End of May/Beginnng of June:
The Potatoes have finally begun to poke their heads out, he says they are still rather spotty but we are glad that cutting them and letting them scab until the field dried out didn't kill them!
We planted
50# of each type (red Pontiac & all blue) so if we could get just that much back we will be okay, we will break even .... If we get more than that 50# each back all the better -- I'm just hoping we won't get the 10:1 return that hubby has been hearing/watching on YouTube!
The last try at potatoes we planted 2# and got like 3# back, but they were very small and my youngest son said they tasted very sweet raw ... He ate them that way too.
So ... If we are going to get a similar 2:3 ratio .... Then I can expect some 75# from each type back ... Not the greatest but it will work.
Hubby is still talking about turning the attached garage into a root cellar .... I think he's over thinking it right now. If we get a 1:5 return, then yeah I could see us having to find a good way to store 500# of potatoes, but if we do get that 1:10 return ... Oh my gosh! I think I'm gonna be canning for quite some time!
🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔
We also have very few corn sprites coming up as well - but that doesn't surprise me, the weather has been rather chilly lately and the soil really should be around 70°F in order for the corn to sprout/emerge
We've been having issues with spotting droppings from the planter these last couple of years so we will have to wait a bit to see exactly how much was actually planted. HOPEFULLY this year we will actually have a crop - enough to both can/freeze and sell! But we will see ... I want to make sure I have enough to feed the family all winter until next year AND feed the chickens, if possible, to help cut back on feed costs -- so we may not sell this year even if we did ge a bumper crop.
Well - we should be getting the tomatoes, what few surviving melons I have, as well as the pease & beans in the ground tonight once hubby gets home.
He used PVC piping and landscape fabric to make me some planting frames to help keep weeds down. And if the wind doesn't rip them to shreds, we should be able to reuse them for a cole seasons before we need to replace the fabric.
Hubby figures a large rock on each corner should be enough to keep the wind from carrying the platforms away and ripping up the plants ... We will see what happens. It seems counter intuitive to put rocks INTO the garden to me -- but then, I'm just a city girl.
I have talked him into "rotating" ... Sort of, that's why it's in quotes, we will plant the potatoes & tomatoes in the same field since they are both of the nightshade family ...l the corn has its own field being a grass/grain ... The onions are in the retaining wall and looking GREAT btw! The peas & beans will be planted in the other half of the field where the nightshades are basically cutting the field into two semi-equal pieces (by volume, not width)
This gives me four plots for planting technically I'm supposed to have one area which does NOT get planted BUT since we planted NOTHING last year, the retaining wall hadn't been planted in several years, and the triangle field hadn't been planted in a couple years ....
Next year I will have to figure out which of the four will not be planted ... I'm leaning towards the long field but then, that's the one where we do the bonfire each year so it gets plenty of nutrients put back in .... Hinny just varies where the fire gets placed - he evn tried it once on the west end where nothing seems to grow.
More on the miracle of bonfires later ...
More of that stuff later ... Just wanted to give a farm update ....
No comments:
Post a Comment