Grow-Along Week 9

Howdy friends!

My goodness! We're at week 9 already!! Can you believe it? We sure can't. So much has been going on that we got a day behind schedule this week and completely forgot to update you all yesterday! We are so sorry about that, but we are delighted to have ongoing great news to share with you all about the growth and progress of our little slice of life on the Micro-Farm. This week brings a lot of new growth on plants as well as some new faces and new projects on the farm.


The garden is growing in leaps and bounds. Our peas are finally tall enough for trellises and those are going up in the next day or two. The salad bed looks wonderful with robust little seedlings from all varieties (except for spinach - only one seedling there). I may try separating out some of the butterhead and romaine seedlings that are coming up too thickly and move them over to the mostly barren spinach row so as to not waste the little plantlets we've got and maximize our harvest in a few weeks' time. We got our new Honeycrisp and American Plum trees planted in the mini-orchard and we're hoping that within a few years we'll have apples and plums to enjoy and store as well. (Nate is working on a separate blog post all about how to best plant fruit trees, as well!) Our Red Lake, Pink Champagne, and Consort Black Currants are all doing wonderfully well in their pots and we're still hoping for potentially some fruit from them this year. The Top-Hat Blueberries have flowers on them, but are looking a bit sparse when it comes to leaves yet. I'm wondering if they didn't suffer a little this winter and am planning to ensure they get properly pampered this year to ensure they continue to produce fruit for us in years to come. The strawberries are looking strong (we only lost one plant out of 25) and most are sporting their first set of blooms for the year.

A shot of the entire veggie garden area.

Time for a trellis for the Super Sugar Snap Peas!

Lovely Leaf Lettuces

One lonely spinach sprout

One of the new American Plum trees

New Honeycrisp Apple tree

The Pink Champagne Currant bush

Strawberry blossoms

Our tomatoes and peppers have graduated to living full-time outside on our upstairs porch, and will be planted in their raised-beds in the veggie patch within the next few days. We are happy to report that several of the tomatoes have flowers on them and many of the peppers have buds and should be flowering any day  now. We are truly looking forward to a wonderful harvest for both fresh eating and canning from both crops this year.

So far, the most recently started seedlings are off to a slower start than expected. Of the melons, peppers, pumpkins, and herbs that we planted, we so far have only a handful of seedlings. I'm mildly disappointed in this result and intend to seed some of the varieties outside directly within the next week or two if I continue to see no progress. I'm starting to think my pepper seeds may be complete duds despite the fact that the California Wonder seeds were a packet that were labeled for use this year. I'm somewhat reconsidering my initial decision to plant cucumbers in peat pots indoors and am leaning more towards the notion of direct seeding them outside in a couple of days since the weather has taken such a lovely turn towards warmer temperatures lately. (I swear it feels like we skipped right from early Spring to summer the last few days! It was 85° F here today!) We've had good luck with rain so far and haven't had to water the gardens too terribly much, which we are happy about. To add to the boon of not having to water, our rain barrel that we use to water the veggie garden the most is topped off and ready for action. I'm actually considering throwing some comfrey or nettle leaves into a mesh bag and tossing that into the barrel to create a fertilizer tea to give the young plants a boost the next time I need to water.

In other news, we have 6 new faces joining our farm-family! I'm happy to report that after a few weeks of searching and lots of phone calls, we have 6 baby Silkie chicks in our brooder. We are absolutely in love with them and have been spending a lot of time cuddling and bonding with the new babies. After the passing of Hideki, our sweet Silkie rooster, we were left with a noticeable vacancy in our chicken coop and we wanted very much to bring another group of Silkies into our flock. Our babies are straight run chicks, which means that we don't know which ones or how many of them are boys or are girls. With Silkies, it takes quite some time before it is easy to determine which are which, so for now they are just my Little Peanuts and I'm holding off on giving out names until we determine for sure which are boys and which are girls. They are the sweetest little bunch of walking cotton-balls you've ever seen, though!

 As far as new projects go, we'll be doing some chicken-coop remodeling in the next few weeks as well as building some essential structures for the yard and garden. We promise that several how-to and DIY articles will be forthcoming in the very near future as a result. Who knows... I might even get brave enough to use some of the power tools myself! (Don't hold your breath!! ;)  ) First on my project list is this awesome invention that Such and Such Farm came up with to help re-grow our chicken run (as over the fall and winter they managed to scratch their run to dirt despite having free-range forage time outside the run on most days). To cut cost, however, we plan to partially deconstruct and then modify some pallets that we have on hand to use as the frames. We're hoping, in total to have a DIY project to share with you all that will cost less than $25 to build and will be helpful to other chicken-keepers as well as pet owners. Let's face it, some of you have dogs and those dogs can be just as bad about wearing down your grass. We figure this particular project has more than one application. :)

Well, that's all we have for this week! Thank you for your ongoing support and keep your eyes out for our upcoming posts!

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! :)