Heeeey y’all! It’s a whole new month with whole new farming fun! Come along and let us give you the scoop!
New Farm Additions
Farm life is all about growth and that is exactly what we are doing! We’ve added 3 Olive Eggers & 3 Easter Eggers chicks. We are very excited to add these sweet girls to the BHG flocks! You may recall that in May our skilled brooder Shrill-x hatched out 4 chicks – 2 boys & 2 girls. They are growing so fast! The plan is to give these girls to one of those boys, Hope perhaps. We have named the 4 chicks as follows: Males – Hope & Joy; Females – Faith & Patience all qualities we are developing day by day! These chicks will serve as a reminder to not give up in becoming better people.
In other chicken news we are unfortunately being forced to cull two of our original flock – the rooster (Kong) & his cohort at the top of the pecking order (Brownie). The two of them began eating eggs just as we got our eggs Certified Naturally Grown – THE NERVE!!! We have tried everything to stop this behavior but it’s continued. We separated Kong first but we were still not getting the amount of eggs we should so we knew that there was another culprit. Then we caught Browine yolked-beaked & yolk-footed! After seperating her as well the egg count returned to acceptable numbers minus Brownie’s eggs of course. We had planned to cull some of this flock anyway in the Fall so the sting isn’t quite as bad. However, in this time of uncertainty and inflation we are happy to add these birds to our freezer!
Well we did say farm “additions”. Here is the plural. Meet Sonny & Cher! These beautiful thoroughbred kits are only 10 weeks old pictured here. Huge right? Rightly so because they are Giant Chinchillas. Adults average upwards of 17 pounds!They are a beautiful addition to the BHG fertilizer crew! These two have the sweetest disposition! We got them from a local rabbitry. They really know what they are doing and we have learned so much from Lauranna the owner. Before the year is out we may have expansion completed on the farm to add 2 Flemish Giants. That would complete our rabbit wishlist!
This month we will have more additions to the farm but we can’t say what just yet. It’s a secret for now but we will be posting a video over on our YouTube channel. I am so stinking excited!!!
Disappointments
The extreme heat wave we had last month absolutely destroyed all of our tomatoes that were growing in Hoopty. This is troubling since tomatoes are on demand at our home daily. I’ve accepted responsibility for not planting all greenhouse varieties. You can see me rant about that drama here. However, in speaking with other growers in our area we, have found that they also have had the same result in their high tunnels. Fortunately, we didn’t have a total loss as the tomatoes yielded well before giving into the heat. Some of these went to market, some we ate fresh, and the remainder went into the freezer until we can make time for a canning day. Thankfully since we have a long growing season we are able to start over. We have already started 4 more greenhouse varities and within the month they will be ready to be set out.
In other disappointing news are our tomato trials of Accordion, Pink Fang, & Gezahnte beautiful though they may be are not standing up well against the pest pressure in our area. We do belive the fight against the heat wave did weaken them so we are restarting a few of them as well.
Success
The 3 Sisters Garden plot really took off & was very successful for us! We yielded beautiful pumpkins & tasty corn. With this trial we’ve learned a lot! Summer squash didn’t do so well in this set up for us. While the pumpkins did. Our Blauhilde pole bean is too vigorous for the corn so we will try a different variety next time. There’s still a couple rows of corn left & a few pumpkins left to harvest before we pull everything and start leveling out the ground to prepare for building our simple greenhouse. This structure will serve as our seed starting & seedling storage space. We are still working on building plans. Mr. Bain Home Gardener has a lot of work ahead of him! I so appreciate & love this man. If you have a supportive man holding you down spiritually & emotionally, helping you reach your goals, and smiling while he walks the fire with you – TELL HIM & HOLD HIM TIGHT!
Waiting & Planting
We are patiently waiting the harvest of our sweet potatoes and other potato varities. We like to fertlize them once a month with bone meal. The OMRI Listed brand we prefer has become increasingly difficult to source. When we finally got our hands on some we decided to stock up! We have more potatoes to plant this month, garlic to plant before the year is out as well as onions – all of which require bone meal! Oh – & our last batch of tomatoes too! Supply issues are of serious concern now a days so if there is an product you use regularly in the garden or otherwise, stock up!
