Bells of the North Homestead

I feel like it's been forever since I've written and yet it was only earlier last week that I wrote!  So much has happened since the last time I wrote so, this is one of those moments when I take a huge sigh and try to figure out where to begin. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the King said to the White Rabbit "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop". Good Advice. So first, our garden has stepped up production as of lately and we're eating from it non stop.  My parents recently visited and we made eggplant parmesan from eggplants out back which was thoroughly enjoyed by all.  We're easily getting medium to large sized bowlfuls of tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants and squash every week now.  Coupled with the amount we get from our weekly CSA share at Brad's Produce , and well, it's a lot of food. The tomatoes have been turned into sauces, diced tomatoes, salsas, dried tomatoes, and fireballs....

This weekend I decided to bite the bullet and tear out our lovely, beautiful lone tomatillo plant.  If you remember right I posted earlier that I made the rookie mistake of only planting one tomatillo plant.  You know, the old saying, it takes two to tango? Well that applies here. Tomatillo plants are self infertile which means they need two plants to produce fruit.  Since I only planted one plant the tomatillo was going to do nothing else in my garden but draw bees (good thing), take up room (bad thing) and bring shade to my pepper plants (also bad thing).  So, it's gone.  In it's place I planted some Cumin seeds that I hope will come up soon.  Edward and I love cooking with Cumin so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  This will be a new spice for me to grow. I also have one other spice that I will be trying soon but a blog will be following shortly on that to cover that one. So onto the state of the garden.  First we had a...

A weekend not spent camping usually means a productive day or two in the garden.  This weekend we didn't go camping so we managed to tidy up a bit, pull weeds, move some of our squash and cucumber vines around and work in our compost bins a bit. To those who are new to reading here, we do both traditional compost and Vermicompost.  Traditional composting is more or less just moving your kitchen scraps into a large vessel of some sort (we used a recycled cheap plastic trash can with a lid that has holes drilled in through the sides).  Allow the scraps to slowly decompose and within three to six months you have new fertile soil, ready to feed your plants. Vermicomposting is composting but with the help of worms.  We use Red Wigglers because they are more tolerant of warmer temperatures.  During the winter months they will survive, eat, and reproduce but very slowly.  During the summer months as the temperatures rise the worms’ production rises.  I no...

I've lost track of what week I'm on now with my little pets, the worms.  Still though, every week I lovingly feed them all the scraps from the kitchen.  Worrying over whether they will like the cherries better than the cucumber peels or the rotten peaches over the bell pepper parts.  They honestly don't really give me much feedback since they tend to eat it all. One of these days I'll start actually weighing how much I'm putting in there so I can see exactly how much they're chomping down.  All I know is I put about two to three large bowls of mixed waste and about two weeks later it's completely eaten.  All that's left is mushy mud, paper bag mulch and a bunch of worms on the top that are begging me for more food.  We've already harvested loads of worm tea and so far the plants seem to like it.  The plants are most definitely growing BIGGER this year.  Heck, last year they never got this big, but then of course we didn't prepare our soil like w...

This is pretty rare. This is actually only rare because A) I did another video       & B) My son and husband helped me

Wednesday our little friends arrived in the mail!!!  Approximately 250 of Red Wigglers along with several little cocoons which will hatch later on and provide even more worms. (or as we call them for our son "squirmy wormies") So Wednesday night hubby and I had to prepare their new home. Luckily enough I had already picked up the rubbermaid containers from Target.  Great deal for $5.99 each.  Not bad! Then hubby got out his power drill and proceeded to drill holes for ventilation.   We drilled all around the top with just about an inch apart from each one.  We didn't go very far down simply because I've heard red wigglers like to explore.  I didn't want them to find a hole and explore right on out of our container!   We also did loads and loads of holes on the top.  I figured it would take a pretty creative worm to get to the top of the bin!   Next was the bottom.  I read pretty much everywhere that it's important to drill holes in t...

This past winter we discovered compost tea.  I have to admit, when I first heard of it my very first thought was "OOOHH GROSS!"  After a bit of research though and hearing lots of good things about it, I decided to give it a try.  So I went to Youtube like I almost always do to scout out people who are familiar with it.  I was lucky enough to almost immediately find this video from Ray at Youtube. So starting February we purchased a bucket from Lowes and kept any vegetable or fruit scraps and threw it in there.  We actually kept it inside for a bit but it started to stink come March so we brought it outside.  It takes a bit longer for the compost to actually breakdown in the cooler temperatures but we figured that would just be the price we would have to pay for an UNstinky house!  Little did I know at the time that the extreme smell was due in part to too much nitrogen remains and not enough carbon. Here is a list of high carbon items that can be com...