This is the time of the year when lots of prepping starts. We have lots of eggs in the incubator, setting to hatch out of the next 7 days, one hen that’s broody and should hatch out this week, a bunch of fun breeds of chicks coming soon, honey bees that are building up for Spring and vacant garden slots that need tending!

Whew. It’s actually sort of exhausting when I write it out like that, but today’s post is focused on the Garlic/Shallot beds. I’ve found, over the years, that the main onslaught of the mid- to late-Winter onslaught of weeds hits hard towards the end of February. Therefore, I used the last week of January (and, because of usual delays…the first week of February…) to weed out my winter plantings (primarily garlic and shallots these days) and mulch or put a weed prevention down.

The beds all already have a few weeds (the early birds, I suppose) poking through. I was able to get the raised beds weeded today and put some weed prevention down. We’ll see how well it works.

Today, New Years Eve, I actually planted a small row of shallots (French Round) that I had neglected to plant when they arrived in the Fall. To be honest, I thought they were some odd onion bulbs I was experimenting with (I’m still trying to nail down my onion crop). I finally looked them up and discovered they were shallots!

Since I had no room in my raised beds (all mostly garlic, with some shallots), I went to the veggie garden and chose the row where I lay several inches of horse manure out to plan sweet potatoes this past year. I chopped up the ground a bit (it was brutally cold a week ago – like 6 degrees! – but it has been in the 60’s the last couple of days and the ground had mostly thawed,) and planted the small batch. I then covered with a light covering of more horse manure. The final plan will be to put some straw or leaves down on them over the next week.

This is late (by about 2.5 months!), but we’ll see how they do. Worse case, I get some bulbs to try again in the Fall of 2023, when they are supposed to be planted.

In addition to this small planting, I took around 4 of my shallow harvest from last year that I accidentally left out on the counter too long. They began to sprout, so I figured I’d go ahead and plant the things!

I have lots of plans for this year. With the new internet, I’m hoping to record these misadventures right here…

My tomato plants really put out a lot of produce this year – way more than I could eat or process (into canning recipes.) The other problem is that my plants were all gone by mid-September. Back in the day, I would have plants producing green tomatoes right up to frost. I haven’t had that out here in the Gooch yet, so I plan to tweak the process a bit. For next year, I’m going to shoot for 7 feet between stakes and reduce my plantings. I think I had something like 25 plants this year. We can probably get by with 10, but I will reduce my footprint to 20 next year – 2 grapes, 2 cherries, 4 Roma, 8 (or 10) regular. That will leave me with 4 (or 2) late plantings for early July.

Kale – this has been a big success. Started seeds inside in late July/early August. In 2021, I mistakenly moved them outside after a couple of weeks and the tiny seedlings were irreparably ravaged by some pest. This year, I kept them inside until end of August, when I moved them to the porch to get acclimated to the sun for a week or two and then planted them.

I think that I have around 10 plants, which is more than my family currently needs (with the other Fall greens we have coming in.) It should also be noted that they were easy to divide after sprouting, so a plug tray of 6 is probably all I need to start. If I decide to can or otherwise preserve them one day, I’d want to plant more.

Pest Note – Not sure if it’s all kale or just my variety, but the pests still came for the plants when I moved them outside. I found some kind of work/caterpillar eating on the underside of the leaves. Once I hit them with some spray, I ended the threat, but it’s something to be watchful of.

Swiss Chard – This was a new planting for me this year. I only ended up with 4 good plants from my experiment with a 6-cell tray. I treated them like I did the kale, but it was probably not necessary. I never had any bug trying to eat on the chard. In addition, those four plants gave off a ton of produce (and are still going after the light freeze we had the past two nights. The variety that I used this year had green stalks – for fun, I want to try red stalks next year.

Broccoli – Although the plants look huge, I do not see any fruit. I started these in July, so I expected to finally have success with these things. They also suffered some pest issues, so starting them even earlier is likely to be problematic. This is likely to be my last try of these, for now.

Brussel Sprouts – as with the Broccoli, the plants look healthy, but there is no sign of fruit. I may try these again, but only to use up old seed. I do not seem to be able to get these to be successful.

Spinach – My spinach seeds continue to fail. They start, but they don’t seem to make it much further. It’s about 70 degrees in my sun room, where I start them, but I can’t seem to get them to hold (I’ve actually had success in past years, so not sure what happened in 2022.) I ended up purchasing 6 plants, of which 2 have really taken off, while the rest sort of just plod along. This is the one plant that I need to plant more of. Maybe a dozen plants for 2023.

There are so many updates to give, but I think I will focus on one garden item and one husbandry item. On the garden, we decided to plant sweet potatoes for the first time (I mean, ever!) I had built two raised beds for another purpose and they simply lay empty for much of the Spring. When it was clear that they would get no other use, I ordered some “sweet taters” and planted some slips. Although I was advised to pull them in late September, I simply watched the weather and decided to pull them this last weekend. They could have stayed longer, but now is the time for me to put in the shallots and garlic, which will all go into those beds. So, “taters got to go!”

Interestingly enough, there were a TON of sweet potatoes. They had really gone crazy with the upper growth (in fact, they grew so much that I plan to experiment with them along the base of my sunflower plants IN THE GARDEN next year – to see how well they keep the weeds down,) but I simply didn’t know how they would turn out. I would hazard a guess that I pulled around 60 or 70 pounds of potatoes from 5 plants in that raised bed. Many of the potatoes were very large (at least compared to what we get in the store), so I am not sure what the real results are yet (they need to taste good before I can call this a success!) My plan is to try a couple this weekend and then attempt to cure the rest for longer term storage. Ideally, I will be able to create slips from them next year and have a sustainable source of good, sweet starch.

I have also decided to add two more raised beds, between now and Spring. These 4 x 8 beds really knocked it out of the park for me. They are a foot high, with perhaps 10″ of soil (actually, pretty much all cow manure) in them. It’s a really good way to plant.

The final update is on the cows. We have cleared the last of the fence line that was encumbered with vines and other vegetation. This weekend, the plan is to begin to run the high tensile fencing on the inside of the wooden board fencing. Once I get this run along all of our outer perimeter, I can create paddocks by running lines down the middle of my fairly large pastures. This will allow a better rotational grazing plan. At any rate, that’s the plan for now.

I hope to get this blog going a bit more now, and add some videos. It’s been hard to date, given everything else going on in life.

God bless.