New Blog!

Our new blog: Ramble Bramble.

Adam came up with this blog name and it will include all the adventures of our small family including: babies, gardening, trips, cooking, family, friends, jobs, etc. etc.

Hope you enjoy!

Once I figure out how to do it, I will import all of our 25x50 blog posts and incorporate them into the new blog. I have also turned off the comment field on 25x50 because we will no longer be checking it.

Sweet Potato Harvest

Adam and I harvested roughly 25 sweet potatoes from our garden today. I have plans for these potatoes: ranging from a savory sweet potato bread to sweet potato soup. For tonight, we made a two potato gratin that I got from a Moosewood Restaurant cookbook.

First, let me just say that I love the Moosewood and all of their cookbooks. If I could take Ithaca and subtract the 100 ft of snow they get every year, add in some southern accents and food and shake it until it ended up closer to my parents in Arkansas I would totally live there.

This gratin was the perfect recipe for Adam and I because it combined one of his favorite foods (potatoes) with one of mine (sweet potatoes) and topped it with a mutual favorite (cheese). I have to say, though, I think I'd add less cheese than what the recipe required. What you see here is 4 oz of grated Havarti but it kind of overwhelmed the sweet potato flavor. All in all, however, the gratin was spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that I forgot to take a picture before we dug in.

Relish Your Garden

In the height of the summer, Adam and I ventured out to the garden in the early morning hours to pick all of our green tomatoes, peppers and onions. We then spent the next two days in my parents' kitchen making my Gram's relish.

This particular relish is a family recipe and, therefore, a big secret. I can tell you there is a lot of chopping involved and several cups of vinegar and sugar but a better accompaniment to black-eyed peas I've never found. Luckily, we had some red peppers in the mix so the relish looks Christmas-y and will make great gifts when that time rolls around.

The huge benefit to making this relish is that we put so many tomatoes to good use. Not being much of a fresh tomato eater myself, Adam and I were often lost as to what to do with the vast amounts of tomatoes we had on hand. Luckily, this relish pretty much wiped us out.

The best part of making this relish is that Adam and I got the very first quart all to ourselves.

I think I did it again

Maybe it is unrealistic to think I can blog and garden (and attend classes and work two jobs) over the busy summer months. I don't know. But, needless to say, I continued our blog tradition of being completely absent during the summer months.

But it is almost October now so let the blogging begin (again)! There are still some forthcoming summer-y blog entries detailing our relish-making adventures but that should about conclude the summer.

In totally unrelated-to-gardening-news, Adam and I are expecting a baby although I'm sure most of you reading this have already heard the good news. For that reason, I am considering creating a new blog (to detail all of our adventures including baby and gardening) but have yet to think of a good name.

Give me your suggestions - I need them! (Says the girl who actually named a blog 25 x 50).

Vacation: All I ever wanted

We should have done a little post about how we were going to be absent from the blog-o-sphere for a while. But we didn't. Sorry if you were wondering.

We have been on vacation - not the entire time we've been absent from the blog - and now we are back to the real world.

At least, I am. Since Adam is a lucky ducky teacher, he has the summer off. Since I am a poor pathetic grad student, I have two classes and two jobs for the summer. Fun.

Our garden is going bananas. While we were out of town my parents watered and harvested. Here is what has been harvested so far:

zucchini
bell peppers (!)
herbs
lettuce (but it was bitter-y so we yanked it out)
one okra pod

Everything else is doing really well. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, beans, watermelons, tomatoes and flowers.

Our only failure so far has been our cucumbers. They got the evil cucumber beetle and never recovered.

Pictures soon to come, I promise. Adam may be doing most of the posts for the next two months because of my aforementioned dreary summer plans.

Oh hail!

Around 4 this morning we had some major hail. And I just kept picturing our little plants being ripped to shreds. Honestly, our garden has endured just about all of the possible weather events for this section of the country. Early frost, strong winds (although, thankfully, no tornadoes), heavy rain and large hail.

I can't believe I'm going to say this but I'm actually looking forward to the summer when every day is just hot and humid and mosquito-filled.

May showers bring slugs

Our garden is growing very quickly now. Our onions are thick and dark green, the potatoes have shot up


we've got our first tomato



and our first little zucchini



BUT, we also have our first pest of the season. Slugs.

It has been so wet this season and the slugs seem to really like the nice, moist mulch we have provided. We first noticed them when we harvested lettuce for the first time and had to pick several slugs off the inner leaves.

Then, yesterday, we went to the garden to discover they had severely munched on our zucchini and cucumber leaves.


