Eclipsed $100 in Produce out of the garden

Just went over $100 dollars of produce out of our garden.  Harvesting something everyday now.  Tomato's are averaging 1-1.5 pounds every couple of days!   By far it's been the biggest producer.  Here are some highlights:

19.5 lb of Tomato's

3.5 lb Red Potato's

5 lb of Russet Potato's

2 lb Bell Pepper

Ton's of little Thai Chili's

3 lb Cucumber

1 lb Okra

1 lb Lettuce

1.5 lb Green Bean

2 lb Beetroot

1 lb Squash

Good start so far this year.  Hopefully continued production as the blueberry's, blackberry's, and grapes ripen in late June.

Recovered over $45: Dinner completely out of the garden and some garden pests and problems

After being out of town for four days, I returned to an abundance!  The growth in that little time was amazing.  The next two pictures are what I harvested Sunday night. So far, we have recouped over $45 dollars out of the garden!  Only going to get better!

For dinner tonight, I fried the okra in a milk batter and sauteed the onion, green bean, Thai chili, and squash. I also took some of the tomato's and made a pint of tomato sauce for use later.

This reminds me, I need to clean the stove top!  Ooops.

For the pests, came across a couple.  The dreaded squash bug and the corn earworm!  The squash bugs I killed by soaking the plant with water and waiting for them to crawl up away from the water.  Then spray them with a mixture of dawn soap and water.  They die pretty quickly.

I inspected the corn and found one ear with the silk dead and discolored.  Opened it up and low and behold, hello mister corn earworm!  Killed it and looked through the rest of the corn and didn't see anymore, but they are still out there.

I did have some blossom end rot using the grow bags.  The watering hasn't been consistent enough and when it isn't, calcium can't get to the fruit and thus the rot.  Probably about 10-12 tomato's.  I've since placed some of the bags in a kids pool and kept an inch or so of water with great results.

Solar Cooking: Beef Stew and a Garden Update - Reaping the Work

Cooking some beef stew today in the solar oven.  The difference today is that i'm going to add the ingredients in stages based on the cooking time so we don't have a bunch of mush.  Changes after cooking are annotated with a *

Recipe:

1 lb stew meat

4-5 medium potatoes

1/2 onion

2 stalks celery

3 carrots

2 tbsp steak seasoning

1 bay leave

2 tbsp dried onion

1 tbsp salt

1/2 can tomato paste

1 cup water (*change to 1 1/2 cup)
1 tbsp corn starch

1. Pre-heat the solar oven
2. Put the stew meat in the middle of the pot
3. Quarter the potatoes, about half a golf ball sized, and place around the stew
   
4. Mix the water, tomato paste, and seasonings and pour over the roast
   
5. Place the roast in the solar oven and adjust the aim
6. Cut the celery, onion and onion flakes, and carrots and set aside
   
7. Cook the roast for 2 hours
8. Add the corn starch and stir well
9. Add the carrots
10. Cook for another 30 minutes
11. Add the remainder of the vegetables
12. Cook for another 30 minutes and allow the stove to cool slowly by not adjusting the aim (target temp around 200)
13. Enjoy when you are ready.

Results:

Wow, the meat almost melts in your mouth.  This was really fantastic and timing the vegetables going in was a great call.  This was a great recipe.  I did add 1/2 cup more water a little later so I'll adjust that.

Lessons Learned:

Nothing to change or add to this one.  A winner.

Garden Update:

Just wanted to show a screenshot of the excel doc I created to track how much we were recouping from the garden throughout this year.  I didn't keep track of what I spent to compare but now that I have a template I can do that as I go along now.  The workbook actually has 4 tabs, rain collection requirements calculator for both agricultural use and personal use, a plant 'needs' calculator based on family size, recoup calculator you see below, and a cost calculator to bounce of the recoup.

I based the recoup on organic prices I researched and this would have to be updated occasionally.

