Tulsa City Farm

 

Spent the day pruning 400 tomatoes plants and weeding! It is amazing how many things there are to do each day. Trying to end the spring crops as the summer ones come in.

 

 We have been cutting and selling our salad mix, turnips, beets, turnip, mustard, kale and collard greens at a local market, called the Blue Jackalope. With the above normal temps I do not know how much longer the greens will hold up.

 

 The squash is starting to bloom as are the green beans. A  couple of  little tomatoes. Soon we will be opening to the public.

 

 My daughter and I were   interviewed   by “The Tulsa County Paper”, should be out next week on Wednesday.

 

 Just delivered fresh spring salad mix, mustard & turnip greens, turnips, and spinach, to the “Blue Jackalope Grocery Store” at Phoenix   and Charles Page Blvd.. This might be the last week coming up, with the warm weather.

  Soon the summer crops will be coming in.The squash plants already have blooms. Okra will be late ,after replanting it, after it flooded away ,as are the cantaloupes .

 Today I finally got to spay neem oil (organic),now that it dried up. Sand fleas are loving my beans!

  Things are looking up. I lost all my cantaloupes and had to replant. Half of my cucumbers have to be replanted. Also all my okra washed away.  But everything else is looking good. I have found lettuce growing 250 feet from where it was planted. Glad the rain this week not too bad.

 

 Have 10 guinea birds starting to fly a little. I hope the birds of prey don’t get them.  I want them for eating bugs. I also added 4 pygmy goats for weed patrol.

 

 I cut, washed, packed, leaf lettuce salad mix and delivered it to the Blue Jackalope store today.

 

 Be carefull what you ask for! We have had rain for 4 days.My rain gauage said we recieved 6.3 inches one day.Water settled places I have never seen. My plants look like they are all there and did not float away.The seeded row I do not know about yet. I can not get in the garden yet.Hoping none floated away or worse rotting in the ground! Time will tell.

 Since I last loged in we have had two great rains. I have got all my Tomatoes planted and cucumbers.I also got 5 different winter sqauash ans 4 summer types planted.Peppers planted as well as my melons all planted.

 Next i'm going to get started on turning under a winter cover crop in a new section for planting pumkins in a couple of months.

  My daughter is helping less since I bought her a couple of pygmy goats. And I understand. She treats them like babies.

 It has been very dry here. As I was trying to get the garden ready for summer planting, the wind was blowing the dry ground, creating a small dust storm. I thought this must be a little like the dust bowl days. That night the weather man said it was the driest since the dust bowl--wow!

 The drought and warmer temps than usual have pretty much destroyed my early spring crops!

Well,to those who follow. I'm sorry I have not had time to blog.I lost a lot of my seedlings, by listing to the news. They said it was only going down to 38 and I woke to 31 and sleet.

 My fava beans are doing great though and the onions look good,as do the leeks.I have not seen any sign of the carrots yet. I used a pelleted seed so I would not have to thin them.The rabits loved the collard greens . I think I have them fenced out.

 It is too wet to do anything on my day off from my day job,but I see it will be nice on my working days, go figure.

 Well, we started some kale,collards,iceburge ;Red & green Romaine;cocept;butterhead lettuce.Plus New girl Tomatoes.

 The ground is too wet to get in, but I might be able if it does not rain Sunday.I know I complained about not having any rain and now about it might rain.I need to get my Fava Beans planted.

  We have contacted a couple of farmers markets. Might do one or two.I had to take the tiller into the shop this morning.That is all that is really going on here on our little place.

Well, I have never planted or grown broocoli.After having a few of our friends ask us to try,we orded some seed.And to day I started some.

 There is no gauratee about a new crop,that you have no experince in growing.But I am going to try a few.One other than broocoli,is cabbage and lettuce.On a small scale they are not profitable.But as one of my friends said it would be freasher and she said healthier if I grew it because she knows what I do to my soil and mine would have all the nutrients  it should have. I'm not going into all the science of different soils, organic vres cont. styles of farming or how it stats losing nutrient value as produce ages or the fossil foot print of shipping.

