1000 pound challenge accepted

Vegetable and herb seedlings for the 2012 season.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012.

A friend of mine who writes "The Good (& Simple) Life" blog has thrown down the gauntlet. With a 500 square foot area in which to garden, she has vowed to achieve a yield of 1000 pounds of produce over the course of one full calendar year -measured from April 1st 2012 through March 31, 2013 (assuming the Mayan prediction for the world to end in 2012 doesn't come to pass).

That's two pounds of produce per square foot and it's not an easy goal. It helps that Angie, the woman behind "The Good (& Simple) Life" blog's 1000 pound challenge, is planning her garden in the state of Georgia where the growing season is significantly longer than ours here in New Hampshire. Conversely, the fact that she's doing it all organically makes it arguably more difficult.

North vs. South Gardening Challenge

We, here at the "Living with the Land" blog, are taking up the 1000 pound challenge and we'll be comparing results over the course of the year. We will represent northern gardeners while Angie will represent the South.

Size Matters

As Angie noted in her challenge post, she will be growing "tomatoes (enough for canning), peppers, eggplant, zucchini, winter squash (my personal obsession), lettuces, cabbages, fennel, onions, garlic, peas, beans, cucumbers, celery, okra, beets, radishes, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, watermelon, spinach, Swiss chard," and other items as whimsy dictates throughout the year on her rectangular 20 x 25 foot garden plot. That's 500 square feet of garden space.

My garden plots total about 375 square feet and I'll add in another 30 square feet of herb garden. I will not count other producers like an existing grape vine, apple trees, maple trees or other edible wild plants growing throughout my 5.25 acre yard for the purposes of the challenge. I will, however, keep a record of these things as a side note since it may be of interest to those trying to live with the land.

What to Grow This Year

Since I still have some time before the regular growing season starts here, I hadn't yet fully planned what I'll be growing yet. I have already started some seedlings indoors, however. So far I have several varieties of tomatoes including grape, Roma, and Better Boy hybrids, among others. I also have started summer squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, and red cabbage. I have a handful of 2nd year leeks already in the ground along with garlic chives, asparagus crowns, and some garlic cloves planted last year, and have about 40 square feet of the garden area dedicated to strawberries.

I expect that I'll be planting garden peas, pole beans, chili peppers (several varieties), bell peppers, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, various greens such as mustard and arugula, and a variety of herbs. My herb garden already contains a few plants that are able to overwinter here with minimal protection: sage, chives, lemon thyme, peppermint, and oregano. I'll weigh the herbs as freshly picked, rather than dried. I use them both ways.

Organic Versus Not so Much

Angie is a committed organic gardener and even uses as much passive watering (collected rain-water) as possible. I am less avid, but still like to avoid using chemicals on my food where ever possible. My water comes from a well on my property. I compost our vegetable and plant scraps along with some of the chicken manure that our backyard flock produces. I have been known to spray Miracle Grow on my garden, use a fungicide for powdery mildew infestations, and once I even used Sevin insecticide for a particularly bad infestation in the garden. I sometimes buy composted cow manure and peat moss to enrich the soil if I am adding a new section of garden. My gardens are raised bed (about 180 square feet) and on a terraced hillside (the remainder, minus about 30 square feet of non-contiguous herb garden).

I have mentioned the short growing season here. As I write this, it is snowing here despite the fact that we had two days of 83+ degree heat last week, naturally followed by two nights at 20 degrees or less. We are in what New Englanders refer to as "mud season." Even my terraces and raised beds are too saturated with water for planting even if the temperatures allowed. With a few exceptions, a significant portion of any seed I put in the ground now would likely rot. As long as we get nights that are below freezing the soil temperature is going to stay low, although the terraces help on that front.

Early spring planting here is a wager. You plant your toughest crops and hope that the weather doesn't call your bluff. Row covers or a small greenhouse could provide protection and greatly extend our growing season for some of the hardy crops, but I don't want to spend more to grow my own food that it would cost me to buy it at a local farmer's market.

The North Poised to Take an Early Lead

A quick survey or the gardens shows me that the warm days we had last week have kicked a few things into gear already. On day one of the challenge, I'll be able to make a token harvest and, hopefully, take the lead over "The Good and Simple Life." It'll be just a handful of chives, some lemon thyme and a bit of oregano, and possibly those few remaining leeks, but if our northern garden is going to have a chance, then every ounce counts and a lead is a lead.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Despite a much shorter productive growing season, we do have the advantage of mature garden beds. The majority of our garden has soil that has been prepared in years past with compost and manure mixed with the sandy and unproductive soil that naturally occurs in our yard. Depending upon the soil quality of Angie's yard, and the amount of available organic compost and composted chicken manure she has available, she may struggle to attain maximum productivity for the first year as nutrients are added into what may  (or may not be) less than optimal soil.

