Hard to believe it has been 11 days since my last post.  Twelve?  Too long.  I am so busy, not much time for blogging.  Today I went out to the farm and planted the next row of corn.  Yesterday, Kylie and Michelle planted the beans in the first row.  We have corn plants already!  And they were noticeably taller today than yesterday.  They are doing well.

I also planted the next two zucchini plants. I only plan on doing the four, but I might add a couple more.  Those plants are hyper-productive.  The first two are out of the soil with good, strong cotyledons.

Aside from the above, we have a few strong sunflower seedlings and some borage.  I don't know if we have anything else.  All the other seedlings in the beds are either grass, weeds, or could be weeds or crops.  :)

At home, the tomato seedlings are kicking ass, most of the peppers are looking good, and we have onion seedlings.  We have a bunch of marigold sprouts, but they don't look too good.  The corbaci peppers have not sprouted.  Only one of about 9 seeds came up.  I am going to replace the corbaci with more of one of the other kinds.  I'm also concerned about the strawberries, wormwood and chamomile.

The lemon balm are growing, but the leaves don't seem so healthy.  They just feel dry and papery instead of moist/oily, and they tend to go yellow/brown or curl.  But the plants seem vigorous.  Go figure.  The mint and strawberry plants are strong.

All-in-all, a good start to our farming venture.  Challenges of course remain (understatement), and we will have to start figuring out a plan for moving our operations to New York City.

Much Progress

It has been a week since my last post, and much has been done, much has happened.  We now have seedlings of every type of tomato and pepper, with almost all of the tomatoes having sprouted.  Next mission is keeping the seedlings alive long enough to put into the ground.  When we do put them in the ground, we need a windbreak in place, to protect them from the high winds at our garden plot.  So far I would say the only weakness of the garden plot is its exposure to high winds.  It is a real issue that must be resolved in a real way.  Because the winds come across those open fields from the west and can mow down an entire garden of small plants.

Saturday and Sunday we went out to The Farm and put some serious work into the beds.  Two of the main beds are fully prepared with turned soil, the square foot grid, and protective screen.  In those beds, Kylie has planted the sunflowers, carrots and borage.  Everything else is seeded indoors.  On Sunday, I got two of the Three Sisters Mounds dug, and we planted the corn.  I will dig the third one today when I go out there after court.  Kylie planted sweet corn.  I need to see if there is an issue with cross-pollination between the sweet and indian corn and what we would have to do about it.

Pictures!

One view from our garden location.  These views are a big part of the peacefulness we feel out there.  It is a beautiful location.

An Overview.
This shot shows the whole garden area.  That black-clad figure is me.  Behind me is our friend's plot.  In the foreground is the shared excess plot.  That is where my Three Sisters Mounds, Zucchini Mounds, and Potato Patches will go.  In front of me are my beds.  The white square next to me is the water tank.  The farm has a creek and a pond.  My friend pumps the water into the tank, and we use it from there.

The Beds
You can see the grid laid over the soil.  That allows for the square-foot planning.  Those beds will have sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, cape gooseberries, strawberries, and the companion herbs (basil, borage, chamomile, marigold, nasturtium).

The Supervisor
What is a farm without a Supervisor keeping everybody in line?  There she is.  "OK, guys!  Keep working!  Make me lots of pretty green things to tear up!"

Fred and Kylie working diligently under the Supervisor's watchful eyes.  In the background are three of the cows my friend has.

The Horses.

The Chickens.
These are some of the lovely ladies who give us our eggs.  Thank you, ladies, keep up the good work!

So there you see the Farm.  Within a couple weeks, we hope to have a bunch of green coming out of that brown soil.  Enough work has gone into it -- and NO CHEMICALS.  No fertilizer, no pesticides, no weedkillers.  Just compost.  It is good soil.  The Ph is right, and it has a good blend of nutrients.  Over time, we will make it into great soil.

Meanwhile, back at Grace House Gardens, last night I put the rest of the seeds in soil.  First I planted the seed starting tray with:

6 Giant Cape Gooseberries
45 assorted Marigolds
3 Chinese Lanterns
9 Calendula
9 Wormwood (absinthium)

The first two will go to the Farm.  The last three will remain here at Grace House Gardens.  Also started were a tray of Gold Princess and Bronze d'Amposta onions for the Farm, and a tray of German Chamomile for both locations.

I forgot the damn wild strawberries!  Grr.  Today I will try to get those planted.

We have had some difficulty with the plants here.  We lost a strawberry plant to wind coming through the window.  The lemon balm are mostly not looking great after transplanting.  Could be transplanting shock.  Could be the high heat we had.  Could be over-watering.  The primrose bloomed and looked pretty.  The other strawberry plants are looking ok.  I think a small animal is going to steal my fruit.  The spearmint looks great.  We almost lost the basil and spinach on our windowsill to heat and wind, but managed to save it.

So that is what is going on here.

