Attack ! An encounter with the worlds deadliest chicken !

Steady yourself dear reader... what you are about to witness is largely boring. It's not very interesting at all. Seriously, at one point Meghan looks at a chickens butt. However, toward the end, right before I am laughing hysterically behind the camera... Meghan gets pecked in the eye by a chicken.

Sleep with one eye open... because you can't open the other one because a chicken pecked it.

hahahahahahahahaha

Raised Beds ( take 2 )

Some of you may remember our raised beds from last year. We used discarded pallets, broke them down to individual slats and rebuilt them into raised beds. Overall they worked wonderfully , but the major flaw was that they we a lot of work. It took us nearly two weeks ( on days off and after work ) to assemble 5 beds. This years effort took only about 2 hours to assemble and yielded over 80 square feet of growing area. 

As always we start with pallets.

12 in all, all cut in half.

Using wood screws we begin to piece them together.

It's a surprisingly fast process.

We lined the bottom with tree trimmings that 

would have been heading for the compost otherwise.

add 4 bales of straw 

Break up and spread the straw

Add a layer of compost

Spread to near the edges and make sure it is 6-8 inches deep.

Water thoroughly

Plan and Plant.

The medium of straw and compost has maintained an ideal temperature for growing. Our sprouts are coming up strong and fast. Some seeds ahead of their expected germination. As always we let you know how it progresses. 

Now enjoy this silly video of us ( and the dog helping ) build these beds. 

Are we saving money ?

So, the question popped into my head when I looked into our shopping cart at the plant store last week... "Are we saving money by growing our own vegetables?".
The short answer is no. The long answer is yes.

2012-2013 being the first growing season at +The Littlest Farm we are saving no money at all. We didn't keep detailed records ( which I regret ) but we have spent quite a bit on dirt, compost, seeds, new equipment, etc. Even with all of our re-purposing and reusing ( raised beds of pallets etc. ) there were things that we just had to buy.

We are growing things that when we compare the price of a seed to the price at the supermarket are remarkably cheaper. Tomato is much cheaper to grow at home, as are lettuces and squash and next year when all we are buying is a couple cubic feet of soil booster it will be solid savings.

It's important that all gardeners learn that the investment phase of the garden is crucial. I don't speak only of the investment of money, but the investment of time. A properly planned and maintained garden will bring great amounts of food and enjoyment year after year.

Looking at the above graphic you can see the return on investment ( bottom right corner ) is quite impressive. Add to that the gratification of growing your own food and frankly... who cares if you are saving money.... you are gardening. 

The Littlest Potato

A recipe for one.

Not long ago Meg & I looked at our Potato Cage  and we saw a little root poking out... and there it was...

The Littlest Potato

We stuck it back in its place, gave it some encouraging words and waited... staring at the dirt gets boring after a while so we went and did some other things. 

Slightly less little potato

This stubborn potato fought again toward the surface so we plucked it, cooked it and ate it. 

Here is our recipe for one potato. It probably isn't a good recipe for a dinner party. 

First be sure to clean the potato thoroughly. It worked very hard at growing and deserves a proper death. Certainly don't yell "Get in my belly !"  at it. It's very rude. 

Boil for 10 minutes ( or until done ) 

Drain and Slice your potato

Add 1/32 of a tablespoon of butter and 22% of a pinch of parsley.

6 grains of salt and a 1/4 grind of pepper. 

Enjoy!

Coping with loss

So, we are new to gardening in the Bay Area of California and are literally stumbling through this season trying to figure out what to do. We are so used to Oregon weather and throwing everything in the ground at the slightest hint of spring that we were not properly prepared for the tumultuous and unpredictable weather of our location. There was a sharp spike in the temperature with no rain and we lost several plants who went to seed prematurely.

Please join us in a moment of silence for our fallen plants.

Rainbow Chard- we hardly knew yee

Red Stalked Celery you were too beautiful for this world

Also among those lost were our daikon radishes and our snow peas are producing prematurely at a height of only 2 feet.

But instead of filling the void  on our plates with sadness we are promptly moving on to younger and better looking plants. Added to the fold are green and purple tomatillos , early girl tomatoes, piquillo pimento, orange and red bell peppers.

