Welcome back to the farm. The time has come to continue the garden project. In part one, we prepared a part of our yard to be a garden this year.
We started out by mucking out the stall and the chicken coop, gathering waste hay, and mulching leaves. We layered all of these things and watered it well and tarped the future garden bed all winter. For an in-depth look at the process, check out Garden: Part 1.
During the late winter and early spring, we began our second step in getting the garden ready. As with everything we do here, I am going to share the oops moments as well as the woohoo moments. This second step was the seed starting.
On March 19th, we started our seeds in twelve count egg cartons that had small drain holes poked in the bottom of each well. They were filled with regular ole potting soil. These were set in an aluminum single use food pan with a plastic top. We watered by pouring some in the base tray and allowing it to wick up through the holes in the bottoms of the wells. The seeds we picked to start were a couple variety of peppers and some spinach. We kind of split on this operation with the oops and woohoos.
The spinach was the first to sprout around March 26th. The banana peppers did great once it got warm enough for them and they sprouted. The jalapenos did terrible as well as the bell peppers. They never sprouted. We determined we must have used old and improperly stored seeds. The ones that sprouted we would keep inside over night and put outside under the plastic cover to act as a green house when it was cool to get natural sun.
We ended up unprepared for in ground planting and had to repot into a bigger container. Time passed and things got in the way as they tend to do. It was a full month after the spinach sprouted that we finally got things ready to put them in the ground and plant the rest of our seeds.
That was a big oops. The spinach ended up in terrible condition and didn’t make it through the transplant. The peppers on the other hand managed it fine. I’m getting a little ahead of myself though, the first thing we did before transplanting was pull the tarp material off and feed the chickens on the garden bed a time or two so they could help break up the soil and turn it over. This may have cost us some beneficial bugs and worms but it seemed to make the next part easier.
On planting day, we took to the garden in the late afternoon when the heat of the day was winding down and it wasn’t going to zap us dry of our energy. I started off by raking the plot mostly flat and picking out any weeds and grass that survived or started growing after the tarp was removed. Once the plot was acceptably flat, we rolled out the weed cloth barrier. This will help us with not having to weed nearly as much since we tend to have little excess time as it is. With the fabric laid out, we staked it down with garden fabric staples and lined the edges with the logs we had used to secure the tarps over winter.
Then came the fun of getting down and playing in the dirt. I used my knife to cut an X on the spots where the plants and seeds were destined to go while Delisa came behind and cut the flaps off and planted seeds and starts. I jumped in and helped once I had the holes cut. The first night we got most of everything planted. We even planted sunflowers, nasturtiums, and okra around the outside edge beyond the logs.
Yet another oops was we didn’t fence it in immediately. There are a few ninja chickens that still manage to get over the fence and into the yard despite wings being clipped. They found the holes with the seeds and proceeded to have a nice meal as well as attack the loose dirt where we planted the flowers and okra on the edge.
A quick trip to Tractor Supply Co netted us some fencing and a few light weight posts to fence the garden in. The chickens seem to only be able to come over the fence in two spots and neither leads them into the garden spot so the fence is working. I used an old gate I made and the garden was once again secure and we replanted the seed that had been attacked.
This is the finally tally of what got planted. A lot has already started to come up
Green beans
Spinach
Banana peppers
Bell peppers
Jalapeno peppers
Tomatoes (from starts my dad gave us)
Cucumbers
Squash
Zucchini
Cantaloupe
Watermelon
Okra
Sunflowers
Nasturtiums
We learned a lot about this method of starting a garden. We tried two previous times to start a garden and both were met with minimal success at best. This is shaping up to be our best attempt so far. That being said the lessons we learned will help a lot next year.
First, we will probably expand the size and tarp earlier in the winter so there is more time for composting to happen. Secondly, we will be more diligent and better prepared for seed starting. This includes better timing and bigger starting vessels. Probably add grow lights and a designated area for it inside the house. Third, start earlier getting things in the ground with preplanned garden days in the spring according to our average last frost date. And lastly, store our seeds properly.
If anyone has any tips for seed storage, we would love to hear them! Comment or send us a message to let us know!
As always, it’s been great to have you visit the farm, go have a Sunflowery day!
Sunflower Farms MS 