Homestead Acres » Gardening

Getting A Little Snow And A Deep Freeze

Kim — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:16:40 +0000

Well the winter storm the news had been going on about didn’t really materialize. But we did get a little snow yesterday! It started in the afternoon and by this morning we had 2 inches of fresh snow. Not a storm by a long shot, but pretty. What we have had are frigid temps on the homestead! Today it was -15 C and the windchill -22 C. Tonight and tomorrow will be colder. Burrr, times like this I’m so grateful for the wood stoves.

I’ve been suffering from spring fever, I want to get back in the gardens!! Maybe I’ve been watching to many gardening videos on YouTube lately. It has inspired me to make room for my grow lights again. Tomorrow I’ll be making room in the summer kitchen to set them up. Hopefully hubby and I will be able to get the stand up from the basement ok. It’s very heavy! He built it for me the first winter after we moved in to this house.

We’ve both been thinking next summer will be a cold one. I checked the Farmers Almanac online and for Southern Ontario they are saying a cold and dry summer. Hopefully it wont be to bad! But I’m planning my gardens for a cold season. I’m just about done my seed order and there will be many Canadian and Russian variety’s this year!

When To Harvest Butternut Squash

Kim — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:42:52 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

To harvest winter squash for storage in a root cellar, wait until the skins are hard enough to resist scratching by your fingernail.
Then cut them off the plant leaving 2 – 3 inches of stem attached. Let them sit in a room that stays between 50 and 60 F for a week or two. Then store on shelves or pallets in the cellar.

How To Make Compost Tea

Kim — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 22:34:50 +0000

Compost tea is black gold for your garden! Compost is full of living microbes that help to build your soil and nourish your plants. But some times it’s inconvenient to apply compost to your plants through the season. If your plants are in containers, eventually the soil would reach the very top of the pot! But container plants especially need fertilizing through out the yea r, as constant watering washes out many nutrients.

The solution is to make compost tea. It concentrates the nutrients and makes it very easy to apply. It’s easily watered on your lawn, containers or vegetable gardens. It can also be sprayed on your plants and dose and amazing job at warding off fungus and pests. As both are normally symptoms of plant stress.

I hope this video on how I make my compost tea is helpful to you. I’ve heard some have improved it further by adding an aerator, such as an air stone from a fish tank to it. As aerating the water adds more oxygen and encourages microbe growth. I haven’t tried that yet as I’ve had wonderful results with just stirring the mix. But if you have tried both ways and found an advantage to one or the other, I would love to hear about it!

Garden Update Aug 5 2011

Kim — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:35:00 +0000

Late getting this one up! We’ve all been sick here. Tomatoes are doing great, but we need rain so bad!

Garden Update Jul 7 2011

Kim — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:30:39 +0000

Finally the rain has cleared up! It’s been a long rainy spring the weeds have gone crazy. I’m working hard to get the gardens caught up.
How are yours doing?

Garden Update June 9 2010

Kim — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 04:09:04 +0000

It’s been raining hard here for some time. We had a week of straight rain. Then it’s been every other day since. The gardens are a mucky mess. Can’t use the tiller or the hoe. The hoe just wont work in the mud. So I’m pulling a lot of weeds by hand, in between the rainy spells. Would be nice to have some warm dry weather again!

*Adding my youtube vids here. I’m behind lol

What We Are Growing This Year

Kim — Wed, 12 May 2010 01:26:13 +0000

We’ve had a lot of questions about what we are growing. So I thought I’d make a video showing our garden plans. Also below is a list of what seeds we are using and were we bought them from.

Veseys

Cross Country Cucumber
Chocolate Cherry Tomato
Small Sugar Organic Pumpkin
Seneca Horizon Corn
Optima Lettuce
Simpson Elite Lettuce
Dusky Eggplant
Broom Corn
Black Beauty Organic Zucchini
Scarlet Nantes Organic Carrot
Early Purple Top White Globe Turnip
Waltham Butternut Organic Squash
Detroit Dark Red Supreme Beet
Cherry Belle Organic Radish
Tango Celery
Sunberry Organic
Lemon Boy Tomato
Georgia Jet Sweet Potato

Bakers Creek

Sunberry/wonderberry
Calabrese Green Sprouting Broccoli
Huckleberrys
Hendersons Pink Tomato
Huge Lemon Oxheart Tomato
Yellow Egg Yolk Tomato
Mortgage Lifter Tomato
Yellow Strawberry