Fall Planting
This month will wrap up farmers market season for us and right in time too! We have to get ready for Fall! Fall planting is so important for us! Cauliflower, broccoli, collards, mustards, & the aforementioned all are started now for an Fall harvest and planted again in Fall for Spring! Having the freedom from the weekly markets will make it easier to get everything done. Hopefully our Fall will look slightly better than our Summer has.
So that is what’s going on over at Bain Home Gardens. We are off to get some farm chores done. Till next month…
June is known for a lot around the world but we here at Bain Home Gardens know it for graduation parties and oh yeah – THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER! Before we get into June let’s review what happened in May!
Flowers By BHG
May started and concluded our Spring Flowers by BHG subscription. It was definitely a whirlwind of a month of harvesting and arranging the bouquets. We won’t complain since we rather enjoyed creating these living works of art.
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We harvest arrangements for our home as well and we were very impressed at how well the flowers held up. Even when delivery day was extremely hot and humid our subscribers report that their arrangements perked right back up once indoors.
Particularly have we been thrilled to add new selections to our bouquet this year like our Bee Balm Wild Bergamot. Unfortunately our lilies are being little divas and the majority of them have not opened. Not to fear Summer subscription is here! That’s right, Summer subscriptions are open now and will remain open till subscriptions sell out or until June 15th. Deliveries begin July 4th and will continue for 5 weeks. You can expect zinnias, lilies, petunias, marigolds, and of course SUNFLOWERS! Grab you subscription while they are still available or grab one as a unique gift for that flower lover in your life!
MICROgreens by BHG
Microgreens subscriptions are also up for renewal and open for new subscribers until June 15th as well. We have adjusted our model since we first begin growing microgreens for the public. You can read about the changes here. Like everyone we are having to make adjustments in how we manage things due to the increasing cost of supplies and shipping. For example we bought a package of seed for microgreens to try. After realizing we really enjoyed them we decided to purchase again. The cost had already gone up significantly in only a month! We have found that buying in bulk for our seeds as we do for our pantry does of course save us a few pennies. We accounted for that savings and inflation when adjusting our prices for our microgreens. As we work to grow from sustainably sourced organic seed the cost sometime can be prohibitive. We do not want to give up on growing our microgreens however so adjustments have been made to continue this journey. If you would like to join us this Summer, you can join here.
Big News
You guys joined our journey back in April of 2021 when we got our first flock of chickens from our friends at Hawkins Homestead Farms as they were thinning their flock. Since then we have learned so much! We love our chickens so much! They each have so much personality and their own preferences. It been such a joy having them. Only a couple of months into being chicken parents, our resident brooder, Shrill-x hatched our first two chicks, shortly after, one and just recently, FOUR! Needless to say our flocks has really grown! We have no complaints either since farm fresh eggs are definitely at the top of all of our favorite things to eat! The flavor, the color – what’s not to love?! Ensuring the eggs have the highest quality possible for us and our customers is a bit of a challenge now a days as the economy shifts. Organic feed is really expensive but we’ve carried that weight because we know its worth it. We recently even found ways to stretch our feed which decreases our feed bill while actually increasing the quality of the feed!
That’s all good and well you maybe thinking but what’s the big news? Well you know that our farm is CERTIFIED NATURALLY GROWN. This includes our microgreens as well. We are very proud of that! As of June 2, 2022 our chickens & eggs are too! This means our eggs & meat (if & when we begin meat production) all CNG! This feels so good as we already know that we put forth great effort to ensure our girls are VERY well taken care of. Now when our customers see that CNG seal on our carton of eggs they too can feel like confident in what they are buying. If your are curious about CNG and their standards please feel free to check them out here. Also here is our CNG profile. Today we will be combing through the millions photos we have of the chickens and eggs & uploading some! Truly exciting! What do you think of these above?
New Product Line
We are excited to offer a little bit of our homestead with the public by creating a name for what we already do! Introducing Real Simple Surface Cleaners by BHG! Around our homestead we commonly use vinegar to clean our counters and stove. We sometimes infuse with orange peels and at other times we use our herbs that are grown right here on our farm. The first in this line is our Lavender Infused Vinegar. I love the label on this because there are literally 2 ingredients – vinegar and lavender! It really does not get any more simple than that! You may wonder if the vinegar smell is still there and I have to say that yes it is but not as strong as vinegar on its own and it has undertones of lavender. Each 16 ounce jar makes a total of 32 ounces of cleaner. The next in the line will be Basil Infused Vinegar. We will have these at our table at Farmer’s Markets but you can also purchase from our shop.
