This year we are planning where to put all of our seedlings or where to direct sow seeds.  Mapping out the gardens and using companion plants will help tremendously come planting time.  There are 2 established growing areas and we are starting a 3rd in the lower part of our yard.  The new area is all native soil with grasses, weeds and lots of rocks so it will dug out  and completely amended before planting anything.  As of now the plan for that area is corn, beans, squash and/or pumpkins.  We are also flexible with our plans so if we need to change things around we can. 

Blessings

Here's the continuation video of what we did with the Rhubarb.  We decided to put the Rhubarb in a pot and a bucket because we need to figure out what to add to the soil to make it more acidic.  Rhubarb is like blueberries and roses and prefer more acidic soil.  Our native soil is Alkaline and is not ideal for acid loving plants.  Another update to come soon.

Blessings 

Our Rhubarb hasn't done well in it's current location so I decided to dig it up and move it to a new location.  It would bud and sprout in the Spring and then grow a few stocks then die off. We haven't harvested any stocks from the plant in fear it would completely kill the root.  It had a pretty good root system established which was kind of a surprise after seeing the tops die back every year.  Another video to come on where these are replanted.

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We have had over a 50% success rate with seeds germinating this year.  The lights have helped tremendously especially with the addition of an actual grow light.  We are still using the single florescent lights too both of which have the cool blue bulbs.  At this point we consider this experiment a success so hopefully we can keep everything alive from here on.  There will be more plants/seedlings to put in the gardens way earlier than last year because we started the end of January this year. 

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You don’t have to spend a lot of money in order to start seeds for yourself-in the picture you can see that everything is recycled containers & bags. A spinach container, rotisserie chicken container, compost & seed starter mix bags and more. We highly recommended the jiffy organic seed starting mix it’s around $7 (or less depending where you buy it). Keep in mind it has no nutrients in it not great for bigger plants. You can find seeds from $0.20 up to almost $10 depending on what seeds they are and how big the package is.

Blessings

The weather has been crazy in Northern Arizona. Rain, snow, rain and more rain. This is the first year that we have had a rain gauge and we’ll keep an eye on it and document how much rain we get. Our goal is to log & share how much rain we get in a year it will help with water planning & usage. Happy Spring Everyone!

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We live in a open range state and certain times if the year there are cows here roaming free.  We don’t mind if the cows come in the yard because their manure is useful. This last time a cow unfortunately did some damage to our fence around our growing area/upper garden area so that will have to be fixed soon.  We could close our gate to keep them off our property but it happened at night or early morning so we didn’t even see them. You’d be surprised what has showed up in our yard besides cows-Havelina, donkeys, skunks, dogs, cats, black rabbit and snowball our white duck.  That said we wouldn’t change anything because we love this part of Arizona. 

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We were blessed with 5 hatching eggs so Laurel is making videos on the process. She has hatched eggs before and none of the rest of us have. We usually get young chicks to raise and add to our flock. Check the video out, give her thumbs up and subscribe to her channel.

Our girls are blessing us with an abundance of eggs compared to the last several months where we may have gotten 1 egg a week. The longer daylight and warmer temperatures have helped.

The girls are spoiled and live a good life here. They are let out most days to free range and are secured in the run/coop at night.

Our nest run eggs are available for sale most of the year.

We have been working on the website for a little while at least when the computer cooperated.  We are excited to share what we have been working on this year which is our 3rd year doing a market garden.