Expanding Berries with Cuttings

I have been continuing to dig around a bit to find information on how to do cuttings.  I think I am slowly feeling more comfortable with the process and am about ready to take the step and get some cuttings - assuming I make the time to do so!  There are a lot of websites out there that give some good information on the subject, but this one I found particularly helpful.


Propagating Deciduous and Evergreen Shrubs, Trees, and Vines with Stem Cuttings

This website not only has detailed steps of the process, but it also has a nice list of plants and their success rate with stem cuttings.

I would like to do quite a few plants such as magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas, etc, but I am most interested in doing stem cuttings to get my fruit and berries going without spending too much money.  I realize that it might take a bit longer to do it this way, but right now it is probably the best way to go for us.

I don't foresee our farm really being a berry or fruit farm, but what I would really like to do is be able to offer fruits and maybe even surplus vegetables to our meat customers.  (Right now we have pastured pork, grass-fed beef, and "run of the farm" chicken eggs.  We will soon have lamb and are hoping to add broilers and turkey as well.)


Right now we have a young orchard planted, a couple grape vines, blueberry plants, and some raspberries, as well as blackberries in the woods.  I would like to use hardwood cuttings from the berry plants and grape vines that I have to increase my number of plants.  I would also like to find some additional varieties to take cuttings off of, or purchase if I have to in order to take cuttings another year. I will probably continue to get some starts from raspberries and blackberries like I have in the past since they are ready to fruit faster, but I'm thinking that doing cuttings of them also will be a lot less work to get the amount of plants I would like to have.

I hope to be able to get some of these going soon since the dormant season for doing hardwood cuttings will soon be coming to an end.  I have my root tone (which I got at Menards, but you can also get it at garden shops or even off of Amazon) and peat.  From what I understand, now I just have to get some sand and my cuttings.  Hopefully I will be able to post pictures of the process soon!


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Diaper Pails

We are now starting our 4th round of cloth diapers, with 2 using them at the moment. (We use prefold diapers and diaper covers that my mom and I made, similar to the ones you can buy. If you would like to read more about our cloth diapering, you can do a search on the right side of my blog.) With 6 1/2 years of cloth diapering under my belt, I have learned a lot and changed a lot!

One of the things that I have changed is our diaper pail. I started out with a trash can with a flip up lid. I used an ice cream bucket to carry soiled diapers to and from the toilet to dump into the trash can and then rinsed the little bucket. It worked okay, but I wasn't completely sold on it. Not only could you eventually tell which room the diapers were in, but the trash can/diaper pail also had to be cleaned on occasion.

When we still lived in town, I started acquiring buckets. I needed a few for collecting coffee grounds for composting, but I guess I decided that it would be a good idea to keep getting more buckets. Some I got from the Hy-Vee bakery, but most I got from a local deli. They had about 2 a week from their pickles. And these are the buckets that I affectionately call "the pickle bucket". Creative, huh?

When we moved to our farm house, I did not move our diaper pail. I had used and cleaned it for 4 years, and I thought it would be best to just throw it away. So once we got into our new house, I needed something for the cloth diapers. The handiest thing I had around at the moment were some unused pickle buckets. I grabbed those, and it was one of the best diapering changes I have made yet.

So now our diaper pail is "the pickle bucket". Here is what I love about them.

• The lid has a rubber seal so no smells seep out.
• 2 pickle buckets stack quite nicely, taking up little space. They fill up at just the right time and make just the right size load to wash.
• Diapers are easy to load into the washing machine. Just take the lid off and dump them in.
• They are easy to handle, with their convenient carrying handles.
• When they are getting a bit "used", I don't feel I have to clean them. I can just throw them out.
• And . . . new pickle buckets have a rather pleasant "pickley" smell for quite some time when you open the lid. Sure beats the other smells!

As to where I keep them, they are in the laundry room. I change diapers in the bathroom, and the laundry room and bathroom are connected. (You can see our house layout here.) I know they aren't as beautiful as a white garbage can with a lid, but they are out of site - and they work so much better!

I know there are a lot of you out there who use cloth diapers as well, and many who have used them longer than I have. Since I still have a bit to go with them, and I'm sure there is more that I can do differently, I'd love to hear your best cloth diapering tips!

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Plant Propagation - Stem Cuttings

Last year my aunt sent me some small grape vines that she started from stem cuttings. Unfortunately, with the unfavorable spring, only 2 of them took. But these grape vines did spark my interest in propagating by stem cuttings. I have done a bit of this before with various house plants. These have been no brainer plants though - you pull off a piece, stick it in water or dirt, and it grows like mad.

What I am interested in trying is propagating things that are a little trickier - bushes, trees, more grape vines, etc. With all of the landscaping and berry planting I would like to do yet, it could get quite expensive. (If you have just read my husband's newest post, you will see that our land is pretty bare right now - and that we will need to figure out a happy balance with trees!) So last fall I bought some rooting hormone, and I have started my research. This is what I have gathered:

• A lot of plants propagate best with hardwood cuttings - which need to be taken when the plant is dormant.
• Some plants will propagate with the cutting from new growth taken early in spring.
• It takes just a little bit more than dipping the cutting in rooting hormone and then sticking it in dirt.

