Growing Food with Water Catchment

This is a February planting of beets, broccoli and lettuce.

Second cutting is going to be great on this patch.

New expanded beds all set up with irrigation from the cistern... Growing here now are potatoes , chard, lettuces, kales, cabbages,  radishes, beets, broccoli, mustards and soon sunflowers down the middle bed with the chamisa at the end. 

Inside view of the far left hoop.

Red Russian Kale 

Potatoes

Propigating Hops From Rhizomes

When we first started this garden blog a few years ago we got a female Chinook hop plant. It has since given us bitter and aromatic flowers every season that have been used in all the homebrews from the Spotty Dog. It is also spreading like crazy and it is time to divide it up a bit.

Summer is Fading Fast.

some harvesting happening but mostly just busy. Cutting firewood, splitting and stacking. Getting ready for what The Old Farmer's Almanac is calling a dry, mild winter. Still want a pile of wood the size of the house. Making pickles tomorrow and canning tomatoes next week. three batches of homebrew done. Planting kale from our seed in a coldframe soon too. Many exciting things happening down on the Spotty Dog mini-farm. more soon. photos are hard to take when you are busy living life. we will try. this is an especially beautiful time of year in Northern New Mexico. Just feels like winter is creeping up on us and the wood pile needs to multiply. along with our pantry stock.

some recent fotos:

Sunflowers are pretty:

Homebrew

two most recent batches of brew in the second stage of fermentation:

Brewed with all homegrown hops. In the past this would have gone up on The Homebrew Blog , but this just makes more sense.

Summer Time

dehydrating mini apricots from a friend's tree downtown:

thank you rain:

Chinook Hops...

....are taller than ever!

new extended pole for them to grow an extra six feet or so.

Hops

Chinook plant is making a comeback after already being this tall and nicely trimmed down to one main shoot. Trimming all the new growth off that plant almost every other day just to keep all the energy into production of flowers and roots instead of other shoots.

April, Twenty-Ten

garlic:

things are getting done.

clover all over the main garden:


garlic tops coming up!:

pest management

future greenhouse/ coldframe:
got these two double-pane french doors on freecycle and have two more coming my way. that is already a twelve foot long panel/wall eight feet high. should grow some tasty winter tomatoes. or whatever we decide to do with it.

The big harvests are just around the corner.

many silvery fir tree tomatoes in today's harvest wagon:

ripening tomatoes and harvesting hops.

garlic braids curing.

long time no blog

berry patch:

harvesting hops, potatoes and finally some rain!

new potatoes!!

our first farmer's market!

irises we cut for market:

spring projects: berry patch and hop trellis

for the past week I've been taking care of the landlord's pig and nine chickens.. good times but i wouldn't really want to do that every single day, although the eggs are nice to have..the pig is pretty high maintenance..she was constantly tipping her water pail into the muddy mess. a few hens for laying would be no problem though.


look at that dinosaur egg!

more drying and the internal debate over a dehydrator in the high desert.

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sunday afternoon, some squash blanching and freezing

mmmm...local dinner

Rainy Day Pizza

male corn flowers with the foothills of the Great Rocky Mountains in the background.

more rain . more rain!

everything has been loving the almost-daily rain. garden drippers have not been turned on for over two weeks. the roma transplants have began to grow and look really happy. five more future bushes. they are planted slightly above the surrounding ground level, so I may need to add some top soil as well as putting some boards up at the gate to devert rain waters. They have been running small rivers in between the rows of plants for weeks now and most of our good, stinkey top soil is gone... more small projects..plus I bought six more mouse traps, set them all up last night and guess what? I only have two traps left. Quick results....
I always thought we needed a good barn cat to take care of the mice and such. But with mouse traps workin' like this and at 50 cents a pop, and made in the U.S.A. i'm thinkin forget it.