Blueberry Pie?

Well... I don't know if we'll have enough blueberries this year to do much with them, but they are doing well so far. We were told from the nursery that we purchased them from that within 2-3 years we should be able to pick about 5-7 pounds per bush. We have eight so if we do the math on the low end we should end up with 40 pounds of berries. They also said this year we should get close to two pounds per bush. These are North Blue variety developed by the University of Minnesota about ten years ago. They specifically were developed for colder climates with the idea of a larger berry in mind. When we planted them we had to amend the soil in order to get the PH proper. I purchased an organic blueberry additive to make the soil more acidic. Blueberries as we've read are not easy to grow so we hope all goes well. So far lots of new branch and leaf growth and plenty of healthy looking blueberries. If you click on the photos you'll get a better up close look. Good Day!

Green Beans - Seed to plant in 7 days

These beans were planted one week ago today. On the left is an Italian green bean and on the right are bush variety green beans. The grid you see in the photo is the square foot method I mentioned in previous posts. It has been determined that in one square foot four bean plants can grow properly. I planted two seeds per spot or eight seeds total and then reduced them to four plants per square foot. I probably could have just planted four seeds per square, but opted to be safe.

Beans are one of the easiest garden vegetables to grow. They are hardy and incredibly hard to foul up. They also offer a huge yield. I stagger my bean plantings by about two weeks apart so that we have a constant supply for about a month and some to freeze too. Currently we have eight squares of beans totaling 32 plants and will finish with 16 square or 64 plants.

Earthbound Farms Organic Shopping Bag

I mentioned the other day about Earthbound Farm and what great services they provide and their marketing is excellent. We've received tons of coupons for their products as well as free heirloom lettuce seeds this spring. They are celebrating 25 years. And look what showed up in the mail yesterday. A free reusable recycled shopping bag. If you can't read the print on the bag from the photo here it is: "We estimate that if everyone in the US used one reusable bag instead of a plastic or paper shopping bag just once a week for a year, we would keep more than 16 billion disposable bags out of our landfills." It also states that the bag is made from four 20oz recycled plastic bottles. Go here to sign up for the Earthbound Farm newsletter.

Great Deal on Organic Agave!

Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Blue Agave is on a great sale at Amazon.com. 44-oz. 2-Pack for $12 + free shipping. The Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Blue Agave 44-oz. 2-Pack for $16.89. Add it to your cart via "Subscribe & Save" and apply coupon code "AGAVE333" to cut it to $11.83 along with free shipping. (Of note, cancel "Subscribe & Save" at any time or you'll be billed for subsequent shipments. You can always subscribe for once every six months if you don't go through much.)

Organic Yogi Tea

Once in a while we'll offer something of interest that isn't necessarily garden related. If you click through on the Yogi Tea and fill in your address they'll send you several of their teas for free. We've tried them and really enjoyed the Egyptian Licorice. Most of the ingredients are organic. I think you'll find them to be 80-100% organic. Enjoy!

This past weekend, Memorial Day weekend, we wrapped up about 97% of our planting in the garden. Here is a basic estimation of what we planted this year. The photo shows an aerial view of our garden. You'll see that we've run out of space again and have used twelve containers to supplement our existing raised beds.

1. 24 Tomato plants- early girl, grape, roma, cherry, sweet
   
2. 20 Various pepper plants - green bell, jalapeno, sweet red, mixed variety, orange, etc.
   
3. 4 plants of zucchini
   
4. 4 plants yellow summer squash
5. 1 plant amber cup winter squash
6. 2 plants sweet potato squash
7. 30 red skin potato plants
8. 6 blue potato plants
9. 14 cilantro
10. 16 oregano
    
11. 24 sweet basil
12. 16 broccoli
13. 16 bush green beans (16 more to plant in 2 weeks)
    
14. 16 Italian green beans (16 more to plant in 2 weeks)
15. 24 red beets
16. 40 spinach plants
17. 60-80 radish
18. 3' x 15' - ever bearing strawberry plants
19. raspberries - currently resides in about a 3' x 6' section
20. 8 blueberry bushes
21. wide assortment of lettuce greens
22. 60-80 carrots
23. 40 early sweet corn
    

I cut the greens you see in the photo this morning for a salad with lunch today and tonight we'll be using the greens on our sandwiches at dinner. We have now harvested three of these plastic shells of lettuce greens. See the update on the right.

As your garden grows and even in the off times of late fall, winter and early spring where do you purchase your fruits and vegetables? There have been 12 fruits and vegetables tagged as the dirty dozen. They have consistently been tested with high levels of toxins from pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides. They should be avoided unless you find an organic option. In the off times that we're not able to eat from our garden we choose many Earthbound Farms products. They are reliably stocked in our grocer and consistently are fresh and taste great. They have a great website that changes regularly and the content is extremely informative. Here is a link to their organic pocket guide, a great tool to carry with you as shop for produce.