Goals and Techniques

I also want to mention that both of us are aiming for a well-rounded garden whose goal is to provide as much of the table produce for our families as possible. If this were a straight productivity race, we'd each figure out which one or two crops are the best producers by weight and ground area required and plant only those one or two items. Conversely, I expect we'll both benefit from intensive gardening methods and by using a vertical approach such as providing vertical surfaces so that cucumbers and other vines grow upward, letting pole beans climb high up posts and the stalks of sunflowers, while squash and other ground covers act as a natural mulch holding in moisture and preventing soil nutrient run-off.

We'll use successive plantings to try to double up on area used for short-lived plants (like spring peas). and, of course, as I've mentioned, I'll be giving our veggies as much of an early start as possible by seeding them indoors until the weather allows them to move into the garden. While we are having fun with the race to 1000 pounds of garden produce, the real goal is to learn to optimize the available garden space that we have, share best practices, and pass on a little of what we learn to others.

Game On!

We'll detail and compare techniques, obstacles and results with Angie over the next year. Hopefully, the two of us and our readers will learn a few things throughout the process. Don't forget to participate by sharing your favorite tricks for higher yields as comments on the blogs as well.

Game on!

Fishing is Foraging, Too

I often talk about wild edibles, plants that grow wild in field and forest that can be eaten. Foraging need not, however, be limited to vegetarian fare. Even for those who don't hunt, fishing can be a plentiful source of nutritious food.

I prefer to fish the clear, contaminant-free brooks and streams that run down from the mountains here in New England. Their sources are high above any old mills, factories or storm drainage systems so the water is clean and pure as it self-aerates by splashing down over little waterfalls and endless rocky cascades.

These streams ore often home to brook trout, a small but tasty fish that is easy to clean and easy to cook. Brook trout fishing is a more active sport than some other types of fishing because you have to move along the stream searching for the small pools where the fish tend to hide. Although I enjoy all types of fishing, brook trout fishing is one of my favorites.

I was just given a regular fishing column for Yahoo! Sports where my first fishing article, about Brook Trout Fishing, was published yesterday. You can read it at here. I'm mentioning it here, because I think fishing is an often overlooked part of the self-sufficiency equation. For the low cost of an annual state fishing license, you can easily catch enough fish to supply your family for a year.

Broody Hens

Broody hens can be helpful if you're trying to hatch more chicks, or harmful if you're trying to get all your hens to lay eggs for the table.Either way, if a hen goes broody at the wrong time of year for hatching new chicks, you've got to either wait it out or take steps to shorten the broody period.

One of our broodiest hens decided that February 15th is a good day to begin brooding. It's too early to begin hatching here and I prefer to use an electric incubator anyway, so I decided to remove the eggs and move the hen off the layer box. Sometimes, if the season isn't right the brooding instinct will be a bit lessened and it can be easier to break them. I should know if that's the case in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, here's a more complete guide that I wrote about broody hens.

Chicken-napper Thwarted by Stout Coop



Foot prints on the side of the chicken coop this morning tell of a
failed overnight attempt at entry.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

 When you're trying to be as self-sufficient as practical, a single mis-step can set you back. This is particularly true when it comes to farm animals like the chickens that we keep. We have three chicken coops that are all built like bunkers. It was more expensive and it took more effort to build them so strongly, but there's a good reason for it.

Our yard is surrounded by forest, miles and miles of forest depending upon which direction you go. Lots of things live in the forest, including a bull moose that wandered through our yard last week. Other local residents include bears, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and weasels, just to name a few. When it comes to these wild predators, chickens make a pretty tempting meal.

Two of my chicken coops survived a prolonged and concerted effort at entry by a large black bear. The third, unfortunately, had a weak point and the bear after a week of failed attempts, was able to rip and access door to shreds and pull out two chickens. last year. After that, I added a stronger door and checked all the coops for weaknesses. Since then, nothing has been able to get at the chickens locked up in the coops at night.

This morning, however, when I went out to feed and water the birds, I saw some interesting marks on the side of the largest of the three coops. Muddy claw marks that appear to be canine in nature (or possibly vulpine) showed a recent attempt at entry. The prints reach about four feet high on the side of the coop. It could be a dog, a coyote, or a fox. There are, according to all wildlife and forestry service folks that I know, no wolf populations left in New Hampshire, certainly not in southern New Hampshire.

