I love seeing row after row of uniform black plastic seed starting planters in garden centers and greenhouses. They’ve been dutifully watered and sunned, shaded and fertilized by the garden pros in the nursery. They even have the guts to set them out before the last frost of the year, so we can get our gardens started early! After spending so many cold days looking out the windows, dreaming over the seed catalogs, I’m itching to get started with my own seeds, but not quite ready to be outside. To…
Category: Garden
Super Ambitious 2017 Goals and an Exciting Announcement
I’ve never been told I lacked ambition. I HAVE been told I’m just like my mother (hence the timing of this post). My list of goals for Burton Farm is long and ambitious. But you know what they say, wake up with determination, go to bed with satisfaction. In this post, I’ll tell you what we’ll be working on in 2017 on Burton Farm. I’m also going to spill an exciting secret I’ve been keeping for a little while! I’ll give you a hint, though: All the biggest music stars are doing…
Why Our 2016 Summer Garden Failed to be Spectacular
How’d your 2016 garden turn out? Mine produced a dismally small bounty that included about two dozen turnips, 23 green beans, 14 squash, zero cucumbers, zero zucchinis, and zero tomatoes. Fail. I mean, come on. Who can’t grow zucchini!? Ok, maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m a terrible gardener. But this has certainly been a disheartening season. I’m going to break it down in a list, as usual. Oh, I love to make lists! I’m bummed our garden didn’t turn out lush and green, but at least I’m…
One Rocking Marigold: Garden Update 7/17/16
I am marigold growing genius superstar! Just kidding. Kind of. All right, so recently, I told you how I had been completely unsuccessful with my marigold-from-seed attempt (uhhh-gain!), but this week one finally flowered. I let my fingers do some walking over the interwebs and found I’d been doing marigolds wrong. Today, I’m admitting my faults and promising a new day for marigolds on Burton Farm! How I’m remedying what I’ve been doing wrong with my marigolds: Because marigold seeds are so feathery and paper thin, I have always scattered…
It Never Seems to Rain on the Mountain
It was supposed to rain yesterday. The weatherman had been promising “rain on Saturday” all week. After a hot, dry day with the boys, I figured it wasn’t coming. I screwed the hoses back together, pulled the heavy out to the garden and noticed for the first time the heavy, dark rain clouds overhead. “Nope,” I thought. I’m already out here now, so it’s getting watered. I started watering the garden. It needed the water yesterday. I bet my neighbors (if either of them see me) will think I’m nuts.…
Garden Update: June 19, 2016
I know. I know. It’s important to get in your garden every day. At least, every other day. Not just on weekends. Ashamedly, I’ve only been a weekend gardener and it shows. I hand-weeded around our small plants this weekend in the blistering hot sun, but still only covered about 30% of the garden. And there are still weeds in the walkways. Ugh. Every day, Erica. Get out there every day. How do you motivate yourself to just do it? Something Different and Exciting Happened Though… But yesterday, instead of…
Garden Update: June 12, 2016 – Two Steps Forward…
It appears that the Irish Spring Soap Helped. In hand-weeding this weekend, I only saw one little pile of golden nuggets, instead of many. So, that’s great. What does this mean? It’s going to take a bar of soap each week to cover half of the fence line to keep rabbits out of our garden? Maybe I’m cheap, but that seems like too much for me. It’s supposed to rain all week, but when it stops, I’m going to sprinkle some hair clippings from my hairdresser’s floor. We will see…
Our First Turnips & How to Get Rid of Rabbits
So. Here are the first three turnips that were planted willy nilly in the garden. They’re the first crop to come up. Since it’s my first time growing turnips, I wasn’t sure what to look for, but two of these were busting out of the ground a half inch, so I thought we were good to go. We didn’t eat the leaves since they’re pretty holey and really, who wants to stink up the house for eleven scrawny, holey leaves? The pigs were really excited about them, though. I tossed the tiny…
5 Goals We’ve Set for Our 2016 Summer Garden
Five Goals We’ve Set for Our 2016 Summer Garden 1. Grow and eat the best tomatoes and cucumbers that we have ever eaten in our lives. Everyone knows that a farm grown tomato is the best tomato and those supermarket tomatoes can’t even tomato. Tomato. Oh my stars, do I want a real tomato! And the white cucumbers we grew a few years back from Baker Creek Seed Company tasted out of this world delicious, especially when we didn’t let them get too big. I definitely intend to gobble them…
Our Compost + Freedom for Pigs Flotsam & Jetsam
I spent three hours Saturday pulling weeds by hand, clearing 8-12″ wide circles around the new seedlings so there would be less competition for water. It was probably only about 1/3 of our massive garden. I pulled weeds until my hands wouldn’t grip anymore. Surprisingly, the numbness in my hands I usually experience from doing fine motor movement was gone. Pulling weeds _IS_ exercise! I pulled weeds around where a seed was planted but failed to germinate. We will come back today to put another seed or seedling in its…