So, on the Agrarian Homefront, I am now officially a licensed business and a farm. I had submitted a form to see if the farm name I wanted was available or not and a few weeks later, received this lovely certificate telling me, my half acre in Hixson, TN is now a farm, very exciting, as I am planning on starting to our local Farmers Market in May, once I have some more products made up and am finished with my school year, and have my senior graduated from High School.
With all the sunshine and warmth this week, I was able to get my large bed in my backyard cleaned up and deweeded, it was was good to see the soil looking good and healthy with lots or worms doing their thing to get it ready for planting in a few weeks.
I was able to plant some more cool weather crops out in my small beds. I now have Mullein, Kale, Watermelon radish, Cilantro, Collards, Swiss chard and Sugar Snaps going in these three beds. In the far one, I have parsley that has been going all winter, and my Thyme, Sage, Lavender and Rosemary and starting to get more growth. The far bed was my herb garden from last year and the front yard is where a very expanded version of this is going to be going this year. In the middle bed I had flowers last year, but am going to just have some smaller sunflowers and veggies in there this year, as the flowers will too be moving out front, with lots more room to grow, and it will also allow me to grow more varieties which I plan on selling at the Farmers Market too.
This is another one of my backyard beds, which had some flowers and chard come back, when we get over our last cold snap this week, I will be bringing green bean transplants out here and dedicating this bed to Swiss char, spinach and cilantro - which I have sown already.
This is the bed out front, I got the two planter boxes placed, that will be having the arched trellis go between them. This will be the entrance and will be trellised with Nasturtium and Green Beans. You can now see the general shape of the garden, where the stump is that will be trimmed down some and I will have strawberries around that. The logs (that are treated) will mark the whole perimeter, however on the outside of the log on the left, where you see the Dogwood (that was dying) was taken out this week, I am going to put Echinacea and Black eyed Susan (both of which I have growing in pots right now. When you walk under the trellis, I will have a gravel pathway which I plan to lead into the garden and fan out into four areas that will have the bamboo teepee trellis's at each end. The four areas will eventually and hopefully be full of a mix of flowers in varying heights and herbs of varying heights and varieties. I currently have 49 different vegetables, herbs and flowers growing under lights, and the plan is to have the beds ready and the plants big enough to be transplanted from the end of April-the Middle of May. The temperatures are still very varied, it was down to 32 this morning, with a high of 57 today, but by the end of the week we will be at 80f! So, I am very hesitant to put plants out too early until the weather is set into a good steady pattern. The Almanac is saying 8 April as our last frost date, but I will definitely be way more cautious and wait till the end of the month, I have seen a few years where people have put their gardens in by mid April only to have a temperature dip towards the end of the month and then loose all their transplants or bought plants.
This is Marsh Marigold in my bird bath that I got from my in laws house last weekend, the stuff that was covering their pond. I got a few samples and and my plan is to turn an old clawfoot tub we have into a pond for the bees to use as a water source this year, so I have it in different containers outside in water to keep it alive till I get to that project in May.
This is some beautiful bloodwort I found in the woods down by our neighborhood pool when I went on a nature walk earlier in the week. Since I have been studying so many herbs and plants this last year, I am very eager to get out each week and identify as much as I can in our neighborhood, as we have wonderful undisturbed woods with an abundance of plant life.
These are my new English Lavendar and Echinacea plants I ordered, they are starting to come back to color and I am very excited to watch them grow. I plant on using Lavender and Sage as perimeter plants in my new bed out front, as we have deer in the neighborhood that wander up our street some days, and I don't want all the hard work of the new garden to become deer food, so this is part of the plant to deter them.
This is some beautiful corn seed I ordered that I will be planting out back this year in my big bed, its a new variety I found at Baker Creek and is meant to be good for popcorn, I am just intrigued by the color and its name Gemstone Corn and pray that it grows well and we can enjoy it this Fall.
My bees are out being busy as the first Dandelions and Violets are in full bloom. I saw a great recipe online for making Dandelion and Violet vinegar to in turn make salad dressing, so I got out in the chemical free backyard and pick a crop and will try my hand at it this year.
This is my winter compost getting ready to be spread in the garden. When I went on my walk this week, I found a beautiful spot of new soil behind our house. Our backside neighbor is retired and keeps are gully area clear and rakes leaves into piles, which decompose over the years. With all the rain this year, our gully was like a small wash and there are new areas I haven't been able to access before, and I found some beautiful soil with an abundance of worms, so I gathered a bucket load of worms and soil and added it to my compost, which I will spread in about two weeks.