We're not real worried because the zucchini, cucumbers and lettuce all have a lot of new growth so they are far from dead.

But we need to get rid of these slugs.

Our plan of action: get the slugs drunk. That's right, apparently, slugs LOVE beer. They love it so much that if you leave a bowl of beer out they will crawl right in and drown. We are also going to spray the leaves of the plant with a soapy water mixture to make them distasteful.

We'll see how it works!

Shout Out

This post is for you, babies Mason!

Last night I saw this pretty little red strawberry with a not-quite-ready berry growing right next to it.

Adam and I are currently blessed with two nieces, one nephew and one mystery niece/nephew on the way.

But this picture reminds me of my little red-headed niece Dorothy and her still-growing baby brother or sister. So this little post is dedicated to them.

Uncle Adam and Aunt Erin wish y'all lived closer to us so we could make you some fresh strawberry shortcake! In the meantime, we'll make do with blog shout-outs.

(And I will continue to look forward to the day when all my nieces and nephews hit the 2 year mark so that I can start referring to them in years instead of months. The month-age thing just confuses me.)

Honey Do

Last week, Adam went out to the farm to make some improvements while I stayed at home and worked on my research papers.

And since a large part of my waking hours since then has been consumed with finishing those research papers, I am just now getting around to writing about his accomplishments that day.

First, he made some bean poles out of bamboo. We are late planting our beans so we don't have any actual bean plants yet - but we've got some beautiful bean poles!


Second, he mulched our seating area. The county is putting in a sewer line near the farm and, therefore had to cut down some trees. They turned those trees into mulch - free for the taking!


Third, he planted our second round okra and covered them with cloches to prevent them from being nibbled on as they were the first time.

All in all, he got quite a lot done! I suspect he also drank a cold beer (or two) under our nice little umbrella but we don't have a picture of that.

Next on the to-do list:
1. Plant beans
2. Plant corn
3. Plant flowers

Still Here...

I promise we are still alive and kicking. Our garden is still doing well. We have been very busy.

Several new additions have been made to the garden. So many, in fact, that I just simply do not have the time to blog about them. Rest assured, I will very soon upload all of my pictures and post a probably too-lengthy blog about it all.

Also, very soon we will be bringing home our first big harvest. I see lettuce, cabbage, herbs and strawberries(!) in our very near future.

But, for the immediate future, I must go write a paper...

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Tomato blossom


Pepper blossom



Strawberry blossom (and a little berry!)

Summer Plans...

The weather here lately has been summery to say the least. We reached 90 degrees one day this week and weren't far from it during the rest.

These warmer temperatures have been cooking a few ideas I have in my mind for summer projects.

Unfortunately, my summer is not shaping up how I thought it would. Whereas I once thought I would take no classes, I am now taking two classes and will be working a job and (hopefully) a summer assistantship to pay for them.

So, my summer schedule thus far is the most hectic of all.

But after this semester ends (classes end in another week and my assistantship ends on the 15th) I will have one blissfully empty week before summer classes begin.

This is where my mind is currently focused (not, unfortunately, on a paper due tomorrow) and where my "real" summer plans reside.

During that week, I want to:

1. Make a garden apron (like I saw here and here)
2. Make some rosemary shampoo, tarragon perfume and herbal deodorant
3. Construct a ladybug house
4. Make these cute row labels (good ideas here)
5. Drink a cold bottle of wine (and have Adam drive me home!) in the garden on a cool night

Sounds good, right?! It might be a little ambitious for one week, especially since I won't actually be in town for that entire week, but I am looking forward to it.

Now I just need to focus on my papers.

In Honor of This American Life...

Adam and I weren't able to go to the farm tonight because we went to the live show of This American Life instead. (Really good, by the way).

So, in honor of This American Life, here's a little story. It's a farm story that has nothing to do with our plants.

The plot behind ours has been inactive so far this season. So we were a little surprised, when we arrived Wednesday evening, to see it tilled and planted. Standing in the middle of the new plants, and surrounded by a skimpy and apparently temporary fence, was a man in a suit watering his new plants.

Adam was tilling our garden at this point so the man introduced himself to me. I can't quite remember his name but I think it was Bob. Or Bill. Aside from the fact that he kept calling me "Karen" and he had a massive comb-over, he seemed very nice and we were happy to have him as a plot-neighbor.

As we were saying our goodbyes, Bob/Bill said:

By the way, when I came out the other night, your fence was knocked over. I'm pretty sure a deer did it. Anyway, I righted the fence but I though I'd let you know.

