Here are some of the things that I have been dreaming about working on at our place this year....
- Moving the apples trees, cherry bushes and highbush cranberries out of the garden space and into their permanent locations around the property. We need to do some grafting of better apple varieties on the crab apple root stock. I am thankful that my Dad can teach me to do that and that he has a bunch of good apple varieties to get from. I have been working on this a lot the last couple of weeks. I still have more work on this project.
-I am hoping to plant raspberries and black raspberries. Ken's employee at his insurance agency said that she had a bunch of black raspberries plants that produced well and multiplied a bunch and we could get some starts of them if we would like. I am hoping to take her up on that offer this year.
-Figuring out more ways to cut down on the cost of chicken feed. We did buy in bulk this fall and that has been really nice and has saved us money but there are also ways to raise some of feed as well which I hope to try. Here is an article with lots of ideas for saving money on chicken feed. I found it very interesting. And no, we probably won't be trying all the methods. Some might be a little TOO interesting. :-) I did just buy a bunch of sunflower seeds (the black seed type that is especially used in chicken and I believe rabbit feed) and I have a placed figured out for planting a large patch to hopefully grow and use for feed.
-I am working to grow ginger as a houseplant. I did get some planted and we just noticed that some shoots are poking up. Exciting! This video has a lot of information on doing that. I love to have fresh ginger to cook with and growing our own will be so neat. We do have a friend that has been doing it here in MN so I am confident that it should work well.
-I think it would be neat to grow turmeric as well. I did buy a root of that as well and it is planted but nothing has come up yet.
-I also got some lemon grass that I have been soaking and hope to plant soon.
-I really hope to do more fishing this year and figure out how to make that a larger portion of our diet.
-I am planning on keeping bees again this summer and really hope to get them fence to protect them better. I also will be exploring ways to work at overwintering my bees. I haven't done that successfully yet but I would really like to try harder to make that work.
- We are adding more varieties of herbs to our gardens this year.
-I am hoping to do a lot more seed saving this year. That is such a fun way to save some money and not having to rely on somebody else.
I do think it would be so fun if we could get the large majority of our food off of our own place. I wonder if we can truly get there or not. The family in the video below really makes me think that we can but I know that it won't happen overnight nor will it happen accidentally - it will have to be intentionally. I do love dreaming about it.
Do you have any dreams for your home and yard?
We've got wild blackberries on our land coming in currently. I planted my first garden here in Louisiana and started pretty small since I've got an infant at home and quite a few things about gardening here are different! I only put tomatoes, peppers, and squash in the ground. But you can grow year round here usually so I hope to do lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and onions in the fall if I can. We hope to get some fruit trees started in the fall as well!
ReplyDeleteFree cuttings from plants is awesome. We got a box of raspberry plants from my husbands aunt. All but 2 have leaves and new growth on them. We are excited about our new free raspberry patch!
ReplyDeleteSarah, That is so fun that you are getting things going on your land. It would be a big adjustment to growing gardens in LA. I think everywhere you go there are advantages and disadvantages - you just have to figure out what works. It sounds like you are getting things figured out. The blackberries sound yummy. Berries are still months away for us. Mara did pick and prepare wild greens yesterday however. They were good!
ReplyDeleteGreg and Donna, That is neat that you got free raspberries! I did too just yesterday! I had thought I might get some red ones from my parents but they have had trouble with worms the last couple of years and we were a little concerned that trouble might come with them. Some other friends had some however that they were cleaning out so I got quite a bunch from them. I am very thankful!