Trials
The Three Sisters trial area is growing WILD! Beneath the large leaves of the Winter Squash are beautiful fruit. I honestly cannot tell if its pumpkin or some other squash but the good thing is time will tell!
The beans, although started a couple of weeks behind the corn, have managed to outgrow the corn! We think this particular variety may just be to vigorous for this set up. In the future we will choose a variety that does not grow quite as densely. You can see that the corn is setting nicely although the plants themselves are rather short. We are not sure what that means as the actual ears of corn but we do remain hopeful.
Our heirloom tomato trials are going nicely too. Orange Accordion and Pink Fang have set fruit and we are just waiting for them to ripen. They have held up nicely through high winds and are standing up to the Summer heat well. We are already in the 90’s here in Alabama and it isn’t even officially Summer yet!
This heat is desirable for some plants such as okra. Our Motherland okra has not done very well. The initial plating died except for one plant. We replanted it in the high tunnel and that planting is still very young so it is too soon to tell how it will do. We are really hoping that it is successful!
We also planted for the very first time Roselle which grows a lot like okra, in fact they are cousins of sorts. We acquired this interesting plant from a fellow organic gardening enthusiast. We hope to be as successful as they have been but if not we know who has the goods!
Planting
We have recently planted sweet potato slips, 3 types of potato, grape vines, final plantings of peppers and tomatoes, beans, arugula, sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, & more! Up for planting this month is succession plantings of dill, basil, squash, and cucumbers. We have a lot of work to do!
Harvests
We have harvested and cured the last of our onions. This onion harvest is our best to date! Have we found the recipe? We are afraid to say yes as these things can be so fickle. As with our Garlic harvest which was just terrible! We actually know what the problem was. We made two mistakes. One we didn’t trim the tops as we normally do which lead to the tops falling over and the bulbs not growing as large as they could have. Second we did not trim the trees around the bed we grow our garlic in . This meant the area was shaded out far too much. The bulbs are so very small that peeling them is going to be a real nightmare! Trust me next year – WE WILL DO BETTER!
The Bee Balm Wild Bergamot was harvested. We noticed that some were so top heavy with blooms that they were falling over onto the ground! So these are the ones we started harvesting first leaving the upright ones for the bees. We are preparing them now for tea blends.
Fruit
We have enjoyed using our Blackberries in our tea blends. The flavor was quite amazing! We will welcome them back next year so we can do it again!
Blueberries are coming in nicely. We have planned to add more blueberry bushes to the farm for a couple of years now however more pressing issues have take precedent. Lets see what Spring 2023 holds.
Muscadine vines are pretty loaded this year. We hope to make more muscadine jelly this year with our harvest! You know we also will be eating more than our share too!
The Nectarine tree sadly will not be yielding any usable fruit this season. We are sad about it however this was beyond our control. This tree sets fruit really early in the season. The late freeze we had destroyed all the fruit that had set and the secondary fruit was tiny. The chickens enjoyed them.
The Fig tree is doing great! We do however have a concern. We have noticed an increase presence of squirrels on the side of the property that holds our fig tree. We are hoping that they do not rip us off as they did with the Loquat tree.
Lemon trees are growing very fast however we have noticed no blossoms again this year. Someone said to us that there is a chance that it may blossom in the Fall but we are not sure if that is accurate or not. We will see. What did bloom and has fruit is our Grapefruit tree! For the interesting story about this tree click here. We aren’t expecting these to reach maturity but its nice to see some signs of fruiting.
Well that is all folks! if you are local to the Dothan, Al area then we hope to see you at Farmer’s Markets throughout the Summer!
Hey there guys! April is gone and May has arrived! We have so much growing! Along with all the growth there is also some disappointments. Come along and we’ll tell you all about it!
