Last year, we planted a little plot of Albion everbearing strawberries. They did fantastic!
Until they got eaten by deer.
Repeatedly.
They even tore through the net barrier I’d put around them, and I ended up having to use some leftover pieces of chicken wire. By then, there wasn’t much of the season left, but the bed did get heavily mulched for the winter, with some chicken wire draped over the whole bed for protection.
I did remove some of the mulch in the spring, but in the end, the bed got severely neglected this year.
Amazingly, some strawberries survived.
The strawberries I’d planted in front of the new asparagus bed, however, did not. Not a single one made it. I had simply taken too long before planting them, I think.
We do, however, now have a third Jersey Giant asparagus fern growing! So I still have some home for the rest of those, and the purple asparagus.
The first thing to do was to find and dig up the Albion strawberries and see how many there were.
I’m afraid I had to be pretty rough with them. The crab grass rhizomes were bad enough, but I was also finding new elm roots invading from below. When I planted this bed, I’d dug up as many roots as I could, then covered the bottom with several layers of carboard before adding fresh soil on top, in which the strawberries were planted.
You’d never know I’d done all that, from the roots I was finding!
Those elm trees have got to go.
I actually found quite a few more strawberry plants than I expected! In the end, I found 10 plants, plus a runner with fresh roots in it, though no leaves yet.
All of these went into a bucket with some water while I worked on where to plant them.
At first, when I thought there were just a few, I had expected to plant them at one end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes, but there were enough that I decided to reclaim the space I’d planted bare root strawberries in that failed. The shallow trench they were planted in were, of course, filled with elm tree seedlings, along with plenty of other weeds.
There was still some soil left in the old kiddie pool we used as a planter last year, so once the weeds were cleared out, I used that to fill in the shallow trench the strawberries had been planted in. This was more for the asparagus, since I didn’t feel I’d been able to cover the crowns properly on that side.
While clearing the weeds out, I did not find a single sign of the bare root strawberries that had been planted there.
Totally my own fault. They should have gone in the ground as soon as I got them. Instead, they sat for about a month.
Then I decided to take some short logs from the old kitchen garden retaining wall and set them along the little wire fence, to prevent erosion and water run off.
That done, I thoroughly watered the newly added soil. It was bone dry in that little pool. Once everything was well hydrated, I spaced out the strawberry plants in between where the asparagus crowns were planted.
Once those were in and watered again, I went and got more grass clippings to mulch both the strawberries and the asparagus.
Then, because I had enough for it, I got more loads of grass clippings and mulched the potatoes.
They’re not as big and juicy as they could be; we haven’t had a lot of rain, and the undergrowth is starting to crowd them again. We need to get under them with the loppers and clear it all out again.
All in all, things are going pretty good in the garden. At least, for our region. I have to keep reminding myself of that when I watch gardening videos, and I see all these people posting about their huge plants and amazing harvests. They all tend to be at least a month ahead of us!
I’m happy I got as much done this evening as I did. I’m not sure how much I’ll get to go tomorrow. Not only will it be hotter, but I’ll be driving my husband to his appointment. Thankfully, the AC in the truck works fine, because that heat is going to be brutal on him.
After tomorrow, the highs are supposed to drop a bit for the next while, then get right back up to the “heat warnings in effect” level again.
On the plus side, the peppers and eggplant will be just loving these temperatures!
My goal for the day was to get all the transplants in.
Ha!
No, I didn’t achieve that goal.
I did, however, get a LOT done, until the 34C/93F heat finally did me in. Enough that I’ll be breaking it up into several posts.
The start of the day was the same as it has been for the past while; after my morning rounds, everything got a watering in preparation for the coming heat. I was quite appreciating the new watering can, which holds twice as much as the breaking apart bucket I’ve been using! So that part of the watering went a lot faster.
Before I started watering the new asparagus bed, though, I did some modification. The landscape fabric or whatever it is had just been folded back to uncover the space I planted in, and the rocks I pulled out was just tossed on top. I lifted the folded side to shift all the rocks towards the opposite side, then laid the edge out close to the little wire fence protecting the strawberries. After weighing that down, I pulled the other end to cover a new section of what had been our squash patch in previous years.
