Kara, Kara quite contrary, how does your garden grow???

I get asked a lot of questions about growing a garden or just growing plants in general so I figured I would let you in on some of my gardening techniques. Besides growing our own garden at home growing up, I also worked for a Nursery and spent a lot of time listening, studying, and talking to our Horticulturalists. I learned a lot and ate up every tidbit of free info they were willing to divulge. We would have people from all walks of life bringing in plant samples and dirt to show to our guys and figure out what was going wrong and how to fix it and make it even better!

I have a pretty laid back old fashioned approach to growing my garden, it's simple and easy and it works! When you grow your own food, you're always needing to think about what's next a season ahead of time. I start my spring garden in the winter and my summer garden in the spring. Now it's time to start planning for my winter garden and though it's still a long ways off (especially for those of us that typically experience warmer weather well into November) but seedlings need time to grow and a lot of patience and love. I like to grow my garden mostly from seed so that I can insure first of all that all my plants are Organic and secondly that they're from a sustainable source (I love the sustainable seed company though I do order from other companies as well). When I'm really on top of my game for that season I'm using my own seeds that I've saved from previously grown plants... but that doesn't always happen. I'm actually trying to get better at seed saving.

A healthy garden needs a healthy home so the first thing you need to do is prepare your soil for planting. Now not all soil is created equal and I have been fortunate enough that my soil started out  healthy and needed next to nothing to get started but if you have doubts as to what type of soil you have or if it's healthy enough to plant, take a little sample into your local nursery....For the love of your garden please DO NOT take your sample into Lowes garden center or Home Depot or any other such establishment and here's why, those folks have hourly employees that have very little to no knowledge at all on what it really takes to grow a garden. You might be getting Todd the paint department boy who is covering Jackie the garden center girl for her lunch break and just because Jackie works in the garden center doesn't automatically qualify her as a seasoned and trained horticulturalist so it's best to take your dirt and plant issues to someone who knows a little more about what's going on in the world of things that grow.

Now that that has been cleared up you're ready to start preparing your dirt given that your dirt sample came back clean of disease or other issues (yes dirt can have disease, look at the issues industrial farming is facing with over growing, planting the same things over and over again and contaminating the dirt with chemicals, that poor dirt has no chance of being healthy to grow healthy crops...no wonder GMO is becoming such a big deal bc they need plants that can withstand the damage that has been done to the dirt that makes growing healthy plants an actual possibility) One sure sign that you have healthy dirt is by digging up a section and looking for worms, if you have some healthy crawlers underneath your dirt and you have a lot of them, you should be sitting pretty. Worms thrive best in good soil and they also help to make your soil good. If you find yourself wanting to speed up the process of making your dirt extra healthy you can always purchase yourself some worms and then set them free to do their thing.

Alright let's talk some crap here....literally....Dirt loves Poo! Chicken poo is by far the best hence why I have backyard chickens! Rabbit poo is probably the next best poo you can sprinkle into your dirt. You can buy bags of poo for your garden but be warned that too much can burn your soil and cause plant issues so you'll want to mix it into an organic planting soil 1 part poo to 3 parts soil. One of the best ways to get nutrients into your dirt is thru a compost pile that's made up of your own home scraps, I'm talking egg shells, coffee grounds, veggie scraps, veggie and fruit peels, grass clippings from mowing the lawn, etc (basically anything that has been grown in the ground can be turned into compost to be put back into ground, circle of life-plant style!) I'm still in the process of making a compost area for my garden. If you're interested in doing that for yourself but don't know quite what to do, it's simple, you basically make yourself a pile in a corner of the yard or in a composting bin where you can leave the stuff to rot. It's very low maintenance, the occasional turn with a pitch fork or shovel to allow the underneath layers to soak up some sun and weather and help it rot even more. When it looks like dirt, it's ready to go into the garden! Simple!