Almost all of the tomato seeds have sprouted!  The peppers still have not made an appearance, but they do take longer.

Last night I used our first produce.  I snipped some fresh basil leaves and tossed them in my spaghetti sauce.  A small thing, it was quite a charge.

Pollicello Farm consists of the main garden plot in Fluvanna, and then what we have here at Grace House.  I love taking care of these plants.  I love my plants...

Here at Grace House, I feel like I am watering my plants with free water.  I have several milk jugs by the kitchen sink, and when I am heating the water for dishes, I fill the milk jugs instead of just letting that water go down the drain.  Then I water the plants from those milk jugs.  Water is a significant part of our utility costs here at Grace House, so I feel good that my plants aren't costing me anything.

This morning, Farmer Fredd was up before the sun and on the road out to Pollicello Farm.  I got one bed completely ready for planting, and covered it with window screen to protect it from multiple harms.  I have a photo on my phone.  :)  I used twine and roofing nails to lay out the square foot grid.  On a second bed I turned the soil with my new garden fork.  Probably Tuesday evening I will go out and finish that bed.

I am glad that I have not been able to plant as quickly as I wanted, because last night was very cold.  The nights are still getting cold, and those low temperatures would be bad for seedlings.  So the new objective is to plant in the first week of May.  That will allow plenty of time to get all the beds and mounds worked.

Pictures coming soon...

Started last night:

12 Martino's Roma tomatoes
12 Royal Chico tomatoes
6 Green Zebra tomatoes
6 Black Giant tomatoes
6 Tess's Land Race Currant tomatoes
6 Thessaloniki tomatoes
6 Red Mushroom peppers
6 Long Red Cayenne peppers
6 Yellow Monster peppers
6 Corbaci peppers

I purchased these Burpee germinating kits.  The growing medium pods are kind of bs, but it has a wicking mat that should be useful.

Tonight I will start the onions, cape gooseberries, yellow and red wild strawberries, marigolds, chamomile and wormwood.

With the weather being so much cooler than usual, it is a good thing I have been unable to get things planted on the schedule I wanted.  Next year I will be prepared with some cool weather plants to put in the ground in late March, then follow those up with the normal warm weather plants.  In August I will begin planting fall crops.  Then in September I will plant next year's garlic and a few other things they recommend sowing in fall, and following that I will put in place the winter cover crop, probably buckwheat.

I think with the buckwheat, I will mow it once for the compost heap, then let it grow and turn it into the soil as recommended in the Bible.

Tonight I potted the strawberries and repotted most of the lemon balm.  The lemon balm were taking over the pot with the fennel and the sedum.  The sedum did not survive the operation.  I didn't really want it anyway, it was just in the pot when Bob gave us the fennel and lemon balm.  The fennel was being crowded out, so I removed most of the lemon balm, putting two clumps in a long, skinny pot, and another clump in a round pot by itself.  I left a clump in the big pot with the fennel.  Hopefully they will all survive.

Tomorrow I am supposed to plant, but I am not sure if I will be able to get out there.  It is supposed to rain.  I might just say screw it and plant in the rain, but I do have a bit of work to do first.  The soil needs more work.  It is full of large clumps to be broken up, and the beds need to be smoothed out.  But I have a lot of seeds to get planted.

I will make a longer post later, but for now I just need to record what was done yesterday.  We went to the farm on the way home from New York and I finished getting the beds prepared.  The soil still needs some work, but I got the bed frames settled around the beds, and all the spare soil from outside the frames shoveled in.  Tomorrow I will go out there and hopefully finish the soil work on the primary beds.

I am thinking of changing the plan to the extent that I plant half the plan now and use the existing  beds for potatoes/zucchini as well.  Then I can create additional beds for the other half of the crops, which will give some staggered harvesting.  I do not think we can successfully plant in the area I was going to put the Potato Patches and Zucchini Mounds without serious additional work and added compost.  This way we can get a full variety going, and then do the work on the additional garden area while the first planting grows.  I am also only going to plant three Three Sisters mounds at a time, with ten-fourteen days between each planting as Bob suggested.

False Starts and Premature Germinating

Reading my new Bible (thank you, FiL), I wish I had read this three months ago, before beginning the planning and construction of the garden.  C'est la vie, and it will be all right.  This year is a learning year anyway.  Next year's garden will have the benefit of what we have learned this summer.  I have already wasted a whole set of seeds, but it's all right, because they were crap GMO seeds bought at Lowe's.  From now on, we will only use heirloom seeds.  The idea is to return to a natural life free of corporate bullshit, not be dependent on buying their shit every year just to keep growing our food.  Tomatoes, peppers and carrots came out of the seed starter mix, only to die an early death on our windowsill.

Pictures will follow.  You will see how we have an area that was disced and tilled by a tractor, and on that area there are 8 raised beds defined and surrounded by wood.  Four of the beds are for the Jefferson Juniors, and the other four are for my friends.  In between is an area of as-yet unutilized soil.  In that area will be my zucchini mounds and potato patches.  The beds have been improved with compost.  I will buy a few small bags of compost for the new additions.