There was still some grass clippings on the fabric, and that got used to lightly mulch the asparagus area, and heavily mulch along the wire fence. Once that was done, it all got a thorough watering.
The light mulch should be enough to protect the soil, while still making it easy for the baby asparagus to poke through. The heavy mulch should, hopefully, keep any weeds from coming back by the strawberries.
I’d left a couple of buckets filled with water to keep them from blowing them away. I noticed the cats have been drinking from them, often, so now I keep them full for the kitties. 😊
Next to the new asparagus bed is our garlic bed, then the potatoes.
The garlic is looking so good! We should start getting scapes soon. We are all looking forward to cooking with those!
The potatoes are coming up a lot faster now. When watering that bed, I noticed there are SO many frogs! They get startled when I water the potatoes, and jump into the netting. They seem to be able to get in and out just fine, though – at least when they’re not being scared by something!
Once all the watering was done, it was finally time to start transplanting things.
I did at least get quite a bit accomplished today!
The main thing was to get our new plants into the ground. I did my rounds, as usual, then took the time to dig holes for the haskap, while waiting for the post office to open.
The old rain barrel was so empty, I barely had water to scoop with the buck to put into the new holes. Before refilling it, I decided to move it closer to the gooseberry and apple tree. That way, if it was going to leak, it could water them at the same time! I left the hose to fill the barrel while getting other things done, the water off before digging the holes. That didn’t take very long, even with the roots and rocks, since the holes didn’t need to be particularly deep. You can see by the water line in the barrel that a third of the water was gone by the time I was done!
Once the post office was open, I went and got our parcel. I’d brought the bucket with the remains of the brick of coconut coir that was reconstituted. The haskap plugs in particular were getting dried out, so after I’d added some of the soaked coir to the ground soil in the wheelbarrow, I added more water, then tucked in the transplants. That way, any soil kept with the roots wouldn’t get washed away.
We’d buried our Freya pretty deep, then added rocks on top to make sure no critters dug her up. The remaining top soil was left in the wheelbarrow, and I added the last of a bag of indoor-outdoor potting soil my brother gave us, along with the coir, and mixed it together. Then the plum tree was planted.
I used the rocks to create a ring around the “moat” I made around the plum tree. This area gets pretty dry, so I created a trench for water to flow into, then slowly get absorbed around the roots, while making sure the soil around the base of the stem didn’t get washed away. I used grass clippings to mulch on top of the trench, and returned the tomato cage to deter the deer from nibbling on it. Last of all, I returned some of my daughters flowers for Freya, and added some fresh dandelion flowers as well.
For the haskap, I returned the sod to the holes, root side up, to partially refill the holes, then added the rest of the soil mix in the wheelbarrow. The haskap plugs were pretty small, so I had to be careful not to accidentally bury them too deep! As with the plum, I made a moat around them and filled them with water before mulching with grass clippings. I also “stole” a couple of wire tomato cages from the raspberries nearby that didn’t survive. I’ll have to come back later with a rake to clean up properly around the transplants, but other than that, they are done! Yay!
Today I also had a trip to Walmart planned, so I made sure to NOT take my prescription painkillers, since they have a possible side effect of drowsiness. Not that I’ve notice anything changed on that. With or without them, there are times when I feel like I’m ready to fall asleep. If it’s at my keyboard, that’s not a big deal, but it is if I’m driving!
After I was done with the planting, I ended up asking my daughter if she could drive me today. This turned out to be a good thing. My daughters recently ordered an air conditioner for their upstairs “apartment”, which was to be picked up at a Home Depot in the city. She checked, and it was ready for pick up today. There’s a Walmart right next to the Home Depot location it was at, so it was a a trip to the bigger city, instead of the smaller, closer one, today.