Trials & Pollination Issues
This year we are running a couple of trials. First let’s talk about the tomato trials. We started several new varieties of indeterminate varieties along with our standard varieties back in January. Among these are: Pink Bumblebee, Purple Bumblebee, Green Zebra, Sun Gold, and Sweet Million. All of these have been planted in the high tunnel. Here lies the problem… In our First Farmers Market In Years video we finally figured out what was happening with our bees! We have a large tree that flowers on the end of our property. It is as far from the high tunnel as it can be. THAT IS WHERE THE BEES ARE! This is nothing new as the bees always swarm this tree. This year however they seem to be totally satisfied STAYING RIGHT THERE! Imagine that. So what we have been forced to do is to hand pollinate our plants in the high tunnel and even some in the raised beds! This has meant more work for us on the farm and time that we really do not have, however, the farmer does what she must.
As far as health of these new tomato plants they are great and very vigorous! They are also full of flowers! Each morning that we hand pollinate we are looking for tomatoes but nothing yet. We are however optimistic.
The Three Sisters trial is looking really good! For our squash we planted pumpkins, yellow squash, and some zucchini. At first the squash seemed stunted. After a couple of rains however they have really taken off! We planted a purple bean for the pole bean so we can see the beans easily when harvest time arrives. If you follow our journey then you know that we have struggled year after year with growing corn. We are hoping by doing this trial where our compost pile was will contribute to the overall health of the plants here and hopefully increase our yields.
Harvests
We have harvested all of our carrots! We didn’t have the abundant harvest that we had last year but of course we are happy for whatever we can get! Onions on the other hand are looking better than ever! This is quite ironic since we thought our onions were not doing well this year because so many were going to seed. We did find that the ones that were not are indeed growing quite well. In fact, we began harvesting them this week for a farmers market that we participated in yesterday! Most of those sold and what was left will be used in my very first home grown vegetable broth and our first onion salt blend! We have at least two full beds of onions left to harvest and they will be harvested this month.
We sampled the leeks and they are just not as big as we hoped. We likely wont be selling many but what is harvested will become a part of our home goods for the year – sauces, salsas, spice blends, and broth.
Growth As A Homesteader
It is one thing to learn to grown various vegetables and fruits but we have learned that it is whole other thing entirely to learn to use convert those items into something your family needs and will really use. As a business entity too we must convert these things into something that the general public needs and will buy. It is a challenge to figure this out but over time we have really grown in this regard. Over the last week we worked hard aggregating several produce items in to marketable products and also something we can use as well. We used our dehydrated spices to make seasoning salts. We used fresh herbs to make bread, used dehydrated herbs and berries to make tea blends, and we used frozen peppers to make hot sauce. We featured all of these at the farmers market we attended yesterday. They were a hit! Of course we saved some for ourselves, however, what what was left for the public is being added to our online store. Along with the aforementioned items we also butchered a hen for the first time and used her to make 11 pints of chicken broth seasoned with our own homegrown herbs. We then used the meat in a pasta dish for dinner. Win-win!
Taking what we grew ourselves and making pantry products that we can use to save money at the grocery store is so rewarding! There is the unfortunate result of becoming a bit of a food snob… nobody is perfect.
Planting
On this months docket is potatoes – sweet and fingerling, Asian greens, white onions, succession planting of squash, zucchini, green onions, basil, and cilantro.
I cannot mention planting without mentioning that we are delayed on our planting. We decided to support another source this year for some seeds and seed potatoes. In January we made an order to Urban Farmer. We just received our sweet potatoes yesterday ahead of the fingerling seed potatoes which we prefer to plant by mid-February. We found that Urban Farmer’s shipping schedule is a little later than what we are used to after the fact but that is on us. We had resigned to the fact that we would be planting them late due to our error. We tried calling, leaving messages, and sent emails trying to speak to someone in customer service about shipping concerns as the potatoes were not all we ordered. Kiwi plants and grapes were included on this order. We also ordered onions which are, as you can see above being harvested now but by their schedule are only being shipped mid – April for our Zone. Again this is our error as we assumed that as a seed company they would have accurate growing information and ship accordingly as have every other source for the staple items.
Yesterday when we opened the sweet potato slips we were very disappointed. We know plants don’t look great when they arrive but this has to be the worst any plants we have ever purchased on line have looked. We have since placed them in water and are trying to determine if we should even bother planting them.