We are firm believers that if you don't fail you don't learn anything and boy are we learning a lot this year. It truly is an adventure in urban farming.

Radish Greens Soup

We picked our first prize from the garden last week and after proudly munching on it raw in the garden ( with huge grins ) we dashed to the kitchen to make something from it.

What we picked was our radishes and what we made was Radish Greens Soup. A subtle yet hearty Italian inspired soup great for any day.

Radish Greens Soup

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 cup chopped leeks
• 3 medium potatoes chopped
• 3 bunches of radish greens
• 5 cups of veggie or chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of cream
• 1 tablespoon of butter 
• 5 tablespoons of grated Parmesan

In a large saucepan saute the leeks and radish greens in the olive oil for a few minutes ( until soft ). Stir in the potatoes and toss over medium heat for five minutes. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and let cook for 20 minutes.

Partially puree the soup in a blender and return to sauce pan. Stir in the cream, butter and parm. Garnish with julienne of raw radish and enjoy. 

The Life of Cabbage

Among the produce we have growing is red cabbage. Neither of us have grown cabbage before and knew nothing going in. We have had a warm spell here in California that had us concerned that the cabbage ( among others ) was bolting and wasn't going to properly grow and produce.
This prompted a Google search and a lot of learning about cabbage.

Stage 2 ( our current stage )

We looked at our plants and didn't see cabbage, we saw a weed like sprout in our beds. It will continue on like this, adding leaves and stems and leaves until stage 5 when it starts to look like it wants you to make soup out of it. 

Stage 5 a.k.a "pre-cupping"

By the end of stage 5 the base and the stems are completely concealed when viewing from above. 

When we hit stage 6 all we will be thinking about is corned beef recipes.

Stage 6 a.k.a. "cupping"

At stage six we will have between 20 and 25 leaves and the innermost "heart" leaves will be concealed by the larger older leaves. Then we leap forward to stage 9 ... Mature Cabbage !

Huzzah ! Let's throw them at lousy vaudeville comedians !

I am rather disappointed that not a single paper I read, website I looked at or stranger on the street could explain to me how it is that creepy dolls come from cabbage. 

How ?! Why?!

The Great Potato Nipple

Today we made some modifications to The Great Potato Experiment. It seems we missed a few small details in our slightly less than careful planning of our potato cage.

It seems obvious to us now, but we weren't getting enough water to the lower layers of taters... so after great debate and discussion we made what I am calling The Potato Nipple & for the record Meghan refuses to refer to it that way.

The problem was that the cage was 3 feet high and we needed water to make it at least 2 feet down so that it would soak the rest of the way down. 4 dollars in PVC pipe & fittings later we had it solved.
Here is how we did it.

The plants toward the top are doing much better than the one toward the bottom. So we wet the soil and hammered a 1 inch schedule 40 piece of PVC down the middle of the cage to create a cavity.

Once the wet soil had settled ( about 3 hours ) we pulled the pipe out & drilled several ( alot ! ) of 3/16 holes in the lover half of the pipe, put a cap on one end and a 1 inch couple on the other ( for stability )

We reinserted the pipe into the cavity ( holes drilled & cap on ) and put an inverted bottle on top filled with water ( not whiskey ) to create a slow drip system.

Happy Taters 

All of that being said, what we should have done is put a perforated pipe down the center of the cage when we initially planted, designated a hose ( or similar re-purposed drip system ) for watering. Either way we are still looking at a harvest of over 100 potatoes on a footprint of less than 3 feet. We got to be creative on an already creative idea and we are going to yield a lot of food.

Building a raised bed

It occurred to me today while helping a customer at the hardware store that not everyone knows how to build a raised bed... much less no how to plan what to put in it. So, starting today +The Littlest Farm  will be putting more effort into sharing the basics to help people get started growing.

This is a pretty solid tutorial. 

Never forget that the internet is a never ending source of plans. My personal favorite is Popular Mechanics. Their raised bed plans are unrivaled. 

Happy Growing! 

Creatures of the night are eating my cabbage !