I wanted to plant a couple weeks ago, but that was impatience.  Even now, it is too early to plant almost anything.  Our friend Bob has planted some corn, so it is good time for that.  I am wondering if I should go ahead and start my tomatoes indoors, but then I will have to harden them off.  Maybe I should do so.  I do like the idea of sowing in the ground, though.  So I am going to give it a try.

Welcome to the Pollicello Farm Blog

Blogging the Jefferson Junior farm.  You might be aware that Jefferson was a passionate gardener who actually invented some of the crops and techniques we use today.  Monticello was a home for quite a bit of farming experimentation.  The man's mind was amazing.  He dove into so many different areas of knowledge, constantly seeking to educate himself and branch out into new fields.  He was a veritable blackberry bush of thinking.  He has been my role model since I was a young boy.  Perhaps instead of Jefferson Junior I should go by Jefferson's Pale Shadow.  I'm sure I will be able to match his accomplishment in one area: financial management.  Jefferson died penniless and in debt.  Be that as it may, he lived a rich life and left behind a wealthy legacy.


The Jefferson Junior family dives into gardening this year.  As with everything else, it is not done in half measures.  I dive into the deep end of everything.  Sometimes I drown, and other times I pick up the beat in time to make it powerfully to the other end of the pool.  The amount of knowledge out there to be gained, and the subtlety of organic gardening fascinate and enthrall me.  Every web site visited, every gardening book perused imparts more nuggets of wisdom.


So welcome to Pollicello Farm.  Any serious gardener needs to keep a journal.  This will be our journal.  Welcome, and enjoy the journey with us.


Pollicello Farm currently is located on 47 acres in Fluvanna County owned by a dear friend of mine.  Frank and I have been friends for ten years now, through soccer.  We both were coaches, and we formed a soccer association together.  Now we are going into self-sufficient gardening together.  The Jefferson Juniors have the use of as much gardening space as we can handle -- probably more.  The soil is good -- especially for central Virginia, which tends to be mostly red clay.  Two hundred years of cows have given it an excellent pH and a good nutritional makeup.  We have added a dump truckload of compost to our growing area.


The initial plan was for raised beds using the square foot gardening method.  I've used the method before, and liked the results.  Since then, the method has been revised, and we are taking advantage of the revisions.  However, as we have delved into research, and as ambition has latched onto the space available, we have expanded and modified the plan.  Just this weekend I stumbled across a book called The Vegetable Gardener's Bible with a method called WORD that seems to complement the principles of the square foot method nicely.  WORD stands for Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds and Deep soil.  Seeing as my original plan was for 4x12 foot raised beds, with complete reliance on organic methods and heirloom seeds, it does not take much to incorporate Ed Smith's ideas.  But we're not really using "rows" so to speak.  And his "wide rows" aren't rows in the traditional sense of long rows of a single crop.  His "rows" are actually mixed-crop beds that in practice have more in common with the square foot method than with traditional row gardening.


OK, so I started out planning four 4x12 beds for tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots and potatoes.  Now, the original four beds will be based on sunflowers and tomatoes, with peppers, onions, carrots, cape gooseberries and wild strawberries thrown in.  Companion planting principles will have borage, basil, chamomile, marigolds and nasturtiums included in the beds.  But the four beds are now just the core of the garden, and not even the largest part.


The largest amount of garden space is going to be devoted to the nine Three Sisters Mounds.  Yes, I have gone completely insane.  I'm not going to go into the Three Sisters method, because you can google the phrase and come up with 375,954 sites that will explain it.  Our mounds will be centered around a core of 13 corn plants.  Twelve pole bean vines will climb the cornstalks, while two spaghetti squash and two pumpkin vines will provide living mulch.  Borage, nasturtiums and marigolds will provide friendly benefits.


Also included in the new plan are two Potato Patches with potatoes, carrots and onions helped by borage, marigolds and nasturtiums; and two Zucchini Mounds with two zucchino rampicante vines assisted by the self-same borage, marigolds and nasturtiums (hereinafter "BMN").


Pollicello Farm is supplemented by the Grace House garden.  In that garden will be sunflowers, wormwood, pink bananas, lemon balm, mint, fennel, rosemary, thyme, oregano, calendula, spinach, green onions, chives, strawberries and roses.  Those are just the plants that we are adding.  The Grace House garden already contains Virginia Roses, a magnolia tree, crape myrtles, azaleas, hyacinths, lily-of-the-valley, violets and a number of other little flowers.


We are aiming for self-sufficiency as well as income.  The idea is to produce vegetables for eating and cooking, and materials for products such as soaps/cleaners, medical and skin care products, paper and cloth, etc.  Yes, extremely ambitious and probably shooting a bit high, but in keeping with our political philosophy and life goals.  How well we succeed, you will find out as we do.