June Homestead Update

We’ve been busy here on the homestead, friends. It’s been an impressively wet spring here, even by Pacific Northwest standards. We even had a dusting of snow/hail mid-April!

It’s been great for my greens and radishes, but it also means the slug pressure is extra high this year. The slimy devils. But hey that’s the reality of organic, homegrown produce! I figure the de-slugging is just a good way for me to slow down and appreciate the blessings from our garden.

We’ve been thoroughly enjoying eating our way through the bounty of the spring garden.

This spring was my first foray into seed starting, and I thought I would play it safe and plant extra just in case some seedlings didn’t make it. Well, I very soon found myself with more plants than I had space for, but I didn’t want to just cull them. It seemed too heartless.

Even though my plants were hardened off by the end of April, I still didn’t have nearly enough space for them in the garden. They lived outside in the extremely rainy and cold spring garden waiting to graduate from their little red plastic solo cup homes. Some became root bound, some turned yellow, others lost leaves. It was rough. The slugs, apparently lusty for anything tender and green, did a number on my transplants as well. Happily, even after those less than ideal conditions, many plants have survived and bounced back.

By mid-May, I had planted three Birdie’s raised beds and who knows how many fabric pots with tomato and pepper transplants, but I still needed way more planting space than we had. Ultimately, we decided to triple the size of our garden! That meant we needed to rent a tiller. Normally I am a disciple of no-till gardening, but in order to start a garden in unbroken, mostly clay soil in spring, I needed the help of this big fella below.

This hydraulic tiller made quick work of the unbroken ground, so much so that Mr. Halcyon was able to have the first till done in just an hour! Next, I moved wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of compost to the newly tilled area.

Then, Mr. Halcyon extended the depth of the tiller and did a second pass through to incorporate all that good organic matter.

In order to maximize growing space in the garden, I decided to use t-posts we had around our shop and some metal fencing to act as inexpensive trellises for the remaining tomatoes, cucumbers, and pole beans that still needed homes. We cut the fencing into 12 ft long sections and spaced three t-posts per trellis. I got a good workout using the post driver to slam the posts into the ground! You can also see the weather reverted back to temps in the mid-50s with rain…

The roll of fencing was about $60 and the post driver a little over $30, so our 4 trellises were accomplished relatively inexpensively! Tomato cages can be exceedingly pricey, even those little flimsy ones are almost $5 per cage right now, and since we are growing so many lovely plants, this was a far more economical choice!

I planted cucumbers, more tomatoes and hot peppers, sweet peppers, and pole beans this week. I added some granular Espoma tomato tone fertilizer to the planting holes of the cukes, peppers, and tomatoes, and watered them with some fish fertilizer so they could get some “fast” nutrients as well. For the pole beans, I scratched in some Down to Earth vegetable garden fertilizer and gave them some fish fertilizer as well. Then everyone got covered in straw mulch.

In the area behind the trellises, I am experimenting with growing my first Three Sisters garden. A Three Sisters garden is a brilliant Native American agricultural tradition. Corn, squash, and beans are known as the Three Sisters, and growing them together is supposed to help them thrive. The corn grows tall, providing a natural trellis for the beans to climb. The beans lend support to the cornstalks and enrich the soil with nitrogen. The squash sprawls underneath, blocking out weeds and helping to retain soil moisture.

I styled my Three Sisters garden after the diagram from Native Seeds’ website. First, I planted a block of 150 sweet corn seeds. Then I planted 6 butternut squash plants in front of the corn. I am waiting on some pole bean seeds to arrive in the mail, and will plant them around the outside of the corn. It’s only been a few days, so the corn hasn’t yet germinated. I will post pictures when they are growing tall!

In other exciting news, I was able to go to a local farm and pick strawberries this week. Much later than last year, but again, we have had a cold and wet spring.

I picked around 15 pounds of glorious berries and spent the next 6 hours with my water bath canner putting up jams and pie filling.

Mr. Halcyon came home to a steamy and jam-splattered kitchen, but also to 6 half-pint jars of strawberry jam, 4 half-pint jars of strawberry-rhubarb jam, 6 half-pint jars of Christmas jam, and 5 pint jars of strawberry-rhubarb pie filling, so really, he couldn’t (and didn’t) complain. I still had some berries leftover, so I dehydrated half overnight and froze the others.

I used this recipe for low-sugar strawberry jam, and this one for the strawberry-rhubarb jam. Ahh, I love canning season. They taste fantastic with our homemade soymilk yogurt.

That’s all for now. I will continue to battle slugs, aphids, and earwigs, and keep growing our plants! Hope you can enjoy spring and the start of summer!