What's goin down on the farm

Things have been going good on the farm, Saturday I graduate from my permaculture design course, I've got carrots coming out of my ears, the lizards are whoring around the neighborhood, my apple tree graft has sprouted along with the passion fruit vine, I have never eaten an artichoke, I'm counting my tomatoes before they're ripe, and my banana tree was showing some promise.

4 years ago I started a garden which led to a compost pile which lead to a couple fruit trees which lead to a grey water system which lead to permaculture. Saturday I will graduate from my permaculture design course, I have to say I am a changed person and better for it. If you want to change your life and the earth for the better I recommend taking a PDC.

Everyday for a month I've been pulling carrots out of the garden, I'm almost sick of carrots I'm thinking of pulling the whole patch out and giving them away. You wouldn't believe the strange looks you get from people when you offer them free carrots!

When we first moved into the house there were no fence lizards. It was really strange. When I was a kid I was professional lizard catcher, I had a 20 gallon aquarium full of fence lizards in my grandpas back yard. After 4 years of living here we have more fence lizards then you can count. I blame permaculture, if you hang out in the backyard for any amount of time, not only do you see giant fence lizards, you see alot of fence lizard sex. It starts out with a male latching onto a female by biting her tail, ( sound familiar)?

This has to be one of my proudest moments. Remember my apple tree graft, well it took and my Sundowner apple tree is finally growing. 

The Passion Fruit Vine is flowering, it's the prettiest flower you'll ever see. The fruit is super sour, to be honest with you I don't even care about the fruit as long as these amazing flowers keep coming.

The Artichoke plants have taken off this year, to be honest I've never eaten an artichoke before, I've always enjoyed the flowers. This year I'm gonna eat one, how many do you see?

This years tomato crop is huge, I've got green tomatoes everywhere. Growing my own from seed was awesome. I know I shouldn't count my chickens before they're hatched but it's looking good out there. I also passed out a bunch of left over plants I had, to anyone who wanted them, and I'm getting positive reports back on those plants. 

Finally my banana plant was doing great until the wind storm today which snapped the new leaf coming out of the main trunk. DAMMIT! Oh well it's still worth a BOOYAH!!

WHAT'S GOIN DOWN ON THE FARM

I've been real busy lately between, the PDC design course I've been taking, volunteer work, and getting my spring/summer gardens in I haven't had the time to post it up here. So here's what I've been working on.

3-18-13 I put in this vine garden. I planted mamoth sunflowers across the front of the bed that way the vines can grow up the sunflowers and chain link fence I planted Armenian Cukes, Louffa Sponges, Pickling Cukes, and Yard long Beans, companion planted with radishes and carrots.

Finished bed minus chickens.

3-20-13 I planted my tomato starts Prudens Purple, Silver Fir Tree, Juliet Hybrid, Super Sweet 100, Glacier, and Better Boy companion planted with basil, and sunflowers.

Finished bed, I've recently heard that you should have your tomatoes in the ground by February 1st. You're supposed to plant and protect from frost for a bumper crop I'm gonna try that next year.

I thinned my apple and peach trees, I let my little Dorset Golden keep 2 of it's apples.

Thinned Florida Prince Peach full of peaches.

Sunshine Blue Berry full of berries.

My bearded iris's are starting to bloom.

The almond tree is full of almonds I'm crossing my fingers hoping these hold on over the last 3 years I've gotten 1 almond.

3-31-13 Here's the melon patch Honey Dew and Crimson Sweet companion planted with sunflowers and Lemon Balm.

4-5-13 Sweet Potato patch to get potato slips you simply start a sweet potato in a glass of water when the leaves emerge from the potato and are about 4 inches long peel them off the mother potato and place in a glass of water when the roots form up your slips are ready for planting.

Boysenberry vines are coming up along with artichokes both perennials from last year. Fruits and vegetables that return every year are great for lazy gardeners like me.

3-30-13 Bush Bean patch companion planted with fennel, rosemary, and sunflowers. See that stick in the middle back of the picture it's an Apple Banana tree I got from a banana/bamboo grower Phil Gardener.

3-30-13 Okra companion planted with marigolds.

3-30-13 Eggplant and Green Chili patch companion planted with sage, tarragon, and sun flowers.

Monukka grape leafing out.

Thompson Seedless leafing out.

Red Flame Seedless Grape leafing out.

Finally check out this crazy looking bug I found by my compost pile.

Apple Tree Grafting

This weekend I was lucky enough to take an apple tree grafting class taught by Patrick Haulman of the Arizona Rare Fruit Growers. At the end of the class I had my own brand new apple tree that I made by cleft grafting a piece of Sundowner scion wood onto a M-111 rootstock. Sundowner is a new apple in Phoenix and is considered to be the only red apple that will grow in Phoenix. Everything is still in the we'll see how it does mode. I also learned from Patrick that you can grow any apple in Phoenix and get varying results and production. That's right you can plant a Granny Smith and you just might get some apples off of it. The ratings of what and where apples will grow are actually set by commercial growers but the home orchardist can still get results just not on a commercial scale. I'm going to have to rewrite my intro.

