Claud The Backyard Farmer (self proclaimed)

[Claudiusx]

Claudiusx .... I saw this in my news feed today Grocery stores struggle with empty shelves from food supply shortages
how are supermarkets looking in your neck of the woods ???
if it's happening in your area , bet you are glad you put in those raised beds now.

Are the restriction / rationing staples to concerve stock yet ?
There been a run on tissue paper and paper towel , mince , chicken pieces and cooking supplies there ?

The crazies are clearing the shelves here ( hot items in Jan2022 are RATs , surgical and N95 masks , chicken pieces, mince , snags, all manner of vegs , and yet the great dunnypaper run is on AGAIN ....

if it's happening in your area , bet you are glad you put in those raised beds now.

No, not in California at least. Or not in my area of California. But i've see the prices of a few things rise quite high. Most everything I buy has stayed stable though. We hardly ever eat chicken, and the wife wanted me to pick some up. It was 9.99$ per lb. Last time I bought chicken I probably paid about 2 bucks a lb... I know what they say about happy wife happy life, but I refuse to spend 10 bucks a lb on some chicken when that's what I pay for good cuts of steak lol..

We had a slight shortage of TP again a few months ago, but it hasn't been an issue since. The whole hoarding thing has died down here from what I've seen. The panic is gone really.

I'm just about to start working on the garden again for this season. All the local farmers already have fields full of stuff. Not sure what all they've planted yet, but fields rarely stay bare around here for long thanks to the weather.

-Brandon

 

[Claudiusx]

Start of the new planting season for me. Just kind of threw some stuff together to get the beds going. Not sure if if I am going to keep most of the plants through the full harvest but here is what I have so far.

I have two pepper plants that overwintered in the beds. I would have had all of them... but someone just HAD to have a puppy who decided to eat them all. The two pepper plants that are left, a serrano and a poblano, apparently were spicy enough that the puppy left the plants alone. But my bell peppers and jalapenos from last year are gone. I really wish they would have survived because the trunks on the two remaining are now probably an inch+. I'm imagining they are going to be voracious producers this year. Which is kind of lame because the serrano and poblano we planted, we don't actually use often. It was more just a fun filler project.

Bell peppers and jalapenos we do use a lot. So 2 jalapeno plants planted in the beds, 2 bell peppers in the beds, and 1 bell pepper in a pot as a test. We also planted an Anaheim chili plant, and a lunchbox chili pepper. Never have had either, so will be seeing how they are.

I have a collard green plant (it might be a broccoli plant... I can't tell) that must have never sprouted last season then sprouted randomly in one of the beds after the last frost and has been growing good. It's kind of out of place right now, but i'm gonna let it grow.. it's earned it haha.

2 lettuce plants 3 tomato plants, and I'm seed starting a few items.

The only seed I really care about is my big tomato produce from last year, the dixie red. Trying to get them to sprout and then I'll transplant. Dixie red was my number one producer last year, so it's going to be a staple in my garden for the years to come. I don't remember the other varieties I planted in the beds (I bought them from a store) but I'll update later.

-Brandon

 

[Claudiusx]

Basically 3 lbs of potatoes from 1 of my 12 potato plants i planted. By far the best potato harvest ive ever had. At this point ill just pull a plant as i need it

-Brandon

 

[AHBD]

Wow, very impressive ! They look great, all cleaned up and ready to be made in to home fries, french fries, tater salad, baked, mashed, etc.

 

[xp29]

Wow, very impressive ! They look great, all cleaned up and ready to be made in to home fries, french fries, tater salad, baked, mashed, etc.

I'm thinking you must he from the South East now, all the ways you would use taters and the fact you called it tater salad ....... (kindda made me homesick lol)

 

[Claudiusx]

Well that batch we have ate. Time to pull another one. Decided to pull a purple potato plant also. Purple didn't produce as well as the yellow but it did produce some nice sized potatoes. Almost 5 lbs between the two plants. Majority from yellow.

 

[AHBD]

Another beautiful bunch of taters, they look clean and shiny to boot !

 

[Claudiusx]

Another beautiful bunch of taters, they look clean and shiny to boot !

Just rinsed, not scrubbed Then they go in a dark cabinet in the garage to store. Planning on just pulling all the potatoes once the weather starts to warm back up. For now though, seems all these storms California is getting is doing my potatoes some good.

This might be one of the only crops I've had good success with where it makes sense financially to grow them. We go through a lot of potatoes in my house, growing them like this does save us a small bit of money. And, they seem to grow good in this area even when most things don't, so that leaves lots of room in the garden beds for them.

Financial sense or not, it's rewarding.