I want to mention that all the seeds that we have ordered from Urban Farmer arrived promptly and are growing very well we just cannot recommend them for live plants, seed potatoes, or onion sets. As of today I have not received a call in response to the two voicemails or a response to the email. They do advertise a 100% satisfaction guarantee but I’m wondering how does one go about this process with no communication.
Gift Boxes
We hope to make these gift boxes available each month with varying contents. These little boxes make great gifts for that special someone in your life. This months contents are one votive candle and two of our 4 ounce spice blends. These can be delivered locally to the address you choose within our city limits or we can ship them for you. If you require shipping please contact us prior to purchase.
Videos
We have really dropped off with our video production this month and we want to apologize. We are looking to be back on tract with that this month!
By the next time we communicate, we will have attended our first big farmers market and we hope to have much good to report from it! Till then – from our family to yours!
Hey there friends! We hope that your and yours are doing well! As for us – whew have things been busy on the farm! Check out what has been going on!
Flowers
April showers bring May flowers they say and we can really appreciate that since we will begin delivering Flowers by BHG on May 1st! We have planted flowers in succession on the farm to ensure that we have a steady supply of flowers ready to go! We have planted Lilies, Dahlias, Marigolds, Zinnias, Sunflowers, and Calendula just to name a few. We will continue to succession plant through the Spring to ensure we have plenty of variety for the Summer.
We plant flowers for many reasons. Primarily we want to attract and feed the pollinators. We are working hard to understand the native pollinator varieties and get them established on the property. In turn we hope the pollinators thank us by doing what they do – pollinating! We have literally changed the way we grow for them. For instance, when brassicas go to seed, we used to be quick to pull them and replant. Now we leave them to allow the bees to feed for a bit first.
Another benefit of planting various flowers is the attraction of beneficial insects. The property above ours (from which we are down hill) has a ravine that collects water. You know that this is a breeding ground for mosquitoes! Every year we fight with them as we work in the high tunnel. It is not fun. We now have added reason to be concerned due to our chickens and rabbits sharing this space with us. We have to protect them as well! Therefore this year we are hoping to get Rudbeckia varieties established that are known to attract dragonflies such as Giant Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan. Yarrow too is a perennial on our list that also attracts the dragonfly. We are also considering planting Cattail along the perimeter separating the two properties. That plan however is still under research.
We also want to do what we can to attract ladybugs and lacewings. Fortunately, most of the herbs we usually plant yearly help out here – cilantro, fennel, thyme, and dill are all frequently visited by ladybugs. We are finding too that they love marigolds and sunflowers. Lacewings and ladybugs share a common interest in yarrow. In fact it seems all of the good guys love yarrow! I wish I had done a deep dive into this research when we first started farming because if I had many of these plants would already be established. We cannot change the past. We can only effect change to the future. Let this be a lesson to you though!
Hummingbirds too enjoy eating mosquitos. So we have been planting with them in mind. Hummingbirds are said to love red flowers so we have kept that in mind when planning things out. We already have Red Cypress growing wild all over the farm which the hummingbirds visit regularly. However, it is not in the location that is heaviest with the mosquito population. We are looking into Trumpet Honeysuckle for this purpose. We also have established Bee Balm or Wild Bergamot. Although it is not red it seems that hummingbirds enjoy it as well. We are working on a video that will go into more detail about this particular farm journey. Stay tuned for that.
Planting Delays
If you will recall that last year we simply forgot to order sweet potato slips for the season. That was very disappointing and we were determined to not allow that to happen this year so we ordered early. We did order from a new supplier which has proven to be a problem. Our sweet potatoes as well as standard potatoes are not here YET! Needless to say we are pretty annoyed as we expected them to be here no later than mid-March which is late for us but given that we were starting behind for the season we were okay with that. However its now April! I have no idea how this is going to impact our plan for the year however at this point there is nothing we can do except remain adaptable and go with the flow. Along with the shipment of potatoes our grapes and kiwi plants have also been delayed. While the kiwi is more of an investment of time, the grapes could potentially yield fruit this season IF planted soon enough! Time will tell.
