Another fun weekend of homesteading and this time there was an Easter egg hunt thrown in for added fun! Plus a surprise visitor to the homestead! Keep reading to follow along on this last weekend's homesteading journey.
Saturday started out with a fun early Easter celebration at my parents place. My sister and her 2 kids were visiting and my son had a blast running and playing with them. My brother's kido came over to visit too which meant 4 kids running around having fun.
Bit crazy but they had a lot of fun and I enjoyed seeing them all. My sister and her family live in Hawaii so I don't see them that often.
But Saturday was not all crazy fun.
A Critter Hunt and Attic Repair
I had been hearing something in the walls the last few days which to me sounded like a mouse got in or perhaps a rat.
So I went exploring and found out that the attic vent was torn. That meant I needed to climb up into the attic of our old 1964 house. No fun!
As you can see in the picture the access door is small--my shoulders almost would not fit. Plus, the attic has a ton of blown insulation in it.
I ended up sweeping that aside so I could find the beams to crawl across without compressing the insulation. But eventually I got to the vent and managed to get it fixed but not before having to squish an active yellow jacket nest... yeah homesteading life is not always fun!
I was able to back my way out and sweep the insulation back into place (the pic is actually after I did this so I think it looks good.).
I also set a couple traps to see if I could catch anything. But ultimately after all that uncomfortable (painful at times!) work in the attic I decided that the critter likely got in through the crawlspace and not the torn vent. But still good to fix the vent.
So then it was down to the crawlspace where I set some more traps to see if I could catch the critter.
I really don't like this work...
Back to the Fun - Potatoes in Mulch
Luckily I also got to have fun with plants this weekend. On Sunday after the Easter egg hunt (which my son just loved--he had a ball running around finding eggs and did really good looking for them and finding them! Next year I will need to hide them better!) I did some gardening work.
One simple task was placing mulch around an experimental potato patch.
This patch was just grass back in January. At that time I covered it with newspaper, added a small amount (half inch deep at most) of soil over the paper and then added sliced russet potatoes (store bought that had sprouted) to the soil. I then covered the potatoes with mulch and waited.
I did nothing to remove the grass other than sheet mulching it.
And the potatoes have come up really well! There are a lot more that you can't see in the close up picture. The potatoes have done well enough that I already had to add mulch around them!
I'm really happy with this experiment since if the potatoes keep growing this will be a great harvest over an area that was just a lawn about 3.5 months ago.
As spring continues and we move into summer I will keep updating you on how this patch is doing. This really is a simple low effort potato patch! I'm not even planning to water this patch.
I should also mention that this patch is on the west side of my house and does not get much morning or late afternoon sun. But so far it is still doing great!
More Gardening Fun
I also got my hands dirty getting my vegetable seeds in the ground. It can take a while to get everything planted!
All the seeds were sown into my new kitchen garden. I still need to finish mulching the area around it but the seeds could not wait!
At this point I have sown:
- Onions (sets)
- Nasturtiums
- Sun flowers
- Snap peas
- Cilantro
- Carrots
- Lettuce (3 types)
- French Sorrel
- Miners Lettuce
- Broccoli
- Swiss Chard
- Kale (multiple types)
- Cabbage
Later I will be sowing climbing green beans, scarlet runner beans, and zucchini. I just got some marigold seeds to add and I will be purchasing starts for tomatoes, bell peppers and egg plants.
I will also be planting basil both from seed and from starts to see how they do.
I have also planted Kosmic Kale, and 2 native vegetables (Oregon stonecrop and nodding onions) and I have another native vegetable coming in May and another that I will be ordering soon.
All together that means that this garden will have the following perennial vegetables growing in it.
- Miners Lettuce (native)
- Nodding Onion (native)
- Dwarf Checker Mallow (native - arrives in May)
- Oregon Stonecrop (native)
- French Sorrel
- Scarlet Runner Beans
- Kosmic Kale
On my homestead I already have Turkish rocket and purple tree collards growing which are also great perennial vegetables plus Pacific waterleaf which is another native perennial vegetable.
And of course you can add dandelions to that list and I have discovered that the ones growing in thick mulch are much tastier!
So the garden is coming along great and I can't wait till everything comes up and starts growing. Once the plants are big enough I will start mulching around them. In the future I will add a layer of leaf mould each fall to the garden but this year I'm just going to use fine wood chips.
This week I need to finish mulching the garden so hopefully by the next weekend homesteading report I will be finished building my new kitchen garden!
More Fun on the Homestead
I also had a little more fun over the weekend and a surprise visitor! An American kestrel showed up and spent a fair bit of time hanging out and even hunting at my homestead. This was the first time we had seen one here so I'm really excited about it and I hope it sticks around.
Apparently they eat a ton of grasshoppers which would be great! :)
But I also got some new plants from my parents place--the inside-out flower. This fun little flower forms a nice ground cover in full shade and spreads easily.
The bottom 2 side pictures on the above collage show one that I planted at my place and what a patch looks like.
I really like these little native plants and I planted them in some really shady areas where I hope they will fill in and become a living mulch for me.
The last fun thing was I got to do some foraging on one of my hugelkultur hedgerows. While I had planted these plants (except the dandelions) they are all now growing wild and I'm not doing anything to care for them now.
The top right pic in the collage shows the results of my foraging. I got some Pacific waterleaf leaves, dandelions, miners lettuce and Swish chard (the chard overwintered). This was a great collection of greens to add to my sandwich.
I really love being able to go out and get all the greens I want to eat from areas of my homestead that I'm not managing as a garden. I did plant these plants but now this is becoming a wild area where I can forage as opposed to garden.
I want to add some more edible native vegetables to the mix and as they expand I will be able to forage for my greens more and more and one day I may not even need to grow them in my garden. But I likely still will since I love to garden! ;)
Moving Forward
Thank you for taking the time to read this week's weekend homesteading report. I hope you enjoyed it!
I'm going to be doing some mulching this week around the garden and perhaps finishing the latches for some gates. But this week's focus is writing blog posts. I'm going to try to batch a bunch so I don't need to write again for a while. With the new baby coming very soon I need to be able to take a break from writing.
Good luck with your own homesteading/gardening adventures!
Thank you!
Weekly Blog Post
- What is a Hedgerow and Why You Should Plant One
- Companion Post on Steemit - The Benefits of Planting a Hedgerow
Related Blog Posts
- Plant Once With Perennial Vegetables
- 11 Perennial Greens You Will Love to Grow
- 5 Ways Your Homestead Will Benefit from Native Plants
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