Today’s weather was pleasant enough that I was able to work on the low raised bed that will, eventually, be a trellis bed.
This is the bed that had the Summer of Melons mix along one side, onions that we found in other beds and transplanted for their seeds, and a few bush beans, on the other side.
Where the melons were did not need much done. The melon transplants were mulched with layers of cardboard, tree bark and grass clippings. Not much got through there, so all I did was pull the vines loose and spread them out on top of the mulch.
Where the onions were planted, however, was a different issue. There was quite a bit of grass growing among them – both crab grass and lawn grass! – along with the usual dandelions and other weeds.
I decided I would pull up the onions so I could weed more thoroughly, then transplant them back again.
Here is a slideshow of how it went.
In the first photo, I’d already started pulling up/digging out the first onions I’d found. Along the way, I found some of the seed stalks, and those got set on top of the melon vines. I even found a couple of seed heads that got missed.
Interestingly, there were even fresh, new onions starting to grow! Onions sure are hardy!
Once I pulled all the onions I could find (of course, I found others I’d missed, later on), I sorted them between red and yellow bulbs. The red would have been the Red Wethersfield onions that seemed to die off entirely last year, only for us to find them starting to grow again, when we prepared the bed this spring! The yellow are probably Oneida onions, and I think there may even have been a couple of shallots in there, too.
The seeds we collected are all mixed together, which means we’ll be getting both red and yellow onions growing in the winter sown beds.
The south end of the bed was the worst for grass and weeds. That was also where I transplanted a flower that might be a salsify. I was very curious to see what the root was like, as salsify is supposed to have a long tap root that tastes a bit like seafood. We got seeds specifically for that, which we never got to planting, but the seed company images only showed the roots, not the flowers.
Well, whatever this flower was – and it may well be a different variety of salsify – it didn’t have the long tap root at all. In fact, it had very shallow roots.
Curious.
I used a hand cultivator to weed most of the bed, stopping before I got to the end where I’d piled up the onion bulbs. Then I got out the garden fork and worked over things again, finding plenty more roots to pull out, while loosening the soil. All the grass clipping mulch was added to the melon vines on the other side.
When I got close to the other end, I paused to plant all the red bulbs, starting at the south end, in a double row. Some of the bulbs had divided into twos or threes, and those got split up for planting. These reached to about the middle of the bed.
Next, I moved the yellow bulbs aside, cleared the grass clipping mulch off the corner, and finished weeding and loosening the soil.
I uncovered a frog!
The poor thing was trying to hibernate in the soil. It barely moved when I so rudely uncovered it, and then just stayed there. I worked the soil at the end of the bed some more, dug a shallow hole for the frog where I knew I would not be planting the onions, then very gently set the frog in place and covered it with loosely with soil again.
Once the north end of the bed was ready, the yellow bulbs got planted in another double row, working my way to the middle – and there was just enough to reach the other onions! I marked the divide with a piece of broken bamboo stake.
This is way more seed onions than we will ever need, but that’s okay. These are being planted as protectors. Next spring, we might interplant around them; maybe with some greens or bush beans, or something like that. Whatever we plant, the onions should help protect them from the deer.
Once the onions were all transplanted, I raked up some leaves to mulch them for the winter, then raked the path around the bed clear. It’s not a priority for this fall, but eventually the path will be covered with cardboard, then a layer of wood chips.
Once that was done, I went into the overgrown area nearby to find the poplars I’d debarked to be used as vertical supports for the trellis and set them across the bed. They’re not the straightest, and need to have their branch nubs cut away, but … it’ll be rustic. Yeah. That’s it! Rustic. 😄
I’ve got eight of them that are debarked. They were to be lined up in pairs along two raised beds for the future trellis tunnel, but the other bed has yet to be constructed. If I use four on this bed, that means one at each end, two along the side, and they’ll all be six feet apart.
I think that might be too far apart.
If I add one more, that would have the posts at about four and a half feet apart. I think that will work out better. It’ll be easier to find straight (ish) horizontal cross pieces for that length, and the whole thing should be stronger This is expected to someday hold the weight of things like winter squash, so I don’t want to skimp on sturdiness.
Getting those up is not the priority right now, though. Before I work on that, I want to finish assembling the log frame around the low raised bed we put together this spring, and get that weeded. With the peas and beans on trellised on each side of that bed, I wasn’t able to weed around the winter squash, so it got very overgrown!
The next priority is clearing away the fallen spruce tree and the crab apple tree it fell on. That will require the chainsaw, though, which means waiting for a dry day. From the current forecast, that looks like the next two days, and then we get rain again for another two days. After that, I think it’ll just be too cold.
Which means the next two days is probably the last chance we’ll get to do some of the outside stuff. That will include moving the giant hose my brother lent us to use to divert the septic away from the house, if we had needed to, into the barn and covering the septic tank for the winter. I was still hoping to hose off the insulated tarp again, but it’s still damp. It would have been good if we could hang it on the clothes line, but it’s just too big and too heavy for that. Ah, well. It’ll still do the job. Technically, the tank doesn’t actually need to be covered, given how deep it’s buried, but I’d rather be safe than sorry! We’ve had another septic problems without potentially adding more.
At least now we don’t have to worry about the leak at the expeller anymore! My brother has also expressed great relief that it is finally done.
We’re managing to get quite a few things done this year, that will make next year easier!
Including planting one more garden bed with seed onions. 😊😊
This has been such a good day!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 