Category Archives: Gardening

Gardening

Planning for the harvest

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“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”

We don’t have any chickens around here (yet), and wouldn’t be hatching any babies anyway, since we’re only interested in fresh eggs, so I suppose it would be better as “Don’t count your vegetables before they’re grown” for me.

Despite the rather horrible output of the garden in the sand that is the lot – the most prolific things were the guajillo pepper, putting out a bucket of peppers, the thyme and catnip, that survived floods then baking heat, and wonder of wonder, the onions, which thrived and even crowded one another – hope springs eternal. With that and some frames to create some raised beds where you can mix a good soil instead of trying to do anything with a sandlot, you can actually grow some things.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to get outside to get some soil mixed for a frame to hold my garlic. Tomorrow – or today, as the case may be – will be the day, assuming that I manage to get any sleep at all this morning.

Heading into winter is also the time to be looking at seed catalogs, for spring planting. The way winter is going around here, it will be a little springlike for quite some time, but even if it isn’t, I have a plan. You’ll have to wait a day or so for details on that. In the interim, I’d like to blame, I mean thank, Steven for causing me to go to Seeds from Italy. Thanks to him, I now have all sorts of seeds ordered, some of which I plan to foist off on Stacy, as I can’t use five grams of carrot seed in this lifetime. I think. Unless I get a wild hair and decide to try and sell some of it. Those items will be in addition to all the things I’d like to get growing next season after this season’s stuff is harvested.

Gardening

It’s c-c-c-ooold outside

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People have this rather idealized vision of Florida. Every street is lined with palm trees, and the weather is always fabulous.

Except, of course, when it is not.

We do, on occasion, have freezes here. The fact that they are bookended by 75-degree days should not fool you: when it gets cold here, it gets cold in the same way it gets cold elsewhere. Frosty, even. And I have proof.

The little blades apparently forgot to bundle up.

The big smoker, on the other hand, had cuddled under its protective tarp.

I’d covered some of the plants, and moved others into the garage, but some – brassicas – didn’t need that and will actually come out healthier for a bit of a cold snap.

The garden area is where the sun hits first, so they thawed pretty quickly.

They were none the worse for their one night with 25-degree temps.

Food, Gardening, Homestead

Day tripping

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For months now, we’ve been talking about heading south a bit to a real, live farm where they raise real, live grassfed beef, organically. There always seemed to be something interfering, but last week, after dithering on it, we finally said enough: we’re going, on Thursday, to Citra, which is about an hour south of here in the midst of horse and farm country. Which means that it’s really in the midst of a whole lot of nothing.

After driving through various small towns…

…we wound up at Rosa’s.

Off to the right is the start of the actual farm, which is also where they live, so no pictures of that. I can say that it was a perfect, crisp day, the fields were green, and there were cows moooving around on the fields.

There was also hay for sale, and we picked up a couple of bales to put around the plants that are sitting in the raised beds here (more about that later).

The office is guarded by a rather amusing cowboy and his chicken.

Inside a small office, the only case without a lock on it was the refrigeration case: cage free organic eggs, and organic butter, both of which we picked up in addition to everything else.

What everything else? Ah, you’ll have to wait. After packing everything into the coolers we’d brought, and having one of the guys load the hay, we set off back toward the homestead. We tried to stop in Cross Creek at a restaurant called the Yearling Restaurant – based as it is in the hometown of a rather famous author – to have some cracker food, but were a tad early, as they don’t open for business until dinner on Thursdays. It’s on the list for a return visit.

Instead, we stopped by a place called Cracker Boys, which apparently has not yet been sued by a rather large chain of restaurants.

The boy was hungry.

So were we, and we opted for the buffet while the kid had a burger.

It was passable. The only gripe I have about buffet-style food (and quite a lot of other restaurant food that isn’t a buffet) is that it’s so very bland.

We hit the road for home, catching up with and passing a train on the way. I love trains.

We also stopped by Norman’s on the way back to pick up some fresh veggies.