Believe it or not, the worst of the three, should it gain access to the chickens, would be a domestic dog. Dogs enjoy chasing and catching chickens and will often kill an entire flock before they get bored and wander off home. Foxes and coyotes are a big more pragmatic. They'll take a couple of chickens and may also kill any overly aggressive roosters out of necessity, but having learned how to get a good chicken dinner, they'll come back on a regular basis until they decide that they can't get at the chickens or that the risk is too high.

Paying a little extra attention to chicken coop security can save your flock.

On a side note: As the days are getting longer, this morning we found four times the number of eggs that we've been getting for the last couple of months (due to the short winter days). That will come in handy as we are expecting to add two more members to our household this spring when my wife's parents move in with us. We should be all set for chicken and eggs, but we'll definitely need to think about expanding the gardens.

Identifying and preventing frostbite in backyard chickens

In New England, especially in the winter, the weather can pose a serious hazard to backyard chickens. Whether you let them free range or keep them fenced in, your chickens will need a secure and well-built coop in order to survive the winter and avoid frostbite. I wrote a piece for Yahoo! Voices recently talking about this issue. It describes what it means when your chicken's comb turns black in the winter, how to identify frostbite, and most importantly the simple steps you need to take to prevent it from occurring in your flock in the first place.

Read the entire article here: Why are my chickens' combs turning black?

Pruning Our Concord Grape Vine

Too much vegetative growth and lower grape yield
can be the result of not pruning your grape vine enough.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

This year our Concord Grape vine, now about 3 years old, did really well. It produced 7 pounds of grapes that we harvested, plus those eaten by the chipmunks. Those grapes, in turn, yielded just about 7 liters of wine which is aging peacefully on a shelf. It will sit for at least a year before we open the first bottle and see how we've done with the first batch from our own grapes.

The knock on Concord grape wine is that it tends to be highly acidic and can be a bit harsh on the palate. There are steps that can be taken to minimize this or correct it entirely, but we made a very basic batch without taking any of those steps this year. I'll taste it next year just before preparing next season's batch and decide then whether to make alterations to the basic approach we took this year.

Meanwhile, it is the end of the season and although it has been unseasonably warm (the forsythia is blooming again for the second time since September), the growing season is over and it is time to prune the grape vine. This should only be done once it drops its leaves and is definitely shut down for the winter.

Grape vines should be pruned very heavily. I am training mine to weave in and around the spindles of our back deck railing so that it will look as though we have a living green railing next year and beyond, so I'll leave a little more of the vine structure this year for shaping.

For a really good guide to pruning grapes, check out this page from Ohio State University's Extension Service.

Most people tend to either neglect pruning their grape vines altogether or prune far too lightly. The result of under pruning is that the grape vine has so many branches and leaves that it has to spend too much energy building and maintaining that vegetative growth that the yield of fruit suffers. Let's face it, the main point of having a grape vine is to produce grapes, so pruning for maximum fruit yield should be an important part of your pre-winter grape vine maintenance.

One way to determine if your pruning regimen is working is to weigh your grapes each year. If your total harvest starts dropping and there was no unusual cause that you can identify (very bad weather, disease, etc.), then you may want to revisit the way you're pruning the vine.

Next spring we are planning to add another variety of grape vine as well. We are looking for a good hardy vine and will probably look at those grape varieties that grow well in upstate New York as the winter's are similar there. We'd like to get a sweeter grape that is better for eating or producing a more palatable sweet wine. I'll keep you informed as we make the decision on which variety we get. Whichever it is, we'll expect very few grapes the first year after planting as the plant concentrates on establishing itself rather than fruiting.

---------

Read my blog entry on the Grape Tumid Gallmaker, an insect that creates unusual growths on the vine tendrils or grape stems.

Putting up Green Beans by Blanching and Freezing Them

"Green beans are one of most prolific vegetable plants in my garden, year after year. Once the plants start producing, they'll keep producing green beans all season long. The pole bean varieties will continue growing and actually increase their production over time as the plant continues to get bigger and bigger. With just six pole bean plants in my garden, I am picking them at least two days out of three and getting more than my wife and I can eat each time we pick." So what do we do? We blanch and freeze the excess and enjoy green beans all year round.

Read more about how to optimize production of green beans and blanch and freeze them here.