Category Archives: gardening

How to Protect Strawberries from Deer and Birds

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strawberry protection

Here is our setup we use to protect strawberries from deer, birds, dogs, cats, and any other animal that might want to eat them or dig in the bed.  Our strawberries were in there 4th year of production last spring, so we pulled up all the old strawberries a couple of weeks ago, put down a kill mulch of cardboard, and planted about 50 bare root strawberries. Our strawberries are in a raised bed because the soil in this area of our property is extremely rocky.  At one time this area was part of the drive way.

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Ground Cherry (Physalis pruinosa) Toxicity

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In a previous post on growing ground cherries and making ground cherry jam, I noted that the leaf, stem, husk, and unripe fruit of the plant were toxic.  A comment on reddit questioned the validity of that statement and another comment to that post asked (in my own words), how toxic is toxic, or what would the effects be?  I hope this post will at least point readers to some resources I found dealing with this issue.

ground cherry toxicity[Photo credit: ground cherry/husk tomato, By annethelibrarian on Flickr]

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Starting Seedlings in Soil Blocks Using the Soil Cube Tool

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We recently purchased the soil cube tool from Deeply Rooted Organics.  We have been starting seedlings indoors using Jiffy pots and pellets.  This technique has worked fairly well for us but it has become more and more expensive each year as we have begun to start more and more vegetables, herbs, and flowers.  After hearing about the soil cube tool on an episode of The Survival Podcast we decided that we would try it out.

soil cube tool

[Soil cube tool with wooden tong]

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Sustainable Soil Management Practices for the Garden

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I used the methods described in the article A Better Way to Fertilize Your Garden: Homemade Organic Fertilizer for a couple of years to organically fertilize our newly constructed vegetable garden.  The article was published in Mother Earth News in the June/July 2006 edition and written by Steve Solomon.  By using the recipe for this organic fertilizer I obtained very good yields and our vegetables were very healthy.  I think this is a very good alternative to chemical fertilizers and a great technique for a new garden to give it an initial boost, but I would like to offer some sustainable soil management practices for soil building in the home garden that should eventually eliminate or greatly reduce having to add any fertilizer.

garden soil

 [Photo Credit, Soil by John!!! under Creative Commons License]

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Growing Ground Cherries and Making Ground Cherry Jam

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Ground Cherry (Physalis pruinosa) is a new food crop we experimented with this year.  The ground cherry is in the nightshade family (tomatoes, potatoes, etc) and a close relative to the tomatillo.  The fruit, which is encased in a paper-like husk, tastes like a cross between a strawberry and a pineapple with sort of a tomato like texture.  The fruit can be eaten raw, or used in jams/pies/breads.  We ate many raw while working in the garden this year and also made ground cherry jam.

ground cherries[Wait to harvest ground cherries once they have fallen off the plant onto the ground and have turned from green to golden yellow and the husk becomes a papery, straw color]

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Jerusalem Artichokes in Bloom: Late Summer Early Fall

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The jerusalem artichokes in the hugelkultur bed started blooming in late fall.  The photo below was taken on September 3rd.  By the end of September all the sunchokes were in full bloom and getting really top heavy from all the flower heads.  It didn’t take much wind to cause the tallest plants to topple over to the ground.

jerusalem artichoke hugelkultur

[Jerusalem artichokes blooming in late summer]

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Sweet Potato Harvest from Polyculture

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We experimented with a few different polyculture combinations this season.  Some seemed to produce and work well, others not so much (more on polycultures and our experience with them in a later post).  One polyculture that did seem to be promising was the sweet potato/bush bean/beneficial weeds polyculture.  This year’s sweet potato harvest resulted in yields that seemed to be comparable to a single bed or rows of sweet potatoes.

sweet potato polyculture

[Sweet potato and bush bean polyculture with some volunteer flowering plants popping up here and there]

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Jerusalem Artichokes in Hugelkultur Raised Bed Update

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Above is an updated photo showing the jerusalem artichokes and hugelkultur bed as of May 31st 2011.  I’ve added 2 pepper plants, 2 garden huckleberries, and a few other herbs her and there to try to fill in the sides.  I’ve also tried to leave the dutch white clover that is coming up to act as a living mulch.

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New Greenhouse for Starting from Seeds and Growing Seedlings

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About a month ago we finally got around to setting up our new greenhouse.  Actually it isn’t really new.  I received it as a gift about 3 or so years ago.  In the process of setting it up, we had a malfunction that delayed the setup process, then eventually I just decided to scrap the whole project.  But this spring I decided that I would try to set it up anyway and make some on the fly adjustments to the malfunction.  Anyway, after 3 or 4 hours of setup, our mini greenhouse was finally up.  So far it has served us well and has withstood a number of spring storms with high winds.

new_greenhouse

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