Mark Your Calendars - March & April 2014 Special Events

As always, the creative community around central Ohio is offering a full slate of special events to usher in the spring growing season. Here's a selection of dates we recommend:

County Soil and Water Conservation District Tree Sales - Many counties around Ohio offer bare root saplings at discounted rates during the early spring. Franklin has a nice variety of shrubs and several fruit trees, Delaware has sugar maples, and Greene has a great price on sugar maple packs.

Maple Madness - March 8/9 & 15/16 - The Ohio Maple Producer's Association has pulled together a driving tour of maple sugaring operations all over the state.

Naomi's Garden Maple Syrup Tour - March 15 - Our personal favorite maple producer is Therese who sells at the Clintonville Farmers' Market. She is offering a tour this year through the market by pre-registration.

Kids Keep Chickens  - April 12 - Lil is co-teaching her first class with me, Rachel, on April 12. We're leading an hour-long class about keeping chickens for children, including a story, craft, and snuggle time with a real hen.

Wilmington College Food Symposium - April 23, 2014 - This day-long FREE event will feature a cake bake-off, panel discussion (including Rachel!), campus and college farm tours, and keynote by Joel Salatin.

Yellow Springs Earthship Build - April 12/13, May 17/18, June 7/8 and/or June 28/29 - Help a family build an earthship under the guidance of the expert builders at Blue Rock Station.

Do you know of any food and farm events to add to the list? Share them in the comments!

Mark Your Calendars - March & April 2014 Special Events

As always, the creative community around central Ohio is offering a full slate of special events to usher in the spring growing season. Here's a selection of dates we recommend:

County Soil and Water Conservation District Tree Sales - Many counties around Ohio offer bare root saplings at discounted rates during the early spring. Franklin has a nice variety of shrubs and several fruit trees, Delaware has sugar maples, and Greene has a great price on sugar maple packs.

Maple Madness - March 8/9 & 15/16 - The Ohio Maple Producer's Association has pulled together a driving tour of maple sugaring operations all over the state.

Naomi's Garden Maple Syrup Tour - March 15 - Our personal favorite maple producer is Therese who sells at the Clintonville Farmers' Market. She is offering a tour this year through the market by pre-registration.

Kids Keep Chickens  - April 12 - Lil is co-teaching her first class with me, Rachel, on April 12. We're leading an hour-long class about keeping chickens for children, including a story, craft, and snuggle time with a real hen.

Wilmington College Food Symposium - April 23, 2014 - This day-long FREE event will feature a cake bake-off, panel discussion (including Rachel!), campus and college farm tours, and keynote by Joel Salatin.

Yellow Springs Earthship Build - April 12/13, May 17/18, June 7/8 and/or June 28/29 - Help a family build an earthship under the guidance of the expert builders at Blue Rock Station.

Do you know of any food and farm events to add to the list? Share them in the comments!

New Experiences in the Old Hometown

Ale, Lil and I have lived in Columbus, Ohio for a combined total of over fifty years. This city is surprising in its depth and there are hundreds of places and experiences we have never had in and around our hometown. Taking inspiration from Kate's list of things she wants to do in Columbus, here are new things (or things we haven't done in a LONG time) we want to do this summer:

• Check out the Columbus Commons (Done on 5/27 before I even got this post out of the cue; can you spot me in Cbus Mom's review?)
• Explore the Columbus Museum of Art Center for Creativity
• Trek to The Wilds
• Spend a day at Aha!, the Boonshoft Museum, or another children's museum nearby
• Walk around Serpent Mound
• Take an OEFFA Farm Tour or two
• Read with the Columbus Metro Library Summer Reading Club I'm participating as an adult for the first time!
• Visit the Franklin County Fair
• View the COSI Dinosaur Exhibit (Done 5/31 on a fantastically not crowded day.)
• Shop the Athens Farmer's Market
• Camp at a new-to-us Ohio State Park (I'm thinking Kelly's Island)
• Go bowling, ice skating, and/or roller skating Lil has never done any of these!
• Watch a performance in a park

I will update this post as we check things off the list.

Do you have any must-see Ohio places to recommend? What are you up to this summer?

PS. I realize that it isn't officially summer until June 21, but with the stinking hot weather I think we can start planning, don't you?

Starting Seeds

There are oodles of books about starting seeds from people far more qualified than me to be dispensing advice.  If you really want to know everything, I suggest searching out references at your local library. What we do here is a casual process guided mostly by the backs of the seed packets and our own yearning to be outside.

Indoors we will soon start some peppers, tomatoes, and herbs.  Our setup is a simple plastic tray with peat pots and a hardware store fluorescent light suspended on top.

As soon as we can work the soil, around the end of March, we will sow potatoes outdoors in our potato tower (post in progress).  Peas, shallots and greens will come soon after in early april.  Greens can be started indoors but with our limited seed starting space we just start them outside.

This year we'll add asparagus to the garden and sow the crowns sometime in mid April.  They need deep and well drained furrows according to the OSU extension fact sheet.  The extension publishes fact sheets on most varieties of home garden vegetables and are worth a look.  They are hybrid and chemical proponents, so just ignore that advice if you are going for a more natural approach.

Everything else will be direct sown around May 1.  The traditional frost free date is May 15, but I am usually willing to take the risk by May 1.   I cover beds with old sheets for the night if there is a late frost.

Direct sowing is one of Lil's favorite garden projects.  She is good at punching her finger down to make holes and covering the seeds back up.  We label rows with old plastic silverware, popsicle sticks, or whatever else is available.  I lust after reusable metal row markers.

Around mid May there's an inevitable trip to the garden center and we can never seem to resist buying a few more seedlings.  This year we plan to visit Jon Fisher tomato greenhouse on the recommendation of neighbors to add some variety to our tomato plantings.

We sow many seeds two or three weeks in a row to extend their production.  Peas, squash, beans, carrots and greens are all good candidates for this.  In the fall after early season vegetables (peas, broccoli, greens) have gone by, we will sow late season vegetables like carrots, beets, chard, kale, and lettuces in their rows.

To keep everything in order, I generally arrange seed packets in a box based on their planting date.  I put them at the back of the line after they are planted.

A friend just shared this awesome planting calendar calculator.   I will probably  print a copy for the seed packet box so I don't have to keep everything in my head.

What's your seed starting plan?