Grow-Along Week 1

Spring daffodils are coming up!

Hi again, Micro-Farm Family!
Welcome to Week 1 of our Grow-Along! We're super excited to announce that we have seedlings to show you! It seems our peppers and tomatoes have sprouted right on schedule and are being rather cooperative for the timeline we set for the Grow-Along updates. Also, we thought it would be fun to have a little contest since we've got a rather unusual plant getting ready to put on a display in our grow-room.


From the seeds that we planted so far, we have a total of 9 sprouts. The Early Jalapenos are the overall sprout winners with 3 sprouts popping up out of the soil. The Pepperoncini and Cherry Tomatoes are tied in second place with 2 sprouts each, and the Ace Tomatoes and Cherokee Purple Tomatoes are tied for third place with one sprout each. We haven't seen anything from the Principe Borghese Tomatoes, California Wonder Peppers, or Rainbow Bell Peppers yet, but we are hoping they will be coming along soon. We also have no onion sprouts just yet out of the three varieties we planted - Red Marble Cippolini, White Lisbon Scallions, and Red Beard Scallions (yes, to our Dagorhir friends, we picked that last variety for the laughs).

So, in all of our planning, we were wondering what methods you all use to plan your gardens. We have found a few resources that have been absolutely wonderful in helping us to plan layouts, budget space requirements, and determine how many plants we need grow to fill our needs. When we started our Micro-Farm, we jumped in the traditional way with paper and pencil, lists, seed catalogs (by the dozens!), and not a whole lot of practical numbers of anything. Getting started, even on a small scale, can be very overwhelming if you don't have some kind of guide or idea of what you need. There are two garden planners that we use regularly. We started using Smart Gardener (free to use but has some paid add-ons that are very affordable) a few years ago when we started using Square Foot Gardening methods from Mel Bartholomew's book of the same name. We found it to be a very good visual resource for planning space as well as gauging how many plants we needed for our household. This year, we are trying out Mother Earth News's Garden Planner tool as a test run. It has a few features that Smart Gardener lacks such as a larger viewing area for planning your garden plots, automatic crop-rotation guides, and direct links to more of the seed companies we purchase from regularly. Don't get me wrong. Smart Gardener has a ton of wonderful features that we will also be using this year such as the add-on that lets you track your harvest amounts and calculate the money you saved by growing your own food. Try them out! They both come with free registration and access and are both worth their weight in gold for the beginning gardener.

Before we share our first Grow-Along member's plans, here's the contest we mentioned at the beginning of this week's post! So, we have this plant growing in our craft room. I'm not giving you any hints as to what it is other than showing you a picture of its current growth. To enter the contest, send us an email with your name and what kind of plant you think it is. All responses with correct answers will be placed into a hat and the winner will be drawn and announced next week on our Grow-Along Week 2 post. "What do I win," you ask? The winner will be mailed a gift set including 5 mini-packets of heirloom, non-GMO seeds (you will have a choice from a wide variety of vegetable, herb, and flower seeds) and 1 tube of our handmade herbal healing salve (good for bug bites, scrapes, cuts, and minor rashes).

So, what do you think it is?

Our first Grow-Along Member is Stell Michelsen, who is a good friend of ours and blogs on her super-creative crafts and projects regularly over at Stellaria's Stuff Dungeon. Here is what she sent us:

• Ok, this year, in addition to switching the front garden of 5 square-foot-garden beds and 4 straw bales over to all roots, herbs, tomatoes, and cucumbers, I'm planning on building a bean house somewhere, and hopefully can construct 3 keyhole gardens at the top of my driveway. I'm still not sure if I'll build a cedar pole house, or an archway, or a Viking A-frame for the beans, or where it'll be put, or what they'll be grown in. I'm leaning toward straw bales on the cement pad at the side of the house where the previous owners had a hot tub. The back yard is so tiny anyway, I'm afraid a structure of that scale would overwhelm it. I'm still not sure what the keyhole gardens are going to be built out of, but I'm looking forward to having more room for greens, and the means to extend their growing season. Other plans include potato tire towers, and hopefully a top-bar beehive or two if I can get some built in time and locate some swarms. ~Stell Michelsen

We think the idea of a bean house sounds awesome! That's something we've talked about trying for awhile now! We'd love to see pictures when you get it built. :) Top-bar beekeeping is another topic near and dear to us. Unfortunately, our first colony did not survive their first winter for a number of reasons, but we plan to try again this year with a new package of bees. Thanks for sharing your plans with us, Stell! For being our first Grow-Along member, we want to send you a gift set of seeds and salve too! Make sure you send us your mailing address and let us know if you'd prefer veggie, herb, or flower seeds (or a mixture) so we can get it out to you!

We also have Elaine Budner joining us (Hi Mom!) with her shared plans on our Facebook page:

• I want to grow ginger! I want a bigger herb garden. Of course I'll be growing tomatoes, onions, peppers, and so much more. Still in the planning stages. These are my grape tomatoes that I like to grow every year. My worm farm keeps on doing their thing too!!!
  

Don't forget to send us your plans to be included in our weekly Grow-Along posts! You can send them to us on Facebook, through email, or post them in the comments below to be featured in next week's post!

Until next week, Happy Growing, Everyone!