Our raised beds flourished despite the rain thanks to the superior drainage they afford.
I sprouted the brassica seedlings a couple months ago and planted the new baby lettuce earlier in the month, but what has me particularly excited here are the overwintered lettuce. I just about broke my arm planting those seeds last fall. But I shall keep you all in suspense until I can show you how I did it later this year.
Parsnip flowers. So pretty… much like Queen Anne’s Lace.
On to the grain field where we have oats and wheat growing…
We pretty much have no idea what we’re doing here, I’ll be honest.
Already I’ve learned:
~That 2 pounds of oat seed (from that stick on the left over to the tilled dirt) was definitely not enough
~A little bit about cereal leaf beetle larvae. It looks somewhat like a tiny black slug. That’s because it covers itself with its own waste in order to disguise itself as bird droppings. How charming. I cringed as I searched for control methods thinking I would have to sift through mounds of sites advising what type of poison I should apply to our food source in order to eradicate the parasites. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to learn that modern agriculture has nothing on these guys. What you need to rid yourself of these are other bugs so I bought a few. 750 to be exact. I am now the proud owner of 750 ladybugs who I intend to release and allow them to free-range on larvae and eggs right there in front of my chickens who appear be doing something similar.
~Finally, it would seem that ashes make our grain happy. If you’ll notice in both wheat and oat sections of the field, there is an especially dark green patch. It’s most noticeable in the image below. That area was formerly a burn pile and
I was too lazy
it was too cold for me to feel very motivated to clean it up prior to planting so I sowed right over the top of it and I find the difference to be remarkable.
So that’s our garden for the month of May anno domini 2011. Stay tuned, next month you’ll get a bird’s eye view of our progress, if Lord willing, we have any 🙂
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