M-111 rootstock

M-111 rootstock cut in half the red handled knife is a grafting knife and it only has an edge on one side.

The begining of the graft, slice down the middle of the rootstock twice the thickness of the knife.

This is the Sundowner scion wood and I've carved it into a V shape.

Next insert your V cut scion into the rootstock. Here is the important part all your cuts must be touching each other, any gaps and the graft will fail. I had to redo my V cut several times to get the perfect fit.

Now cover the entire graft in parafilm paper, this holds the graft together but allows it to breath.

Finally cover everything in green strechy tape, the tape comes off in a month. We'll see if I did a good graft, the tree should start budding out in a couple of months. When it does I'll transplant to a 2 gallon pot for the summer and once fall arrives I'll plant it out in the yard. If it grows????

WORK WORK WORK

This is by far my favorite time of year, everything is blooming, the weather is perfect, and I'm starting some new garden beds. It all equates to a bunch of work, but it's fun and rewarding. In this post I'll share where I get some of my cheap/free organic materials. I'll show you the elusive Giant Yellow Wood Boring Bee, we'll eat some weeds, and finally my asparagus is coming up.

This is Rovey Dairy it's down the street from my house, for $10 you can hand load a whole trailer full of composted steer manure. That's right that pile in the picture is all bull#$&!. It's a great deal my trailer is 4' wide by 8' long by 3' tall, filled to the top I get 14 wheel barrows of compost. I know there's no way it can be all organic with all the chemicals that are injected into dairy cows, but still it's a great deal.

This is not a commercial for Starbucks, to be honest with you I've never even set foot in a Starbucks. Last week I was talking with my parents about black compost gold (coffee grounds) I was saying that I wish I new someone that worked at a coffee shop, all those coffee grounds would be great for my compost and soil building projects. Low and behold my step dad rides his bike over to Starbucks the next day and asks the manager "what do you do with your coffee grounds?" The manager points over to a large trash can and says "we save all of our coffee grounds for the local gardeners, go ahead and help yourself to as much as you want" WTF corporate America reaching out and helping local gardeners. I've gotta get out more. So thank you Starbucks, thank you Ken, and go have all the vanilla lattes you can drink.

20 pounds of Starbucks coffee grounds.

I mulched around all my blueberry plants with the coffee grounds. Blueberries love acidic soil so it only makes sense to mulch them with acidic coffee grounds. So the plants have a free, organic, acidic fertilizer. 

I put the rest in my 2 compost bins

Ever see this weed before it's called Mallow. It is a close relative to Holly Hock. This time of year it growing everywhere. So grab some out of your yard and wash it off

Fry it up with some bacon fat, garlic chives, and onion.

When it's finished top with grated parmasean,salt and pepper to taste, and boom fried weeds believe it or not it's delicious.

It's about time my first Asparagus spear has sprouted I planted this bed a year and a half ago and this will be the first time I'll be able to harvest it. I get off on eating weeds just think how excited I am to get fresh Asparagus  spears.

Finally I discovered this guy he's a golden carpenter bee. All the carpenter bees I've seen are black this is the first golden one. You can find more info on them here. Do you see his hole in the log table. As a side note that's my wifes table when we sit outside. If she only new what lived inside of it. The golden bees are supposed to be the males of the species. These are very cool solitary bees, and they are great pollinators, they're always welcome around here.

Here he is going into his hole I'll try and get a better pic of him but taking good bee pics is tough.

PICTURE POST

I'm a little tired this morning so I'm just going to show you a bunch of pics of what's going down on the farm.

This guy showed up on the wall above my front yard garden a month ago.


Yesterday I found this.

And here she is almost ready to fly off if you look close you see her drivers side wing isn't unfolded all the way.

Almond tree in full bloom with a chicken grazing.

Baby almond, almonds are just like peaches, when they are growing they look like a peach but you don't eat the flesh, instead the flesh dries out and you eat the pit (an almond).

The one almond my 2 trees produced last year.

Sunshine Blueberry blooms, this blue berry probably has 500 flowers on it, my other 3 Misty Blueberries aren't blooming?????

Remember all my tomato and pepper starts?

Here they are none the peppers did well I'll have to work on that next year but I've got 40 tomato plants.

Burgundy Plum that I cut down to 24 inches is bustin out the Santa Rosa is still dormant.

Anna Apple in bloom.

Potatoes are coming up.

Remember compost pile omega

Here it is compost pile not so omega. That giant pile of organic matter has turned into this little pile of compost. The rule is 1000 pounds of organic matter will turn into 200 pounds of compost.

Southern Belle Necatarine in bloom.

Bonanza Peach in bloom.

FINALLY BE CAREFUL THE CHICKENS ARE WATCHING.