Let's talk weather....Mother Nature is a smart girl and she knows that a good dose of weather helps dirt along too. While you're waiting for summer to come to an end, it's a perfect time to let that beautiful sunshine work hard on your dirt and put the nutrients into it that it will need for those winter months when sunshine vitamins are needed. Churning up your garden spot and turning your dirt over every once in awhile is a good idea to do. If you have weeds in that area this is a good time to get some natural weed killer by placing a tarp or weed cloth over the area and let the sun bake it to death. I don't use chemicals in my garden even though my husband has begged me to shoot those darn weeds with some round up. Round up lingers in dirt for 7 years and yet you still have to use more each year to fight the weeds....it's best to avoid the toxins and just burn the weeds under some weed cloth. Weed maintenance is pretty easy once your garden is in. Just like the summer sun is good for your winter garden, the cold wet winter weather is also good for your spring/summer garden! Let the weather work for you whatever it is and know that Mother Nature is doing her part to help your garden grow as well.

Now let's talk about the plants...even though I grow a garden year after year, I never grow in the same spot....My garden still stays in the same area of my yard but I move locations of where I plant things the next time I plant them. Root systems are intricate much like our bodily system, we need variety to survive and be healthy and so do plants. If you have one spot where you always grow your tomatoes, you risk losing nutrients from having no variety there. Does that make sense? It doesn't mean you can only plant tomatoes in that one spot once and that's it, I give my soil an every other season kind of trade off...where I planted tomatoes this summer, I will plant bell peppers next summer but then I'll switch back to tomatoes in that spot again the following summer (see what I mean) Every plant variety though made similar systematically, brings it's own special thing to the dirt it gets planted into and it leaves traces of it when it's pulled out. Soil systems are a whole different world of their own and much of the nutrients that we ourselves ingest from eating our homegrown goodness comes from the health and nutrients of that dirt system that grows our edibles. This doesn't apply to root systems for fruit trees, though they do have a life expectancy and shouldn't be grown past a certain amount of years. Plants don't need too much of your attention but it's good to pay them a visit every day or so to make sure they're doing good, make sure they're getting enough water or not too much water and to make sure the pests aren't enjoying more of your garden goodies than you are. Chickens by the way are excellent pest control!

A good garden system in my opinion is one that has all aspects of farming life working together for the goodness of what your body needs. (Animals to make the soil healthy, chickens to keep the pests at bay, bees to pollinate the plants, worms to churn up the soil...all working together and thriving and doing their own thing that helps bring good health to your garden.)

Hopefully you've found this post useful and helpful and informational. I'm sorry it was so long but there's a lot to cover when it comes to growing a garden. Once you have the healthy dirt portion down, everything else is easy! Good luck with your gardens and comment below any questions you have that I might be able to answer directly :-)

Chicken enemy #1

While sitting at my computer desk this morning I hear a strange sound....a familiar sound......a destructive sound....so I got up and went outside to investigate where I discovered one of the killers next door had found himself sectioned off in a different part of his yard and he was chewing thru the fence, trying to break into my side of the yard! Ugggghhhh not again! I smacked his protruding nose as he stuck thru the missing slot and quickly found something to block the hole with but this dog is a professional board chewer and a little block isn't going to keep him from chewing further and eventually breaking into my yard. In my haste to find a way to block him I decided to string up some chicken wire but I needed a staple gun, thankfully my Grandparents live down the way from us and They were able to loan me the use of their heavy duty staple gun and also help me string up the wire to block the dog. 

Fortunately chicken wire works in a pinch but unfortunately it isn't a very strong wire and though it's designed to keep chickens in their pen, it isn't really designed to keep predators out. Luckily for me though my parents will be helping me string up some chain link this afternoon. Clearly the owners of these destructive puppies aren't taking their destruction seriously enough and it's up to us to protect our side of the fence. 

This puppy ate that board within a 10 minute period of time, breaking into my yard is obviously easy for him to do and my chickens are at risk of getting attacked! I can't handle another chicken massacre, it would break my heart! As a backyard farmer, work is never done! Even with the small brood we have there's always something going on that needs to be improved or taken care of or worked on. I'd like to trim back my grape vines and completely rebuild my coop when the weather cools for fall. I feel my hens need to have a sturdier pen that won't just keep them in but will be strong enough to withstand an outside attack. 

I'd also like to redesign it for my future garden.....I need more space to plant and though my chickens are prey to other animals, my little tender winter plants are prey to some hungry foraging chickens that love anything green and growing! Lol 

There's still some time before my plants will be ready to transplant into my garden and it's nice days like today that make me want to work in my yard...we never have 70 degree weather in August!!!! 

