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It is that time of year when it’s cool outside and the seed catalogs start to arrive in the mailbox.  You get one or two sunny, warm days and you’re ready to start gardening……  I used to thumb through the catalogs and dream, but now I try to get right on ordering the seeds that I want to plant because THEY RUN OUT!  -Yes.

Johnny’s Seeds has some of my favorite vegetable and flower varieties, but if you don’t order them early they run out! Hakurei Turnips are the first seeds they run out of and they are my favorite. After working at the Peaceful Belly Farm for several years, I have a few favorites that I have to grow each year all of which can be found at Johnny’s Selected Seeds.  These include: Turnips Hakurei, Lettuce Mix Encore, Peas Sugar Anne and Purplet Onions.  There are many other great varieties in this catalog that do very well in Boise.

The Catalog itself is full of great information about growing conditions, germination guides, comparison charts, links to videos, and even a few stories.  The catalog has vegetables, crop covers, flowers and some great tools too.  Their website is good, but I have an easier time finding things in the catalog and I tend to use it all season as a reference.

If you are growing Sun Flowers they have an amazing selection of different colors, heights, growing times.  I tried their Collection of Sunflowers last year and really enjoyed trying some varieties that I might not have otherwise selected.  They also have other fun flowers.  I really like the Calendula Flashback Mix.  It is so drought tolerant.  Once established, it really needs very little water and they will bloom all summer long in full, hot sun.  Save the seeds and you will have Calendula for many years to come.   When you are selecting flowers, because some of them take a long to bloom, be careful. Some of them might be better to buy as a plant, than to wait to grow from seed to flower.    Dusty Miller is a foliage often used in bouquets and you are better off getting a few of these plants, than planting the seeds and waiting 88 days to start cutting the foliage.  China Aster are another one.  They take 110-120 days, which means they won’t be ready until into the fall and it might be too cold by then for them to bloom.  If you have a heated greenhouse and can start them very early, this will help, but if you’d like to cut them during the summer, you might look for the plant.  Most of the other ones will do well if you follow the growing instructions in the catalog.  Look at the days to see how long it is going to take to grow from seed.

Priorities when ordering seeds:  get the flower seeds early that you are starting indoors or in a greenhouse.  Many need to be started 6-12 weeks before they are planted outside in mid-May to June.  Tomato seeds if you are starting your own tomatoes, they need to be started early as well if you want to have tomatoes in the summer and not wait until fall.  Look at how long they take to bare fruit when selecting your tomatoes.  Choose a few early ones and a few longer ones.  Cool Season seeds: lettuce, spinach, turnip, radish, Fava beans, peas, and other cold season plants can be purchased now so that they are ready to plant outside as soon as the weather permits.  St. Patricks Day is the traditional day to plant peas.  (See the story below on peas.)  Seeds that run out.  If you can, order all the seeds you will need at once.

If you have friends who are also planting a garden, order with them and share.  You just need a few tomato seeds, so you could share them or you can also keep them in a cool, dry place and use them for several years in a row.  I have a whole library of seeds that I pull out each year and use.  These include my giant pumpkin seeds, my birdhouse gourd seeds, zucchini and cucumber seeds, radish, flowers and more.

There are also lots of seeds that you can save from your garden and plant from year to year, like Bread Seed Poppy.  Read more about this in my next article. In the meantime, go to Johnnyseeds.com and look at all the wonderful seeds available for your 2018 garden.

Six years ago, when we moved to Storybook Farm I accomplished a life long dream of having goats.  I found some Nigerian Dwarfs in Weiser, Idaho and we went to visit them when they were very tiny to pick them out.  I picked out two females and a male wether who had beautiful markings.  Then, when they were old enough, we went and picked them up.  For years, I hoped to breed them, but was not able to find a buck.

Then, last spring my neighbor’s Brad and Jan got a little tiny black Pygmy Cashmere cross.  I went to see him and they told me they were not going to neuter him.  “Are you sure?” I said, explaining how stinky they can get as unneutered males.  So, in the fall, when he started to get stinky and they changed their minds about neutering him, I asked them if I could bring one of female goats down before the vet came.  They said yes.  I walked Frida down to their house on a leash, where I left her for 30 days or for a full Nigerian Dwarf Goat cycle.  Then, I brought her home.

I read everything I could about how to tell if it had worked and most people said I wouldn’t be able to tell.  Several years ago, my friend Katie had rented goats and the first one they brought to her ended up having babies in the middle of the night.  They brought her a second rental goat and the same thing happened.

But, in February it became very obvious to me that it had worked.  She was huge and her udder was full.  The Friday before Easter, during spring break, all the goats were in the barn, which is unusual and Frida was laying down and when she tried to get up she just laid right back down.  I knew it was time.

