It worked!

The gnats are gone!  The IndoorPharm spray worked wonderfully, and the best part is that it didn't hurt even my tiniest seedlings!  I am still going to repot into new peat pots today because they need more room, but overall, this product saved the day - and the tomato season! 

I have attempted to post pictures of our homestead and plants on here, I hope they work.  It is my first time using photobucket so there may be a few kinks I will need to work on.  

Today is "Bird Day" around here.  The kids and I are going to be mounting/hanging our bird houses & feeders along the fence in hopes of relocating our feathered friends a little further away from the raised beds and new berry patch.  Time to get to work!

Seedling Emergency!

This morning as I was turning on the lights for my seedlings, I was assaulted by GNATS!  I saw one the other night, but attributed it to the seedlings being outside for a couple of hours that day hardening off, but this morning...ugh!  I know what gnats look like, but didn't know if they could cause any real damage...so I research it to death like I always do and find out that indeed adult flying gnats cause no real damage, but the LARVAE from the eggs they deposit in the soil actually damage the plant by eating parts of the roots.  I then came across only a couple of things that can help, both being chemical/non-organic in nature.  No matter, I decide...they have to go and I am willing to do anything to save my heirlooms!  Off to the garden center I go, complaining kids in tow, and find none of the products recommended but instead stumble upon a line of products made by Pharmsolutions of WA.  Of course they have beautiful packaging to lead your eye away from the price and seem to have a product for every need, one bottle is called "Indoor Pharm" and is intended just for indoor seedlings, plants, and hydroponics.  Perfect!  Bonus...specifically intended for fungus gnats!  I took the bait and bought a bottle and also picked up a bottle of "Veggie Pharm" to have on hand once my outdoor garden is in full swing.  They state they are safe for beneficials too, which is important since we do everything we can to attract and keep beneficials, including importing them!  

The product label says to test on a plant first, so I "sacrificed" some seedlings (the ones on the right in photo) for a full-on assault with this stuff to see if the plants survive.  My sacrificial plants are tomato seedlings with only 1 set of leaves past the cotyledons, and I soaked the soil and the foliage to get a good idea of how early I could get away with using this stuff and how forcefully.  A "worst case scenario" if you will!  I will let you know how they look tomorrow and if the gnats are gone...keep your fingers crossed that I will have a positive product review on this...since I already bought it, lol!  (BTW, price was 14.99 for 35 fl oz., not really too bad since the bottle is large enough to last a good while.)

You know you're "farming" when...

The past week has been filled with work and more work!  It's like one of those yard makeover in a day shows around here!  We have been needing to replace our weather and wind beaten fence for years now, and we decided to do half of that this past week as well as create a border and space for more raised veggie beds along the fenceline.  We managed to do it all without any digging (except for a trench barrier along the bed).  My husband was thrilled to have a legitimate use for his new propane weed torch aka "The Flame Thrower".  He torched all the grass/weeds for the new bed and we then laid down cardboard (courtesy of my neighbors' latest move, thanks guys!), then spread out a bunch of compost we had and mulched the area in.  

After that came the fence.  I believe you can judge how close you are getting to a homestead/farmette farming by they severity of the mishaps involved...!  As my husband was kicking down the old fence, I had my son stand safely away from the area (so I thought) when a huge gust of wind came and blew down the gate on the other end of the fence right on top of him.  It was one of those horrible moments when you can tell what is about to happen right before it does.  I looked up, started running but was too late.  The massive drive-thru gate smacked him down to the ground.  It took both Charlie and I to pick the gate up, and surprisingly, not a scratch on him!  He was terrified for sure, but he fell flat down on his front and took the gate on his back, which was the best outcome for that situation.  We have had that problem with the gale force winds and the solid fence blowing down for years, so I think we have solved it now by installing wire fencing and reusing the wooden posts to channel the wind through instead of smacking into the fence.  The downside to this plan is the loss of privacy and our little microclimate!  I am going to grow Hyacinth Bean vines for the summer, but now need to plan for permanent coverage.  I am debating whether to do something easy like an evergreen honeysuckle or something that will take a little longer, such as Rosa Rugosa or Russian Olive.  Either way, we will need to have some privacy back before integrating "Urban Stealth Chickens" into our family!  If anyone has any experience covering a fence cheaply and quickly for the long term I would love to hear it!  Here are a couple of photos of the new fence (on the left) and the new border and raised beds along the fence.  I hope to have some better pics soon.