Raised Bed Issues
When we first started farming we started in pots and raised beds. Many of our raised beds are at least 4 years old. Last year we noticed some deterioration of a couple of beds and knew they would need replacing this year. Well now that the season is in full swing we have realized that more beds than we thought need replacing! This is not the time to buy wood. We have been slowly rebuilding our front and back decks/porches as hubby has had time to work on them. As we have we have noticed the prices steadily creeping up. So we are at a loss when it comes to rebuilding these raised beds at a reasonable cost.
One option that came to mind is to make the switch to modular metal raised beds. This would be a very costly investment however these beds have a 20 year life expectancy. That is appealing in itself! Another option is to stay with the wood beds and switch to a longer lasting wood like cedar. Cedar raised beds are said to last 10 – 15 years however, it too is cost prohibitive. As the season get into full swing and we are able to get back to farmers markets and increase revenue for the farm we will be in a better position to be able to address this challenge.
High Tunnel Planting
March was busy for Hoopty! We moved in a bunch of home grown compost on 3 and a half rows for planting. On those rows we planted tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and tomatillos. They are all growing very nicely. In fact we have already had to prune the tomatoes! About a week after they were pruned they started to put on blossoms. By the time this blog is published I’m sure they will have opened and there will be plenty of yellow flowers in Hoopty! Last year we harvested our first tomatoes in June but I do believe we will be a tad bit earlier this year! That is fine by me! We are growing so many new varieties this year and honestly there is a bit of nervousness with that especially since we are all out of our home canned tomato products. We are hopeful that things go well. If the health of the tomatoes at this time are any indication then I think we will be just fine!
This weekend we plan to get squash, zucchini and cucumbers set out in the high tunnel. We are planting our squash on the same side we had our Marigolds on last year. This is an adjustment but it will assist us in adding another layer of protection for our zucchini and squash. We will also be planting basil along with these cucurbits to reduce pest pressure.
Once the zucchini, squash, and cucumbers are planted the high tunnel will be nearly full! It feels so good to look at it and see all the transplants and know we grew each and every one of them from seed ourselves. We gently cared for them and nurtured them till they were ready to be set out. Now Hoopty has taken over their care. Something tells me she will do a great job!
Pest Control
As you can see from the above paragraphs, we really prefer to use natural means for pest control. Even though we always use organic pesticides we really prefer to NOT to use them. Our first line of defense is crop rotation. See, most of the pests we are fighting each year actually live right below the surface of the soil. They live there and instinctively lay the eggs for the next generation. In this location the generation has the best chance of having food. By using crop rotation, when the next generation of pests emerge in a particular area they will not find the desired vegetation the previous generation did. The idea is that these pests will move on out in search of their next meal thus decreasing the population of said pest in the area. If however you plant the same crop in the same location over and over it is almost asking for an infestation of some sort. We unfortunately have experienced this. However, since implementing crop rotation things have improved drastically!
Crop rotation also limits reemergence of certain fungi in much the same manner. If host crops for particular fungi are not there then the spores will decrease thus reproduction of fungus is limited. This means we do not have to add organic antifungals to our farms ecosystem. We still have yet to mention the benefits to the soil of crop rotation! It really is good practice that just takes a little planning.
We also incorporate companion planting. We plant herbs and flowers all over the farm and in the high tunnel. The idea is to throw the bugs off the trail. Some herbs and flowers throw of certain aromas that pets do no like so they avoid them! Other companion plants do just the opposite, they draw the pests. This may see counterintuitive but if the pests are on the flowers they aren’t on our valuable crops! We call that a win! Not only does this increase the biodiversity of the farm but it also adds to the beauty of the farm. We find these techniques work very well until the season get to be in full swing. By July or August, depending on pest pressure for the season, we usually have to resort to using some sort or organic pesticide in order to ensure we can harvest our Summer crops. Some crops we strive to grow early enough in the season instead of fighting with the pests later in the season. Others are so important to our pantry that we just have to put on our famer pants and fight!
What’s Growing & Harvests
We have lots of produce growing on the farm! Our Chinese celery is ready for harvest and will be harvested this weekend. Oh, and speaking of pests, our celery had a pretty intense fight with spider mites. We nearly lost the entire crop! Thankfully we caught the infestation in early enough to get it under control. Unfortunately many of the leaves have suffered damage and had to trimmed back. So while it is still celery, it is not the beautiful product we like to share with our community. As a result we will not be selling it this season. Instead we will be dehydrating it to make our celery salt and other spice blends for the year.