When we got there, we stopped for a late lunch, first, then my daughter went to get the AC unit while I went looking at pre-hung exterior doors, since we need to replace the entire frame. That means no more storm door. Looking at the options, there is an exterior door that has a window that can be opened in it that would be idea. I didn’t have the measurements of our doorway, but we’re looking at what would be over $800, after taxes. Doors with no windows, or just some window in the top, where cheaper, of course, but we’re still looking at at least $600. They don’t do installations outside the city, so we’d have to find someone locally to install it for us, and the company my brother used that installed the new windows before we moved in seems to have gone out of business during the illegal lockdowns.
At least we have a ball-park figure for the door. Now we have to come up with the money, and get it installed before winter!
The AC unit my daughters got is the portable type, meant to fit into a window. The windows we have don’t work for that, so they’ll have to board up much of the window space. After picking up the unit, my daughter then went to the lumber section and found the supplies they needed.
The next thing we had to do was secure things in the box of the truck, since we no longer have a cover on it. Thankfully, we keep ratchet straps in the truck at all times now, and my daughter was able to climb into the box and get it secured.
That done, we headed for the Walmart. My daughter stayed with the truck, to make sure no one walked away with the AC unit (another reason we miss that box cover!). I picked up what was needed, but none of it came out of our household budget, so I didn’t bother with my usual shopping cart picture. I did get several more large bags of kibble, plus a case of canned cat food. These were heavy enough that we loaded them around the AC unit, so there was no chance of anything sliding around!
By the time we were done and heading out of the city, it was just past 4pm, when my cell phone rang. I am so unused to my cell phone being used as a phone, we were both confused by what the noise was!
It turned out to be home care.
No one was going to be available for my mother’s suppertime med assist.
Which would have been done shortly after 5pm, so that actually worked out perfectly. We would go to my mother’s down on the way home, and I’d run in to do get her meds out of the lock box and set up for her. I wouldn’t be able to stay long, though, as we had frozen stuff. They were in an insulated bag, but we didn’t bring any ice packs, so we had to get them home quickly.
I didn’t bother calling my mother to let me know we were on the way; a call with my mother while driving is not a good thing, even on hands free! She would be angry about home care not coming, and my having to cover for them, and I just couldn’t have that conversation while driving.
When I got to my mother’s place and went through the lobby to her apartment, I hear someone call to me.
It was my mother!
I never even saw her! She’s so small, she just disappeared into the chair she was in. 😄
I told her about the call I got from home care, and that I was there to get her supper medications for her. My mother, meanwhile, thought I was there because she’d called our place and left a message! My husband must have been asleep when she called, because he didn’t message me to let me know there was a call, like he usually does.
So I had no idea about her call but, she told me, she has her list…
She was wanting to arrange a grocery shopping trip.
Normally, I would have been able to come back tomorrow, but I’ve got the appointment for the insurance inspection of the truck. Once we got her back to her apartment, I told her about this. She actually seemed happy to hear that the insurance company could cover replacing the box cover and do repairs. We’ll see how it actually works out, after the inspection, though.
I got my mother’s meds out – she wanted me to take some of the pills that were lift in other bubble packs due to things getting messed up, but I didn’t even check to see what days and times they were for; I was just checking to see if my mother needed new bubble packs for her, which she doesn’t. She still got so very angry that I wouldn’t use the other pills, and started commenting on how stupid home care is for sticking to the exact days and times for the pills…
…
I just focused on recording my taking care of her pills in a notebook for the next home care person to see. It was still a bit early for her to take them, so they were just in the tiny tagine bowl I gave her to hold her meds and count them out.
Once everything was done and the lock box put away, and I was getting ready to leave, there was a knock at the door.
It was the home care aid.
We were both rather confused.
It turns out that someone had been added to her schedule and, for some reason, the scheduler started calling to cancel her other visits. When she found out this was being done, she told the scheduler to stop because it wasn’t needed – and especially wasn’t something that could be cancelled for a person with a lock box! But they did at least call me and, since we were on our way home from the city, there was no extra trip to do it. The home care aid was very frustrated that they’d called me at all. Obviously, she was still able to do the med assist!
This same person would be coming back for the before bed med assist, too.
I had to rush off, but the home care aid, on seeing I’d already done the med assist, left at the same time.
Normally, they would stay to make sure my mother actually took her pills.
