We have big news: I have officially lost my mind. I had talked myself out of raising any baby chicks this year to replace the 8 annoying chickens. Then we went to the feed store to get some more seed potatoes and I broke down after looking at the baby chicks. ARG!!!! So we came home with 3 Rhode Island Reds, 3 Red Sex Links, and 3 mystery chicks (probably Araucanas) that were half priced. A couple days later, at a different farm store, I picked up 2 Black Australorps and 2 Welsummers. The bad news is that Lee has banned me from feed stores until chick season ends. The good news is that the chicks are outside in the brooder rather than in my house. Thank goodness for the reconfigurable chicken house Lee built last year.

We weeded around Lee’s hops, thinned them, laid down a nice layer of composted pig manure, and covered it in bark-o-mulch. This picture is several days old–they have already grown two feet since it was taken. We are expecting a pretty nice crop this year.

We ran out of our fertilizer mix like we do every year, so it was time to make up a new batch. We use Steve Solomon’s “Complete Organic Fertilizer” recipe for everything in the garden. The formula is designed to maximize vegetable nutritional value, without encouraging needlessly bulky plant growth. It has worked well for us for several years now, but we also need to find a source for compost to maintain the soil organic matter content. While some people fertilize only with compost, in western Oregon that can encourage symphyla infestation (we have enough problems with them already). The chicken coop only yields enough compost for a couple garden beds each year, and when we eventually get sheep they will be on pasture full time (no handy manure piles).

We had to replant tomatoes as I planted them earlier then I usually do (kicking myself) and a cold snap came through and killed them.

When I was watering our cole crops today I was smashing cucumber beetles left and right. It looks like it’s going to be a bad year on that front.

We planted our last row of potatoes tonight.

I planted a row of winter squash and Lee set up the drip irrigation for it. We bought the starts at a plant sale for our local youth farm. We have so much of the garden planted right now that we are running out of room in the existing beds. I feel so on top of things!

Lee got three pots of timber bamboo today. He is very excited and has plans of making bamboo fences and structures. The next couple days will probably find us preparing a permanent location for a bamboo grove.

In the next picture, you can clearly see where the beds were last year. They tilled up super nice compared to the former walk paths. (Compaction in action.) Further to the left, the ground hasn’t been used in three years and will require considerably more passes to break up the soil to an appropriate depth.

Lee wanted to use raised beds this year. Raised beds increase the amount of loosened topsoil we have to work with, help the soil dry out sooner so they can be worked earlier in the year, and keep the growing areas well defined so we don’t step in the beds and compact the soil. That’s the theory anyway. We will see how we like them.

Three years ago we planted our first six blueberry bushes along the edge of the garden. We quickly realized they were in a bad location. We need to lower the soil pH for the blueberries but raise it in the garden, so having them right next to each other causes an unresolvable conflict of soil chemistry. They are also constantly in the way (especially when you are trying to turn a large tiller at the row end). Since then we’ve been planting blueberries along the northern garden fence, in an area we’ve set aside for perennial food crops. Lee moved two of the misplaced blueberries last year and is determined to move the rest this year. For the most recent move, he sliced out a cube of soil around the blueberry using a digging hoe and dug a square hole at the destination. Then he moved the clod of dirt in a carefully orchestrated debacle involving a piece of plywood, a shovel, a mallet, a hoe, and me. It was quite the project. Only three more to go…

I found most of the asparagus has returned. They were lost in a sea of weeds. I think we may actually get to harvest some this year if we can keep the weeds down. I’ve read that asparagus like salty soil. Has anyone tried salting their asparagus beds to reduce the weed load?

There has been a lot of weeding going on. Even though Lee has his new tiller toy he is still using his hoe for weeding and I’ve been getting dirty hands. The weeds are growing like crazy, but we are catching up.

One of my 2009 vintage seed rows sprouted with a vengeance. These turnips were the most successful row of old seed. Everything else is spotty. I think I may need to thin these a tiny bit …

It’s not that I gave up on fixing it. I just let other projects divert my attention for the last 11 months. However, with summer on the horizon and another season of fighting loosing battles against the weeds, I decided it was time to order the remaining replacement parts from our local BCS dealer.

This put thoughts of BCS tools back in my mind–a subject that I tend to get very enthused about. (I think it’s the absurdly awesome mental image of cutting hay with a blue garden tiller mounting a 5 foot sickle bar while being towed on a sulky.) So, one thing led to another … first I was browsing (and drooling over) the implements list, then I was searching Craigslist, and finally I came home with this:

That would be a BCS 725 tiller with an 8HP Kohler engine and the BIO100 chipper/shredder attachment. I got both for less than the original (still not working) BCS 830 cost. The BCS 725 is at least 18 years old and uses the older spline PTO attachment. Spline-to-3-jaw adapters are readily available, so it’s not a big disadvantage. (If you are looking at a used market BCS tractor, you should consult the BCS model chart available here to determine age, compatibility, and basic features.)

My particular BCS 725 was a single owner machine, bought from our local dealer and serviced there regularly. The tiller sat indoors, as evidenced by its near total lack of rust. The motor still starts on the first pull. The seller said he barely used the tiller implement, which I confirmed by checking the tines:

They are practically new. Funny how much easier it is to buy something used when you are familiar with the product. Immediately after we got home I took the tiller out to the garden and shredded some grassy walkways. This may be the first year our garden doesn’t look like a sod farm.