Slugs, snails and other slimy creatures are attempting an invasion and we are holding our ground... slaying them by the dozens and using only natural techniques victory will soon be ours.

Most people see them like this

Gardeners see them like this

Fortunately, there is a good selection of natural techniques to keep this hungry critters at bay. 

Our first step is identifying what plants they have a particular taste for. You can't battle an enemy if you don't know where they are.

The next thing we do is set up a barrier. This can be done with crushed egg shells around the damaged plants, or discarded coffee grounds. You will want to make sure the barrier is between 2 and 3 inches thick. 

We tend to avoid the copper method mainly because it can be expensive but you can try this at home by purchasing copper tape at your local hardware store or garden supply. This through either magic or science electrocutes the little monsters and kills them. 

The favorite method at The Littlest Farm is beer. There are two ways to use beer, one more effective than the other. We save our empty cat food and tuna fish cans bury them in the soil, fill them with cheap beer ( slugs and snails have notoriously poor taste in beer ) and wait for those pesky mollusks to drink themselves to death. 

The second beer method is to just drink the beer, ignore the problem and have a good time. This method is significantly less effective.

What methods do you use? 

March Update

I've decided to do a monthly update in addition to our regular posts. It's almost impossible to tell you everything that we have going on here... but I'm going to try anyway.

First, some very exciting news. Our potato experiment appears to be working !

There is also a number of sprouts coming out of the side of the cage as we hoped. It's very exciting. It took 16 days from planting our potato cuts to seeing growth breaking through to bask in the sun. We are very proud of our tiny tubers. 

Generally all around the garden we are seeing a lot of progress. Little green folks popping up all over the place. 

Look at all our little green friends !

We also picked and ate our first radish. 

The peas are starting to grab their trellis. 

Strawberries are doing great in their gutter.

This poppy should be in full bloom any minute now. 

And just for fun here is a list of everything we are growing.

1. Radish
2. Red Stalked Celery
3. Purple Broccoli
4. Carrot
5. Parsnip
6. Rainbow Chard
7. Chioggia Beets
8. Golden Beets
9. Sugar Snaps
10. Shell Peas
11. Basil
12. Chive
13. Tulsy Basil
14. Chamomile
15. Oregano
16. Cat Nip
17. Mint
18. Butter Lettuce
19. Spinach
20. Oak Heart Lettuce
21. Arugula
22. Bok Choy
23. Daikon
24. Russet Potato
25. Butter Potato
26. Red Potato
27. Red Cabbage

It's been a fun,exciting and challenging month at The Littlest Farm with so much more to come in April.

The Great Potato Experiment

Over the winter as we planned our garden we often modified our ideas through several versions until we agreed on the best way to build or layout whatever was on the docket that day. Nothing was more debated or went through more evolution than our potato plan.

We love potatoes and eat them all the time so obviously we wanted them in the garden but there are so any different growing mediums out there that we couldn't decide which one was for us.

Since our first priority in all projects is to re-purpose and reuse otherwise useless materials our initial inclination was to use old car tires stacked to contain our spuds.

We read about this idea in a great book The Urban Homestead. This book is full of great tips and ideas but ultimately we didn't choose this method because of fears of what might leech from the tires into our soil. This fear might not be completely founded but regardless was a concern for us. 

The second idea that we considered was to just put them in their own raised bed and grow them one plant at a time. An idea that obviously as worked just fine for a few million years but that doesn't mean it is good enough for us. 

The trouble with this age old method of tater production is that it just didn't seem efficient enough to us. We love the idea of the tires and stacking up plant on top of plant and really wanted that increased yield without the side effects. 

And that is when my wife had a brilliant idea. 

The TUBER CAGE!!

The plan was to take a six foot long section of hardware cloth or welded wire that was three feet tall, pull it into a circle three feet in diameter ( had to use pi to figure that one out , Happy Pi day! ) and fill it with layer after layer of potatoes and that is what we did. 

Check out the pics of the process and we will keep posted as to their progress. 

The spudded potatoes

The hope is the plants will grow out the side toward the sun

Cross your fingers. 

Click HERE for an update on our experiment.