I'm willing to share it, I'm continually trying to improve it.  Just ask if you want a copy.

Been a while Garden Update

Sorry it's been a while.....life happens.

 

Big update on progress.  It's all cool though!

 

Here's an overview picture of the garden.  You can see the three sisters garden, grape vine, succession garden, grow bags, and the window sill planter

 

 

Here's a shot of some of the first beefsteak tomato's.

 

Here's the three sisters garden with a close up shot so you can see the squash and beans.  Not yet worried about overcrowding but I really pushed the envelope on this design.  If I need to thin it I will and learn for next year.

 

Always nice to see the grapes starting out.  After pruning so heavy this year I wasn't hopeful about a decent crop but it looks as if it's not going to be bad, and I'll get the shape of the vine I want.  BTW, no leaves yet on the 42 potted cuttings but it can take some time.

 

 

 Here's a nice shot of some of the Roma tomato's.

 

 

 

 

The secession garden is doing really well. The cucumbers were thinned and are vining out well. The peas are growing well in the back right. Some Cherokee beans in the back left. Lettuce, collards, and beets succession nicely as well as the radishes in the bottom left.

 

 

 

Here are the parsnips and the carrots. The parsnips in the closer half of the picture.

 

Didn't expect any blueberries this year so this is great.  I have 4 blueberry bushes. 

 

This garden has everything!  Strawberries, garlic, onion, sage, blackberry, oregano, thyme, dill, mint, and onion.

 

 

The fruit tree has a ton of nectarines starting to grow.

 And lastly, the hummingbirds.  They make my day.

Took the plunge

Ok, I took the plunge.  The weather has been so good and the outlook is continuing to be better so I said what the heck.  I put the okra and the tomato's into the garden today.  With the way the weather is looking I thought I would take a chance.  We'll see how this pays off.

You can see in the top left, I pruned the olive tree and have planted 3 cuttings with a root actuator so I may get three more tree's.

Seedling Update, Harvest of Onions

Seedlings are all doing well.  Trying an experiment, transplanted some tomato's and the okra into quart containers to see a difference in seedling growth from now until planting.  Since Phil is out and spring is early, thinking late February into the garden.

Pulled the onions today as I've got to prep the bed for the three sisters.

Post cleaning, 2 lbs 5.6 oz. in total.

Potato's going in, Seedling Update

First, the potato's.  The buds have come in well, I'll only plant the strongest buds in the bags.  The red's seem to have budded a lot more than the Russet's have but both are good enough to plant.

I might be going a little much with how many I'm planting in the bags but we'll see when everything is mature.  Bag one 4 Russet, Bag two 5 Russet, Bag three 6 Russet, Bag four 6 Red.  I'll weigh the yield to see if the amount of plants made a difference or not.

Bag one, 4 Russet

Bag two, 5 Russet

Bag three, 6 Russet

Bag four, 6 Red

Now the seedlings.  True leaves have emerged throughout the seedlings.  Everything except the Cayenne peppers seem to be doing well.  Might have had a bad batch of seeds with those, none have germinated and I replanted.

Celery is coming up, very young, just took longer than I expected.  I added the second flat which has onions, eggplant, spinach, sage, and oregano.  A lot of it is coming up now.



I started watering with a mixture of fish emulsion to give the seedlings a little boost.  Looking at the warmer February and March, I may be putting plants into the garden a little earlier than March 10th.

Garden Update, Seedling Progress and Grow Bag Setup

17 Jan 2013

First, the seedlings. The peppers are now starting to come up, minus the Cayenne.  The okra is growing very well as are the tomato's.  Waiting on the celery also.  As you can see, I hooked up another light, I had some scrap wood, and light from our departed Chinese water dragon's cage.  So I pieced it together to give me more room the evening of the 14th.  This should allow a good transition to the quart containers and ensure enough light. 

