Here is Kit modeling our new garden trellises.  This is the first trellis so far and it’s over 24′ total made up of dean’s purple beans on the right and then Macaslan Snap beans on the left.

The posts are 4″ x 8 cedar posts from the local feed store and they are anywhere from 20-26″ deep.  There is no cement or anything in the hole because we will have to rotate these trellises as their crops move around the garden.

The trellis is the Hortonova trellis found at Johnny’s Seeds.  I bought the biggest roll of this stuff they have and I hope to have nearly a lifetime supply.  I think the largest roll is 250′.  The trellis itself is 6.5′ tall.

There is a single strand of “sharpie pen size” cable on the top row and it’s looped around one end and crimped back on itself.  On the other end is a small 12-15″ loop with a high tensile fence tensioner on the end.  This is also fence stapled.  So the open end of the cable hooks into the high tensile tensioner and from there it’s just ratcheted down as necessary.   The netting is stapled tight to the posts with a normal staple gun.

The whole thing looks sturdy and the height is going to be much better this year.  Last year’s 5′ trellis got overrun massively by the beans and cucumbers.  This year should be much better and the crops will have more room to spread out.  Total costs were this:  $6.59 each for the posts, $2.49 for the tensioner, about $3 worth of cable, $0.15 worth of crimps, and $5.76 worth of trellis.  Total cost is $24.58 and I consider that reasonable considering the posts, cable, tensioner, and crimps should last 30+ years the trellis itself at least 3-4 seasons.  The uses for all this stuff is countless so this is a nice thing to have at hand regardless.

Here’s another good shot of Kit laying in our new grass/clover yard.  This is the side yard in the garden and it’s mostly clover.  I guess I have some hope the clover benefits the garden in some fashion.  She’s exhausted, obviously.

So far we’ve been able to transplant everything except the tomatoes.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any peppers up and growing and that was a shame.  Luckily however I was able to pick up two 6 packs of nice organic starts at the Chattanooga Market for $3 apiece.

The basil starts were near perfect along with the kale, collards, and cabbage.  My only concern was for the bok choi and that was due to the fact that I started them too early.  A 2″ soil block is not very much dirt and the bok choi went to seed before I could transplant them.  Also, this relates to my only concern for the tomatoes and that is that they are looking a little yellow and starved for space.  I thought a good 2 month lead time would be perfect, but in reality that’s too long.  I think it won’t be much of a problem because as soon as I can get out and till up last fall’s cover crops the tomatoes will be planted.  It’s rainy the next couple of days here so it will still probably be a week or more before things dry out enough.

Also, one last update…I decided to use fish emulsion every 2 weeks for my starts.  The fish emulsion did seem to kick start things and keep everything green and lush.  I’ve never used the emulsion before and once you get past the rank smell it’s good stuff.  Also, it was dirt cheap at only $5 for a decent sized bottle and I should be able to use it all summer on my tomatoes.  A good product and I recommend it.

UPDATE:  I wanted to quickly give my reasoning behind the soil blocks.  Last Spring I purchased a bunch of plastic trays and cell flats and a soilless grow mix.  The intention was to start seeds in the greenhouse, which is now defunct, and transplant almost everything except cucumbers.  Well, it didn’t work out so well for a number of reasons, mostly which were my own fault, but for the transplants that did make it, largely the butternut squash plants, it was an exercise in frustration.   There is essentially no way possible to extract a transplant from a plastic flat.  By way of a lot of cursing and shredding of the plastic flats I finally managed to extract the plants, but the flats were of course a lost cause.

For this season I initially decided to go back to the tried and true Jiffy peat pellets.  I pretty much had decided that 6 of the Jiffy greenhouse 72 peat cell systems would work.  Total cost there was about $30.  My next thought went to where I would move all 432 (hopeful) transplants and I could come up with nothing better than back to the plastic flats I already had.  And of course this would require another few bags of soil mix and the good stuff there is pricey.  I figured up that I would be in $30 for the Jiffy systems and then another $50 for soil mix, for a grand total of $80.  I wasn’t thrilled by this and therefore kept putting it off.

Well, when I was placing my recent Johnny’s order I clicked the link on the soil block makers and started doing some research.  It was quickly evident that this is the preferred method overall and the only real obstruction to doing it was the soil block maker itself.  Some more quick research, using this, and using Johnny’s as a comparison, it looked like the soil block makers would cost me about $60 for the mini 20 3/4″ unit and then the 2″ unit.  Adding to this would of course be the soilless mix and I had already scouted out Pro-Mix which goes for $24 here in Chattanooga.

