It was getting ridiculously hot and muggy, but I wanted to finally get a good mulch around the newest food forest additions. I had just gone around them with the weed trimmer and, with the rain we’ve been having, it would grow back fast if it didn’t get covered.
Of course, I forgot to take a “before” picture, before I started! 😄
In the first to photos above, I had just laid out the first wheelbarrow load of wood chips. Before that, I moved out the hose I had set up in the rain barrel, taken away pieces of wood from when we had our pea and bean trellises out there that were weighing down the cardboard, and removed the leaky rain barrel and my watering can. I left the cages and the metal spinner.
The plum tree already had the largest area mulched with grass clippings, so I added the wood chips only up to the wire mesh. With everything else, I mulched closer in, but still made sure to leave a “donut hole” around the plants themselves. There was also a pile of grass clippings set aside when the area was prepped for planting, so I went ahead and added that in, too. With that added in, it took 4 1/2 wheel barrow loads to mulch the area, nice and thick.
After I got the two “after” pictures, I set the rain barrel back between the gooseberry and apple, making sure the cracked side was facing the middle. One of the sticks I’d removed earlier had been under the opposite side of the barrel to tilt it slightly towards the cracks, and that was returned as well.
By the time I was done, I was dripping with sweat, and we hadn’t even reached out high of the day, so headed back inside once this was done. I still want to head out to take garden tour video, but not quite yet!
I did get some video, though. I had gone back to the paths I’d worked on earlier today, and wow, those ants work fast!
This was just one small section in the video. You can even see one ant going by, carrying an egg. Already I can see openings to tunnels, all over the place! Those buggers work fast!
Crud. I’m going to need to get ant traps to get rid of them, since they’ll cause lots of damage here, and these ants are biters. I hate having to kill them, though.
While we currently have sunshine, heat and humidity where we are, I’m happy to say that there is a large system of rain passing over the north of our province, where most of the wildfires as still burning. There’s a possibility of up to about 100mm (just under four inches) of rain by tomorrow!
I think, over the next few days, I’m going to have to start setting up supports around some of our beds. Looking at the long range forecast into September, we might actually drop to potential frost temperatures in the first week. Even in the next week ahead, we have at least one night where we are expected to drop below 10C/50F. The eggplant seem the most intolerant of cold, but we’ve finally got some female flowers on the winter squash showing up! If we can just stay above 10C/59F for another month, we might actually have something to harvest.
Ah, well. Whatever happens, we’ll just have to deal with it!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 