Not All Acreage is Created Equal

It's so amusing to go back through some of the old posts on this blog. It's been half a decade since we stopped posting and so much has changed.

I accepted a position near Dallas, Texas toward the end of 2014. Then I proceeded to make a lot of mistakes that threw the whole family off kilter. We were looking at two houses, one with more of our checklist items and one with less checklist items but more property. In the end we went with more property and a garage.

We now live on a single-level house on 9 acres. Since moving here, we've lost all but one of our original hens to other people's dogs and several more during the last few years to dogs (mostly) and other creatures. Our bees didn't make the move and the new hives we've added to our little apiary have been struggling. We also lost our beautiful (and expensive) angora rabbit to... you guessed it... other people's dogs.

It's been a very tough two and a half years and I've often questioned why or how I could ever dream that such a life was for me. Of course, such things are never just that simple, but I'm convinced that more than anything else most of our issues stem from picking the wrong type of property. Not all acreage is created equal.

The best this black clay can seem to grow is mesquite trees and the odd honey locus. But we're trying.

I know this isn't our forever home. In fact, I'm no longer sure where that might be anymore. What I do know is that it's our home for now, and I'm going to try my best to let this home and this acreage teach me the lessons that only hardship can provide. It's my goal to start overcoming the obstacles in my path as we look to the future.

We can still have our green adventure. We can still aim toward growing a large portion of our own food. And in time, with enough study, patience, and persistence, we can start working with this land; too improve it. To improve us.

Preparing for Spring!

It's been a busy couple of weeks as we prepare for the onset of Utah's prime growing season. With a trip scheduled for the end of April, we had to work extra hard to make sure our plans were on track.

To combat a constant water issue in the back corner of the garden, I finally got around to tying into one of the sections of our yard sprinklers. This took a bit of pre-planning, performing an inventory of sprinkler supplies we had on hand, acquisition of new parts, and a whole lot of digging. I'd been wanting t extend the sprinklers out to the back of the garden for years, but there was always the concern of hitting one of the lines with the tiller.

Since we got our backyard chickens, three lovely ladies who love to peck and scratch their way through the soil, tilling isn't so much of a concern. What is a concern, though, is keeping the ladies out of the garden unless it's time to prepare for winter or is they're on supervised visitation. It turns out they love a vine ripened tomato just as much as we do! So that was another project that had to be finished before we left on our trip. I'd bought some fencing a few years earlier, hoping to make tomato cages, but it hadn't held up to the original intended purpose. Turns out that it was perfect for a perimeter fence around the garden with enough left over to put up some fencing inside for cucumbers or beans.

Installing the gate was an interesting challenge. Neither Tara nor myself had ever done that before. Even so, we seemed to do a good job of it. Measure twice, check the level, all that sort of stuff. Works like a champ and looks pretty good too.

I really need to import the pictures off my camera and upload a few. Maybe I'll do that for my next post as a bit of an update. Certainly as the fence is bare now, but will be overflowing with edibles as the year progresses. Tara's peas are already popping out of the ground and looking for something to wrap their little green tendrils around.

We've got one hoop house and a green house up right now, so we've got more vegetation actively growing than we normally would. The general rule of thumb is that anything other than cold-hardy plants should be held off until atleast mother's day, if not a week longer. The weather here in Utah has been so sporadic these past few years though, you can't really even trust that assumption. We've lost too many good plants to start taking chances. There's nothing more disheartening to a gardener than to walk outside and see your babies withered or frost-burnt.

Trying something new this year as well: ginger. I just bought a healthy looking rhyzome from the store and put it in a pot with some potting soil. I have four healthy plants popping up, each were easy to separate from the old root structure, and a fifth is getting ready to pop up. They were originally hanging out in my tub, I guess they liked the humidity from the shower. Now I've got them moved out to the green house and I hope to get them in the ground in the next few weeks once the weather is a bit more stable. If I'm lucky, I might be able to get at least one to bloom. I hear the flowers are amazing. Either way, I'm a huge fan of ginger.

I know I've given your the rough and dirty on a lot here, but I'll try to do my best to update you on these projects and more in the next couple of days. If I'm super savvy, I might just come back to this post and put in links to the updates so you can follow the topics you're particularly interested in.

Farewell and good gardening to ya!

Rough Year for Utah Garden

We had a particularly rough year in the garden in 2011. It seems like Winter keeps pushing Spring and Summer further and further into the year, making it extremely hard to predict when to best plant or direct sow seeds.

Our first victims this year were the peas. Tara was especially enthused about having a nice crop of tasty snow peas, but the late frosts were just too much. By the time the weather stabilized, it was already too late.

Our cabbage seemed to do all right. One lesson we learned this year with our chickens is that the girls aren't always the most careful in the garden. They did take care of many of our potato bugs, or pill bugs as some may call them, which was nice. But then again, they also loved eating our tomato plants. In the end we had to resort to putting up a temporary barrier until we can erect a proper fence.

I like how they love to rummage through the garden area during the early months of Spring, so it comes down to only allowing them in the garden when we want them there. Hence the fence that I'm hoping to get in before the weather gets too bad this Fall. Otherwise, they make excellent tillers and their droppings help to fertilize. Nothing like turning bug pests into plant nutrition with minimal effort, and getting eggs to boot!

Two of our apple trees did very well this year, but the two newest ones were quite barren, without a single apple adorning their branches. Our peaches took a major hit, having all their fruit blown off by the angry Spring winds. The rest of the early peach-bearing crop in Utah took similar hits. Somewhat more disappointing, however, is the fact that the two peach trees didn't seem to grow much this year, if at all. I was really hoping for some sturdy growth in place of the missing crop, but we'll have to see how they do next year. Perhaps our clay soil is holding them back, could just be a matter of time before they can establish proper root structures to support any significant growth.

Another update, the hazelnut bushes have been separated and moved. I believe I posted about this earlier. I joined the Arbor Day Foundation Hazelnut Bush program, but all of my plants died from the first planting. They did send me more after their survey, but only one survived. I'd actually planted one of the bushes over at my mom's house in hopes that I could get a start from it if the second planting went as bad. Unfortunately, she didn't water the little guy and he died. That left 2 bushes at my house, and one didn't make it. Much to my surprise, though, it ended up sending up another secondary set of stems, so I carefully dug them both up and relocated them to a sunnier location. I'm hoping the extra sun is what they needed to thrive. So far they are both very small and the root structure hadn't penetrated the clay very well.

In addition to moving the hazelnuts, we also purchased and planted two additional pears and an Italian prune tree, which has rave reviews from my dad. I might have been a bit rough with the prune, it isn't looking so hot. We'll see how it's looking in the Spring.