Upon arrival at our plot that night we had noticed that our back fence was ripped and a little...tilted. We weren't overly concerned because the rip is easily repairable and the fence itself was still stable. Plus, deer haven't been a problem for us and we don't have to worry about keeping them out.

So it surprised me when he said a deer must have done it. I told Bob/Bill as much to which he responded:

Oh? You haven't had a deer problem over here? Well, it was most certainly a deer. I even think I saw a mom and her baby earlier.

After telling me this news, Bob/Bill tells me they are putting in (get this) an electric fence! To keep the deer out. Last year, they had a plot on the other side of the farm and apparently the deer destroyed their plants. I'm thinking an electric fence is a little extreme for a garden plot, but I keep that opinion to myself.

Later in the evening, I am talking to some other plot-neighbors of ours and I warn them about the impending electric fence. My plot neighbor says:

Oh, I meant to tell you, I was out here the other night and Bob/Bill had just finished planting his tomatoes. He was running his hose along the aisle between your plots and fell over your fence. I saw the whole thing! Then, he put the fence back and left.

Can you believe it? Bob/Bill is a lying liar! I guess I could be mad but I just find the whole thing funny. You don't expect to encounter bold duplicity at a community garden but there you have it.

Needless to say, Bob/Bill with his electric fence, comb-over and pants-on-fire will be an interesting addition to our little neighborhood.

Photo Survey - Sheds

I told you earlier about our tool "shed" and how we did it on the cheapy cheap. I thought I'd show you what some other gardeners are doing, in terms of storage, at the farm.

Thank you, mulch.

We got a lot done at the garden today and our garden, I must say, is doing very well. So far, we haven't had many weeds (except in the aisles - which Adam tilled today) and we are thanking the mulch for that. Although we've only had to spot-weed, we are on the lookout for more mulch.

So, to update you on some things:

Onions



Zucchini



Lettuce


Potatoes


The cabbage, cucumber, peppers, strawberries, tomatoes and herbs are also doing great.

We did have a fatality this week - our okra.


I was shocked! Okra was the one plant we could really count on last season. Although we initially blamed deer (more on that later), Adam thinks slugs were the culprit. Ew.

Oh well, we'll try again. And this time we'll probably cover them, like we did with our lettuce on the second go-round.

While Adam tilled our rows today, I planted some mint (in a pot so that it doesn't take over)...


...and some wildflowers (these are going all along our fence).

Happy Earth Day!

(Incidentally, doesn't our earth look kind of like brownie batter? Yum.)

Suggestion for a New Title

We aren't thinking of changing our blog name but someone did offer this name-change suggestion:

"A Rake and a Ho(e)"

Adam being the Rake and me being the Ho(e). I assume.

I'm not sure if I should be pleased or offended by this name suggestion. I think I'll be pleased.

Next up:
Lettuce Harvest? Already?
Pepper update
More planting - beans, corn and flowers

Mad Planting

On the way to the garden today, Adam and I got into a little fight. We don't fight very often but I love how we can both keep our sense of humor during a fight because, usually at some super dramatic moment, one or both of us will start laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. And it is hard to fight in earnest after you've had a good laugh.

That happened today when we were planting. Well, at least, it happened for me. Once we got to the garden we were both steaming and we proceeded to plant in stony silence.

That silence was periodically broken by tersely worded questions like "Where does this basil go?" or "The cabbage perked up" followed by a grunt of acknowledgment.

This is what got me laughing.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we made up. We are one little happy family again. I was a little worried that our plants would be affected by the harsh words that we uttered while planting. But we made it up to them too.

So today we planted:


basil (not pictured)

zucchini

okra

cucumbers

And our cabbage has, indeed, perked up.

Speed Planting

Today we (quickly) planted more peppers, tomatoes, marigolds and tarragon. The reason for our haste was because we had to be back home by 8pm for "Lost." We are a bit obsessed.

I'm particularly excited about the tarragon. I love tarragon - the taste and the smell. I happen to have a recipe for tarragon perfume I'd like to try out this year:

Tarragon Perfume (from The Encyclopedia of Country Living)
2 Tbs fresh tarragon, crushed
1 cup quality oil
1 tsp distilled vinegar

Place crushed herbs in a bottle. Cover with the oil and vinegar. Cap the bottle and place in the hot sunshine. Shake the bottle twice daily for three weeks. Strain and use. This can be used as perfume or in dishes. Yum!

I hope to try this as soon as I have enough tarragon. I'll let you know how it goes.

