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Ok folks, here it is, my homemade seed starting rack!   I’m going to use this to  get a little head start on my vegetable seeds this year. I tried to start some last year but it just wasn’t enough light is the house with out some serious lighting backup.  I think I have that problem solved this year, take a look.

The Parts

Wire baking Rack

We had this one already, They run about $40 at the Sam’s club, the good part about these is that the shelves are adjustable. There is also a larger rack that runs about $90 , if you need more capacity.

Fluorescent Shop Lights

I got these two shop light fixtures at home depot for $9 apiece, The rack has a total of 4 shelves so if you wanted to you could add four more lights for a total of three actual growing shelves, but for know I’m starting with one.

Rigging The Lights

The set up is pretty easy, the lights have some chain included with the, you just have to get the lights centered like you like them and hook the chain to the fixture and then the shelf.  I used two fixtures for the shelf for more light, but you could use just one fixture per shelf need be.  Once the lights are connected you’ll need to adjust the shelves so there is very little clearance from the top of your seed pots and the light base, you’ll need to adjust the light distance as the plants grow, but the closer the better, this keeps the plants from getting too leggy.

Final Configuration

Well here she is, for about 15 minutes of work and around $70 I put this lighted seed starting rack together, it should last a long time since it will be indoors for most of its useful life. I have a few flats of seeds ready to go, so that will be another post, I don’t have the photos ready yet hehehe.

If you needed to you could rig the shelf unit with some sheet plastic for a mini green house set up, I used this set up since it will be in the house where the temps are good but the light isn’t.

Well thats it, I’ll keep you updated on how it works, I potted up some roma tomatoes and some  Jalepeno and sweet banana pepper seeds for the first batch and we’ll see how they work!

Good luck with your gardening!!

Some Ideas For Your Spring Garden Preparations.

Here in my zone, it won’t be long until the cold weather goes away for a while, and will be replaced with the scorching temps that Southeast Texas is known for. In between those two extremes is the three week period known as Spring, when fair weather and sunshine prevail.

Until then the time is nye to make the preps for the long gardening season ahead. So here are some ideas to get you jump started.  Oh and If your are still under the 6 week sentence of  Punxsutawny Phil, adjust you times accordingly.

1. Order Some Seeds!

Get your seed catalogs out and order your new crops, get the beans, get the lettuce, get the melons , just get something! Also make sure you get the right crops for the right season!  There is no way I can grow lettuce  anytime after June in my area, its just way to hot.

2. Prepare the Planting Beds.

No matter if you till , or follow the no till, lasagna methods of bed prep, now is the time to start. I have loads of unraked leaves that haven’t made it to the compost pile yet, If you till, now is the time to work them in to the soil, They need time to break down properly.

Set up some raised beds, I have used concrete blocks landscape timbers, old tires, the possibilities are endless.  Also set up any fencing to keep the pests and varmints out! Bird netting too, don’t forget the bird netting! Its a life saver.

3. Start Some Seeds!

When the seeds you ordered come in, or the seeds you saved from last years garden, you did save some seeds didn’t you? You’ll need to start the seeds. Some plants do better being direct seeded, others do better with a head start, tomatoes are one example.

You can use the “Mini-Greenhouse”  kits you get at the box stores, or if you have a florescent light , and some space you can make a better homemade set up…Look for my post on this coming soon!  Anyway, use some loose seed starting soil and get to it, In five to fifteen days the seeds will begin to sprout, keep the grow light close to the seedlings so they don’t get to leggy!

Before you plant the seedlings, let them acclimate outside for a few days, wait till the weather will cooperate, this will keep the new tender plants from getting “weather shock”.

Well I hope these ideas get you started on the way to a great garden this year, lemme know what you get planted when the time comes, I’ll keep ya’ll up to date too!

And as always , thanks for stopping by!

