - really lifted my heart.

We stopped by the Information Table and pleaded ignorant of the whole process. They walked us through everything with great patience.

Anyway,,, The deal is you pick out what Scions (small cuttings from fruit trees that are free) then buy ($5) the root stock they go on. And for another $5 they will custom graft the scion onto the root stock for you. Being you get to sit and talk with the person doing the grafting it is a super totally fun educational experience. You walk away with such a good feeling and some little trees to take care of and grow. Total cost for each custom tree is $10.

He showed us three ways to graft. Easier than I thought and will probably do it myself in the future.

Grafting, in general, is a more powerful tool that I realized. Don't like the fruit on your tree... Cut it off and graft a new variety on. Want to add a new variety to an existing tree, no problem, just cut off a limb and graft on a new variety.

Captain Dave

Our new fruit trees. Scions grafted to root stock.

Here is our friendly guy who grafted our 4 fruit trees.

Lots of Scions to choose from and they are FREE.

Pic of maybe half of the tables with scions for various fruit trees. 

Microgreens Salad Mix

I have started down the Microgreens path adding this to our Urban Farm / Garden.

I know, I know it can only lead to good food, improved health, fun, and a connection with the other living things on this planet, and nutritious fresh flavorful food for my family and friends.

Yes I know I am letting the team down by having an Urban Garden and not supporting big Ag, big chemical companies, and the oil barons. Yes, I am not doing my part in increasing pollution by buying food in packages that has been shipped 3,000 miles away and stored for over a month.

I know I am supporting sustainable living and not Wall Street - I'm sorry to be Un-American.

Yes, I know I should be staring at a computer 24 hrs a day, spending countless hours of soul crushing time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TV. Walking down the sidewalk staring at my iPhone personal  tracking device relaying my every move to Wall Street and Big Data, and giving up my individuality to embrace the cyborg connection between my brain and the collective advertising network.

I'm sorry I can still think for myself.

I'm sorry I would rather be working in the dirt in conjunction with nature and the fantastic plants and microorganisms of the earth.

I'm sorry I love earthworms.

Captain Dave

Image is of Salad Mix 4 days sprouting, now just getting under the lights on a heat map.

Microgreens - Salad Mix. 4 days old just uncovered and placed on the heating mat and under lights.