Bells of the North Homestead

I write this today not for those who already know who I am, but for those instead who are new to our page.  Now I have to admit, the page used to go by the name How Does Our Garden Grow because when I first started it in Maryland, that was how it fit us more.  How IS our garden growing?  When we first moved to Maryland, we had so many things happen to us financially that, truly, we were really bad off.  We had dry goods in our pantry, but nothing fresh in the fridge, and only a small amount of canned goods.  We had no homemade canned goods at all.  Imagine being in a situation where all you have is flour, Bisquick, sugar, cornmeal, some dried beans, and a container of rice.  Yes, you can make a meal out of that, but it gets boring super quick.  To make matters worse, we couldn't afford to buy much due to issues with the condo we still owned in Alaska along with car troubles and a financial gaff by the military which left us with two and a half m...

Six more weeks till Winter. Or so the story goes told by Alaskan Natives and sourdoughs alike.   When the fireweed has bloomed all the way to the top, we have six more weeks till the snow flies.   So far this break up and then into summer, we’ve had some successes….and some failures.    That’s pretty typical though.   The garden is doing well but could be doing better thanks to the late start because of our vacation in the lower 48.   That is a killer here since our growing season is so short.    We got to harvest a large bunch of garlic scapes earlier this week.   Yes indeed, garlic scapes.   SUCCESS! The garlic survived the winter! We’ll have garlic later this summer to harvest.   We’re about 2 days away from harvesting our first zucchini and summer squash of the season.   Our kale and broccoli rabe this year barely sprouted due to the fact that we got a late start on it.   We should have ...

T-minus 19 days till April 15th.  19 days till our honeybees arrive.  22 days till April 18th, the day we get about 20 to 25 trees removed from the front of our property by BlackHawk Works , a local company that has expertise in taking down trees in tricky locations.  The tree removal will help us with our future potential project; solar panels which will allow our house to be a bit more self sufficient as well as get rid of the moss on our roof and reduce the fire danger. Whenever, the daytime temperatures start staying above 50 the birch sap will be flowing and we will then be collecting the sap to be boiled down into syrup.  See this article about that. Meanwhile, at just about the same time we will be hiving our brand new Italian honeybees, direct from California.  As long as our daytime temperatures stay above 50.  If you're curious about our new beekeeping undertaking, see this article.  Within the next weekend or two we also have a lar...

I've often told newer gardeners that the best thing to do is watch your yard, really watch it for a full season to get a good idea of where the sun is at any given time of the day, where the water collects and lays stagnant most often, which areas are drier, and so on.   So, following my own advice, last year that is precisely what I did.  Now I found recently that when presented with a large amount of area to deal with you need to break it into manageable pieces, quadrants or areas.  So I've broken this down to the garden area, the side area, our pond area, our rabbit area and our bee area.  Our morning sun comes over our house and hits the lilac tree, the raspberries and the raised beds on the left so this year I'll be putting more of the plants that don't do as well with afternoon sun over on the left.  Meanwhile, the plants that love the heat (summer squash, tomatoes, hot peppers) will all be pushed over to the right side where the sun shines from 3p ...

Its officially week three into our safe planting time and we’re now harvesting baby kale greens, rapini (or also called Broccoli Rabe which is pronounced raab),  some lettuce, arugula, micro greens and oddly enough, mustard greens which were from last year.  They obviously reseeded themselves.   As of today I harvested our first two radishes, and wow, surprise, no sign of root maggots! Little victories! Our tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and watermelon are looking better than they ever did last year which gives me some hope that we’ll actually harvest something more than greens and potatoes this year.  As of today we have about five unripe tomatoes on the plants, most of which are all on the tomatoes in our greenhouse.  We have harvested our first bell pepper recently which came from one of the few plants we purchased from one of the many greenhouses here. I purchased two weekends ago  two white eggplants which I’m seriously hoping we see so...

Ever since the snow has melted, about a month or so ago, we have been adding bits for our garden.  Buying small bits here and there and all the while waiting for the day when we can really start building.  I knew the day would come, and once it did we would be super busy.  Of course, I was right. In Maryland we started our garden in 2010 and it took us 4 years to build it to the point where it was producing a pretty impressive amount.  Our hope here was to jump beyond that, put to use all the knowledge we gained from there, all while going as cheap as humanly possible.  We were just breaking even each month with a tiny bit to spare when we first moved here so money was tight.  Early May we purchased 50 concrete blocks and some hardware cloth at Home Depot that set us back around $100.  Thanks to problems with voles, here we have to use hardware cloth under each raised bed otherwise our root veggies will be eaten.  This added an additional $20...