Being simple.....

Almost an entire year ago now I hurt my back pretty bad...I'm sure it had been a long time coming from that initial accident that has put me on the mend since September, growing up raising farm animals and wrestling sheep doesn't exactly save your body from the occasional ache and pain or wear and tear. Raising animals can be very physically taxing on a body, cowboys and cowgirls are tough folks! I raised sheep and pigs and goats for years, I raked and shoveled pens, lifted bails of hay and straw into the back of our car and then hauled them into our barn, Loaded and unloaded bags of grain, dragged sheep up roads for their "evening walks" (sheep weight rough 100+ lbs sometimes 150lbs) and flipped them on their backs to sheer their bellies (which often times required me physically lifting them off their hooves when they wouldn't cooperate) top that with 15 years of being in Ballet and forcing my body into unnatural poses and bends that put strain on my skeleton and then I carried two very long rather hefty babies in my belly, i've got a few very weak links in my chain making me more susceptible to un-alignment and back/knee pain. I've always been physically active my whole life, we would spend all the time we could outdoors. I love to hike, bike. fish, swim, explore, run and play with my kids outside too.

Last night I felt pretty great, my back is finally feeling good again and I've been trying to get back into yoga. I read where handstands are good for lower back pain and releasing the pressure that we carry in our back so I decided to try one (outside of course in my backyard) and wouldn't you know I would injure myself....not in the way I was imaging that I might as I flipped my legs over my head and found my balance but when I came back down from successfully hardstanding, I landed my right knee very hard on top of my curious Dog's head! She had come over unbeknownst to myself to see what I was doing and sniff me and I came down pretty hard and fast.....She yelped and ran to her bed and my husband ran and got me some frozen grapes to lay on the injured spot. Needless to say we both left hurting and my poor dog was worried about me while I was laying in the grass with a grape ice pack on my leg. My knee is still swollen today and I have a gnarly bruise, I can't even touch the lump that is swollen but I don't think anything is broken....just another injury to add the the many on my list of growing up and doing physical things.

I try to live a simple life....I try to quiet things down as much as I can, I try to let life flow how it's going to flow and not fight it. A knee injury that has me down for a few days means a few days of much needed rest and I try not to stress myself out with over doing the "To Do" list. I homeschool my kids which sets us up for a pretty relaxed day at home, we don't rush through our mornings to make it on time for a bell but rather wake up, enjoy breakfast together at our leisure and head into our first part of schooling for the day. I've found that things go better when I let them lead which means sometimes we start out reading and other times they're more focused and want to get down to math or science first thing, other times they just woke up with too much good energy that has to get out so we play in the backyard for a bit before we get started..... Living simply shouldn't be complicated and I try to keep out what makes it complicated to me, when the pressure builds up too much in my simple life and I am feeling stressed by too many things, I take a step back, reevaluate/reprioritize and get back to the basics. Sometimes that includes separating myself from social media or being a bit of a recluse, not for too long but long enough to just feel the quiet in my life and let go of some of that pressure that has built up in the burdens of the outside world and the noise that I feel comes from society and the world around us. No one said you couldn't reshape your life to how you like it or that you can't start over however many times you need to make it feel right to you and that's what I do. I do it whenever I need to.

This week i've spent more time outside, the mornings and evenings have been cooler and I was actually able to get my seeds into pods and started for a winter garden. My husband cleaned our backyard up a lot this weekend, moved boards that were blocking the area of the existing garden and chicken coop where the grape vine is growing, he put down some weed control mesh that kills off weeds and makes weeding virtually unneeded (love that!) and every night we have enjoyed some time spent watching our hens (big and little) enjoy life in the coop. The babies are still exploring a lot and it's funny to see them fly on top of the hutch or get a little lost in the corn and sunflowers that are growing in the coop.

This special time in the evening has become just what I need to slow things down and enjoy time more and be present in the moment happening right then. My kids are playing in the background, my chickens are being cute and funny, my dog loyally sitting by my side and my husband puttering around the yard and coop, figuring how to improve things or moving stuff around or even pausing and enjoying everything for himself.....it really is one of my favorite things right now to just sit there in that moment and enjoy what is simple, what is happy and beautiful in our own backyard.