Terra Novus

The hop rhizomes arrived in the mail yesterday!  I will upload photos of the rhizomes soon, as well as trellis construction and growth progress.  Keep your ears to the ground, seedlings!

There is a type of berry that produces a soaping agent called Saponin. These can be used to clean laundry and has many many other cleaning uses. We are using soap nuts to mix them with our water, to be used as a natural insecticide. We purchase all of our products at www.soap-nutstore.com. The site is worth checking out, even if you just want to learn more about Soap Nuts. Their prices are pretty low compared to a lot of other sites we’ve seen too. Go have a look.

At Terra Novus, things look pretty bleak. Nothing but brown. Dead nettle stalks, dead grass, poison ivy that is very much alive. But there is so much potential here to grow whatever we want, however we want. Squash, Garlic, Tomatoes, Asparagus. The list goes on. There are already two different types of grapes growing as well as blackberries.

Robin and Grandma identifying plants

We have set up a compost pile next to the barn, near the garden. In the photo below, we tilled the earth a bit to allow earthworms to sneak up into our goodies, then installed pallettes held up by posts. We then took all the dead plant stalks from the garden and used them as the base of the compost. The loose brush allows oxygen to get underneath. If you look closely, you can even see Grandma’s first contribution: orange peels.

Compost Pile-Beginning

As far as the garden goes, we removed a lot of dead brush, and removed all the tomato cages and other wiring that was lying around. We also found a bunch of garlic bulbs that already started to sprout a bit! Grandma needs to transplant some plants, so we have to wait a bit before we can till the land.

Robin Removing Tomato Cages

Soon we’ll get the rainwater collection system built, and we’ll be able to water everything with natural rainwater. No pesticides, no nothin’!

Ladies and Gentleman, Felix Wellington has arrived. I am currently planning my contribution of hops to Terra Novus. I am planning on growing Cascade and Centennial. More updates will arise soon…

Hello everyone. It’s almost spring. More on that later. Check out our about page to learn about what Terra Novus is about.