Kelly and Andy's Backyard Garden

04/09/2023

Seeded about 3 weeks ago with mixture of castings and potting soil. Aside from the kale not being exposed to light soon enough and getting leggy the starts are going great!

04/02/2023

Okay it (was) March and we are back at it! Goals for this season are fencing, irrigation and hopefully a chicken coop. 2 loads of mulch thanks to city of Kingston breaking ground at sisters of Providence, worm castings being added to potting soil for seedlings and some early spring pruning of the fruit trees.

08/19/2022

The hay between the trees helped at the time...but now there is little hay left and lots of weeds! Solution: bike store cardboard and truck fulls of arborist mulch. Future self will appreciate the upfront effort.

After first failed attempt the zucchini and vining plants between the boxes seem to be taking off. Still waiting for the fruits to emerge.

We are also training the limbs on the trees bending them to about a 45 degree angle. I only broke two in the process!

07/29/2022

The garlic has been harvested and will cure for a few weeks. This year we have 3 varieties- Red Russian, Killarney Red, and Ivan. Totalling roughly 180 heads of garlic! Now we have to use up our last year's garlic. I'm thinking garlic butter!

06/28/2022

Garlic scape time! If left uncut they will seed into bulbils. Chopping them off puts the energy into growing bigger garlic bulbs. Time to make garlic scape pesto....yummy!

06/18/2022

This year we only have a small strawberry patch. Thankfully we've been getting berries for a few weeks now!

In a couple years we plan on expanding to a 50ft row of strawberries, as well as rows of raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries.

06/13/2022

It's that time of the year again. The cherries are forming, which means the birds are swarming.

Do those birds think they're going to dine on our cherries? Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

We've covered the cherries in netting to protect them from the birds. Unfortunately, this often leads to new branches growing on an angle. Next year we are hoping to build some frames to hold the weight of the netting off the branches.

06/03/2022

This row cover has really helped the lettuce. Protecting it from intense heat and reducing the impact of flea beetles.

05/19/2022

Kelly got wild with the pruning sheers again today. Time to snip those trees down to encourage them to grow nice and small.

You can see our pawpaws growing under the green shade cloth. For the next 2 years they will live under there, simulating a forest undergrowth environment. Once they are 3 years old they will be ready to handle the full sun, and will provide us with some tasty mango-banana flavoured fruit.

We also finally finished tarping the lot to kill off the grass and weeds so we can turn it into a our new garden. These tarps will stay in place for the next 18-24 months so we can start with a clean slate for gardening. Thanks Jeff and Val for sharing some tarps with us to help us cover this over!

05/12/2022

Today was the day of days!

After spending months collecting pallets, building raised beds, digging drainage, hauling compost, and filling in the swamp, we finally got our trees into the ground.

27 trees arrives in the mail today including pawpaws, peaches, apples, cherries, plums, pears, Asian pears, persimmon, and kiwis! (Our 4 hazlenut trees came in the mail last week and got planted up then.)

Special thanks to my mom for putting the girls to bed so we could get the trees in the ground just before it was too dark to see what we were doing!

Including the cherry and apple trees we planted years ago in our front yard, we now have 35 fruit trees in the ground. We hope those front yard trees taught us some lessons to help these ones thrive.

05/10/2022

The tree stumps are no more!

The slow process of cleaning up the new lot is in high gear.

Now... If anyone has old tarps they aren't using anymore, we'd be glad to take them off your hands. We have to cover the grass / weeds for the next year and a half in order to kill everything before we can put in our new garden.

05/03/2022

Watch this video to see how adding a sprinkle of worm casting affects seedling growth.

04/30/2022

This ash tree along with another ash tree were cut down a few weeks ago. It was dead due to Emorald Ash Borer. As a huge plus there will now be ample sunlight for market garden rows. Now we wait until the ground is dry enough for the stump grinder to make its way through.

04/15/2022

Time to start filling the raised beds.

We got just over half of them filled today. We also got landscape fabric and a layer of hay down between a couple rows of raised beds.

Eventually once all the beds and pathways are done we will get a pile of mulch and cover over with that too.

04/10/2022

We've also finished up the drainage pipes that run between the rows of our future mini orchard.

It's gone from full on bog to slightly swampy.

04/09/2022

Progress continues.

Boxes are going in place for the fruit trees.

Tomorrow we will hopefully finish lining and leveling them up so we can start filling them.

04/02/2022

Urban orchard preparation continues.

Over the past week we've attempted to drain the swamp by starting a drainage ditch (hopefully we can finish that this week).

We cleared out all the brush and most of the logs from the trees that came down.

Today we marked out where our fruit trees will be planted.

Once drainage is complete we will have to bring a ton of dirt back to raise the ground level up, and to fill the raised beds we built for the trees to go in.

Slowly getting there.

T - 1 Month until trees arrive.

03/27/2022

Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!

Unlike those yahoos in DC, we actually intend to do just that.

We need to keep water from pooling from where our fruit trees will be planted in May. Today we started draining water. Soon we will install some drainage pipes before piling yards of dirt on top to raise the ground level of our yard up a bit.

03/26/2022

Our grow light nursery has moved into the livingroom due to a temporary disaster in the basement. I could get used to being surrounded by little seedlings.

Pic 1: Lavender that has been growing for 1 year. Dried out... and almost died. I gave them sprinkles of vermicast, a massive haircut and consistent water. Happy to report they are looking much healthier.

Pic 2: Tomato plant cotyledons have emerged!

03/18/2022

Progress is being made.

Once these are all built it will be time to wheelbarrow a dump truck full of dirt and compost into them.

03/18/2022

Enjoying a fine spring day by building raised beds for the fruit trees arriving in May.

Thanks for the great company and the helping hands today Ellen!

03/06/2022

Starting up our pepper plants. Using our new soil blocker for the first time.

The garden won't be huge this summer as we are road tripping and starting the multi-year process of creating our new garden, but we still want something to eat this summer.

03/06/2022

We've been home with COVID this week and Kelly started to go stir crazy. She may have a fever, she has no voice, but she'll be damned if she's going to sit inside all day... We've got pallets that need to be cut up!!

02/28/2022

02/27/2022

Check out this video to learn more about vermicomposting and how it's working for us. The final product are worm castings that garden plants thrive off of! Looking forward to seeing the benefits this season.

02/24/2022

Thanks for joining our page everyone!

Over the next couple years we will be doing a lot to transform our backyard into our own little urban farmstead. There will be lots going on and we will be updating the process as we go.

02/22/2022

Well it's official... we have a LOT of work to do in the backyard garden this spring... 27 trees ordered to create our backyard orchard... Only ones left to find are the hazelnuts.
If you feel like schlepping dirt, digging holes, or planting trees this spring let us know (especially the dirt schlepping)!!!