Early on in the summer, we had many plants in the green stage. Seedlings were popping up all over with some fruit and flower, but June was definitely about maintenance. Farming and gardening and growing things seems to be a lot about waiting.
flowers and herbs
tomatoes, lettuce, herbs
herbs
Just a few of our potted plants around the back patio
Last year, we had a few potted herbs and vegetables, but we’ve doubled our back patio space with a few large raised beds.
amaranth
salvia
a mostly mulched flower bed, with rows of flowers peaking through
There were a few projects we tackled last summer that were not expected to produce much success early on. The most surprising success was the roadside stand with little flower posies.
a mix of marigolds, sunflowers, and zinnias
Success of roadside stand– Evan built it because we knew we would need it eventually, and he wanted the practice. Neighbors would occasionally ask what we were selling, and I was itching to get something going. My flowers were a natural choice, as they were one of the few growing successes we had last summer. I waited in anticipation for the first flowers to bloom, and once they started, I started to assemble posies. It was only a few bouquets each week to start, but at peak season, I was producing 10 to 12 larger bouquets. Pairing color and texture was a fun challenge for me, and encouraged me to start researching more.
More zinnias, they’re my favorite– As the season ended, I geared up to grow more. Starting with my current garden, I worked to save seeds for the following season. I knew off the bat that I wanted to grow more zinnias, as the variety of color and strength of stem makes them a really awesome cut flower choice. All winter, I poured over websites and catalogs, trying to decide which varieties to include, and trying not to go overboard.
cutting ground around the irises was a lot of work
Researching more flowers- amaranth, cosmos, greenery– I also knew it was foolish to invest in only one flower variety, so I started research. Based on our zone, and the traits I was looking for in my flowers, I bought seeds for amaranth and cosmos. Both plants offer a variety in color and height, plus promise the hardiness needed for a cut bouquet. The greenery is still something I am working on, though I will be trying some hardy herbs this year, and continuing to research other possibilities.
Moving the location and cutting ground– With a few new varieties of vegetables to add to the garden this year, I had to find a new location for the flower garden. An existing iris bed was expanded, twice, to accommodate my flowers for this year. As we are still in the transitional stage with this flower bed, I have an odd mix of perennials and annuals as a test to see if the soil and light is the right mix for my flowers.
a mostly mulched flower bed, with rows of flowers peaking through
Watching and waiting– The hardest part of gardening is the year-long cycle of hurry up and wait. As we reach the end of June, we are just watching, watering, weeding (sometimes), and waiting. Wondering if there is enough sun exposure. Hoping that it rains enough, or trying to get watering done efficiently. Keeping the weeds at bay so they don’t choke out the plants.
After what was shaping up to be an unseasonably warm and early planting season, we had a few frosty mornings that kept delaying our planting. I was totally convinced that I was never going to get my garden in, and all my seedlings were going to die before I could transplant. Obviously that was a bleak outlook, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But now the warmth has returned, and this past weekend, I was able to get most of my garden planted.
My early seedlings
This year’s garden has been nearly 5 months in the making. Back in January, I started planning the vegetable garden, perusing catalogs while also trying to keep from going overboard. I settled on 5 heirloom varieties of tomatoes, 2 varieties of pepper, 3 varieties of pumpkin, 3 varieties of beans, plus cucumbers, carrots, and summer squash. Compared to last year’s garden, I am being way more adventurous. I have never grown peppers or tomatoes before, and had to do a bit of research before I started them indoors. Our indoor grow setup was put to the test, and proved sufficient.
Testing out the new sprinkler for easier watering
As the weather got warmer, I hoped for early planting, but wanted to avoid last year’s seedling failure. Most of our vining plants were stunted, and it wasn’t until this spring that I realized a lack of hardening off was more detrimental to my plants than I realized. But we also didn’t have a great set-up for bringing plants in and out until the weather improved. This year, I just used spare boxes, and as seedlings became acclimated to the weather, they took up residence on the back porch. Per my research, hardening off seedlings that were sprouted under grow lights should take at least a week, as one gradually exposes the seedlings to more natural sunlight and the elements. I’ll be the first to admit that I was not super scientific about the whole process, but I’m hoping it makes the difference.
Many of my plants are direct sow, meaning that they are not planted until the soil is consistently warm and out of danger of frost. Of my vegetables, I didn’t sprout the beans indoors, and of my flowers, only amaranth was an indoor sprout. This past Friday, the weather was beautiful and I started to move my seedlings to the garden. Six amaranth plants and a variety of peppers and tomatoes went into the ground, intermingled with marigold seeds to help keep off some of the pests. The following morning, I planted carrots, all of my beans, and some of the vine plants. I sprouted a few of my vines inside, and they are still in the midst of the hardening off stage, but I hope to get them into the garden this week.
