Category: Gardening

Findings to the first growing season of our planter tables

How did the planter tables produce for us? Did they hold water?

I have been a bit disappointed with the results. The soil was not holding water very well, despite the fact that I hat put in so much sheep wool and woodchips. When I watered the planter tables most of the water would drip out of the bottom, so that did not bring much.

The plants in the planter table did not grow very good. It looked nice and green, but there was not really much to harvest.

A planter table filled with plants, looking nice and green

We had a very tiny Hokkaido pumpkin and a lot of tiny red beets. For a direct comparison I had planted some parsley seedlings in the planter table and in the garden at the same time. I forgot to take a picture of the parsley in the garden, but I actually harvested of those twice as to harvesting nothing from the parsley in the planter table, since these hardly grew.

Very small parsley

The only thing that kept doing well, even in summer with little water and a lot of heat, was chard.

Obviously we only made the planter tables last spring and the soil has to set and develop first, so we are not going to jump to conclusions. In the spring we will ad some compost and mulch in form of woodchips to the planter tables and we have to think about what we are going to plant in there. I think plants that need a lot of nutrients and/ or water are not a good choice. We are probably going to plant some flowers, herbs and some lettuce, but who knows what I will think of until spring comes.

Trying to grow sweet potatoes

The leaves looked nice, but there was no crop to harvest

We love to make sweet potato fries, so it is obvious we would like to try and grow the sweet potatoes our selves, although we do not have the ideal location for that.

So first things first, I bought a few sweet potatoes in the store and put them in a container with some soil to start them of in our greenhouse. After a few stems with some leaves appeared I transferred them to a nice protected spot in our garden 4 (the oval bed behind the patch with the willow trees).

Above the ground the sweet potatoes (only 3 pieces) looked good, a small patch with beautiful green leaves.

The only thing is that this garden is a bit off from our central point and if we would want to water, we would have to bring the water there every time. Well, we did not bring water there much and as I have read later, sweet potatoes need a lot of water, so that will explain why we did not harvest any sweet potatoes, but we found only thin roots.

Dough up sweet potatoes that did not develop

I am thinking of setting up some rain barrels in our different gardens with garden hoses with holes on set distances as an “automated” watering system. I would just have to go around and open the taps for a certain amount of time. The rain barrels would just need filling every few days. If we really get to setting this “automated” watering system up, I am tempted to try growing sweet potatoes again, other wise it would be no use, since I do not get to watering enough.

Apple harvest fall 2024

Many many apples, apple moth maggots, making apple sauce and lots of apple juice

The large apple trees that where already on our property when we bought it are packed with apples again (last year we hat very little apples). A lot of apples started falling, but with that abundance hanging on the tree it was hardly noticeable. We gave a lot of the fallen fruit to the sheep, who loved it, and we started making apple sauce with the most useful apples. The apples falling from the trees where apples with maggots from the apple moth, so the first few batches of apple sauce needed some honey, since the apples where not really ripe yet and the apple sauce was a bit to sour for our taste.

At some point a lot of apples without maggots fell from the trees and we noticed that they where already ripe, earlier in the season as they where in previous years. We got ourselves an appointment at the juicing company and collected all of the apples from the ground for more apple sauce. This was the biggest batch of apple sauce I made at once so far. I filled a 15 litre pot until the edge with cubes of apples and boiled the apples with some apple juice until tender. I pureed the apple sauce, since we like it smooth and water bath canned 6 batches at 90°C for 30 min. (Weck-Style). For me this was a day’s work.

A big pot with apple sauce
Weck-Jars filled with apple sauce, stacked together

Over the course of several weeks we made a lot of apple sauce, but if it will be enough for the whole year…., time will tell.

After the apple sauce making and canning marathon, we picked all of the apples out of the three big apple trees we have. This took the better part of the day and filled up 15 grain bags. We ended up with 330 litres of apple juice, which is a lot more than we had 2 years ago, which is great, since we went out of apple juice early this summer. Maybe now we will have enough for the coming 2 years.

As with the plums we had been clearing as much of the apples with maggots in them as we could and we will have to keep an eye on things after apples start forming in the spring again. When fruit start falling again in the spring we will have to clear them to keep the maggot pressure low for the next season.