Phew!

We went out to the farm today for the first time since the storm and pretty much everything was intact. The only thing out of place was the cover to our little tool "shed" which had partially blown away.

Here's the status on everything:
lettuce and tomatoes= excellent
onions, herbs, collards and strawberries = good
cabbage = rebounding
peppers = so-so
potatoes = no growth yet

Of course, I forgot the camera so I wasn't able to take any pictures. I did pluck the flowers off some thyme and took a picture when I got home.

Picture of the Day

Who knew potato eye-sprouts could be so pretty?

These here are from a red potato.

Picture of the Day

We've never really had a problem with pests in our little garden. Some of our plot neighbors are obsessed with keeping deer, rabbits, etc. out but we've really only seen a few rabbits and absolutely no deer.

So it surprised us when our first round of lettuce was pecked to death by birds.

We wised up and protected our second batch.

So far, so good.

All in a Twitter

We will be out-of-town this Easter weekend but it looks like our little garden should be getting a fair amount of rain while we are gone. If it does get a little dry, wouldn't it be great if our plants could let us know they're parched?

Well now your plants can Twitter you. Granted, I don't really understand what Twittering is (I have yet to master "texting") but apparently a new device will allow your plants to Twitter when they need water.

I'm not so sure about this. I think we all know those people who are constantly checking their phones or updating their Facebook status with such mundane things as "I'm brushing my teeth and then I'm going to floss!" What if I become obsessed with my plants' hydration status?

Or worse, what if my plants become obsessed with telling me their hydration status?

So, I think we'll forgo this foray into gardening technology for the time being. I like my plants to be the strong, silent type.

Send good thoughts to the garden!

Arkansas has been pretty lucky this year weather-wise. We haven't had any major storms - unlike last spring.

We did have some serious storms move through tonight though. Luckily, central Arkansas did not have any tornadoes but we had a lot of wind and a lot of hail. I kept picturing our poor little peppers being ripped to shreds by apple-sized (yes, apple-sized) hail.

In a side note, how do you like the new layout? Yay or nay?

UPDATE: Forget the garden, send good thoughts to Mena, AR instead.

Watering Woes

One big goal for this year is to figure out our watering system. Last year, we were plagued with watering problems. The water pressure at the farm is so strong that our cheap-o hoses were constantly busting, creating "Lake 25x50" instead of "Garden Plot 25x50."

When we finally bought a decent hose, we showed a remarkable inability to learn from our mistakes and hooked it up to a cheap-o sprinkler. The water pressure caused the sprinkler to rise up and flop around in the dirt so that we had to drive spikes through it in order to keep it stable.

A million other little problems kept creeping up with our sprinkler system last year of which I will spare you the details.

So, this year we have created a new watering system. We put two poles in the ground in the middle of the garden. Initially, we attached oscillating sprinkler heads but these proved to be too powerful for our little space.


Then, Adam brought out the very first watering sprinkler-thing we ever used: The Pound of Rain. This he haphazardly attached to one of the poles and it watered the front half of our garden beautifully without also watering our neighbor's plots.

So, we bought another Pound of Rain (so that we'll have one in front and one in back) and found two tiki torches (on the side of the road) which will work better than the two poles when it comes to holding the Pound of Rain.

We are going to test it out today. If it works, we are going to bury the ugly bright yellow hose so that we aren't constantly tripping over it. Wish us luck!

UPDATE: New watering system works wonderfully. We weren't able to bury the eyesore of a hose tonight but hopefully we'll get to it next weekend.

Cold Peppers

Winter decided to make a final push here in Arkansas. The temperatures on Sunday fell dramatically and the whole state was under a hard frost warning for both Sunday and Monday night.

So, we ventured out to the farm in a swirl of bone-cold wind (particularly jarring since we've been enjoying mid-70s weather) to protect our peppers and tomatoes with homemade cloches.

Our plants owe a debt of gratitude to our addiction to seltzer water because we had a large quantity of empty plastic bottles on hand. Adam, ever the boy scout, tells me he was saving these for just this purpose. We'll remove them on Wednesday when the temperatures return to their normal springtime haunts.

Picture of the Day

Look what I found wiggling through our dirt!

We named him Cletus.

After a brief talk (in which I told Cletus I hope I don't accidentally spear him with a garden tool when next we meet) I bid him goodbye and wished him many worm children.

One Tomato, Dead Tomato

Not sure what happened to this hapless tomato but it just did not make it!


Our other tomatoes look great though. You win some, you lose some.