We have had some pretty cool temps around here for the last month, also alot of rain too. Everything is one big, cold, mud puddle so doing anything around the garden has been difficult.  Today it warmed up to around 50 and the sun was out so I decided to dig up the Horseradish , which is better after a frost, we have had at least six in the last 2 weeks. I will grate this up later when I get a chance , I just wanted to get it out of the ground today since it was so nice outside. So without further delay here are the pixs!

Horseradish Ready for Harvest

Here is the plant about to be dug out, it looks pretty big from the top.

Horseradish Dug Up

Here I have chopped the tops off and dug it out, it was down pretty deep, there are alot of side shoots which will start new plants. I have to tell you that as I’m digging this out the smell is awesome, like really sweet horseradish sauce!

Horseradish Cleaned

Here I have hosed off most of the dirt and it looks good, there is one main root and a pretty good side root, I’ll grate this up later tonight and let you Know how it turns out!

And Have a good New Year BTW!!

I know I said in a previous post that we get the mild winters, well every now and then Mother Nature pulls a fast one. Friday afternoon, it started snowing here , not a blizzard mind you but snow.  This was the earliest recorded snowfall in our area since they started recording stuff like this. It was quite a shocker!!  The Friday evening the clouds and snow cleared off and the temps began to plummet, when I woke up Saturday it was 23 degrees , unheard of around here at this time of year, and oh the frost we saw!!

Frosty

Yep , I put it off until it was almost too late. i made a mad dash Friday afternoon to spread some hay around the garden in hopes that everything won’t be frozen solid, let’s hope it worked.

Frost in the back pasture

The shadow of the house and the frost that follows it.

This shot is of the shadow of the house and the frost like, the sun melts it so fast .

More frost out back

Yep, so forget all I said about mild winters here, let me rephrase that and say, Unpredictable Winters hahahahaha!

I’ll keep you posted on any plant damage in the future, too early to tell yet.

So until next time , stay warm!!!

When it’s 54 degrees outside and a slight drizzles is coming down, there ain’t much you can do outside in the garden, so let’s bring it inside for a while and look over a few of the seed catalogs that fill up the mail box over the year!

Johnny’s Select Seeds

Johnny’s has one of the best put together catalogs in the business , IMHO.  It’s full color and brimming with pix, and every description lays out the info you’ll need to make the most out of your crop.   The tools section has more goodies than you could find just about anywhere, hoes, seeders, what ever you need.  So when the December Gloom is in yo face, check this catalog out!

Seed Savers Exchange

If rare and heirloom varieties are you thing, Seed Savers is the place for you!  This catalog is not as polished as Johnny’s, but what it lacks in shine it makes up for in variety.  I didn’t even know there were that many different kinds of beans!!    The layout is easy to navigate  and it still has plenty of pix and info for the avid gardener, it also has an extensive book section in the back.  Overall a great catalog!

Henry Field’s

Henry Field’s catalog is another great one, It has a great selection of seeds but also has an extensive fruit and nut tree section.  This one has plenty of full color photos and information and a large tool and goody section as well.  It’s another good one to pull you through the cold times.

And for all the flower people out there each of the catalogs mentioned above have a large flower seed section as well, so there is something for everyone

I know there are plenty more , these are just a few that I have done business with, and no I’m not on the payroll of any of them.

So enjoy your shopping and I hope you can make it through until Spring!

Happy Gardening!

The last three tomatoes of the season have turned red, and we’ll miss the great taste of a red, vine ripe summer tomato, oh well only 5 months till spring!

Now to clean out this area for the next round, or maybe I’ll let this bed sit for a while with a thick layer of compost.

First Sprouts Of The Fall/Winter Garden

So thanks to the extra mild temps we have had these last couple weeks, most of the stuff we direct seeded into the raised beds has started to sprout!

We seeded:

• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Oriental Cabbage
• Regular Cabbage
• Carrots
• Red and Yellow  Onions
• Soft Neck Garlic
• Beets
• Radishes

I’m trying to figure out my macro settings on the camera , so maybe soon I can get some better pics for ya’ll.

Until then Enjoy the Fall weather, it’s awesome!!!