McKenzie Seeds
Spaghetti Squash
Bonny Best Tomato
Marigolds
Cosmos
Sweetie Tomato
Muncher Cucumber
Long Red Cayenne Pepper
Bright Lights Swiss Chard
Asian Radish Watermelon
Alpine Strawberry
Mr. Stripey Tomato
Italian Cucumber
Salad mix
Italian Zucchini
Viking Asparagus

OSC

Celebrity Tomato
Haleys Best Cantaloupe
Calendula
Okra
Thyme
Yellow Ground Cherry tomato
Catnip
Delicious 51 Cantaloupe
Parsley
Basil
Arugula
Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage
Golden Acre Cabbage
Danish Ball head Cabbage
Golden Queen Tomato
Cherry Bell Radish
Sparkler White Tip Radish
Dark Green Zucchini
Green Sprouting Broccoli
China Rose Radish
Sugar Baby Watermelon
Connecticut Field Pumpkin
Velvet Queen Sunflower
Climbing Nasturtium
Royal Burgundy Purple Beans
Golden Bantam Corn

Aimers

Heart Of Gold Cantaloupe
Brandywine Tomato
Small Sugar Pumpkin

Burpee

Spinach

Seed We’ve Saved

Hinze Paste Tomato
Laxtons Progress Peas
Kentucky Beans
Bush Blue Lake Beans
Red Potato
White Potato
Blue/Purple Potatoes

Garden Update April 10th 2010

Kim — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:52:49 +0000

Despite the strong cold winds and snow on April 8th and 9th the gardens are doing just fine. The greenhouse stayed nice and warm with the help of a heater. The garlic actually looks better after all that rain. In the herb garden my motherwort, comfrey, chives are up. Also some mint and lemon balm just starting to come up.

Asparagus beginning to pop up

Comfrey

Motherwort

Chives

Broccoli Seedlings

Either a cucumber or teddy bear sunflower

Rhubarb

Strawberry

Garden Update April 1st 2010

Kim — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 03:56:19 +0000

We’ve been making good use of the wonderful weather. The past week has had many days in the mid 20′s C. I took the opportunity to start some of our tomato, pepper and herb seeds.

Here is our video on how I saved the tomato seeds from last years garden.

4 Reasons To Keep A Pantry

Kim — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:39:04 +0000

I have always been inclined to have a pantry, perhaps it comes from being around my Grandma. Who’s generation lived through the depression and was very skilled at stretching things. It seems that more and more people have fallen into the practice of shopping weekly for all their grocery’s. Keeping just enough food on hand for a few days. Through out my live I’ve seen many times why this is not a good idea. You really never know when having some staples stored up will be a huge help.

Storms

We live in a snow belt. Just last week the schools were closed for 3 days and the roads also. Yes they did open for short spells, but do you really want to drive on bad roads and then get stuck at town when they close again? It’s a wonderful feeling to see the snow falling and not have to worry that your short on food, water and other supplies. In the summer like wise storms can knock power out for hours or days.

Job loss

Another good reason for stocking a pantry is income loss. I can’t count the times hubby has been laid off work with little notice, or weather has reduced his work hours. Even a tax mix up can happen leading to your refunds being cut off. Yes that happened to us a few years ago. We went to town to shop and found a bill in the mail. We knew we didn’t owe it but it took months to sort out. Our income was greatly reduced during that time and we were able to live almost entirely off our pantry stores.

Price increases

Prices are always going up. In the past few years we have seen more frequent price jumps as inflation affects all sectors. Do you remember the grain crises a few years ago? Almost over night a 8 kg bag of rice went from $6.00 to nearly $20.00! Like wise wheat berries, as well as processed flour more then doubled. With the price of grains rising it drove the prices of all grocery’s up. Having a good stock of goods at home can help protect you from sudden increases. It allows you time to save up to restock your goods, and to watch for sales.

Savings

Keeping a pantry saves a lot of money! I don’t buy the same things every week. Instead I have a master list of what our family uses. I keep a base amount on hand at all times. I mark off a list how many we have used and when I see a good sale I can replace them. It’s even better if you can use coupons on sale items. This helps since I normally don’t get caught having to replace all items that go up in price at the same time.

Check back soon to learn how to keep track of your pantry.