My large, half-acre vegetable garden is ready for planting.
Having a really good vegetable garden where I can grow lots of fresh, delicious, and nutritious produce is extremely important to me. I share the vegetables with my daughter, my grandchildren, and other family and friends. Last week, the beds were cleaned, topped with an even layer of Miracle-Gro Organic Raised Bed & Garden Soil, and raked perfectly for planting.
Here are some photos.
It’s spring and time to turn our attention to preparing the vegetable garden for the season. Soil is delivered and dropped onto the carriage road near the garden gate. This Miracle-Gro Organic Raised Bed & Garden Soil is already complete with nutrients, but I also add Miracle-Gro Organic All-Purpose Plant Food.
The fertilizer is mixed thoroughly with our Kubota tractor backhoe bucket and loads of soil are transported to the garden.
My crew uses the back of our trusted Polaris off-road vehicle to load and unload soil. Everyone at the farm uses these vehicles every day – to move soil, potted plants, tools, and supplies, etc.
Next, Chhiring shovels the soil into the wheelbarrow – it’s a very focused and efficient production line process.
As each wheelbarrow is filled, it is taken to a specific bed and unloaded.
Appropriately sized clumps are dropped to top dress all the fed beds.
Some beds are already filled with plants, but others are cleared and ready for fresh layers of soil.
The beds in this garden range in size from about 5′ by 10′ to 8′ by 70′. Here’s Phurba going back for another wheelbarrow full for this bed.
Meantime, Cesar begins raking the soil across the bed with a hard rake.
A three inch layer is spread over each bed carefully and evenly.
José tackles another bed.
The beds are beautiful to look at even before any planting is done.
In this center bed along the side fencing are lots of planted peas – one section for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and another for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas. They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from pests and diseases.
Here, soil is placed around my rhubarb plants. My rhubarb did nicely over the winter out here in the garden. When keeping rhubarb during the cold season, be sure it is well fed and maintained, to ensure good health and productivity.
At the corners of each bed I planted herbs. Phurba grooms whatever herbs survived the cold season and removes any dead plants.
This bed is filled with tulips. These colorful flowers will be ready to cut and enjoy in a few weeks.
I planted several beds of tulips last November. They require a sustained dormant period of cold temperatures in order to stimulate root development. I’m excited to see them bloom.
This bed is planted mostly with currants. True currants are tiny berries that grow in clusters on shrubs belonging to the Ribes family. Some of the varieties include ‘Rovada,’ ‘Red Lake,’ and ‘Jonkheer Van Tets.’
And remember the saffron planted here by my friend, Hannah Milman? In January, I covered the growing saffron with wire fencing to protect the underground bulbs from curious creatures. The foliage grows well in between the wire.
And here is my garlic bed. Fall is the ideal time to plant garlic. Planting then allows the bulbs to establish good roots before winter, leading to larger and more flavorful cloves by the summer harvest. This garlic looks good so far!
In the foreground is one of my strawberry beds. Strawberries are perennial plants that naturally enter a dormant state during winter. Dormancy allows the plant to conserve energy, protect the roots, and prepare buds for fruiting in the next season. There’s still lots of planting before all the beds are full, but everything is off to a great start!
It’s always exciting to have babies at my farm - especially when they're cute, fluffy chicks.
Right now I have more than 50 precious chicks in residence. The peeps came from eggs laid here at my farm and then incubated and hatched inside my "chick room" at the stable. All of them are healthy, alert, and very curious. They will remain in a large, heated cage until they are big enough to move outdoors to their own enclosure and coop, and then into the chicken yard with the other adults.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
It’s that time of year when I have lots of eggs – all laid by my healthy hens here at the farm.
The eggs are placed into an incubator where they are safe from other birds and closely monitored until they hatch. Chicken eggs take 21-days. While the eggs incubate, they are automatically turned once a day, 45-degrees each way, back and forth during this period.
At about day-7 and again at day-14, Helen “candles” each one, meaning she holds each egg against a light, turning it slowly, to observe the embryo inside. Fertilized, growing embryos can be identified by visible blood vessels, a large dark spot or filled space in the egg. This egg looks to have a developing chick inside.
From days 17 to 21, they’re placed into this hatching cabinet, where it is still warm. The eggs are spaced apart in sections where it is safe and where eggs cannot roll during the hatching process.
And then the wait for pipping begins, when a chick starts to crack its egg. This process starts around day 19. The chick breaks through the shell to breathe air.
And one by one, chicks emerge. They remain here until they are dry.
After the chicks hatch, they are placed into this cage in the same room. The room is kept very warm and the chicks are checked often. Baby chicks need constant monitoring until they are at least a month old.
The chicks are kept in a draft-free brooder with appropriate red heat lamps to keep them warm. Chicks require an air temperature of 95 degrees during the first week, 90 degrees the second week, and so on – going down by around five degrees per week until they’re ready to transition to the coop.
And here is just one of the chicks – nothing short of adorable.
These youngsters are less than a week old, but they are already very mobile and exploring their surroundings.
The chicks are fed organic chick starter for the first six to eight weeks. Starter feed is a protein dense variety of chicken feed designed to meet a chick’s dietary requirements. Several feeding dishes are placed into the cage.