I decided to reseed the cayenne and the celery the evening of the 16th and on the 17th I added another tray that has eggplant, onion, sage, oregano, and spinich that I can interplant or put in other areas of the garden.  I also replanted some Jalapeno's that hadden come up yet.

So I have the plan for this first grow season and I'll be doing a lot of growing in grow bags.  I just couldn't see building any more permanent beds taking over our back yard completely.  It will be interesting with the weather in south Texas as the grow bags are black and I wonder how much heat will be conducted to the roots as May and June approach.  Anybody have any experience, please share.

14 Jan 2013

I purchased these on Amazon as a way to drastically increase my growing potential while making it temporary. We have a very large flagstone patio that we had built so this seemed to be the most reasonable way to increase our growing potential without overtaking the yard.

This is what I'm going to plant:

1. 6 Manalucie Tomato's (interested to see how this hot weather tomato works)
2. 2 Roma Tomato's
3. 2 Rutger Tomato's
4. 2 Beefsteak Tomato's
5. 4 Okra
6. 8 Green Pepper
7. 14 hot pepper (Jalapeno and Cayenne) (Most in a topsy turvy bag)
8. 6 Celery
9. 24 Potato's

The potato's on the bottom of the pic, Okra and Cucumers on the left, then Tomato's, and lastly the Pepper's.  The Celery is going in the ground.  I have 8 other bags I haven't put out yet.

29 Oct 2012

This is the garden bed I'll be planting the three sisters in.  I have some onions, carrots, and lettuce that I'll have to pull by late Feb so I can prep the bed for a 10 March corn planting.  I've kept it growing by using plastic sheeting since I planted these late for the 2012 2nd growing season.  In will consist of 42 corn, 27 pole bean, and 16 squash.  Check the link out for more information but basically Native Americans would inter-plant these three as they were beneficial to each other.  The corn provides a pole for the beans, the beans return nitrogen to the soil for the next year, and the squash shields the ground from evaporation and to deter weeds.


This second garden was prepared in the fall and what you see are asparagus holes.  I already planted the two year old roots so hopefully we'll have a nice asparagus bed with some shoots this year, but much more in the years to come as it will take some time for the plants to mature to full production, probably 2-3 years.

13 Jan 2013

We'll be planting some carrots, parsnips, and herbs on the windowsill garden.  We got some Cilantro growing in it now.  I've got to finish some minor work on it.





20 Jan 2013

Garden Prepping for 2013, Starting Seedlings

I have kept paper journals of my gardening exploits over the years.  I was discussing everything I was doing with a friend while he was over and he mentioned that I ought to start a blog and share some of the information that I've learned gardening in South Texas and may also get some advice as I go.

The climate here is so different that you can actually get two growing seasons.  March to June, and August to December.

So here it is, I did it.  Now we'll see how this year goes.

Seedlings started on the 9th of January.  Already had shoots in 2 1/2 days.

Here's what I've started in seedlings (I started more than I need - worse case scenario:

Plant                                              Sprouted
12 Cayenne Pepper                             0
12 Jalapeno Pepper                             0
4 Beefsteak Tomato's                         All
4 Rutger Tomato's                              All
4 Roma Tomato's                                3
4 Manalucie Tomato's                         2
12 Green Peppers                               0
12 Celery                                            0
6 Okra                                               All

As these mature I'll transfer them to quart containers until about 10 March when I'll transplant into grow bags on the patio.  Any extra I'll pot and give away.

This first growing season for 2013 will have the following:

1. 4x4 bed with 7 Asparagus roots that were planted last fall.  They were two year roots.
2. 10 tomato's
3. 8 cucumber's
4. 14 cayenne pepper
5. 6 green pepper
6. 4 okra
7. 5x5 bed with 'three sisters.'  40 corn, 20 squash, 28 pole beans
8. 6 celery
9. 16x3.5 various greens
10. 24 potato

I'll have some other stuff too with a window sill planter and some companion planting but I'll update that as I go.