The chipper was left outside more (thus the rust), but with only two moving parts there’s not a lot that can go wrong. I have to admit that I’ve wanted one of these BIO100 chippers since I first read about them. The chipping blade can handle 3″ limbs. Behind the blade are 28 swinging hammers and the main flywheel weighs 37 pounds. It’s built like a tank, weighing 210 lbs before you attach the tractor, and the design has changed little in the last 20 years. There’s just one problem: they cost $1600 retail. Fortunately, through the wonders of Craigslist, I got the tractor, tiller, and chipper for about 2/3rds of that.

I may not have a garage full of Italian-made sports cars, but I now have a shed full of Italian-made garden tillers and that seems so much more practical!

Evil the rooster had his pen mowed. He wasn’t exactly chipper with all the activity, but he did his best to strut his manly stuff and look suitably concerned.

Lee tilled up several garden beds by hand with his grub hoe. He said the soil broke up beautifully. These beds have been in use for several years now, and spent the recent winter months under a sheet compost of chicken litter.

I prepped the new beds with Steve Solomon’s fertilizer mix and worked it in.

I filled up my remaining beds with seeds and starts.

Grow little broccolies, grow!

There was an old Brussels sprout plant left behind from last season that sprouted the most delicious and delectable tender shoots. As you can guess, Lee and I were munching on them.

Lee’s Note: Brussel sprouts must be the world’s most overachiever vegetable. First they produce a tall stalk covered with dozens of Brussel sprouts. If left uneaten for months, they next head out a single larger cabbage. The cabbage eventually bursts, the stalks tip over from the weight, and an abundance of Broccoli Rabe sprouts from the main stalk. I’m fascinated to see what it will produce next–hopefully chocolate!

Lee spent a couple evening hours on three days and made an amazing amount of progress clearing out blackberries with his grape hoe. I followed after him and raked up all the dead grass and bramble mix. We want to plant some grass seed here to help compete with the inevitable regrowth of the blackberries.

Lee also dug out the biggest blackberry root either of us had ever seen.

Finally, we got the chainsaw going and started cutting firewood from the nut trees that broke up in the snow storm. There are so many small trunks that it’s a slow process. On the plus side, no splitting!

The rains have finally ended and my cold is on the decline, so I have high hopes for this next weekend.

I call the picture below my “2009 garden row.” I’ve heard it was a good year for … um … carrots. Obviously, the 2009 vintage of carrots was so sought after that you can no longer find them in stores. So I’ve heard.

I’ve also decided to skip the metal garden label stakes we have and just use split cedar shingles with permanent marker labeling. I’ve found that the wood stakes last longer in the rain than masking tape labels on the metal stakes. What do you all use for garden row labels?

I’m actually really excited because I feel so prepared for this garden year. Not that I am of course, but because I went through my Maritime Northwest Garden Guide to find what I can plant this month. Then I sorted through my garden seed, picked out those varieties, and labeled my stakes. All I need now is prepared garden beds and I’m set.

If you live in the Northwest and you haven’t heard of Maritime Northwest Garden Guide, I strongly recommend it. It is one of my two favorite gardening books, Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades being the other. What I LOVE about this book is it provides month by month planting guides with lists of vegetable, so you know what you should be planting or starting under cover at any given time. I don’t have a good memory for this sort of thing, so the book is my yearly reference. It also calms Lee down when he is pestering me about whether I have planted cucumbers or broccoli yet. I can pull out this book and tell him I DON’T have to do it, because it’s not listed for this month. Basically, it’s a marital gardening life saver. hehe

After I chopped off their pumpkin heads and scooped out their guts, I filled them full of the pie filling.

I hate to say this, but I felt very Martha Stewart’ish while making these. They were that cute.

They didn’t taste quite like pumpkin pie but they were good. It was a delicious fall sort of comfort food.

All my squash vines had bad cases of powdery mildew and were dying. My Jack Be Little pumpkin plant produced the most squash of any. It was a very bad garden year for squash. The next most productive variety was Carnival with four whole squash!

I seemed to have averaged one pumpkin or winter squash per vine with a couple of plants producing two. Pathetic! I’m not sure whether this was caused by the late planting, the very cool summer, or lack of pollination. It could very well be all three.

I have one very late green pumpkin that isn’t going to ripen in time. I left it out in the garden hoping for more sun. Most likely the frost or rain will kill it and then I will just feed it to the chickens.

I pulled out my Tiger Eye bean plants and shelled them. The beans did an excellent job drying on the plants. Someday we will grow enough dry beans to actually eat some.

Lee dug our two rows of potatoes. We planted them in late June (along with most everything else in our garden) and weren’t sure if we would even get a harvest.

We ended up with 108 lbs of potatoes from our 60 linear feet of row. That’s on par with past yields, and not too bad considering we planted third-generation potatoes really late in the season.

The popcorn is going to be a bust I think. I checked several ears of corn Saturday, but none of them were ready. We’ve had torrents of rain since then. I am expecting the corn to rot, as I don’t think there is much sun in the forecast for October. With the potatoes beds nicely tilled, I am going to plant garlic in them as soon as it stops raining. On a bad note, as we were digging potatoes we think we found a few symphylans. I am going to do the water soil test to make sure. If we do have them, rototilling and crop rotation seem to be your options for dealing with this pest.

My one cayenne pepper plant has turned red with peppers. I haven’t actually picked them yet as I’m not sure what to do with them. Does anyone else out there plant things without knowing what to do with them?

My Brussel sprouts are still growing. I tend to refer to them as “green balls” as I seem to forget their name 99% of the time. I actually had my first taste of Brussel sprouts this year, which was why I decided to plant some. It’s never too late to try a new veggie.

Our favorite cherry tomatoes, Sun Gold, are still chugging along. I actually have a lot of tomatoes that need to be picked, but I’ve been burnt out on canning for the last few days. As a final preserving project for the year, I’m going to can up some batches of stew tomatoes.