A chick should never have to “wait in line”. On average, about 10-chicks can consume approximately one-pound of chick starter feed per day.
Fresh, clean water is also always provided. In fact, every chick is personally shown where their food and water sources are, so they know where to find them.
Chickens are generally gentle, shy birds, but because these are being raised around a lot of activity, they will be well-socialized and friendly.
Chickens have their own personalities – some are more active or more curious than others.
These babies get lots of visitors throughout the day, but ideally, they should be checked at least twice daily for food, water, and temperature needs.
These chicks all have clear eyes and are very alert.
One can typically identify roosters from hens around four to 12 weeks of age. Right now, they’re all just sweet, charming peeps.
In general, chickens are quite vocal. They make around 30 different calls to communicate with each other, expressing everything from “I am hungry” to “there’s a predator nearby.”
Chicks grow quickly and are quick to follow behaviors from other flock members.
These peeps are also very social and where one goes, the others follow.
This chick is wide awake now, but chicks sleep quite a bit – between 18 and 20 hours a day when they’re this young. They need the rest for growth and development.
I’ve raised many different chicken breeds and varieties over the years. I am so happy with this group – they are all strong, good eaters, and will be great additions to my flock.
Whenever I get bare-root tree cuttings and seedlings I prefer to plant them in appropriately sized containers first, so they can be watered and carefully monitored until they are planted in the gardens.
This week, my outdoor grounds crew worked very hard to pot hundreds of young trees, including pine trees, spruce trees, and cedar trees, American chestnuts, willows, buckthorns, and bald cypress. They all came from Musser Forests, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company specializing in conifers, hardwood seedlings, and transplants.
Enjoy these photos.
Potting and planting hundreds of trees at the farm is a huge, yet exciting undertaking. I love trees, and every year I plant as many as possible, sometimes thousands. I get them small – as bare-roots or as containerized seedlings.
Bare-root trees are so named because the plants are dug from the ground while dormant and stored without any soil surrounding their roots. Bare-root plants should not have any mold or mildew. The cuttings should also feel heavy. If they feel light and dried out then the plant probably will not grow.
Once the bare-roots are removed from the box, they are placed in water filled bins until they are potted.
Some trees arrived in small containers. These are Crippsii Golden Hinoki Cypress seedlings ready to be potted in larger vessels.
This is a Southwestern White Pine, Pinus strobiformus. It is a tall evergreen coniferous tree native to the mountains of western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and southwestern Colorado, extending to Mexico. It is characterized by its pyramidal habit, slender trunk, open crown, and soft, straight to slightly twisted, finely serrated, rich blue-green needles.
The Leyland cypress is a fast-growing, evergreen hybrid tree. It can reach 50 to 70 feet in height when mature.
Gold Thread Cypress is an evergreen shrub with striking yellow foliage. It holds its stunning golden color all throughout the year.
I save pots whenever I can – they always come in handy for projects like this, and I always encourage the crew to reuse supplies whenever possible. Each pot is prepared with a small layer of soil ready for the tree and backfill.
We use composted manure and top soil for potting. Composting manure above 131-degrees Fahrenheit for at least a couple weeks kill harmful pathogens, dilute ammonia, stabilize nitrogen, kill weed seeds and reduce any objectionable odors. I am so proud of the nutrient-rich soil I make here at the farm.
It is amended with some good fertilizer and then mixed well. I use Organic All-Purpose Plant Food from Miracle-Gro.
The process for potting is the same for small seedlings and for bare-roots. Each tree or shrub is placed into an appropriately sized pot, so the roots and root balls are not crowded at the bottom.
Phurba places a seedling in the pot so it is straight and centered in the container.
Here he tamps down lightly after the pot is backfilled so there is good contact between the tree roots and the surrounding soil.
Once trees are planted, Pete moves them in sections to a designated area where they wait to be transported to the nursery.
These are Bird’s Nest spruce trees – slow-growing, dwarf evergreen conifers with a distinctive nest-like depression in the center.
Phurba moves fast and pots the specimens by group. These Bird’s Nest spruce trees have shallow root systems and will do well in these pots.
As each tree is potted, it is placed in a row with all like specimens – and marked.
The Blue Atlas Cedar, also known as Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca’, is an evergreen native to the Atlas Mountains of Northern Africa and prized for its steel-blue to silvery-blue needles and branching structure. It typically grows with pyramidal crown when young, gradually spreading into a broad pyramid as it matures. The tree can reach 60 feet in height and 40 feet in width.
I also got a selection of Fernspray Gold False Cypress, Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Fernspray Gold’ – a dense evergreen conifer known for its golden-yellow to vivid green, soft, fan-like foliage.
In order to get all the seedlings potted as quickly as possible, it’s “all hands on deck.” The crew creates a very productive assembly line. While some plant, others load. Here’s Matthew loading potted trees onto the wheelbarrow.
And then he lines them up in the nursery where they will be properly and carefully maintained.
These trees will thrive in these pots and be in excellent condition when it is time to plant them in their more permanent locations around the farm.
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