We needed those things to stock the fridge but also to go with the dinner we’d decided on, which was selected from the assortment we’d picked up at Rosas – this assortment, to be exact.

The winner: rib eyes, grilled outside. We also decided to stoke up the firepit.

Gabrielle joined us as well.

Simple is better.

Much, much better.

How about a little fire, scarecrow?

Or, how about some veggies and steak?

Dinner!

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Food, Gardening, Homestead, Life in general

And so it goes

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Every so often, I look at this blog and wonder if it’s worth the bother. I think my life must be terribly uninteresting and the failures here at the homestead have far outnumbered the successes in the gardening realm. Still, on the rare occasions that someone does come by, as my aunt and uncle did this weekend, and looks at the place with their eyes instead of mine, it reminds me that being too close to something can give you tunnel vision sometimes.

So here’s what’s been going on around here of late, beyond the workaday crap that made August a hellish month, stress-wise – a month in which I managed to lose eight pounds, dropping me to 100 even. I’m working on keeping the needle there and climbing, and thus far, the “keeping the needle there” part is working out better than the “climbing” part.

I had worked my ass off to prep a bed of corn, which started out well.

Very well.

And then, there was zero rain. None. Zilch. Nada. So I was trying to water. Then I had some kind of animal run through this back side of the plot – probably the damn dog next door, who is forever running all over our property. And then these critters showed up, along with the corn earworms.

I don’t think I could have done enough to turn that plot into arable soil that would sustain growth to maturity. Between all of those factors, the corn withered, and eventually had to be cut down. A total loss of the time and effort spent.

I’d put in a line of limas, which I hate, for other people to eat. Out of eight seedlings, two survived. Neither has put out any beans as of yet, although they both have flowers.

I had also set up several cucumber plants, of two varieties: picklers and lemon cukes. One of each survived, and this lone pickler, along with one lone lemon cuke, are the output so far.

Continue reading And so it goes →

Gardening

Let there be green

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Garden two, after manually turning the soil, and adding half a ton of topsoil and compost, then manually turning that in and manually forming the wide hills, on June 28:

What to plant, what to plant…I know! Corn! And lots of it!

July 10:

July 16:

July 26:

Cancer, Gardening, Homestead, Life in general

Work in progress

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When it all comes down to it, life is just a series of small steps on the way to somewhere else. It’s never as simple as, say, telling someone you’ve bought a house. What you’ve really done is saved up the money for it, decided what you want, scouted properties, negotiated the deal, signed a thousand pieces of paper, taken the keys, packed and unpacked, sorted things over, and then started the things you want to do. But it’s much easier to say “I bought a house.”

In the same way, it’s easier to say you’re improving the soil on the property. What has actually happened is that you’ve looked over the soil, discovered that fill dirt and sand from other lots was dumped on yours, dug down a foot or so in various places looking for the real soil you know is there, tested the soil, brought in a ton of topsoil and compost, and sweated your way into what is the beginning of returning the top layers of nothing to a form that is rich and loamy and beautiful for growing Stuff.

Continue reading Work in progress →

Food, Gardening, Homestead

Leaving your mark

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You should always leave your mark on the world, even if it is meant to be fleeting and ethereal.

After the rains came and went, I walked the property in bare feet. I finally killed my old boots a couple of weeks ago and haven’t replaced them, and sometimes you just need to feel the dirt and sand squish between your toes. This footprint lasted a couple of days before it finally vanished into the soil completely.

Life goes on, and my sister the vegetarian requested sub rolls so she could make her veggie subs for lunches while she attends classes every single day. I’ve never made sub rolls, but that doesn’t really stop me from doing much of anything, so I took my tried and true italian bread recipe and adjusted it.

Individual balls of dough, each around four ounces.

The rolls, formed and proofed.

Fresh from baking on the stone.

Cooled, ready for immediate use and also for freezing.

The Boy tells me today I need to make baguettes for french bread pizzas. Hey, I said, there are these rolls in the freezer that haven’t been used yet…