Now that I’ve written this, I find myself hoping she actually did take them once she had food to take them with! I’m sure she did, but with my mother, you never quite know!
From there, we finally headed home and got the truck unloaded. I’m really glad my daughter was able to come along. I was feeling well enough to drive home, and just having someone there to talk to seems to have been enough to keep me from getting sleepy. I’ll have to bring my daughter along for trips to the city more often!
By then it was late enough that, once everything was put away, the outside cat feeding and evening rounds needed to be done. Some kittens needed eye washing, too. There was one we couldn’t catch, though.
Once that was done, I got a few more things done outside. My daughter and I went to check on the new trees, and we ended up moving the rain barrel to the opposite side of where I’d set it this morning. Then I refilled it, while watering everything but the silver buffaloberry (there are just too many of those, and they are looking really great). I didn’t fill it all the way to the top, but got the barrel at least 3/4 full before I switched the hose so I could water the garden beds.
In the old kitchen garden, I removed the plastic on the raised bed cover, then re-covered it with mosquito netting. I’m really, really hoping to be able to keep the flea beetles out and finally get some kohl rabi! Plus, it can be watered through the netting, without having to move the cover off.
That done, I made some recordings for a garden tour video. I’ve gone through them, but I don’t know that I’ll use them, or if I’ll make new recordings tomorrow. The ones I took aren’t bad, but they just don’t seem good, either – but that could be because by the time I watched them, I was just too tired!
It’s been a longer day than planned on, and I am more than ready to hit the hay! Hopefully, I’ll even get a decent night’s sleep. Between the cats and the arthritis pain, even with painkillers, my sleep is frequently interrupted.
One of the things I picked up today is the same stuff my mother uses on her knees, and now on her lower back, and she finds it makes a huge difference. I’ve used up my tube of Tei Fu lotion and, while that stuff helps, it isn’t a topical painkiller, like this other stuff is. (Voltaran, I think it’s called) I’ve actually had prescription topical painkillers before and found they didn’t make much difference. It would be rather funny is this stuff works better than the prescription stuff!
I’m not holding out much hope that it’ll work, but it’s worth a try!
Today is supposed to be warmer, but it’s still dreary and overcast out there. Which means it’s all I can do to stay awake!
The first order of business, as always, it to feed the yard cats. The adults get distracted with their kibble feeding first, then I set out the canned cat food for the kittens, some in the sun room, some in the cat house. This morning, they got some bonus cat soup from one of the trays for the inside cats that got mostly ignored (we set out 3 trays, plus some in Butterscotch’s cat bowl, every day). This is supplemented with lysine, so that’s extra good for them. After adding it to the kitten bowls, I set the tray with some still in it by the kibble house to lure the adult cats away, and it was licked clean in no time!
Poirot headed out while all this was going on, so I had a chance to say hello to her babies, and look them over. Hastings (the white and grey) is the biggest of them, and most definitely female. Miss Lemon (the mostly white) and Japp (the mostly black) are less developed and harder to tell, still, but I suspect they are also female.
I made sure the sun room was closed up with some of the bigger kittens inside, so they got a chance to fill their bellies before the adult cats gobbled up their wet cat food, then continued my rounds.
I think the winter sowing in the bed is a lost cause now. I don’t know how they managed it, but I found a section of netting completely pushed over the hoops to one side, allowing all sorts of elm seeds in. This was even a section that was pinned down with ground staples on the fence side, but it still got pulled up. About the only benefit the netting provides at this point is to keep those elm seeds off, since the cats are still managing to either get under the netting, or just lie on top of it, and even the seed protection is being sabotaged by the cats! I keep looking for seedlings, and even the onion seedlings and what I thought might be sprouting beans seem to be gone. I do see some seedlings that I know are weeds (mostly creeping bellflower), plus grasses. This is so frustrating!
On a more pleasant note, more trees are blooming. The Saskatoons have been blooming for a while, as have the cherry trees now. The ornamental crab apples are really starting to open up. Then there’s this one.
These are on the tree that get many small but very edible crabapples on it (click through for a second image). The others in the row have flower buds, but they aren’t opening up yet, like this one.
