Fall is definitely in the air!

So, the weather is changing. It's bouncing between overcast and drizzly and sometimes downpouring, to gorgeous and sunny. Fall's HERE! ;o)

Today I've been busy... turned over one half of the compost heap, oh so beautiful in there! The worms are working overtime, I swear! Already it's gorgeous, dark, lush loveliness! Smells ridiculously wonderful. Turned over the most recent additions of veggies, straw, shredded newspaper, and found the worms were EVERYWHERE in there, even 3' off the ground. They're chewing through the newspapers et al like you've never seen before. Well, okay, like I'VE never seen before.

I'm going to try to keep it going this winter, despite the cold temps. I've been reading up on humanure composting, and I think I'm going to steal some of those ideas for the compost heap we have here.... especially keeping it hot hot hot over winter. I think if I'm careful I can keep the temps up inside. Just gotta keep an eye on it.

So excited about how this spring/summer/fall has been going!

Po-ta-toes...the beginning

So, we're growing potatoes.

We're not using tires, because of the concern of leaching. We are, instead, reusing a 55g white plastic fuel barrel that was rigorously cleaned and rinsed prior to dirt-addition. We put the barrel up front where it should receive the most amount of sunlight for the yard (we think).

We planted the barrel with I believe 7 plants. We are also removing the flowers in the barrel, to see if this makes any difference in the results.

We're also using a mounding/hilling technique in one of the raised beds in the back yard. This particular raised bed has a bit of wind protection on three sides, and we've mounded up dirt to about 1.5 feet above the surface of the raised bed, so a total of about 2.5 - 3 feet of available dirt from the surface of the yard. We planted this bed with 6 plants total. We are not removing flowers from this patch to see if this makes any difference in the results.

The top three pictures were taken around the 23rd of June, 2011. I think we'd had the plants in the ground at this point for about 2-3 weeks. In addition, I should mention that we pre-started these plants in little 6" diameter plastic pots, and covered them with black mylar until the roots were growing like gangbusters. Then we planted them as you see them in the above photos.

I will add current photos shortly.

First Post

Okay, so I'm interested in starting another blog, this one specifically regarding the growing season here in Alaska, the successes and failures. Thoughts, frustrations, ideas, etc...

Keep it growing, Alaska!