Home farming, the beginning

by Annie @ Mama Dweeb on May 3, 2011

Josh’s dream is coming true! I am 100% on board with his home farm and eager to get in there and help him make it grow. He has put countless hours of planning and research into home farming – namely of the square foot variety – and when I shared with him that I wanted to learn he couldn’t wait to get out there and show me.

I am joining two other wonderful bloggers as we participate in the Triscuit and Better Homes & Gardens’ Home Farming Challenge. Cat from 3 Kids and Us is doing a raised bed, Culinary Concoctions by Peabody is doing container gardening, and I will dig into the earth as I plant an in-ground plot. All three of us will be posting from now until August about our home farms – the sore backs, the cute buds and the frustrations – on our individual blogs and over at the Better Homes & Gardens page.

Gotta tell ya!

Before I gush about my little home farm, I have to tell you about something awesome Triscuit is doing. Go to HomeFarming.com – this is a fabulous place for beginners. They have tools where they help you create your own home farm, complete with suggested dates for planting in the ground and a community of other home farmers ready to answer all your questions. Plus, you can enter to win $1,000 for the ultimate home farm! This is going on from April 12th-25th, so hurry on over and enter.

Here we are, at the beginning of home farming season! This early on we have two options – plant the hardy root plants in the ground and start the more wussy – err, “not frost tolerant” – plants indoors in small containers until all dangers of frost have past.

While some people start their home farms with a hoe or tiller, we have a tractor. We live on 20 acres of land, so we are going to plant almost every kind of plant we can and share our experiences (and hopefully success stories) with you. Josh and David mowed a plot that is roughly 100 ft x 50 ft. Then, Josh used a rototiller on a spot that is 1/4 of the plot for our root plants.

Since Josh is all about the square foot gardening, he took some scrap wood from his shop and constructed 1ftx1ft squares to divide up our ground plot. Then, we took a magic marker and wrote on the board what we planted in that spot.

I got my hands into the dirt and planted the seeds! This is the first time I have ever planted anything. Josh is the gardener but I am quickly learning.

I started out with carrot seeds, and dang those are some small seeds! It was really difficult to keep only 2 seeds from falling into each little hole. I have a feeling the plots I planted will be a tad overgrown compared to the ones Josh planted. He is so much more careful.

I will admit, Josh got a lot more seeds planted than I did. We both agreed that since Josh is more particular about home farming, as soon as the kids needed one of us, it would be me that attended to them.

Lucy watched me plant the carrots. I only got one square foot of carrots planted before she announced she was not having fun anymore. When it was cooler out we came back out and she let me get another 5 minutes of planting done. Josh sweetly took her inside so I could plant at least 5 more square feet.

While I planted, Lizzie and David had their tiny watering pots out and watered my new seeds. Lizzie loved watering them more than David did. He got distracted by a long stick and dug into the dirt with it.

By the end of the day we finally planted seeds in 1/4 of our plot. We have carrots, lots of varieties of lettuce, cabbage, and different varieties of onions in the ground. Josh has many more plants in containers indoors and has even started a few herbs for an herb garden for me.

I can’t wait to see them start to sprout! I hope I can keep them weeded and watered. Josh bought some hoses that should make watering easier for me. I have a short video I made introducing you to our plot, sharing a few tips and my own thoughts on home farming:

Tips & Thoughts I share in the video:

We are stagger planting: This means we are not putting all our seeds in the ground on the same week. We will plant a few carrots this week and a few more next week. This way they will grow in batches and we can harvest them for many more weeks.

I hate pre-planning: I’m not very good at hashing out minute details to plans. So having Josh sit down with me and go over exactly where each plant would be and how many to put in each little square foot plot just frustrated me. I want to just put the seeds in the ground and watch them grow. This will be a good learning experience for me. I’m going out of my comfort zone and planing out the small details.