Preparing for Spring

Hi everyone! It is that time of year again to start looking through seed catalogs to start planning your garden. And if you are like me, you didn't have time in the fall to service your equipment. Now is the time to do all that maintenance.

Last year our garden exploded with produce. We picked about 300 pounds of tomatoes off 20 plants. We got 50 qts of sauce, 10 qts of tomato soup, and 5 pints of salsa, not including what we gave away to friends and family. We got so many cucumbers and zucchini that we lost count. The cucumbers were turned into 20 pints of dill pickles and 8 pints of relish by my beautiful wife, Jeanetta. The zucchini was shredded, measured, bagged, and frozen to make zucchini bread throughout the winter months. These were our 3 main producers, but we did have other vegetables. These 3 just outgrew everything else.

You may ask how our garden did so well. It is a combination of many things. It started with our neighbor who raises horses. She stopped in for a visit one day and asked if we wanted some horse manure. We gladly accepted. She told me to come over the next day, which was a cold Saturday, with our loader tractor to pick it up. The next morning, I was up early, and started the tractor to warm up a little bit since it was January. After a breakfast of our own bacon and eggs, I drove the 1/4 mile to her house. She met me at the barn and showed me the pile. The little bit of manure I was expecting turned out to be around a ton, that had been sitting there for around 2 years. Big Score! After 5 hours of hauling manure, our garden was covered with the rich composted manure. The manure laid on the garden for a few more months until the ground thawed. After running over it a least 10 times with a 3pt rototiller, everything was mixed together to form a beautiful seed bed.

The manure was just one of the many natural supplements that was put into the ground. Different supplements were added for different plans needs when they were planted and throughout the growth but that will be in another blog written by Jeanetta, since she is the one that took care of all that while I was working.

If you have animals on your farm or homestead you already have a supply of their black gold. Do not use cat or dog. I am talking about cow, horse, rabbit, chicken, etc. And it should be composted for different lengths of time depending on type. That will be discussed at a later time. Talk to people that have these animals that may be able to supply you with what you need. You might get lucky and find a supply for years to come.

I hope you all had as much fun reading this as I had writing it. I also hope you learned a few things today. I am going to grab another cup of coffee and go feed our hens. Until next time everyone stay safe doing your daily chores.

A few of the seed catalogs we use are: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Territorial Seed Company, Grow Organic.com

Another resource for seeds you might not think of is Dollar Tree. They sell the American seed brand by Plantation Products LLC. Their website says the seeds are 100% NON-GMO and some are labeled heirloom.