My green beans already starting to sprout
Over the course of the last few months, I consulted multiple websites and books for inspiration and help. My favorite resource has been the Family Garden Plan, a book that I found through one of my social media accounts. The experiences of other people have been really useful to me, and I appreciate social media for those connections. One of the biggest learning curves for me has been figuring out how to grow and maintain seedlings. I had to repot several sets of seedlings as they outgrew the original pot I had put them in.
I would love to answer questions about our set-up, or hear your story about starting seedlings indoors!
We had quite the date night this past fall: a trip to the hardware store for ground contact 2x6s and lots and lots of dirt.
the layers of soil, peat moss, compost, and mulch in our blueberry boxes
After my huge disappointment over the initial testing of our ‘orchard’ soil, Evan and I decided on building raised beds for our blueberry bushes. Twelve holes are now twelve little raised beds, filled with peat moss and a compost/manure soil mixture. It was really fun to reveal the very defined layers of the raised box dirt when we planted the bushes the other week.
Between the blueberry patch and the vegetable garden, our dirt has been astonishingly disappointing, and we are hoping our amendments in the fall will produce a better crop this season. The vegetable garden did not need as aggressive of amending for the upcoming season, but still received a layer of compost and mulch back in the fall.
Improving the soil is a slow process, and obviously only time will tell how much more work we will need to put into it. In order to keep the improvements coming, we are also more aggressively composting and mulching. Anything that doesn’t get fed to the chickens goes into the compost heap, and every few weeks the chicken bedding gets added in as well.
As we continue to test the soil and grow our plants, the literal fruits of our labor will be apparent. I am optimistic about the adjustments we have made since last summer, and am excited to see what sort of harvest we will have this year. Want to know more about our processes or just want to chat dirt and gardening? Leave us a comment or check us out on one of our social platforms!
With the building of basement grow shelves this winter, I was able to start some of my newly planned vegetables in the house. I was bitten with the winter gardening bug, and may have gone overboard in my seed ordering. New additions to our garden this year include multiple varieties of both tomatoes and peppers, and new varieties of beans, pumpkins, gourds, and flowers. I attempted to only buy heirloom varieties, because I enjoy the challenge of harvesting seeds for next season, and used MIGardener, Territorial Seed Company, and Baker Creek seeds.
Starting seedlings indoors was not a new idea for me. Last March in the early weeks of our pandemic lockdown, we started our plants indoors as a science and math lesson for our oldest. However, leggy plants and limited window space led us to pursue a different method this year. We visited family last summer, and they had an extensive growth light set up that inspire ours. Multiple shelves with lighting to encourage early growth in two hard-to-start from seed vegetables: peppers and tomatoes.
If you’ve been following along on our social media at all, you’ve caught a bit of the saga of my seed ordering and subsequent planting. Based on my research, and the seed instructions themselves, the peppers were the first plants I started. We are trying two different varieties this year: Hungarian Sweet Wax Peppers and Mini Bell Peppers. I anxiously awaited the first sprouts, which took much longer than I had anticipated. (Had I done all of my reading properly, I would’ve realized that the germination just does take that long.)
In addition to the peppers, I am trying a new variety of flower for the farm stand after research into cut flowers: Amaranth. Eagerly, I ordered three different varieties from Michigan Gardener, and so far they have not disappointed. Their germination rates are excellent, and it’s fun to see the different colors of the seedlings. I ordered two red varieties, so seeing those seedlings next to the green pepper plants is fun.
The second and third rounds of seeds were planted in mid-March. Tomatoes are a totally new plant to me, and we’re still figuring them out. Seeds have sprouted, but the seedlings quickly wilted. I’m still troubleshooting those issues. The flowers that I planted in the third round of seeds seem to be doing well however, and right before Easter we finished up the new flower bed.
The remaining plants are all direct sow, though in my eagerness to get plants started, I may still try to sprout a few inside before May. We prepped the garden plot last fall, and are excited to see the literal fruit of our labor as we move from spring into summer.
If you have any suggestions for my wilting tomatoes, I’d love to get some feedback! Also, I’m super interested in learning more about heirloom seeds and seed harvesting, so any research/books/sites you can pass along would be appreciated.
It’s hard to believe we are deep into autumn already! The back-to-school time found us busy juggling new schedules and trying to find a new routine.