This year we built what we are calling our salad table garden. The hopes is that we will bring this garden inside to the basement this fall and hopefully under two basic shop lights with 40 fluorescent bulbs we will be able to continue to grow fresh greens. Usually we purchase the clam shells of organic greens at around $3.29 from our local grocery store. So far we've been able to cut two full clam shells of salad greens. We've a rotating system in this small garden. You'll see carrots which will take a couple of months and then the other three sections will be rotated. Once once section has been completely harvested then we'll replant it and with some luck the other section will be ready to begin cutting. When we cut the greens we just take what we need for a day or two. I just take a pair of scissors randomly cutting the larger pieces. We also have spinach coming up in another part of the garden which was planted a little late. Our raised bed garden has been in for several years and I've just come across Mel Barthol0mews, Square Foot Gardening book and have just begun to incorporate his ideas and techniques into our existing garden. You can see here I've used a nylon string to separate the sections into nearly one foot square areas. More on using the square foot approach later.

Strawberry

We are only a week or two from having loads and loads of strawberries. Our patch is about 3 feet by 15. It was originally started with only three purchased plants. We kept allowing them to branch off and now we have this incredible patch. These strawberries are ever bearing and for most of the summer we pick nearly a quart a day through the first fall frost.

Blog Site - changes and revisions. The site is a little design messy right now. My apologies as I am in the process of changing the standard template. we'll have more space for everything we have planned. Later today we'll ad a few words and photos about our seedlings that we started in March.

Frost advisories for tonight so we had to protect all of our plants with black plastic sheets and bed sheets. Temperatures are predicted to drop to the low 30's tonight. Last night we covered up too as it wasn't predicted, bet we knew it was going to get cold. In the photos you'll notice I've covered up the raspberries draped black plastic over the trellis. Behind the raspberries is our strawberry patch. And the burgundy sheet covers our redskin potatoes. Now most of these plants are okay and run little risk to the frost, but our strawberry plants are loaded with emerging strawberries and flowers. In the past when we let them go we've found that they get damaged so to be safe we cover everything. It takes about 15 minutes and for me I have a quick system in place. The trellis supports the plastic for the raspberries, the strawberries I've pvc white water piping that easily bends into an arch, and the potatoes I used dowel to support the sheet. In the following photo you'll see that I put various planters over the blueberry bushes. It's a bit of work, but great insurance.

Today begins our 2009 garden-blogging season. Our site will follow our garden from May 17 through the late fall of 2009. We'll be posting photos nearly every day of our prizes and our failures. We welcome comments and suggestions. We'll also post tips and comments on the latest and greatest in organic gardening and organic products.

As we're getting this up a little late in the season. I'll give you a quick run down of the garden haps and history. Our garden began as a brainstorm as to what to do with a patch of backyard that had once been occupied by a pool. The pool was one of the popular 18' ring pools. We had trucked in lots of sand for it in order to level the area it was located as well as to soften the pool floor. Anyway, our first struggle was going to be the soil. Under that few inches of sand we have clay, clay, and more clay. We have about six inches of top soil and then clay in the areas outsid of that pool ring. After a bit of research on all the methods of gardening we decided to go with raised beds. Three springs back, 2006?, we began by building out our first section of raised beds. We trucked in 5 cubic yards of clean (no toxic chemicals, pesticides, etc. in the soil) top soil with no clay content. We planted the basic vegetables and had good results.

Three years fast forward and the garden has been a big hit for our family. We eat about 85% of what we harvest and give away the other 15% to friends and family.

In March of this year we started our own seedlings as a trial as to what we could grow in our 59 degree basement with a basic fluorescent shop lamp. Well, we have over 60 tomatoes, 60 broccoli, 20 pepper, 12 cilantro, 18 basil, 12oregano, 36 lettuce, and 6 squash plants. This was just an experiment to see if we could get our own plants started from seeds. We did, but they are a bit small still for being one week from Memorial Day. In West Michigan Memorial Day is traditionally the time when most people will begin planting their gardens and flowers. Frosts and Freeze are minimal and you can feel pretty safe that temperatures won't drop blow 40, although we had two frosts last year after we planted. We'll still purchase plants this year for the raised beds and we'll use our tomato and pepper plants we started in containers. We'll check out our local Farmer's Market for great plants. I've had the best luck and quality with locally grown plants.

This year the garden will contain; strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, lettuce, carrots, radish, spinach, redskin potaotoes, blueskin potatoes, brocolli, green beans, four types of peppers, and at least five different types of tomatoes.

So let the blog grow as we detail the plants and events. We hope you enjoy our garden!

A great book to learn how to maximize your garden production by utilizing a smaller section of your yard and with a lot less work. Mel shows you exactly how to do it all. Step by step instructions and easy to follow plans are through out this book. He even details the best way to make a great garden soil. I highly recommend this book.