New Things Happening on the Urban Farm

It's been too long since I posted. Mainly because I've been busy with my 9-5, I have a dog that requires an unexplainable amount of my attention, and I have not really been growing vegetables so I don't have much to write about anyway because of the first two reasons.

That is going to change this month. I can't free up my 9-5 time, but I need to spend more time with my dog IN the garden. A few things have been happening since my last post on our little Urban Farm.

First, my wonderful boyfriend Daryl and I built a massive raised bed, just one but it's 10x10. Enough for square foot gardening with lots of nutritious soil to be devoured by soon to be vegetables.

Second, we bought MEAT RABBITS. Meat rabbits are just that, rabbits one raises for meat, not a pet. I did come across several helpful blogs about meat rabbits that helped me seal the deal.

I chose the Californian breed. We are starting with one male and one female. We will never eat the breeding partners that we star with, so these indeed can be looked at as pets (although I've had them 2 weeks already and they still don't have names). Once they grow to full sexual maturity, we can begin to breed them. The female is expected to deliver 10-12 babies every 12 weeks. My favorite thing about my rabbits so far is their ability to love and devour vegetables as much as me. They LOVE my home grow arugula. My least favorite thing about them is they spray their pee everywhere. Beware, they are NOT good indoor pets, we tried for all of 5 days and went through half a bottle of Natures Miracle. Pee ended up on walls four feet away. Gross. There is however this redeeming attribute to the species:)

Rabbits seem to be a lot of work, but they are also rewarding. Ill be honest, I'm not sure how I'm going to be when it comes down to slaughter time. I guess it's an experiment and I guess I'll never truly appreciate the meat that I eat until I at least try raising it myself, let's just wait and see.

New 10x10 raised bed

I amended the soil with compost, chicken shit, and Amend from Kellogg. 

Each trellis has about 6 pea stalks that I started 2 weeks ago

Self seeded arugula from last seasons abundant seed harvest 

Looking from the new rised bed into the back yard

Me, with the new babies AKA or 3 Californians:)

Enjoying their vegetables and alfalfa 

Our girl has the smokey nose and ears, and the male is all white, with a very masculine looking face.

I'll leave you with this, the bunny run, with my predator of a cat, Meepers, waiting for lunch. Fortunately, the little guy is seriously every single animal on the Urban Farm's best friend, including our duck Stella.

Sorry, if you're not our friends on FB, and not logged in, you can' t view this.

Rain, Rain...Grow Away!!!

As soon as it started raining last week, my veggies took off. They have been getting plenty of winter sun, but this is my winter crop, they don't LOVE sun, the LOVE water. So as you can imagine, they are pretty content with the current cloud burst. Here is what the garden is looking like, 5 weeks after laying the seed, with the exception of the artichoke. It came up from last years failed transplant from my ex-neighbors yard that never survived, I guess the roots did!

Totally new to me, Artichokes!

Radishes

Spinach

Kohlrabi!!!!

Growing into Swiss Chard, I missed you last season!

Pea trellis'

Carrots growing between the peas

A whole new crop of Arugula! 

Spinach

Yummy lettuce

Elephant Garlic, started with one of last years bulbs

Red Onions 

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Germinating 5 varieties of heirloom of tomatoes from seed 

The Waiting Game

All the hard work is done. I prepped the beds with worm and chicken poo. Tilled last years mulch under. Cleared out all the old dead plants from last year and thew them into the new hot compost pile. And laid the seed for my winter crop. Planted about 15 different patches of vegetables altogether.

It's been awfully warm around these parts, we have not had a cold or wet winter at all. Although my water bill does not appreciate this, it also makes for rapid seed germination. It's the waiting game at this point.

Ready. Set. Grow.

Most of the seed packs I used for Winter, not including potatoes, onions, peas and beans

Swiss chard

Pea trellis

Pea sprouts

Baby Carrots

Kohlrabi

Stella Bell the Duck

Radish

New gardening station/germination sun table for this warm winter. Germinating tomatoes for March transplant. 

Artichoke

New compost hot pile this year: All food scraps but meat and dairy, Stella's straw soiled bedding and grass clippings

Photobomb.

Side bed, arugula seedlings at base

Back yard raised bed

5 Elephant garlic, used the ones I grew last year to propagate new ones for this season

Red Onions, 60 of 'em

Good 'ol Yukon Potatoes 

Filling in the holes

The patches of dirt left bare between the seedlings are beginning to fill with new life as the baby plants stretch out their new arms to compete for the sunlight. Watching a garden grow is such a rewarding experience for me. Every morning, I walk down my back steps, let Stella out, and examine all the growth that took place the night before. Then I go to work. When I return, I water the plants that look stressed from the heat of that day using Stella's pond water and examine the changes that took place that day. Maybe over the course of the week visitors may see some differences, but to the gardener, we see them every day and night. 

 The Zucchini plant is healthy and has gotten huge. I had to take down the little white picket fence aka "duck barrier" in front of the plant because this huge Zucchini grew right into it. Technically, you should not let your zucchinis get this big because they become fibrous and woody, less juicy and not as sweet, however, we are going to let this one go, and go, and go, and see how big we can get it. We might make zucchini bread, or a roasted zucchini boat out of it. We have plenty of others that we will be eating. It was a good thing I tool the picket fence down when I did, because it's been growing an inch a day.

The zucchini leaves get bigger every day

Remember the first pics of it??

Watermelon vines

Flowering cucumbers and summer squash

 I don't really know what is going on with the leaf at the very bottom on the pic below. It seems to be a healthy green leaf, but the veins are turning white. To me this indicates a deficiency, a disease, or a pest. I'm going to do more research to find out what it is. We did just have a heat wave, so I'm hoping it was just the result of extreme heat, but it might be low in iron or something.

Cucumbers, one with white vein (bottom)

Kohlrabi

There are a lot of advantages to successive planting. Unfortunately I do not do it as often as I would like. The nice thing about successive gardening or planting, is that not all your crops mature at the same time. It is the best way for a home gardener to have a continual harvest, its just hard to remember. I also have a hard time hold back on seeding my entire plot!

Below is a pic of my radish crop that I am successively seeding. I planted some 1 month ago, and the others 1 week ago, and I still have some fallow dirt.

Successive planting of radishes 

My worm bin, started last year sometime

My little red friends

More worms in the bin

My pumpkin patch 

Stella loving her new pond, she gets in herself 

Midget melon flowering, can't wait for this one

Huge tomato vines

Like, huge, like probably 5 feet

GARLIC!!!

Laura's red onions

Bolting lettuce. I need to eat this stuff.

Peas Starting to climb