-Brandon

 

[xp29]

When i was a kid i would soend the summers at my grandparents, grandma always had a big garden. She never once asked me to help her in the garden, but somehow AWAYS managed to guilt me into it some how ... it's great memories now
Your taters looks great btw

 

[Claudiusx]

Well, I skipped last year apparently. We only did potatoes.

Potatoes have got to be the new Tomatoes. They basically grow like weeds without me even trying. I heard an old saying once that to successfully grow a tomato plant, all you need to do is grab a tomato and throw it somewhere in your yard and forget about it it. It will grow eventually. Well apparently the same can be said for potatoes in my area LOL.

We prepped the garden beds today. And the work consisted only of pulling out potato plants. These were not plants we planted. These are plants that grew from potatoes that we missed digging up from our previous harvest a year ago.. There had to have been over 3 dozen plants.

Unfortunately my pepper plants which I had overwintered twice (three year old pepper plants) didn't survive the neglect, so I will be starting anew this year.

Which brings me to this springs plan:

Above shows the intended plantings for this spring, and their general spacing in my garden beds. Each box represents roughly a 6 inch X 6 inch area, so its roughly to scale. The only thing not shown in the above is we cut a tree down last year, and now have quite a large area that we have been amending with soil treatments. We will be planting a large plot of a corn variety that grows well in coastal regions (or so I am told..)

Everything is pretty straight forward this year. I'm trying a new carrot variety, i've never had huge success with carrots.

I am also trying a watermelon variety that SHOULD fit in the space I laid out. It's a smaller variety that is supposed to bush out more than spread like normal watermelon vines do. My only concern is whether or not I will be able to get away with just 1 watermelon plant, or if I will require two for pollination reasons. All the flowers being planted are mainly to help with the pollination of the watermelon. I know watermelons typically need multiple plants in order to pollinate, but I was not able to find any info on this specific variety. I'll keep doing some research but if anyone knows, feel free to chime in.

Claud the farmer is back baby,

-Brandon

 

[ChileanTaco]

I love to see that as I grew up very rural, my parents were almost self-sufficient.
I know there is a lot of work behind that, and/but I personally think it's totally worth that. For example, my love for all sorts of veggies I think is clearly routed in that.

Overwintering peppers: I also did that, and usually didn't get more than 3 years out of them. In the right climate zone, even overwintering tomato plants worked (2 years).

I can't do any gardening here (I'm here in the Atacama), but I just have to have "something"... so currently just herbs and tomatoes and hot peppers on a balcony, but I just can't do without.

As you're talking about watermelon varieties: Something that just comes into my mind as I miss them are lemon cucumbers. In case you can get the seeds, you might try that. They were fun and they were tasty.

 

[xp29]

Well, I skipped last year apparently. We only did potatoes.

Potatoes have got to be the new Tomatoes. They basically grow like weeds without me even trying. I heard an old saying once that to successfully grow a tomato plant, all you need to do is grab a tomato and throw it somewhere in your yard and forget about it it. It will grow eventually. Well apparently the same can be said for potatoes in my area LOL.

We prepped the garden beds today. And the work consisted only of pulling out potato plants. These were not plants we planted. These are plants that grew from potatoes that we missed digging up from our previous harvest a year ago.. There had to have been over 3 dozen plants.

Unfortunately my pepper plants which I had overwintered twice (three year old pepper plants) didn't survive the neglect, so I will be starting anew this year.

Which brings me to this springs plan:


View attachment 87926

Above shows the intended plantings for this spring, and their general spacing in my garden beds. Each box represents roughly a 6 inch X 6 inch area, so its roughly to scale. The only thing not shown in the above is we cut a tree down last year, and now have quite a large area that we have been amending with soil treatments. We will be planting a large plot of a corn variety that grows well in coastal regions (or so I am told..)

Everything is pretty straight forward this year. I'm trying a new carrot variety, i've never had huge success with carrots.

I am also trying a watermelon variety that SHOULD fit in the space I laid out. It's a smaller variety that is supposed to bush out more than spread like normal watermelon vines do. My only concern is whether or not I will be able to get away with just 1 watermelon plant, or if I will require two for pollination reasons. All the flowers being planted are mainly to help with the pollination of the watermelon. I know watermelons typically need multiple plants in order to pollinate, but I was not able to find any info on this specific variety. I'll keep doing some research but if anyone knows, feel free to chime in.

Claud the farmer is back baby,

-Brandon

This will be a fun thread to follow

 

[Claudiusx]

After more thoughts, I'm going to remove the bean plants from the bed, move the tomatoes up, and plant a second watermelon plant. I think I would have been fine for pollination with just the one, but I also think I'd rather have more watermelon to eat than beans.. so there's that lol.

Hoping to actually plant sometime this week. The watermelons I'll probably start indoors and try to plant outside next month.

-Brandon