I eventually decided on ordering the soil blocks with the idea being that it’s probably the best way to start transplants overall and the idea of not fighting with more plastic seemed like a win-win.  Quickly, the whole idea behind a soil block is that it doesn’t create root bound transplants which allows the plant to start growing immediately once placed in the garden.

So fast forward to today and I’ve now started 200 3/4″ soil blocks.  The actual making of the block was simple and they’re holding together well.  Like I said above, the cabbage, kale, and collards sprouted first, and now I have leeks and spinach starting to come up also.  The blocks are as wet today (6 days after starting them) as they were right after I made them.  I’m going to have to create some 2″ blocks to pot-on the cabbage, collards, and kale, and I will probably do that in the next 5 or 6 days.  I don’t expect any hassle out of the 2″ unit.  Also, the 3.8 cu ft bag of Pro-Mix looks like it’s going to be more than enough to start everything that I want to start.  Those first 200 blocks hardly used any soil at all.  I’d say I have probably 95% of the bag left in total.

My only concern now is that the 1.5″ soil blocker might be needed to ease the whole process.  I’m going to deal with just the 3/4″ and 2″ units this year, but I can see myself buying the 1.5″ unit after this season.  The 1.5″ unit won’t accept a 3/4″ block to pot on, and that’s the only reason I didn’t go with it initially.  For tomatoes and pepers, and other plants that must be started 8+ weeks before the last frost, the only real solution is to first use the 3/4″ block and then pot on to the 2″.  This allows for adequate space to grow a decent sized transplant.  However, for most other seeds, everything could be started directly in the 1.5″ block and never be moved.  This would be less hassle overall I think.  We’ll see how well everything does from here and then I’ll decide what to do.  Email me at rphagan3 at gmail dot com with any questions.

We had a big day planned, but considering it was cold and the snow was wet we figured we wouldn’t be out for more than an hour.  It probably took us longer to get everyone dressed than it did for the actual hike, but I think Mike nailed it, a little hike was perfect.  So here we were early this afternoon on the first big overlook on the Signal Point trail…

As you can see, Hank made it and had to be right in the middle of everything.  From left to right are Charlie, niece Ella, Hank, Cori, Kit, and nephew Mike III.

Our big plans for the day centered around picking up the chicken we promised Ella for her birthday along with a few others for our new flock.  More to come later…

Now that I’ve done some more reading about garlic I realize that the idea for the Fall planting is to establish vigorous roots, but no real sprouts.  Anyway, things were great until the early Spring when we had some guys take down a large oak for us and instead of dropping the tree out in the center of the lot, which seemed easy to do, they dropped it right on top of our garlic patch.  I considered the entire planting to be a lost cause after seeing these guys trample all over the beds and the large limbs that gouged the dirt.

To my surprise however the garlic took it in stride.  By late Spring the garlic was growing great and we only lost maybe 10-20% of the planting.  I was pretty shocked.  Fast forward to mid-July of 2009 and we were harvesting nice looking bulbs.  We ended up with about 125 bulbs and they ranged from large to small.  The overall planting seemed to be consistent in size and I think the problem was more of the trampling and tree damage.  All in all though, for our meager $10 in expense we reaped a massive harvest.  Also, the bulbs were grown totally organic with no added chemical fertilizers or herbicides.  I lightly sprinkle some home made compost and that seemed to be plenty.  Here’s a pic of a small batch that we harvested…

So now fast forward to the current and here’s what we did for the Fall of 2009 planting.  We purchased another 3 pounds of bulbs, this time from Southern Exposure Seed Savers.  The varieties are Red Toch and Inchelium Red, both of which are supposed to be good all around varieties.  We also planted 7 bulbs of what was harvested from the 2008 planting.  All in all we have probably 200 cloves planted.

Here’s what we did differently this year.  We forked the beds deep, added a good amount of compost and leaf mold, and planted the cloves in mid November as opposed to early October.  After the original planting we’ve also added nearly 2″ of shredded leaves to act as mulch and an additional fertilizer.  The later planting this year is almost right, although still a little early.  The end of November might be the best time for us to plant in order to avoid any top growth.  The sprouts now are minimal, 2-4″ and not as robust as the prior year’s.   Here’s a small section of the current garlic beds,

All 200 cloves fit in a 30″ X 15′ bed, plus another small section in the old greenhouse that’s 4′ X 5′.