It wasn’t raining this morning (though I did see snow, every now and then) so I headed into the outer yard to check on the walnuts.
In the first photo, you can see the tiniest of leaves on the walnut sapling are emerging.
Click through to the next image, and you can see the little friend I found, hiding out in some of the grass that fell into the collar!
*sigh* Of course, my phone’s camera didn’t focus in the right place. I hate it when I have pictures that look great on my phone, only to discover they actually suck, when I see them on a proper screen!
Our rhubarb is doing really well with all this rain, so I gathered a few stalks before heading inside. Poirot was back with her babies, though, so I did pause to give her her squeeze treat! She is much more pleasant about it than Brussel was (Brussel no longer goes into the sun room, now that the older babies have all moved themselves into the cat house to join Caramel’s babies!). Brussel would always growl at me, then attack my hand, when I gave her the treats!
As for the rhubarb, they got cleaned up and cut up, along with some strawberries, to make a double recipe of Upside Down Strawberry Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread We’ve got two cast iron skillets and can fit both of them in our oven at the same time, so that works out. This, together with a bit of whipped cream, and some Vanilla Chai tea made for a perfect treat for such a dreary day!
I still fell ready to fall sleep on my keyboard, though.
And now, just for fun, here is the newest cooking video from Townsends. This sounds like something that would be perfect for a day like today!
We got a nice little down pour in the wee hours of the morning. Not enough to refill the rain barrel, but enough to water things nicely.
Knowing it was going to get hot today, I made a point of having breakfast before I did my morning rounds, as I planned to stay out longer to do some planting, before it got too hot.
While checking on the covered garden beds, I tried to open them up a bit so they wouldn’t get too hot inside during the heat wave (we haven’t reached the hottest part of the day yet, and we’re already at 31C/88F) today and tomorrow, while still giving them protection.
I was hearing thunder the whole time I was outside. As I was gathering my supplies together into the wheelbarrow, the rain started coming down again. It didn’t take long for me to get quite wet before I could dash inside! I ended up waiting until about 8:30 before heading out again, though I’d really hoped to have been done by then.
I went through the bag of walnut seeds and found three that were showing roots and needed to get into the ground right away. That worked out perfectly, as there were three spots marked out along the wet side of the lane I want to keep clear to the second gate. It the second picture of the slideshow above, you can just barely see a dot of orange in the distance, marking the northernmost spot.
The first thing to do was rake around the markers, clearing them of dead grass and debris – and any little poplars coming up that I’d missed, before!
Next, at each marker, I removed a circle of sod, which I quartered and set aside to put back, later. Once the sod was removed, I dug around a bit more to loosen the soil and remove any rocks I found in the process.
Once the holes were dug, I added some of the indoor-outdoor potting soil my brother gave me, mostly filling the holes. Then a plastic collar was set into the soil. The loose soil and and sod (placed upside down), along with any rocks I’d dug up, was set around the collar and the hole in such a way as to create a sort of moat, so wany water would drain towards the middle. Then, all of them got a thorough watering. I actually have a couple of photos reversed. The one with the arrow shows where a walnut seed is. Each got pushed into the moist soil, root side down, and the marker was inserted into the soil near it. Each collar got topped up with more of the bagged soil and pressed down gently, before getting a final, thorough watering.
Once the seeds were planted and watered, I raked up more dried grass to set around as mulch.
Here was have the three planted areas, with the grass mulch set around the collars for mulch. The very last photo shows the “combed” area I’d raked the dead grass out of. I just thought it looked rather funny. 😁
Three seeds planted; five more to go! All of those will be planted on the east side of the lane, and closer to the inner yard fence.
While it hadn’t gotten really hot yet, things were pretty muggy, so I was more than happy to get inside!
I had some plans to head into town today, which turned out to work out for everyone. Because of her work schedule, my older daughter basically didn’t see me on Mother’s day until some time past midnight. She wanted to treat me with a Mother’s day dinner today. After the four of us discussed options and ideas, my younger daughter and I left for town in the late morning.