We brought towels out to the barn and got ready.  At about 8:00 p.m., after taking a break from looking and looking in there all day, Luis and I went out and it was happening.  Frida was panting, some thing was coming out.  We took a closer look and realized it was a tiny goat head.  I panicked and called a friend who is a vet basically saying “It is happening!”   Then, before we knew what to do, it was out. We dried it off very carefully with a towel.  It was covered with a black gel that was very warm and slippery.  My friend Hester told us the mother goat would eat the umbilical cord and clean them off, but she was busy getting ready to have another, so we kept cleaning it and making sure it was breathing.  It was and when we got it all uncovered we realized it looked just like its dad Boo.  I couldn’t believe it.  I grabbed my phone to let Brad and Jan know the Boo Junior had been born and to hurry down to see the next one.

Luis looked at me and said “This is amazing.” What had looked like a black blob was now trying to stand up and starting to look like a goat.  My neighbors came over, the vet and we were all there to watch the second one to be born.  This one was brown and looked a lot like its mom.  This one had a thick umbilical cord, so the vet tied two little ropes on it and then cut it in the middle.  I was so glad he was their.  The mom cleaned off this baby, ate stuff and seemed like she could rest more.  None of us thought that there were any more, but I had heard that their could be three.  A friend said she went to bed after 2 had been born and in the morning there were 3.

In the morning, there actually was a third one, but it didn’t make it.  It was very sad.  Brad, Luis and I buried it.  Luis named him Martin, after Martin Luther King.

The baby goats are way too much fun.  It has been goats this and goats that for the past week.  Are they getting enough milk, are they ok, are they stuck behind anything, do they have a safe place to go outside, are they too hot, are they too cold.  Frida, their mom, has been a very good mom and they seem to be eating just fine and doing well.  I know this because yesterday they really started doing baby goat things.  Jumping, playing, racing around, chewing on things.  They are so cute.  I am not getting anything done because I just want to sit and stare at them all day.  They have been held a lot and had lots of visitors, so they are very friendly too.

They did get disbudded at age 7 days, which is supposed to be the best time when their little buds or horns first come out.  It was hard to watch, but the woman who did it had been doing it for a very long time and she told us all kinds of stories of goats who had their horns left on.  She also gave them a shot and they have to have another in 30 days.  Then, the little boy will get banded (neutered at 12 weeks).  She was very good.  I highly recommend her.  Ashley Ward 208-724-8398. She lives in Eagle, and raises, shows and sells, Pygmy goats.  When she was six years old, her grandparents gave her 3 goats and she did 4-H with them and showed them and now she is till doing it, but I bet she has 25-30 goats and a huge beautiful pasture and barn for them.

 

    

You can see the mom Frida on the stump and the dad Boo following her around in the middle photo.  The last photo shows Boo with his horns and how they have to cover them with bike handlebar covers.

Every year Dennis Fix, the owner of FarWest nursery travels to Oregon to bring back some great varieties of raspberries, marion berry, black berry, currants, gooseberries, and grapes.  This is how I got my berry garden started and now I have berries from early summer until the fall.

The raspberry varieties there go from early (end of June) to fall.  Read the labels and select ones from different ripening times.  Example:  Early ones: Latham, Caroline Mid Season: Boyne, Ever bearing: Amity, Fall: Heritage and Fall Gold.  The golden raspberries are my favorite now.  I love their flavor.  I also tried Black Munger, but I did not like them.  They are very dry and seedy.

I got some thornless blackberries there last year and they have big berries that are tasty once they ripen.  These blackberries do not take over like the ones you see on road sides.  They are easier to maintain.  Once I got these plants established, I took cutting of them to help create more plants in my row.  I did this by cutting off some of the stem in the winter when they are dormant and sticking them into the soil with 1-2 buds under the soil.  Where the buds are is where roots will come out to bring the cutting to life.  It is a nice way to create a row of the berries that you like best.

Crandall Current is a favorite.  These bloom early and the yellow flowers smell like clove.  Then, the berries come on and are big, dark blue and juicy.  Other currents are small and tedious to pick, but these are easy pick and tasty.

Check out FarWest soon as they seem to sell out of these quickly. Try to get your bare root berries in the ground before they leaf out.

Word of warning.  When planting raspberries, marion and blackberries be aware that these plants will spread by runners underground.  This can be beneficial if you are trying to get a berry patch going, but it can also be very problematic if you plant these in a bad spot.  An example of a bad spot would be close to a fence and a neighbors yard, where the berries will go under and spread into parts of your neighbors yard where they may not want them.  Plant them in a place where you and other people will not have to constantly be digging them out.  It is easy to plant them, but really hard to remove them, so be careful.  If you can, plant them in a row, where you can easily walk to pick them and trellis them up as needed.

Currants are more of a shrub and so they can be planted anywhere, even as an ornamental in a garden bed.  They are pretty and you can enjoy them and eat their berries.  They will not spread like a raspberry.