The containers hold my new colonnade apple trees!  I am still a little unsure of where I will want them since the border is a blank slate right now, so I figured I would park them in pots in the meantime.

My youngest son Finnegan gave us a scare the other night by having what sounded like an asthma attack.  I took him to the ER where I was relieved to hear that it was not asthma but instead croup.  He had a couple of hours of nebulizer treatment and a steroid to help open his airway and then we were able to get back home (by 3 am!) and rest.  I thought only babies had croup but apparently it is not uncommon at all for a child his age.  I am just very thankful that it is not a chronic condition like asthma.  Here he is breathing his "magic dust"...

He was feeling well enough the next afternoon to plant his apple tree...

Next up, allergy season!  My husband and one of my boys have allergies pretty bad, and I find that every year I live in VA mine get a little worse, so maybe this year I need to get some meds.  I am sure we will all be sneezing today as we get outside to work some more.  I have a huge list of "Charlie Chores" for my husband to finish today since he gets to go on vacation in AZ for a week for his sister's wedding, while I get a "Staycation" at home with 2 kids, 2 dogs and a lawn to mow!  (Note to self:  keep removing parts of the lawn-grass is evil!)

Seed Swapping Fun!

The past weekend was alot of fun in spite of the cold weather!  I hosted a Seed Swap & Cocktail Party on Saturday night for my gardening group "Grownups Playing in the Dirt".  It was an evening of meeting lots of new faces and getting a ton of new seeds to try.  I was impressed by the amount of guests I had (24!) and the amount of seeds and good food everyone brought.  I ended up with all flower seeds since growing flowers from seed is something new for me.  For others, veggies were the attraction.  It's a great way to meet people and try something new for free!  My home is tiny, but the husbands were able to start a campfire out back (with a propane weed torch, I might add, lol!) and we were able to spill outside around the fire for some extra room.  It was chilly, but no wind at least.  Soon enough we will be complaining about the heat and mosquitoes!  There were alot of kids so they kept busy running around the yard, as all kids should be doing...and I am sure they all went home exhausted!  Outdoors and tired...nature's ADHD remedy!  I intended to snap some photos of the event, but forgot all about it once the party started.  My seedlings under lights are still too immature to send out into the world, so now I have an excuse to have another party in May!  Speaking of the seedlings, here they are as of this morning:

The rest of the weekend was spent cross-legged on my graveled perennial beds with my kids and dogs weeding.  Not exactly exciting, but very relaxing nonetheless.  The kids were so helpful in fact, hauling my debris in their little red wagon to the compost pile, that I offered to take them out to dinner and let them pick.  They chose, of course, McDonald's...yuck, what is it about that place and kids?!!  Anyway, they got their wish and all I got was my body desperately wanting its gallbladder back!  I am noticing that my kids now know what is a weed and what is a plant, important since alot of my perennials are self-sowing babies all around them!  

Yesterday, my best friend calls and is thinking about apple trees for her yard instead of trees that "don't do anything" and it got me thinking!  She has room for some nice trees and for them to provide food is awesome, but I am afraid if I add any more trees to my backyard it will shade my veggies.  After some researching, I decided to order some Colonnade Apple Trees.  If you haven't seen them, they seem to be the perfect solution to add fruit for the family without shading the yard, or would be great for tiny gardens as you can even pot them on a deck.  I ordered 3 of different varieties, and will try and update on the status of them to see if they live up to expectations!  Click for a picture and article about Colonnade Apple Trees, and a video from P. Allen Smith.  Now I can't wait for them to get here...funny thing is, the day after I ordered mine, a post appeared about them on one of my favorite blogs "The Crunchy Chicken".  So at least I'm not alone in trying this strange variety!

I am hoping to get the rest of my garden weeded and start on our fence building this week, but it is still cold and supposed to rain tomorrow...ugh!

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

I just realized I haven't posted in many days.  It's the weather's fault!  It has been raining and cold nonstop for 5 days and I didn't even venture outside until today.  I snapped a couple of photos and retreated back into the warm house!  I have a couple of bulbs drowning in the mud and count it...ONE pea sprouting!