In other news, today we planted potatoes! Yukon gold, red and sweet potatoes.


We used a similar method as we did last year:
1. Cut off portions of the potato with several "eye sprouts",
2. Plant the potato chunks with the "eye sprouts" facing up
3. Cover with dirt and mulch.

Our potatoes did well last year so I'm hoping we are just as successful this year - particularly with those sweets!

Up next:
1. More planting (flowers, herbs and beans)
2. Figure out our watering system

Ch-ch-changes

Although our basic farm layout from last year is the same, we have made some changes this year.

1. Fewer rows
2. Wider rows
3. Fewer plants

Despite some crop failures last year (peppers, I'm talking to you) we honestly had more vegetables than we knew what to do with. Because of this, we've decided to scale back on the plantings.

We still have four rows in front but the back few rows are different. One side has four rows while the other side just has three. The side with three will be the side with beans since they really need more room.

Also, we only have 6 total "round mounds" (3 on each side) as opposed to the 8 "round mounds" we had last year.

We are planting pretty much everything we planted last year - we're just planting less of it. And we've spaced the rows out more so that our aisles are more spacious.

Other changes we've made are to our watering system. Watering was a constant problem last year because the water pressure at the farm is so strong we kept busting our (cheap) hoses. I'll detail our new watering system in another post when I can share pictures.

In other news: Adam is coming home today! Yea!

Picture of the Day

I don't have any farm-related pictures form those months we were absent. So, this is from Christmas. Adam and I are in front and my cute-to-boot niece is next to me (and my sister and parents).

We're trendy!

I always knew we had it in us. Our local news ran a story about the increase in popularity of community gardens. And they featured our humble little garden at Two Rivers!

In the meantime, Adam is on spring break and I am left in charge of the garden. Yikes!

But, so far so good. We've been getting plenty of rain so I went out yesterday to check on our little baby plants and give them a pep talk. Some of the mulch had been scattered by the wind and, I suspect, birds, so I raked it back onto the rows.

Our tools were all present and accounted for as well.

But, since Adam has the camera so he can take pictures of our beautiful niece and nephew, I could not take any pictures today. We're expecting more storms on Friday so keep your fingers crossed for all of our little plants!

A place for everything

One rule I had for this year: no tools in the car. Last season, we drove around Little Rock and beyond with shovels, rakes and hoes precariously perched behind us. Not only was this incredibly tacky but I constantly lived in fear of being rear-ended and decapitated by a muddy tool.

So, I challenged Adam to build us a space-saving, cheap tool shelter.

He rose to the challenge and made me a "shed" out of a scavenged wooden pallet, two poles, a bike lock and a grill cover to keep the tools dry.

Total cost: $20.

My husband is so talented!

A time to plant

Today we planted:

Cabbage and Collards



Peppers - banana and bell (please pray they don't turn out like last year!)



Strawberries!





Beefsteak tomatoes



We also re-planted our rosemary, thyme and oregano from last year.

Still need to plant:
flowers
herbs
potatoes
okra
beans
carrots
squash
corn

Other to do:
build a tool "shed"

Out here in the fields...

I don't need to tell you that we had our work cut out for us today. On our list:

Clear out last year's leftovers
Till
Fertilize
Form our rows

And, no fools we, our experience from last year taught us that if you don't mulch on the same day as you do all of the above, your rows will be washed away and weeds will takeover by the time you actually plant. So, we added the following to our list:

Mulch within an inch of our lives

Another lesson from last year: don't be afraid to actually purchase mulch. I think we spent more time looking for free mulch last year than we did actually mulching. So, this year, we brought bags of leaves with us to the farm (free) and bought 6 straw-bales ($40 total).

















Next, we cleared the plot of all the large plants and pieces of roots. We thought we'd be able to till the smaller bits of plants into the ground but that didn't really work. So, we did something we thought we'd never do. We burned it:


It is amazing what we are reduced to because we don't have the time or resources to do things the way we'd prefer. The way we'll do things when we have our own farm: no tilling, permanent beds, permaculture. But all of that is for another day. In the meantime, we tilled, formed our beds and then mulched.

Behold, this is the neatest you will ever see our plot:



And then we fertilized. I have no idea what all is in our fertilizer mix this year but I do know it is all vegan. Among other things, there is corn and alfalfa. Adam will have to tell you the rest.

To do list:
PLANT!

UPDATE: I lied. I do know what is in our fertilizer mix - the ingredients were right here on our blog! It has just been so long since I gave any thought to it that I forgot.