My first stop was at the place our truck is insured at. I talked to someone about the wind damage to the truck, asking if it was something the insurance covered. She didn’t know for sure, but gave me the number I needed to call and find out. Since the cover isn’t actually part of the truck, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be covered, but it’s worth asking.
The next stop was at our usual Chinese food place to place an order, only to discover they were closed. We keep forgetting. They are always closed on Mondays. After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to try the other Chinese restaurant. We keep forgetting about that one, but I’ve been there for sit down meals a few times while waiting for my truck to be worked on, since it’s in a hotel right next to our garage. This restaurant, it turned out, closes on Tuesdays, so we were good! 😄
After going over the menu and deciding on things for my husband and myself, I left my daughter to take care of the rest while I went to the pharmacy. My husband had ordered refills of his injections for delivery, but getting them faster was preferrable. While there, I also picked up some liquid, spray on bandage. The little calico kitten has a strange wound on her back leg, and lost some skin. We can’t bandage it and, while we’ve been applying antibiotic ointment, it really needs more protection.
That done, I got back to the restaurant early enough that my daughter and I popped across the street to the grocery store, where she picked up drinks to go with our Chinese food. We got back just in time for the food to be ready.
That was a very nice treat from my daughter – and no need to heat up the house more with cooking, today! The air conditioner in the living room has been turned on. We need to start bringing the fans up out of storage in the basement.
In the end, it has turned out to be a more productive day than I expected it to be, with this heat.
One more hot day, and then it’s going to get downright cold again! I’m certainly happy to have gotten those walnuts in!
My husband had a medical appointment this morning, so that was our first order of business.
Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
We got there maybe 10-15 minutes early for his 10:15am appointment. After checking in and settling into the waiting room, a receptionist came by and said, “you know you’re appointment is at…” I’m not sure if she said 11 or 11:30. We double checked our calendars and confirmed, we had 10:15 – which was the time his doctor gave him when he had his last telephone appointment. She then said it should be okay, they might be able to fit him in. So when we were taken to the examination room at 10, we figured things were worked out and we’d have his appointment at the time we expected it to be at. We just had to wait a bit.
And wait.
And wait.
After half an hour, my husband was simply in too much pain and had to leave. He took the truck keys and headed out, while I rescheduled. He now has an appointment later in the month – and we have a physical printout of the time and date, this time.
I remember when we first got a doctor after the move, in this same clinic, that there were several times we’d come in for an appointment, only to be told it was a different time. The thing is, we are very diligent when it comes to getting the appointments correctly into our calendars. Getting to an appointment is not always easy; particularly for my husband. The last thing we’d want to do is make a wasted trip.
Which is what today turned out to be.
I was not impressed.
After we got home, I had lunch (my husband can’t eat when he’s in this much pain), then headed outside.
My goal for the day was to plant the walnuts, or get as close to planting them as possible. The first thing I wanted to do was mark where they would be planted. The markers will remain after they are planted, so we know where they are, so I found some older bamboo stakes and other markers and added bright orange paracord to their tops for visibility. Then I headed to the outer yard, to the area the Korean Pine are planted.
The first photo is the “before” shot. The bamboo stake in the foreground is at one of the Korean pine. There are two others straight down the right of the image. The bamboo stakes marking them are pushed through chicken wire cages protecting them – somewhat, at least! – from critters.
You can just barely see in the top left corner, a hint of orange. That’s marking a chicken wire cage surrounding an ash tree my mother gave me a couple of years back. There used to be three more Korean pine on that side, but those did not survive, and the ash tree is planted where one of the Korean pine used to be.
That ash tree was my starting point. From there, I paced off and marked off every 20 feet or so to the north. There was space for two markers. I marked off one more to the south of the ash tree. There was room to mark another, but we discovered that area is low enough to flood in a wet spring – and that’s what killed off the last of the Korean Pines planted on that side!
I’ve got 8 walnut sees and one sapling, which left me with five more areas I needed to mark off. I started off in line with the Korean pine, but ended up changing things up. I ended up marking three spots in a triangle; not quite 20 feet apart, but close. I then needed to leave a gap at the gate into the main garden area. I ended up marking spaces closer to the inner yard fence line than the Korean pine, and spaced them so they were staggered with the two pines in this area, rather than in line with them. The Korean pine have a potential spread of 30 feet, so I needed to take that into account when it came to the spacing.