Onions and garlic are coming along too. We have noticed that some of our red onions are going to seed which we find quite interesting but the weather has been quite erratic. Yellow onions seem to be fine at this point. We should harvesting these next month. The garlic is looking beautiful as ever! We are excited to see if we top last years harvest!
Mustard greens have been replanted as they too have gone to seed. The new planting is growing well!
The asparagus bed has come alive and is looking amazing! The purple asparagus is obviously my favorite and what I am most excited about. This is season two for this new bed of asparagus. We will not do any real harvesting (I have to taste one or two spears) this season. Season three however should yield well for us. We realize that as much as we love asparagus we are definitely going to need to add second, larger bed at some point.
Speaking of perennials the strawberries are growing very well. We hope to have enough to make a few quarts of jam this year. We’ve gone back and forth on it and have finally decided that we will be planting a second row of strawberries on the opposite end of the high tunnel. This should increase our harvest two fold next season giving us more berries to share with our community.
More Updates
As far as the chickens and rabbits, we hope to get you more updates over on our channel throughout the month!
Well that’s all folks! See you here in May with more updates!
March – the month that welcomes Spring – is here! Before we get into Spring, let’s talk about what was accomplished in this last month.
Flowers By BHG
A large portion of this month has even spent preparing for our Flowers by BHG subscription. We have planted so many flower varieties and still have plenty more to go! In the high tunnel we have planted our ProCut Sunflowers and Marigolds are reappearing from seeds dropped from last year. We will allow most of those to grow while those that are in the walkways will be relocated to more suitable locations.
Our in ground beds have been topped off with Tulips, Gladiolus, and Lilies. Our Daffodils are already gracing us with their beauty as they, along with the Periwinkle, are the first flowers to bloom on the farm. Still to be planted (in succession) are Calendula, Aster, and Zinnia. Fillers such as Basil and Snapdragons are already growing nicely. This season will have the largest variety yet and we cannot wait to begin arranging stunning bouquets! We still have slots open for new subscribers. Sign up closes April 1st!
Flowers by BHG – Summer 2023
Add natural beauty to your home with these local Certified Naturally Grown flowers! This subscription is for 5 weeks of everyday beauty delivered to your doorstep. Delivery is included for those with in the City Limits of Dothan, Al. If you live outside the city limits of Dothan, Al and would like to discuss arrangements for delivery and pick up please contact us prior to purchase so this can b…
Last month we informed you that we planned to plant fennel and kohlrabi the month of February. Unfortunately that was not accomplished. Those items have been moved to this month’s planting. We did however get to plant two rows of carrots in the high tunnel. Both of which are showing signs of life and doing well.
February is usually the month that we plant our potatoes. Somehow though we did manage to order them with the wrong shipping date! They won’t be here until sometime this month. We’re a little disappointed by this however given all we had going on this month I highly doubt that we would have had the time to get them in the ground anyway! So they also get moved to the March planting schedule.
So what did we actually plant the month of February? We did manage to get green onions, Asian greens, radishes, and carrots planted. We hope all of these to be ready to harvest by next month for our first farmers market appearance at 2 The Olive Fruit April 30th. There will be various vendors and lots of home grown goodness along with music! It is bound to be a good time! Watch out for the details on our Instagram and Facebook pages.
We also started many trays of plants to install in the high tunnel and into raised beds. Among these are our herbs of which we are very excited about! We finally had success starting Thyme, Sage, & Garlic Chives from seed. These will get raised beds just for them as they are perennials in our area and we look forward to having them established once and for all on the farm! We have also been blessed to get a few Lavender and Culantro seeds to germinate! We are hopeful that they will continue to grow for us.
As we mentioned in our Hoopty Transformation video, we are also growing several new Jalapeno varieties this year that will be great for our salsas we plan to make this year.
We again over did it with the tomato plants! We of course planted the ones we know we needed for sustainability but we also added a few new ones that we are excited to grow. Among these are the Pink Fang, Gezahnte, and Orange Accordion – all from Baker Creek! As you can see from the photos in the links, these are beautiful heirloom tomatoes. We hope that they grow well here at Bain Home Gardens!
