The Friday 5, Homestead Happenings

Here we are at the end of March getting some much needed rain. 

What have we been up to?

1. Seed planting

Having fun with phenology this year we’re planting based on what's blooming instead of hard and fast dates. Most early garden bulbs bloom based on the temperature of your soil so that helps you gauge your actual garden conditions, not just the averages for your region. 

Can you believe that over the last couple days of glorious sunshine I didn’t stop once and photograph the crocuses blooming? I stopped often and enjoyed them and their glowing, glorious stamens of gold, but no pictures. 

They are in bloom however and so now is the time to plant. I thought I’d have fun with design and delicious this year so I did alternating rows of spinach, red orach and purple orach. Had I realized that red and purple looked basically exactly the same I would have put the spinach in the middle. Too late now. That took care of three plants on the list and then I got busy with something else and I’ll have to get back to the crocus time planting over the next few days. 

Josh also chose some tomatoes to plant early based on maturity times so we have some Paul Robeson, Indigo Rose and Velvet Red in the starter trays. I’m so looking forward to seeing these Indigo Rose tomatoes and tasting the Paul Robeson ( or Robitussin, as my sister calls them).

2. Tallgrass Prairie

One thing that distracted me was the necessity to continue planting out the tallgrass prairie seeds. Josh helped me tighten up the dimensions of the spaces and then we set about seed sowing. I just did a mix of the big three - Indian Grass, Big Bluestem and Switchgrass and then the forbs that belong with them.

We also realized that the bench was facing Northeast. Why I did that I will never know but how silly. Go west my son, go west! So we turned it around to face the sunset behind the tall grass and it will be a gorgeous spot in the evenings to experience all the joys of our tiny patch of prairie. 

I also planted some Virginia Rose seeds along the West fence line for some prairie roses. Unfortunately I put the seeds in my pocket, but which pocket I can’t remember and I’ve searched all my pants so … hopefully I’ll find them sooner or later so I can plant more. 

In the next week we’ll sort out the shorter grass/forb combo with the Little Bluestem and then plant out those seeds. I’ll lay some cardboard down under where the bench will be and mulch it for ease of mowing and then we have to find a comfy bench to put there. The paths will be mown grass in keeping with the rest of the grasses and then we’ll try and keep the chickens out, for this year, so that the plants have a chance to get established before the little raptors set about scratching. 

3. Turkey Eggs

Also this week, our turkeys started laying which is super exciting. Their eggs are absolutely beautiful - white with purple speckles. I love them! 

We’ve had four eggs so far and I’ll start selling them soon for eating. Apparently their yolks make the best mayonnaise you’ve ever eaten in your whole life.  

Around May I’ll set up a brooder for the turkeys and let them hatch out some poults and then we’ll have little baby turkeys for sale. 

4. Calamondin Oranges

My sister and I took a drive to pick up some itty, bitty orange trees. We use a lot of lemon around here and so I was trying to figure out what I could grow that would be a possible replacement. While I love apple cider vinegar in many applications it’s just not the same as citrus sour. 

We had seen some large citrus trees at local garden stores that were up to $250 and that was just too steep. Plus, at that price I’d feel absolutely awful if they died. But then we found these little guys at a very reasonable price. 

They are the “perfect” citrus houseplant because they are the variety best adapted to house dwelling. Taking them outside in the summer for the sun and heat helps too. 

They bloom all year round and smell amazing. 

The fruit can take up to a year to ripen, so we’ll have to see usage compared to production. Fortunately you can take clippings and root them, like I did with the crabapple branches, and then I’ll have more plants. This way I should be able to ramp up production in the next year or two because they can start to flower in their first year. 

5. Pepper Pruning

Peppers are starting to try to bloom now so I have to keep up with taking the little bloom buds off. 

The Spanish Padrons were the first to get there. 

You know how last week I decided not to prune them after I read that one article where they hadn’t noticed any particular difference between yields of pruned peppers and unpruned peppers. 

After doing some more research I realized that there are actually three stages to pepper pruning. Depending on the type of pepper it will require different pruning based on the season. 

Transplant Pruning - Why?

• Produce more branches

Do this for small-fruit peppers so that it will produce more branches that will produce lots of flowers and then lots of peppers

The Brazillian Starfish are all branchy-branchy…

Don’t do this for large-fruit peppers that naturally produce a y-shaped plant. This may actually stunt the plant's growth. 

… whereas you can see that Y-shape starting to form at the top of this Spanish Padron pepper plant.

• Encourage good root growth by removing flower buds

Plants produce roots or flowers. So if they start to bloom then they will stop producing roots. 

Once you plant your peppers outside you want them to produce lots of good, strong roots and especially stabilizer roots if you live in a windy area like we do. Because these guys were planted early to see when the right time would be for our area, they are extra early. So I will have to continue to remove the blooms until they get planted out. I’m also considering planting some in containers and then letting them bloom to see if we can get early peppers. 

After you plant them out you’ll want to continue to take off the blooms for the first couple weeks and then they’ll grow some good strong roots, before they start producing fruit. 

• Air circulation prevents disease

You also want good air circulation because hot, wet conditions can produce a lot of fungal diseases. Pruning out the side shoots, especially those lower on the plant allow for lots of air movement and the plant will dry quicker after it rains. 

Summer Pepper Pruning - Why?

• Pest protection

Leaves that are low to the ground are delicious! Slugs and snails and all sorts of other ground dwelling pests will try and eat the leaves if they can reach them. Clipping off the lower leaves means that nobody can reach them and then gain access to the plant. It also helps with air circulation...

• Disease Prevention

And air circulation helps with disease prevention. Many fungal infections are spread from infected leaves. Last year the phlocks got powdery mildew and then the leaves fell off and blew through the vegetable garden and then that infected the Golden Scallopini Pattypan squash and the Galina’s Yellow cherry tomatoes. Had I taken care of the phlox immediately we would have had squash for much longer and I loved those squash!!!

Any leaves or branches that touch the soil should be clipped off so that there can’t be a moisture or pest problem. 

• Prevent breakages 

Do this for those large y-shaped pepper plants we were talking about because they don’t do so well with suckers. This can make them top heavy or oddly shaped and then they can have branches break off and all sorts of wild things happen. It also wastes energy putting effort into growing leaves instead of putting that energy into the peppers. 

Don’t do this for the smaller sized fruiting peppers because you’ll reduce your pepper harvest. Kind of like indeterminate tomatoes, the more branches you have means more flowers and more fruit. And you want lots of peppers, right?

End of Summer Pruning - Why?

• Force peppers to ripen faster

At the end of summer we start to worry about those last couple peppers that we want to ripen. If your peppers are in containers you can bring them into the house and you might get peppers well into the fall if they’re placed in a warm, sunny location. 

In the garden we can only protect them from so much by covering them if there’s an early frost. 

So how can you help the garden peppers ripen faster?

Prune any leaves or branches off that are hanging over the fruit. You want the sun to get at the fruit. 

You can also chop the very top of your pepper plant off so that it stops thinking about growing up and puts the energy into the fruit instead. About 4 weeks before the first frost is expected you can cut the top 4 to 6 inches of each branch off and any flowers or immature fruit that you know will absolutely not ripen. This again forces the energy into ripening the fruit.  

That’s what we’ve been up to.

Hope your planting is going well and all your little seeds are behaving themselves. 

Have a lovely weekend!