Zinnias
I was pleasantly surprised at the responses we got over our roadside flower stand, and disappointed that our fall vegetables were mostly a bust. The flowers were almost a fluke; we grew them because I wanted something pretty. Once the zinnias started blooming, they hardly stopped. However, given the revelation of our dirt issues, I was not surprised that our vegetables didn’t do so well. The only real vegetable success we had was the bottle necked gourds. Those were fun to watch grow, and a fun harvest as well.
one of the cute bottleneck gourds
Our big summer building project was the chicken coop, and Evan is already planning a “next time”– what to do to make it better and maybe bigger.
As we head into fall and winter, our focus moves inside. In addition to a few home improvement projects, we also have to start planning for next spring. Hopefully, we’ll make some soil adjustments and have a more productive vegetable garden. We also have to look at getting our apple trees trimmed sometime in January, and order new bushes and trees to continue our orchard expansion.
I’ve always loved the idea of having a blueberry bush. I have fond memories of going picking with my family when we were younger, and I love to eat blueberries. Unfortunately, that is not something they cover in marriage prep, and I learned the hard way that Evan did not like blueberries at all. Something quite the opposite of me—he had bad memories of picking blueberries.
When we bought the farm with the apple trees almost ready to pick, i hadn’t yet thought about other plantings we would make. I knew we would need to replace our trees eventually, but I didn’t really think about other fruit plans. Evan was talking about our hopes and dreams for the property to a friend, and they actually convinced him to add blueberries to our list. And so our blueberry planning began.
Before the garden
My research started with soil, space, and a place to purchase young bushes. MSU Extension is a wealth of resources for most of our agricultural needs, and I started there. Blueberries require lots of sun, and we thought we had a perfect spot. They also require what is considered a relatively high acidity for garden plants.
Evan and I measured out the distance between each bush, and we cut sod out for mini-raised beds. I researched and bought this soil test kit from the local hardware store. It is very easy to use with clear directions, and includes additives to test for not only pH but nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. I collected dirt samples from three different holes. All three tests came back as VERY alkaline. I was disappointed to be sure. We were hopeful that our soil would be at least slightly neutral so we wouldn’t need a lot of amending.
After the sod removal
Now, you may ask, why amend the soil if you are making raised beds? We weren’t planning on very tall beds, and full expect that once the bushes reach maturity, their root systems would be creeping into our dirt. So now we are on the hunt for fool-proof methods to create a more acidic environment for our bushes so that when they arrive in the spring, they will be able to adjust well and flourish.
If you have any recommendations for us, we welcome tips and tricks! I’d love to hear about others’ experience growing blueberries or amending soil for more acid-loving plants.
Growing up, my mom always had the most beautiful flower garden. She grew chrysanthemums, day lilies, zinnias, dahlias, snapdragons, irises, daffodils, tulips. Her garden was a riot of color. Spring and summer and even fall brought gorgeous cut flowers into our house, and I have fond memories of bringing flowers from my mom’s garden to my teachers.
Several times over the years, I grew my own flowers. One year, a marigold I had planted grew to be several feet tall. I was thrilled when we bought our first house, and I found daffodils and hydrangeas in the garden.
This spring on the farm, flowers were first on my list for our garden. I bought zinnias and marigolds and added those to my collection of seeds from the previous year. My son added sunflowers to the mix. I waited anxiously for the first flowers to bloom.
little zinnias
big marigolds
Having cut flowers on my dining room table brings me a lot of joy, and I love being able to share that with others. We’ve been able to sell some bouquets at the roadside stand so far this year, and I am already planning next year’s plantings.
Cut flowers are not always the first thing to occur to people when they plan a garden. However, I think the beauty that they can bring is an important factor in planting. Flowers bring bees and butterflies. They can come in so many different colors- from sunshine-y yellow to rich reds and purples. For me, flowers are worth it.
I grew up with a field behind my house, and the open space was nice. My parents had a decent sized garden. It just wasn’t on my radar to have a bunch of space of my own.
Through a series of circumstances, Evan and I were drawn to property near his parents’. We didn’t think it was possible; we thought it had sold shortly after we bought our first house. But we met the owner, the woman who built the house with her husband back in the 1960s. She agreed to sell her house to us, with the farm property to go with it. The house came with a few apple and pear trees, lots of yard, and a farmed-out field behind it.
So here we are, at the Sunrise Farm Project. Evan’s morning person tendencies rubbed off on me, and together we enjoy the sunrises out our dining room window. We are learning about the land, and learning about our abilities to cultivate the land. The apples were our first project, and are our biggest continuing project. We started our garden this spring, and are in the process of adding chickens.
The Sunrise Farm Project is a learning experience, and we are sharing that experience. We are not perfect; we don’t have it all figured out. This is our ongoing story, how we figure out what the heck we are doing.