 Also I'm going to try growing some leeks for a friend who caters events.I have a teacher who asked me about pumkins for her school kids.That sound like fun.

 This hobby has gone wild.I told my daughter this was her fault.She wanted to sell veggies!

 I wanted moisture and I got it 14" of it and snow drifts 3-4 feet deep.We will not be doing anything to the farm as I had wanted to. But I have to remember it is Feb.1,st and that is still winter.

 I have always wanted a hoop house,but today I'm wondering how one might hold up under all this snow and the 35-40 mile an hour wind gust.

 I did get to build a tube bender.I drew the shape on a 4x8 plywood and put 26 3/8 bolts in it,with a block at the starting end and it worked! I bent 60 1/2" EMT pipe into hoops. A $1.78 a 10' pipe is cheaper than a 9 gauge wire hoop and I believe will last me most of my life.I hope to use them to get an early start on some veggies.I'm seeing May tomatoes in my head.

 I guess tomorrow I will finish digging out my truck and car. I can not even see the front of the car fron the back half of the doors forward.The drifts are terrible, the worst I've ever seen.It is the roof of the house I worry about most.

 

  Well, all our seed has been ordered last week and arrived this week.We have added a few new varieties and we are going to grow a few new thing,like pumkins and lettuce.A new Japanies Turnip.Also a yellow flesh watermelon (a request from a couple of custormers) and a mexican squash.

 

 We finally finished the goat barn. So we will be adding goats to the urban farm this spring.

 We still have not gotten any rain and the green manure cover crops are hurting.I was even upset we did not get any snow that was predicted Tuesday. And I hate snow!

 All of my seed catalogs are in and my little girl and I are trying to figure out what all we want to grow this coming year. Plus we have got to get all our receipts together,its tax time next month.

 So if you shop with us let us know what you would like to see us grow for you next year.This will be our last blog until late winter next year.

 My family would like to wish every one a happy holiday, no matter which one you do (Its Christmas here!) And a happy new year!

 To those of you who read tis blog , sorry it has been a while.With work  and early sundown not much is getting done. I'm still working on a list of things to do.

 We lost our first cover crop to lack of rain and had to replant and water it ourself.We did get a hill side fenced and an area leveled to start building our little pole barn for future goats.A hard frost can in and we remembered , we still had soaker hoses that needed to be picked up.

 Mostly just doing things like getting a couple poles up and leveled concreted in and then getting ready for work. 

 Today after church my daughter and I were able to get back to a whole list of things we need to do.

 We started watering a cover crop we had spread a couple weeks ago. Last week God gave it 3" of rain.

 Then we laid out out where we want to build a barn for goats we want this spring.It is a hill side are we can not use for veggies right now and it is covered in small trees and brush.A great place for the goats to start working on.

 After laying out the area we used a level and some boards to level the area.Now we have got to get it dug and leveled out.The area picked has a pretty clear area and not too sloppy.Also I have a sand point well already there..

 I made my wife mad,by letting my daughter drive on the farm to the water,so we could move it from time to time.She got scared a few times and hit the gas instead of the break!But she is trying and it was a great reward for all the digging she did today.I was right there with a foot to put on the pedal.

It took days to pull up all the plants and put them in the compost.Then we had t-post to pull up.Hoses moved and netting stored.

 I've got a guy coming to plow over the clover we planted as a living mulch.And in a week or two come back and till it for us.In the end of September we will be planting our winter cover crop.

 Our soil test came back  and I was happy to see I only need to add green sand.It was a organic soil test.I'm very happy with the cover crop green manure as a soil building process.We still have large piles of wood chips decomposing on the back of the property for future organic material or we just might make new beds there in the future.

 We are going to be opening ground on one bnew bed in two weeks and sending that soil test off then.