Grow-Along Week 6

Howdy everyone!

So sorry we are a day late on our update this week! We have had so much going on here at the Micro-Farm that we completely missed our normal Thursday deadline. Plants are sprouting, budding, and flowering everywhere here, our Mason Bees have hatched and emerged, and our Chicken-Brigade is at full egg-laying power. This post is going to be super picture heavy so sit back and enjoy the updates!


First, we want to show you the progress of our peppers and tomatoes that we have started in our grow-room. We are thrilled at their progress and they should be ready for potting up soon as they will be moving outside to their own beds in the next few weeks. Now that the weather is starting to stabilize (at least in the daytime), the little tomato and pepper plants are going to be spending some time outside to acclimate to the weather. In gardening terms, this is called "hardening off" your seedlings and is necessary to avoid young plants going into shock when they move outside into their new garden beds. We also have some updates on the Voodoo Lilies that are currently sharing the grow-room with the young plants. The Sauromatum venosum that flowered earlier in the year have all begun to put up their leaf-stalks and are getting ready to unfurl their leaves. Just as they only put up one flower, Voodoo Lilies only have one leaf structure per plant as well. We are quite excited as we have a large Amorphophallus riveri that is showing signs of potential flowering as well. That particular specimen is known affectionately as "Shaun" after Shaun of the Dead and this will be Shaun's first time to flower with us if he does indeed decide to put on a show.

Little Peppers

Little Tomatoes

Outside, things are just bursting with new life! The hens are laying like crazy and we are averaging between 8 and 12 eggs a day from our hens. (Keep an eye out in the near future, we plan on adding a page with a short profile of each of our little farm-family members and you'll get to meet the girls who make our gorgeous eggs!) We have peas and lettuces sprouting in the veggie beds, horseradish beginning to leaf up, garlic starting to send up scapes, and strawberries taking a strong hold in the back gardens. Around the front in Nate's herb beds, we have Angelica, St. John's Wort, Valerian, Catnip, Sweet Woodruff, and Comfrey making strong leaps in growth. The seeds we planted in the Faery Garden are starting to sprout, and the irises and tulips are coming up strong as well. The daffodils are putting on a grand show (we are hoping to see some flowers from our amazing $0.06 daffodil bulb haul from Wal-Mart soon!), the hostas are starting to make a showing, and the lilac has lots of buds. We also have tons of buds on our Top-Hat Dwarf Blueberry bushes and a lot of new growth on our new Currant plants. Two more full sized blueberry bushes will be arriving sometime within the next week along with our Borettana Cipollini onion starts.

Garlic scapes

Pea sprouts

Strawberry babies

Rows of tiny lettuce sprouts

Horseradish leaves

Blueberry buds

Lilac buds

Tulip buds

Pink Champagne Currants

Red Lake Currants

Catnip are the two at the top,
Sweet Woodruff is at the bottom

From top left: Valerian, Angelica
Bottom: St. John's Wort

Also of note, we've been getting weekly hauls somewhere in the ballpark of 3-5 dozen eggs from our Chicken-Brigade, and our ducky girl, Nibs is putting up some good egg numbers too. We do offer our all-natural fresh eggs locally at a cost of $2.50 per dozen, if you are interested, chat us up on Facebook or send us an email for availability. We've sold out of all of our current eggs leading up to Easter, and I can't say I blame our regulars for wanting fresh eggs that you don't even have to dye in order to have a lovely, colorful Easter Basket. :) I'm trying some eggsperiments right now with some egg-related crafts and home/garden uses for eggs and egg shells, so look for upcoming posts with recipes and DIY ideas. Our little girls that we picked up as peeps a few months ago are going to be moving out to the big hen house soon, look how much they have grown!!

I already shared this on our Facebook page, but I whipped up some super-cute plant markers for the garden this year as well during some down-time I had at work (yep, we do work 40 hours a week AND run a micro-farm!) and I think they turned out mighty fine. :) The markers themselves are wooden plant markers that we picked up for $3 per pack of 24. I used some micro-tip Sharpie markers to write the varieties and draw a little depiction of the plant on the marker and we finished them using some clear gloss spray-paint to give a little weather protection to the artwork. In all I am rather satisfied with them and will be putting them out in the garden soon to avoid confusion over what varieties went in which beds/rows.

At Elaine's house, a lot of things are going on as well:

• The soil gnomes (Nate Rumbaugh and Ed Budner) filled my square-foot beds, my day lilies are coming up nicely, the holly bushes have buds, and the daffodils are in bloom. I'm also in love with all the miniature horses being born at Opal Woods Farm and wishing I could fence in my back yard for a pair!

Jamie and Kenny Bass down in Georgia have got a jump on us with a much earlier growing season than we have! Take a look at their seedlings and their freshly tilled garden plot! This is their first year in their own home with property that they can grow food on and we know they are super excited to be joining the grow-your-own revolution!

Anyone know what kind of flower this is?

Future veggie garden

So much potential!

Until next week, Happy Growing!

If you want to join us in the Grow-Along, simply send us your gardening plans, pictures, or progress via Facebook, email, or in the comments below. We welcome everyone to the adventure! It is never too late to join us! :)