I'm baaaaaack........ Get ready for a novel! =)

Its been a long while since I last blogged... I apologize.  I'm gonna try to do better, I promise.

So had a heck of a year as far as the garden went, even tho we were in a drought the garden produced an amazing amount of food.  The drip irrigation system helped a great deal!  This was the first year of growing on 'raised' beds, more like mounds.  I was trying to keep the garden from getting flooded like years before so I dug trenches for paths and tossed the topsoil onto the beds next to it.  Of course when I try to adjust my garden for flooding, we get a drought.  =/   The plan is to never walk in the planting beds to keep it from getting compacted.  I did a soil test early in the spring and with the help of reading the e-book by Michael Astera The Ideal Soil: A Handbook for the New Agriculture I had a plan on what I needed to add to the garden beds to get them 'ideal'.  Its an easy read and very interesting, his website also sells a great deal of the minerals and nutrients commonly needed.  He even gave me his advice via email, I had lots of questions! 

After I got all the paths dug out, and believe me THAT was a good workout, I put down all the old bedding from the goat stall... goat poo and all!  It made the paths a lot less muddy and I figured as it broke down it, the worms would love it!  The one thing I didn't think about was how much the weeds would love to grow on the sides of the mounds.  The hens would scratch the beds looking for bugs and move the dirt onto the paths too.

I was able to can a lot of things this year!  I did some of my regular stuff like canned tomatoes, salsa, pasta sauce but I also wanted to try some fun new things.  So I made some caramelized red onion relish, sweet jalapenos, apple butter, pepper & onion relish, hot pepper butter, tomato based table sauce, sauerkraut, chipoltes in adobo sauce, sun relish and a hot pepper peach jam.  We are pretty well set for a while and have lots of options to give as gifts for this holiday season!  In addition to all that I made a boat load of hot sauces... I think there are at least 10 different kinds.  I went a little crazy on growing hot peppers this year and boy did they do well!  I purchased an Excalibur dehydrator this summer and man did I use it!  I had that thing full of hot peppers most of the fall!  I have jars and bags full of dried hot peppers.  I decided to buy a coffee grinder and grind some of them to a powder and purchased some small spice jars so I could give them as gifts too.  Others were interested in buying them so I created a little online website for them:  Mo Better Hot - Hot Pepper Powders   In addition to drying the peppers I also dehydrated sweet onions, tomato slices, celery, carrots, herbs.  It was a great investment!

Some of the hot sauces and dehydrated hot peppers

Mo Better Hot Powders

But now its fall and its time to start the garden / yard clean up for winter.  Its so sad for me - I hate not being able to work outside during the winter, and I hate being cold even more!!   So after evaluating how this years garden did with the raised beds - I wanted to try to do something to keep the dirt from coming down into the paths and even more so - help keep the weeds from taking over the edges!   So I'm trying to add some wood side boards.  I ordered 8x2 10' boards.  My beds are 30' long so need 3 boards per side of a bed.  I had 12 boards delivered last week - figured I'd do 2 beds this fall to have a couple ready to plant early spring and can work on installing the rest in the early spring.  This also gives me a chance to see how they make it thru the winter.  I did not purchase treated wood as the chemicals used to treat the wood leaches into the ground, and I don't want that in my food system.  So I worked on staking out the area with twine to be able to edge the sides in a somewhat straight line.   I worked on edging the sides last night after work and was able to get one done tonight before it got too dark.  Supposed to be in the 50's all weekend so I'll be working on the beds all day.  I have to weed out all the chickweed that took over and after getting 2 beds installed with the boards I can even out the dirt, if there is a little too much dirt I can use some to build up a new flower bed area I'll be constructing next spring by the new rain barrels I installed behind my drum studio this summer.  

One side installed.  2' stakes used to keep board in place.

My tools... the straight edger, the 2' stakes and a mallet - good workout pounding the stakes in!

Other things in the garden I've worked on this week was to put out the cold frame Mo bought me a few years ago.  I've placed it so the celery I started from seed will be covered - hoping I can over winter it since I learned how hard it is to start celery from seed!  I'm also going to try to start some cold hardy greens in there, maybe some radishes too - if they don't grow no loss but might as well try.

I want to start using cover crops more often, I was only able to get one bed covered this fall - but now I have a huge bag of cover crop seeds so I'll plant it early Spring and let it grow till its warm enough to plant stuff like peppers and tomatoes.  Then ya just turn it into the ground and its considered "green manure" .  The seeds I purchased are oats and field peas.  Its still green but can tell up close that its starting to get a little frost damaged.  This bed will be dead in the Spring and I can just work it into the soil.  It helps keep weeds from taking over as well as add organic matter back into the soil.  This bed is where the corn was planted this year, and corn takes a lot from the soil so I wanted to make sure I was able to add something back in right away.  The peas being in the legume family, are nitrogen fixers which means they put nitrogen back into the soil - something corn takes a lot of when it grows.

oats & peas cover crop.

I've started a new compost pile toward the front of the garden this fall with all the corn and sunflower stalks.   I'll be starting to add our green compost items from the kitchen to it.  I picked this location as its were nothing much else grows due to the tree shading it a good part of the day.  The pile has already shrunk quite a bit since I created it.  You can't ever have enough compost!!!

 Working on putting some of the fruit beds to bed for the winter.  I got the straw down on the strawberry bed, need to finish weeding and get a mulch layer around the blueberry bushes, and put chicken wire over all my newly planted grape vines - learned the hard way last year how much the deer like to eat grape vines... they munched them down the barely an inch left.  =/   I will be installing my grape trellis next spring, have the posts waiting, my neighbor is gonna come down with his auger and easily drill the holes for me.   Still need to build something for the blueberries next year so the birds don't eat more than we do - some sort of structure that we can put bird netting on but still not too hard to get in to pick.  Anyone have ideas?

Strawberry bed and Blueberry bushes (and weeds...)

My up & coming vineyard!  =)

future grape trellis...

 We are also trying to plant a lot more trees on the property.  Kind of a pain when mowing but will be worth it.  I get a lot of freebies from being a member of the Arbor Day Foundation.  We just planted 6 more trees (with some still needing to be planted - maybe this weekend).   Worried that the deer will nibble them down to nothing as well I placed old clay drain tiles over some of the real small ones and some got chicken wire cages.  20 years from now the backyard will be nice and shady!  We also buy a live tree for Christmas and then plant it in the yard.  This will be our 3rd Christmas tree to plant after the holidays. We also find a lot of trees just popping up in the beds, guessing from birds 'depositing' seeds as they go potty...  photo below shows 2 more I recently found - I think they are some sort of cedar?

Our yard of small trees and clay pipes. 

One Eyed Tom guarding the new Christmas tree.

Baby trees in the landscaping.

So that is my fall update.  Its Friday night and today I just got the best of the best when it comes to seed catalogs....  Baker Creek!!  Its almost more of an art book as it is seed catalog - photography is wonderful!  Its all heirloom seeds, its time to sit back with a glass of wine and start planning next years garden!  I love to keep trying new varieties every year!   I think I want those zinnias on the cover!   RareSeeds.com is their website - check it out, you can request a catalog on there too. 

Have a wonderful weekend!  I'll try to post more Sunday showing how the 2 garden beds look all finished.