First year on the farm: 2016 Kansas City Missouri Garden Pics

[MajorTom]

Greetings from Kansas City! (Well, about 30 miles north)

Just before winter last fall we moved from the city to 8.5 acres of horse property north of town.

I have plenty of sun, great top soil, pumped ground water and several horses willing to make fertilizer for me. I figured that this was as good a time as any to try getting back into veggie/tomato gardening. It's been over 10 years since I've tried to grow anything. Year one has been a bunch of experiments gone right and wrong. But what's been great is that I've had the chance to play in the dirt instead of sitting at my desk in the city. I started with 5 raised bed boxes of 4x8 and 8x8 sizes that have grow to nine that I've been playing with.

I've done a little bit of lurking but I thought I'd share some progress. I'm a Creative Director by trade and a hobby photographer so the garden affords a chance to play with still life photography as well. I'm attaching some of the build progress over the last 4 months along with a few garden shots.

Having a director position in the city makes gardening a bit of a crazy hobby, but it's been so worth it for my sanity. I wear a headlamp at night and do the bulk of my work from 10:00 pm to 12:00 am. It beats the heck out of sitting on my couch watching TV though!

More as I have time!

[MajorTom]

I've got about 44 tomato plants going right now, along with multiple herbs, squash plants, carrots, peppers, etc. Over 100 plants in all. Nothing compared to some of the growers here, but for my first year this is all I can do.

[MajorTom]

About 70% of my plants I started from seed, the other 30% were "Insurance" plants just in case I botched my experiment.

List:
Purple tomatillo - 3
Tomatillo - 1
Brandy wine - 1
Purple Cherokee - 4
Organic peacevine - 1
Park's Whopper - 1
Juliet - 1
Orange zinger - 1
Arkansas traveler - 1
Roma - 1
Old German - 1
Green zebra - 4
Genovese - 4
Fox cherry - 12 (they went a little nuts and I keep transplanting them.)
Mortgage lifter - 3
Yellow pears -2
Celebrity - 4

And one picture of one of my home made fertilizer machines.

[MissS]

What a beautiful job that you have done. It was a lot of hard work and looks just great. The soil in your boxes is awesome looking. How lucky you are to have such a nice new home and a gorgeous Palomino helper to boot.

Thanks for sharing.

[Bulldog]

Your garden and land are beautiful, but the fertilizer machine is just gorgeous!

[Runescape]

Awesome photos, everything looks great.

[bower]

Awesome place, great garden, sweet tomatoes and extra sweet tomato elf!! And the fertilizer machine... beauty. Do they also mow the lawn?

[MajorTom]

Bower: They would "mow" the lawn to nothingness if we let them. I am amazed daily that horses can eat (and poop) that much!

[bower]

Sweet!!!
I was pulling grass out of the garden the other day, and I said to myself, I'd feel different about this if I had a pony!
Horse country is a fine place to live.

[Kazedwards]

Wow your garden and land look great. Love the tree line drive! I'm in KCMO in the Liberty area. My wife and I are actually looking for some land up north in the Smithville/Kearney area. Sounds like that's about where you are. Hope the rest of your/our season goes well.


-Zach

[MajorTom]

Zach:

Speaking of the season going "well" - Funny that the last 72 hours have had not one, but two storms roll through with 60+ MPH winds at my property. The wind bent a few of my 3/4 inch thick metal tomato stakes in half and rolled one of my patio tables into my seedling trays. Probably lost 25 plants in all. It really showed me the importance of building a garden in 2017 that is built to withstand these brutal midwest storms. And to not take it too personally when the weather tears up some of your work. I might have to trim the plants more than I would like to so as to reduce their wind resistance.

Live and learn!

[Kazedwards]

Those storms were pretty intense. We lost a tree up front yesterday. The rest will come down on Saturday.

The tomatoes are shaken and I need to resupport a few. I have several that I need to tie back up to the support. Also lost one pepper.


-Zach

[MajorTom]

Zach-
That stinks about the tree. Miraculously, we didn't loose one tree on the property. Plants are bouncing back nicely yesterday and today. I didn't check the zuks for 48 hours and ended up with 4 that were over 13 inches long ... always amazes me how fast they can grow. Had a gorgeous sunset last night too.

[bower]

Beautiful pics. You guys have my sympathies on the wind, it is destructive here too on a regular basis. We just had two nights of frost warnings, and a few more days to come of temperatures half the normals for July. Lots of challenges, but something remains, if not always as we intended.

[whistech]

Major Tom, you have a beautiful homestead.