And that is about all I know so far! Obviously, I have a bit more research to do, and I need to do it rather quickly if I want to get cuttings while plants are still dormant - which I do! I want to get started this season since I realize that my plants are going to be a bit behind plants that I would buy, but they will be cheaper. :)

With that said- has anyone out there propagated from cuttings? I'd love to hear what worked for you and any advice or sites you might have for a newbie!

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Canning Organizing and Planning

I will be the first to admit that sometimes I get a little carried away with wanting to have things organized. With that said, 2 years ago I started a canning notebook. Here is kind of the overview of it.

• Each year/canning season I record what I canned and how much.
• I keep a tally of how many pints and how many quarts.
• I keep this notebook with my canning supplies so it is convenient while I am canning. Otherwise I would probably forget to record things.
• At the end of canning season (I consider my canning season to reset as soon as I can something from the garden) I make note of how much I used and what I had leftover.
• Anything that is left over gets transferred over to the next year's canning list and marked as leftovers.

Why do I do this? Like I said, we have limited space so I want to make the best use of my pantry where I store things I have canned. If I find out I don't use 30 quarts of tomatoes, I don't want to store 30 quarts of tomatoes. Which takes me to my next reason. Time. It takes a bit to can things so I don't want to spend the time canning more than I need. The third reason is garden planning. If I find out that I'm running out of things consistently, I can rearrange my garden plans. And lastly, I hope it will help out a bit financially. If I am able to plan my garden better for our families needs, I will need to purchase less from the store - and I guess health can be put in there too since what we grow will be better for us that what we purchase!

As for this past canning season, my notebook isn't too impressive. (The photo was taken in Nov. so my list has changed a bit.) If you are from the area or have followed my blog, you may know that many gardens left much to be desired last year due to constant spring rains and weeds taking over. Most of what I was able to can was fruit that was given to me and things that I can in the winter. (This winter I pressure canned dried beans with seasonings, ground beef, and soups. I usually cook and freeze ground beef but our home freezer got turned into a business freezer, and I wanted some ready for casseroles and soups for when our little one came.)

I haven't been canning very long, and I'm still figuring out the whole process and how I want to go about planning what I can. I'd love to hear some things that you do!

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Rearranging

If you haven't noticed, I have rearranged my blog a bit. Feel free to check out the changes, especially the pages bar above. (There may be a few more changes coming too.)

More importantly than that, however, our lives are being rearranged a bit. Ethan and I are hopeful that as this rearranging continues, we will continue on with our farm. You can read more about our recent changes on Ethan's blog.

Dreaming of Spring

Sometimes winter can be long . . . very long. It seems like no matter how much dreaming of spring and summer you do, it is always just beyond reach. I'm sure like many others, I have been doing my share of dreaming of warmer weather lately.

On my windowsill I have a little plant that keeps me dreaming. It's a little sweet potato vine in a jar of water. For quite a few years in a row, I have started my sweet potato cuttings from, well, sweet potatoes. (You can read more about that by searching "sweet potato" on the right sidebar of my blog -which if you want to do, now would be a good time to start). This year I decided to try something different to see if I could skip a step - using an established vine to get my cuttings for garden starts.


Before the weather turned bitter, I took a cutting from my sweet potato plant in the garden. I brought it inside and stuck it in a jar of water. I was quite excited because I was starting out with a beautiful looking vine. The leaves were big, green, and abundant. Before I knew it, however, the leaves started to fall off one by one. Pretty soon I was looking out my window at winter weather with a virtually leafless vine in a jar of water. With only a couple of leaves left, no bigger than my thumbnail, I didn't have much hope for the little vine.

I would have almost thrown it away if I hadn't seen what was going on under the water though. I noticed a few white bumps on the vine. And as I continued to watch them, they continued to grow. Into roots. And not just little roots. Long, healthy, white roots.

As these roots were growing, there wasn't much going on above the surface of the water. Just a few little leaves that continued to hang on. But as time continued to pass, and as the roots continued to grow, a few new leaves started to emerge. Although little at first, they were beautiful to see. These little leaves soon grew bigger, and a few more little leaves burst forth.

Sometimes it seems like this snow and cold is here to stay, but when I look out the window I am first greeted by my little sweet potato vine reminding me that spring IS coming. And although above the surface it might still look a little rough, it has been lucky to have had the winter to do some growth under the surface so that when spring does come, it can take off and be used to produce fruit . . . err . . . vegetables.

Jonathan Thomas Book

Crooked Gap Farm is pleased to introduce our newest farm hand - Jonathan Thomas Book!

Jonathan was born January 6th and is doing great. He was 10 days late, helping him grow to be our biggest baby - 7 lbs, 9.8 ounces. (Caleb, our first born, had to give up his record of 7 lbs 1 oz.)

Jonathan is doing great, and Caleb (6), Hannah (5), and Isaac (2) are each enjoying him immensely.