Hello again,

Well the South Texas heat has finally stopped the relentless assault on us and the rains have returned… we even had a few temps down in the 60’s , you can’t beat that!  So it’s been a busy few weeks around here, we have been horse sitting for a friend of my wife’s, we have moved cattle around to rotate pastures, and the garden work has picked back up.

After the Hornworm Incident last month, I had given up on the tomatoes, but there is one plant that still keeps chugging along.  So we shall see how that goes.  Mostly its been cleanup work, weeding , cutting back the dead stuff, you know how it goes.  We have also been filling up the compost piles, lots of goodies for that endeavor, old hay grass clippings and what not, so now we have two pretty big piles ready for next spring, if everything works as it should!

Now The Garden Plan!

Down here where we live we really don’t get winter. oh yea I hear ya , it gets cool, 40′ s maybe a freeze in January, but over all its more like a hard Fall season…I was stationed in Colorado in The Army, now it gets cold there!!  But that’s all the better for us , with the proper protection , you can garden dang near year round.   Most of your cool season crops just love the mild weather here from October until usually late December, even some root veggies and onions can stay in ground until spring, That is if the cold rainy days don’t get to crazy and it all rots.   So without further delay here’s what I’m planning for this fall season.

• Cabbage – some red and some green
• Carrots – can’t go wrong with carrots
• Onions and Garlic – Two more favorites around here
• Spinach and some Lettuce
• Broccoli – gonna try this again, I never have any luck with good broccoli

And whatever else I have a few extra seeds for , so stay tuned for the next installment now that things have cooled off a bit!

I was Mowing the yard today and as I rode by the garden I noticed the three tomato plants that lived thru the drought had the top 10 inches or so stripped of it’s leaves!

Tomato Plants Stripped of it's leaves

As I Inspected further I found the culprit, Tomato Hornworms , and there was quite a few of them. The more I looked into the plant ,the more catapillars I saw.

Tomato Hornworm on the Vine

Another one on the bush

They are colorful bugs, but they sure can do some damage, I was just looking at the tomatoes day before yesterday and I didn’t have any damage then, They work fast!

I pulled these off the plants, the chickens get them after the photo session.

So now I’m off to the web to find the best way to deal with these green devils, I will fill you in with the research when I find it,  Till then …Good Gardening to ya!

We finally got some good rain! For the last two weeks its been coming a shower here and a thunder boomer there, well we finally got a goos hour long soaker.

Looking out over the back pasture.

The rains have been mostly the summer afternoon 10 minute jobs,  but this one hung around for a while, about a month too late, everything but a few tomatoes and the watermelons have long since burned to a crisp.  Oh well fall garden coming soon!

Another view of the back.

Yep , it kept raining and raining and raining, I wasn’t sure if it was going to stop!  I guess I really didn’t want it to, it was so nice to see.  Not to mention we needed it, we got enough that the county lifted the burn ban!!  woo hoo!

View out the front of the house

So everything is getting greener and it’s actually a little cooler today, maybe its a trend!

We can only hope!

Here on the farm we have planted a few fruit trees, a fig or two, two plums and a nectarine. The fig we planted last year, and it was going good until the freak spring weather we had this year. It started budding and had a few leaves coming on when the late freeze hit, I really thought it was gone.  But that little tree really recovered nicely.

Fig Tree

As I was Making the rounds yesterday, I noticed some large figs on the tree. Now just to be clear the actual fruits have been growing for a month or so, so they didn’t just pop up yesterday. The difference is they are twice the size of the smaller unripe ones.

Figs

We did finally get some rain this last week, maybe the extra water made them swell a bit. Whatever it was it worked, hopefully we can keep the birds off of them too!

Lucille Is Getting Close!

Lucille, one of our milk cows, is about to have another calf for us.  Last year Lucille surprised us by calving a week after we had her Artificially Inseminated. This time we put her out with a bull and let nature take its course, should be any day now!

Lucille, The Expectant Mother!

Here is the view from the front!  I’ll keep you updated!!

Lucille Front View

Until next time!