Here’s our method of planting garlic…

First step is to break the bulb into cloves, of course, and then for our 30″ wide garden beds we lay out 5 rows.  We plant the cloves 6″ apart within the row, which provides plenty of room and a nice microclimate for the garlic to grow.  In the early part of winter, which for us is around Christmas, we cover the garlic with a thick layer of shredded leaves.  Straw or hay would work here also.  In the early spring, which here is the first of March, we’ll remove the leaves and use them for our leaf mold piles.

We’ll see how this year goes, but we’ve had a good experience with garlic and the bulbs we’ve harvested are better than any we can buy locally.

We got Hank from a 2500 acre goat and cattle farm in Grassy Cove, TN.  Check out Grassy Cove’s wikipedia page here for some good reading, here .  Hank came from Kemmer Ranch and his mom was a full blooded Great Pyrenees and his dad was a full blooded Anatolian Shepherd.  The result is much what you’d expect, a whitish-sand color, dense but short coat, and a large size.  Hank is nearly 43″ at the top of his head and pushing 120 lbs now.

He’s a terrific dog and the kids love him.  He’s getting more sure footed as he gets older and while not as protective as some might like, which is our fault since we don’t have a herd of goats for him, he does a good job for us patrolling the area.  What we do have though are chickens and we’ve slowly broken him of his habit to chase.  We kept him on a long lead for about two weeks while the chickens were out and they all seemed to warm up to eachother quickly.

Now we just let the chickens out and Hank seems to take more and more of an interest in them as the days go on.  He likes to lurk near them like a normal livestock guardian and I’m pretty confident he’d ward any predators off with no problem.  He’s definitely got the size and speed to take down any predator we might have.  It’s a good sign and it’s exactly what we wanted.

We’ve been letting Hank inside quite a bit lately and he loves it.  We’ll let him lay on the bed with us and he’s happy there for about an hour.  He’s a part of the family and he works with us very well.

So fast forward to the late Spring of 2009, only 5 months after construction, and I was dealing with a badly leaning sidewall and 4 broken PVC hoops.  The hoops decided to break at the connection points to the main crossbar.  The sidewall was braced and anchored into the ground and seemed sturdy after I built it.  What I didn’t realize at the time was how much wind comes howling up through our property and that the greenhouse would be the largest thing obstructing the wind.

Quick note on our property, we live right on the edge of a decent sized ravine and the adjacent land around us slopes upwards on each side, so we’re effectively in a funnel where the wind gets concentrated and whips right up the middle of our land.  It’s probably obvious to everyone but the ravine of course slopes upwards on the other side and we just happen to be on the receiving end of the wind.

After some thought we decided to remove the greenhouse completely and decide later this year what to do about it.  The whole idea was to provide some basic protection and overwinter lettuce, spinach, kale, mustards, etc.  We’re committed to making our gardens true 4 season gardens like Eliot Coleman recommends.

The solution for us was quick to find when the 2010 Johnny’s Seeds catalog came in the mail.  Near the back I was looking into the stirrup hoes and noticed that they had a nice spread on low tunnels. A low tunnel is essentially the same idea as a high tunnel, just lower, obviously, and without the need for a central support bar and end walls.  The benefits Johnny’s described were ease of construction, mobility of the tunnel, and 1/20th the cost of a traditional high tunnel.  I was sold.  I quickly ordered the 6′ bender for $69 and now the plan is to use 10′ sections of EMT conduit for the hoops.  I suggest you check out Johnny’s for more info.  There are numerous videos available describing the process.

Quickly, to replace my previous 12X20 high tunnel I will have to build two 6′x20 low tunnels.  Here’s the breakdown in cost.  Hoop bender, $69, 10 pieces of 10′ EMT conduit, $1.37 per, $13.70 total, and $15 for sandbags to hold down the plastic.  I will use the existing greenhouse plastic I have and it will now last us even longer than the 16 years we originally planned.  So total cost to construct the same 12X20 size is only ~$100.  I think I spent more than $100 just for the PVC materials last year.  This is the way to go and now I can easily move it all around the garden to incorporate it into my crop rotation.  Here’s the old greenhouse site now…

I feel a lot better about this new plan and the anxiety of having to construct yet another high tunnel and deal with its limitations is over.  Contact me if you have any questions…