The next two pictures show the markers, though most of them are very hard to see.
The corner where I set a triangle of markers then needed to be worked on. There were a LOT of poplars trying to take that space over.
I ended up filling two wheelbarrow loads of the poplars for the branch pile, and one of those probably should have been two loads! I kept finding more and more of them as I worked my way through.
Getting into the corner area, I found the remains of fence wire in the tall grass. It looks like there might have been a sort of double fence there at some point. If there was, it would have been to protect newly planted trees from cattle. If that’s what it was there for, it didn’t survive. Aside from some lilacs at the property line fence, there’s just poplar lots of tiny self-seeded spruce.
I’ve left the spruces for now. We’ll let them get bigger and eventually transplant some of them into the spruce grove, after we’ve been able to clean and clear away the dead trees and underbrush.
There was also a pile of old tires against the corner of the fences.
Because of course there is. Is there any part of this property where we don’t find old tires strewn about???
Once that corner was done, I went across to the other markers and cleared more poplars. That side didn’t have anywhere near as many to clear out, thankfully.
In the long term, assuming these all survive, we will have a row of four walnuts along the west side of the outer yard, plus one ash, there will be an open space for driving through – someday, it would be great to put gravel down and have an actual driveway to the second gate – then three walnut in the corner, a space to drive into the main garden area, then two move walnut next to two Korean pine. The last Korean pine is planted on the other side of the gate to the inner yard by the fire pit.
If they don’t all survive, well… we’ll find something else to plant out there. These will serve not only as food forest trees (except the ash, of course), but as part of the shelter belt.
By the time I got the poplars cleared out, I was done with this job for the day. The temperature was apparently just 11C/52F, with a “feels like” of 17C/63F, but it felt a lot hotter than that to me! Mind you, I was working in full sun the whole time, so that might have something to do with it!
I may not have been up to digging holes after that but, after a hydration break, I was up to doing some less strenuous stuff.
We’ve had some more rain overnight recently, but the covered beds couldn’t get any, of course, so today I took the covers off the old kitchen bed and the one in the east yard, then gave them a thorough watering before covering them again. I ended up watering the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, too. We may be getting rain, and even have standing water in ponds and ditches, but the soil surface still dried out insanely fast. So far, nothing winter sown seems to be sprouting in that bed. The East yard bed has lots of things sprouting in it, and they all look exactly the same. I’m guessing they’re radishes. The old kitchen garden bed still seems to only have spinach coming up in it.
Then it was time to get a couple more winter sown beds covered, too. I got out the Pex pipe cutter we bought when we had to fix the bathroom plumbing and set to measuring and cutting the pipe I’d picked up to use as support hoops.
I’d picked up a couple of 10′ pipe to use over the 4′ square beds. Those got cut in half, and will be placed in an X formation over the beds they’re intended for.
The roll of pipe I got was supposed to be 50′ long. I cut it to 5′ lengths and ended up with an extra piece almost 3′ long.
The first image above is all the 5′ lengths, plus the leftover short bit. I’m sure we’ll find somethin that will be useful for!
I then raided the old garden shed and found short pieces from broken bamboo stakes. These fit into the 1/2 inch pipe quite nicely. I used those to set up four pipes as support hoops in the high raised bed, then joined them across the top with a couple of not-broken bamboo stakes. I repeated the process over the area where mixed flower seeds were planted in the fall. Each bed got 4 hoops, so I had 2 left over.
One of the reasons I wanted to cover these beds was to protect them from critters. The ground level flower bed in particular gets catted a lot. Protecting from critters just needed netting, but I went with plastic covering, instead. While the plastic would serve as a mini greenhouse, what I was really after was something to keep the humidity in. The soil surface – right where the seeds are – is way too dry. It’s possible some stuff had started to germinate, only to dry out and die. All I can say is, I’ve seen seedlings start, and then they disappeared.
