Praying Mantis

Today my mom came upon a awesome discovery, a ton of tiny little baby praying mantis.  They are the cutest little things I have ever seen.  They looked just like adult praying mantis but they were about the size of an ant, and they were all over the place.  Of course I right away ran to get my camera.

A whole bunch of praying mantis nymphs

Some of the pictures that I zoomed in more with the camera make it hard to tell just how small these little guys are, but this picture may give you some idea of just how tiny they are.

The praying mantis ootheca (egg case), with little praying mantis nymphs emerging from it. 

Close up of one of the little praying mantis

Potatoes

So yesterday we just planted our potatoes and sweet potatoes.  We planted 2 varieties of sweet potatoes (Beauregard orange Sweet Potatoes and White O'Henery Sweet Potatoes), and 11 varieties of regular potatoes.  One thing is for sure we should have a lot of potatoes this year, and a large variety of them.  Here are all the varieties we should have this year:

Mountain Rose - Red inside and out (Grew last year)
Red Pontiac - Red outside white inside
Superior - White inside and out
Irish Cobbler - White inside and out (Grew last year)
Yukon Gold - Yellow inside and out (Grew last year)
Blue Potatoes - Blue inside and out (Grew last year)

Fingerlings:
French Fingerling - Pink on outside and Yellow on inside
Austrian Crescent - Yellow inside and out
Red Thumb - Red inside and out
Purple Peruvian - Blue (Purple) inside and out
Rose Finn Apple - Pink outside and Yellow inside

I am really excited to be able to offer a mix of fingerlings this year.  All together we planted almost 6 rows of potatoes, which is over twice what we did last year.  There should be a lot of potatoes!

 

I just thought these two looked so pretty together that I just had to take a picture.  Red Thumb Fingerling Seed Potatoes and Purple Peruvian Fingerling Seed Potatoes.

Rows of potatoes all ready trenched and planted.

 

New Markets This Year!

Just wanted to do a quick post to let everyone know that we will be adding two new markets this year.

Brunswick Farmers Market
Sundays, Noon to 4p.m.
Starting June 16th
Located at Brunswick Heritage Farm
4613 Laurel Road, Brunswick, Ohio

Akron General Farmers Market
Tuesdays, 3p.m.- 6p.m.
June 18th - September 24
Located in the parking lot at the west side of the Akron General Health & Wellness Center
4125 Medina Road, Akron, Ohio

Of course we will still be selling at Valley City Farmers Market on Saturdays starting June 8th.

Red Wiggler Worms

 

So I now have red wiggler worms, around 2,000 actually.  I have been using earthworm castings as fertilizer and have had some really great results.  So it got me thinking, and I did some research online.  Turns out that red wiggler worms are suppose to poop about half their body weight per day.  Which means that since I have about 2 lbs. of worms I should be getting about a pound of castings per day.  Which sounds pretty good to me.  So I went out and bought some large containers filled it with shredded paper, shredded cardboard, some vegetable, fruit scraps, and other food scraps, and ordered the worms.

I read a lot about it before I actually bought everything and ordered the worms, but there was one thing that I did not happen to read until after I had gotten the worms and added them to their new home.  Apparently some of the worms need a little training.  I thought they would like their new home and not decide to run away, or I should say crawl away.  Most of the worms stayed down inside the bin fine, but a large group of them must have thought they could find a better place to live and kept trying to get away.  It has been about a week now and they seem to be settling a little better now.  Who would have thought that worms need to be trained?

Right now I just have the red wigglers but I am also planning on getting some nightcrawlers (hopefully soon).  I am working on setting up more bins, and looking to purchase some the nightcrawlers.  This year I plan on selling my red worms and night crawlers for fishing, and will be sure to post when they are available for purchase.

More Pictures

 

Here is a picture of my light set ups in my basement.  I still have a lot of plants in my basement that I am slowly trying to get outside and use to their environment.

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The inside of my my hoop-house, which is currently covered with a shade fabric to bring down the temperature during the day, and also to provide the plants that are not yet 100% use to the sun the chance to get accustomed to the outdoors.

 

 

This is about half of my greens plants, that will be going into the ground hopefully next week.  I have many different varieties of kale, mustard greens, collards, and swiss chard.

 

 

This is one of my flats of basil plants (I have 2 1/2 flats), just before I transplanted them into pots.  I will have about 12 different varieties of basil available this year at the market.  Some of the different varieties include lemon basil, cinnamon basil, anise basil, licorice basil, blue spice basil, and sweet basil.

Time for Planting

Before we know it the market season will be here, right now it is time for planting and to prepare for this growing season.  I have already gotten a few things in the ground and very soon (hopefully this coming week) I will be planting most of my cold weather crops.  Of course all this rain that we got yesterday does not help planting.  I know everything seemed pretty waterlogged yesterday.

 

It is a little hard to see from this picture but past my truck and the apple tree is my garden at home, in which I plant all my lettuce.  I have not planted my lettuce yet but will be very, very soon, or at least I hope, everything depends on the weather.

 

Greens in my hoop-house that will be planted outside, and will be cut and sold in bunches.

It is hard to believe that Valley City Farmers Market should be starting in less that 2 months.  I will post the exact date that is will be starting as soon as I find out.

Wishing Spring Were Here

It is right about this time every year that I start to get eager for the new planting season to be here.  I have got most of my seed orders together, of course every day I sit down to look them over, start looking at more things, and then start adding more to my orders.  Which is bad, I need to just send them in already! 

I already have some onions, leeks, strawberries, and herbs started inside under lights.  And within the next couple of weeks I will be starting some early peppers and tomatoes.  Also if I decide to grow eggplant I will have to start them.  I am not sure if I want to give the eggplant a shot again this year.  I have grown beautiful eggplant in the past, but the last couple of years I have had absolutely no luck, I may need a break from it for awhile.  It is still a toss up, because I have enough of seeds left over from previous years that I could give it a shot with out having to buy any seeds, but we will see.

Now that I am almost done with my seed orders I am going to have to get together a list of what I am planning on growing this year to post here.  In the meantime here are just some things that I have planned:

~ Yard Long Beans - Both red and green
~ Lots of Dragon Tongue Beans - Which everyone at the market seemed to love last year
~ I am debating on planting dry beans - kidney, garbanzo, and black
~ I have a good wide selection of winter squash and pumpkins picked out for this years planting
~ I am also debating on growing peanuts
~ I have some cool new varieties of kale, mustards, and collards that I am planning on growing
~ Lots and lots of herbs - I plan to have many types of herbs available both fresh and dried

Those are just some of the things that I am really excited about, like I said I will try to get the full list together very soon.