     

So this weekend was a bust, and to top it off, both the kids and I were sick with a cold!  At least we picked a good time to be sick, and lounging in front of the TV and reading didn't leave me feeling like I was being lazy since it was pouring outside!  The good news is that all my seedlings are cooking right along under their lights, about 2 sets of leaves on them now. Of all the tomatoes, the Heirloom Black Krim is by far looking to be the fullest, fastest growing variety, so I highly recommend that one if you are looking to start from seed.  They were slow to germinate but made up for that very quickly, surpassing all the others.  The Black Krim seeds came from Baker Heirloom Seed Co. this year.  I highly recommend getting a copy of their catalog, it is eye candy for a gardener during the cold winter/spring months! 

I forgot an update about the pasture raised bacon we ate the other night from Full Quiver Farm....DELICIOUS!  Hands down the best we have ever had, and worth every penny!  That's all I've got for now...so I will leave you with some photos of the "Garden Dogs".  These are my gorgeous Aussie girls...

Sprocket (as in Spacely), 11 months                

   

Marley, age 6

Fish on a Wall!

With all the work on our rental unit, the weekend flew by!  Luckily, we finished putting the new floor in and all the miscellaneous things to be done just in time, and our new tenants arrived about 3 hours later.  They have come all the way from Seattle, and in this economy we feel lucky that they chose our house to rent and cannot wait to start getting rental income again.  We only went 6 weeks without a tenant, but it couldn't be helped because we had a lot of work to do on the house and needed every minute of that time!  We chose to install a new floor called "Allure", it looks like wood laminate but is actually a floating VINYL floor (hopefully perfect for a rental property)!  It was extremely easy to lay compared to the laminate we have in our house and looks like this:   

                                                                

Nothing big happening on the garden front yet...peas outside haven't sprouted yet and my seedlings are still coming along under the lights.  There was only about 4 seeds that never sprouted and they were all True Black Brandywine tomatoes, but I still got enough of those that did... glad I planted more than I needed!  So the tomato seedlings consist of several heirloom types (Brandywine, True Black Brandywine, Black Krim) Black Truffle and Black Pearl Hybrids.  The peppers are Jalapeno Gigante, Ancho Chile, Red Poppers and Pinot Noir Bell.  Eggplant consist of heirloom Thai Yellow and Purple Rain hybrid.  Next I will be starting herbs, but many of those can be direct seeded so they aren't as fussy!  As of today, the babies are just starting to develop their first true leaves after the cotyledons:

                             

      

And finally, it's fish on a wall...

Planting peas...AT THE RIGHT TIME THIS YEAR!

The spring planting is officially underway!  I had good intentions of getting those peas in earlier this year, like February, and it is now March...but I feel good because last year it wasn't until April and the year before that in May!  Needless to say, the year I planted peas in May was completely ridiculous, since they wilted in the 90 degree heat as soon as they were about 12 inches high!  I blame that season on the fact that I had a 3 year old and 1 year old and still had not regenerated the brain cells lost in childbirth.  My best friend is only into her 2nd season gardening and had her act together, peas and all, before me...the nerve!  Anyway, after a week of sub-freezing temps and snow, we woke up this morning to a beautiful day, with highs in the 60's, and set about soaking our peas.  By afternoon, the kids were placing them gently, or should I say "chucking" them into the bed willy-nilly and getting as dirty as all little boys should be!  They are very proud and made sure I grabbed some shots of them planting the first crops of spring.  Here they are in all their glory-

                

                

We also are finally seeing bulbs!  I had never planted bulbs before, so last fall I ordered a bunch and Loch and I dug them all in, not really knowing what to expect...well, a few are up and I have no idea which ones they are or where the next one will pop up!  I didn't make notes on this particular venture, so all I know is there are a bunch of alliums somewhere...and "some other stuff".  It's fun every morning to "walk the estate" and look for these surprises! More photos to come on that...

We are finishing up readying the rental property this weekend, we have new tenants moving here from WA next week, so I may not post again for a few days.  A busy weekend filled with boring painting and cleaning up, but eagerly awaiting the return of rental income!