Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Vegetable Garden

Seed Shopping

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Went to the Newville Hardware Store and the Newville Produce Farm to get more seeds – hoping for the rain to stop so we can start planting more vegetables.

  • 1/2 lb of Henderson’s Bush Baby Lima Beans
  • 1 lb of Tema Green Beans (53 days) 
  • Eureka Pickling Cucumbers (57 days) 
  • Bush Pickle Cucumbers (45 days) 
  • Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans (always wanted to try those)
  • Garden Spineless Zucchini (50 days)
  • Kohlrabi seeds and plants
  • Rutabaga seeds
  • a few white cabbage plants
  • sweet potato vines
  • a few cauliflower plants
  • St. John’s Wort plant
  • Rosemary plant
  • half a flat of white impatients for the shady flower beds

Stopped by a yard sale on the way and bought 3 forsythia plants, several daisy plants and a few while irises.

Also spent Saturday evening “finding” the shady flower bed that edges the lawn area (where hopefully we’ll have a stone wall someday). Got this area ready for mulching as soon as the rain stops. With this soggy weather, gardening is limited to areas that can be reached from a grass surface – such as flower beds… can’t wait for the sun to start drying things up.

And finally planted the two Asian Pear trees which Jens had gotten Tina for Mother’s Day!

Getting Corn Planted and Berries Weeded

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Jeff planted our corn this weekend – on what used to be a pasture, but recently plowed under, field – right above the “pea patch”.  We planted two varieties this year, 5 lbs of Silver King and 2 lbs of Sugar Baby.

Silver King is a sweet white corn, about 82 days to maturity, ears should be about 8″ long.
Sugar Baby is a sweet bi-color, early maturing corn – about 65 days to maturity.  This is a new one for us, we are just experimenting…whereas the Silver King has been great for us in the past.

Also spent every evening this week cultivating the Apache blackberries by hoeing around the plant, then using the small rototiller between the plants and finally the big rototiller along each side for the entire length.  It was worth it.  As soon as the Triple Crown berries are a little taller, we’ll do the same for those.

Pea Planting

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Jeff and Lars planting peas

We planted 50 lbs of garden peas in the field that is supposed to grow grapes next year.  Since peas are nitrogen fixing plants, we figured we can’t go wrong sowing them.   Hopefully they will grow and we have time to pick some of them – we did find someone with a mechanical pea sheller…We’ll see if they grow first.  Jeff adjusted the gears on our corn planter and used a different seed plate for the peas.  We had actually bought 100 lbs (not knowing exactly what we needed) – luckily the peas came in 50 lbs bags, so we are returning the one unused bag.



very long rows of peas!

It was a bright sunny day, but not very warm – mid 40’s…also spent a lot of time hoeing and rototilling the blackberry patch, we are almost done – less than half a row to go!!!  Also cleaned up the asparagus patch, dug the first 37 holes for the grape vines, which should arrive next week, and started cleaning up the herb garden.



Plowing and Planting in March

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Jeff has been busy plowing and disking our various “plots” during the last two weeks: 
  • the vegetable garden (which he “squared up” –  meaning he made it even larger)
  • the field below the barn, where we will plant our first 200 grape vines in April
  • half the field above the pond, which we will plant in peas (about 100 lbs) and sweet corn this year, then cover crop it to get it ready for more grapes next year



Last weekend, with unseasonable warm weather, we started planting the garden:  
  • 50 lbs of Kenebec potatoes
  • 25 lbs of Red Pontiac potatoes
  • 300 “Candy” onion plants
  • 1 lbs of red onion sets
  • 5 bulbs of California garlic
  • 3 seed packets of Hollow Crown parsnips



Kept on hoeing the blackberry plants from last year, working on about 25 at a time each evening after work – as of today, we have 362 finished (=138 to go).  The ground is perfect right now, weeds are coming out easy and the weather has been holding up just fine – though we are supposed to get rain and sleet tonight 🙁



garden patch





Chambourcin patch


pea & corn patch



Painting Barn Roof, Planting More Garden

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Jens volunteered to paint the barn roof! He arrived before 7:00 am, and Jeff had already gotten a safety harness (plus reflective roof paint and brushes). By 8:00 am Jens had secured the D hooks on the rooftop and strapped himself into the harness – he finished the entire one side of the roof by 3:00!

Also got more garden planted this morning:

  • 42 bell pepper plants
  • finished the pepper row and tomato row with cucumbers (marketfare)
  • row next to the peppers starts with 1 pack of yellow straight neck zucchini
  • about 4 oz of black zucchini
  • 1 packet spaghetti squash
  • about 1 teaspoon of acorn squash (saving the rest for late summer planting)
  • next 1.5 rows = green beans: .5 lbs of Tema, .5 lbs of Slenderette

Worked a little on the herb garden, added mariegolds to the border, hoed and watered

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