Harvests
We have been harvesting our Purple Cauliflower throughout the month. It definitely brings us great joy to be able to finally grow this beautiful crop after several years of trying. Carrots & Lettuce were harvested from the high tunnel as well. Due to how quickly the temperatures are changing on us we will not plant anymore Lettuce in Hoopty till the Fall. However we will be planting in our raised beds once more before Summer heat sets in.
The month of March we hope to begin harvesting our Pink Celery, Brussels Sprouts, and radishes.
The High Tunnel
The majority of the month of February was spent working on Hoopty! Out with the old and in with the new! So far we have applied our own home grown compost to 3 rows of 13 and have covered with ground cover. These three rows will house our tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and cucumbers. We still have more of our compost to move into the high tunnel but will need to supplement ours with an outside source to complete Spring planting in the high tunnel.
Each year we struggle with having a strong enough of a support for our cucumbers and tomatoes. This year we are not playing! We decided to go ahead and install a more permeant solution – cattle panel trellis. This week we plant to install the t-posts to attach our cattle panel trellises to. This should make the job of harvesting and pruning less strenuous. As Mr. Bain Home Gardener would say, ” I can get jiggy with that!”
MICROgreens by BHG
Our microgreen subscription is again open for new subscribers! We love these tiny powerhouse greens! Like all of our produce, our microgreens are Certified Naturally Grown. This year we celebrating microgreens week with our friends over at CNG! Why not ?! As a part of our celebration, we are offering those who sign up this week (through March 6th) one free week of microgreens with your order!
MICROgreens by BHG Subscription – Spring 2024
This is a 7 week subscription. You get 8 ounces of microgreens delivered weekly. We offer a wide range of microgreen varieties. These may include sunflowers, peas, mustard, lettuce, herbs, and more! Deliveries will tentatively begin March 18th and continue through April 29th. See our complete terms and conditions here.
It really hurts to even type these words. However we said we would share with you the good and THE BAD so here it is. We are very sad to say that we had a sentinel event on the farm in which all of our Lionhead rabbits were killed. Kimba, Nala, and the guy who started it all , Simba have all been laid to rest. I know that these type of things will happen when dealing with farm animals but my heart is so broken. I cried like a baby upon discovery of this event. Of my rabbits Gizmo (Holland Lop New Zealand) and Misty Blue (Standard Rex/Single Mane Lionhead) are the only two survivors. I will begin to rebuild my flock but only after certain precautions (such as a completely enclosed electric area for additional protection from predators) are completed. This of course derails the plans we had for breeding but that is really the least of our current concerns. If you are however among those that were looking to adopt a kit from the Lionhead family then we apologize for that delay. We will also mention that Thai’s rabbits were thankfully unaffected and she will continue her breeding schedule as planned.
While the rabbits have decreased in number our chicken flock is growing. We have adopted another rooster who we appropriately named Oogly. We have also added 3 new girls Trixie, Blue, and Summer. For the latest news with them feel free to check our our Flock Update which will be posted on our YouTube channel later this week. Zig’s flock is doing great in fact all the girls are now laying – even the youngest – Noisy! Kong’s flock is also doing well as some of them have almost fully recovered from molting.
We are happy to report that we are certifying our chicken flock as Certified Naturally Grown. They are fed USDA Certified feed along with organic produce from the farm. They really are spoiled and that is just fine by us!
YouTube
This month was a weird month for videos. Between our video editing app malfunctioning and upgrading devices, serveral videos we had planned to upload were not uploaded. We have started getting these up and will be uploading more over the next few days! We appreciate your patience and support while we work through these issues.
This Week’s Listings
We are so happy to offer for the very first time Wheatgrass! We grow this as a part of our MICROgreens by BHG line. The best way to ingest this super food is by extracting the juice. The simplest way to do this is by using a wheat grass juicer. If you do not have one here are some other techniques you can use. We will be utilizing some of these as well until our extractor comes in the mail.
With all this home grown goodness it may be hard to decide just WHAT TO GET! Then let us help. By ordering our Greens Box or the Farm Sampler Basket you get a nice variety of our Certified Naturally Grown produce!
Well guys that is it in a nutshell! Till next time…