After the supports were in place, I brought over a couple of watering cans and have the high raised bed a thorough watering. Then I used one of the 8’x12′ plastic sheets to cover it.
The wind was a major issue.
In the end, I found some more broken pieces of bamboo stakes and set up the two leftover pieces of pipe over the plastic, to help keep it from ballooning in the wind and blowing away! You can see how those are set up, with Syndol next to one of them, giving everything an inspection. Even with the extra hoops over top, I had to grab rocks and scrap pieces of boards to weight down the edges.
When it came time to do the ground level bed, I got one of my daughters to give me a hand this time! Covering that bed went much, much faster with help! The wind was still a major issue, but not as bad as with the high raised bed.
My hope is that the plastic will keep the humidity levels higher over the beds, so they don’t try out and things can finally germinate.
I have a couple of much longer sheets of plastic and I want to put one of them over the bed with summer squash winter sown in it. That bed already has netting over it to keep the critters out. As with the other beds, it’s completely dried out on the surface. I can see some things germinating in there, but no summer squash. I think overnight temperatures are going to be warm enough that I can set the hoses up, too, so that should make watering things in the main garden area much easer!
So that is on my to-do list, hopefully for tomorrow. Deep water and cover the summer squash bed. I’m trying to figure out how I can do the same for the end of the garlic bed that was also winter sown. There’s just a few feet that would need covering, while the garlic doesn’t need covering at all. This bed is also already covered with netting, so it’s protected from critters, but that one end could really use the humidity being covered with plastic would give it.
We’ll figure it out.
The priority is getting those walnuts planted. Once those are done, then we can shift back to finishing the trellis build, and get other beds prepped and ready for planting. It will be a few weeks before we can put the transplants into the garden, but there are some things that can be direct sown, before then. The area the asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries will be planted needs to be prepped, too. More digging! 😄
The next few days are supposed to be quite a bit hotter. Sunday is even supposed to hit 27C/81F! The 10 day forecast shows us as having quite a few days hotter than 20C/68F. The overnight lows, though, are still looking to be below 6C/43F for most of May, so even with it being hot during the day, it’s still going to be too cold at night to leave the transplants overnight in the portable greenhouse.
Well, we’ll see how it goes. Things are going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!
The first thing I had to do was use the weed trimmer to clear the area they were going into. It hasn’t been mowed all of last year – I got tired of breaking lawnmowers – so there was a lot of tall dead grass. Before I could use the weed trimmer, though, I had to use the loppers to cut out all the little poplars that were coming up.
Then come back to get the ones I missed.
The dead grass was so long, there was only so much our little electric weed trimmer could do, so I got it mostly done, then raked up all the dead grass and clippings, then used the weed trimmer again, then rakes again. I got quite a lot of dried grasses that could be used as mulch, later on.
I decided to plant the apple tree 6′ away from where the plum tree will be planted, with the gooseberry in between. Part of the area was where we’d grown squash previously, so there were layers of straw and mostly decomposed cardboard to rake up. That part should have been easy to work in, but there were so many poplar roots extending through there, it took a LOT longer than it should have! Then there was about three feet of sod that needed to be dug out to where the apply tree would go. More roots. Lots of rocks. It was insane.
After stopping for a lunch and pain killer break, I brought the saplings over, unwrapped and in a bucket of water. I’d made sure to add a wet paper towel to the plastic bag they were wrapped in so the roots wouldn’t dry out, but considering how long it’s been since we found these, I wanted to make sure they were good and hydrated before planting.
This area gets full sun in the summer, and any rain drains off quickly, so I also made sure the planting holes were filled with water first. The holes got shovel fulls of a mix of garden soil (from the pile we bought a few years ago), sheep manure, cattle manure, and some of the rehydrated coconut fibre brick. With how shallow the soil is before reaching rocks, gravel and clay, I tried to build up where they were planted a bit. Once they were in, I mulched with the grass I’d weed trimmed and raked up. To protect them from deer, I set up the dollar store tomato supports I’d picked up a while ago. Then, to keep the mulch from blowing away, while also trying to keep the weeds from growing back, I added a layer of cardboard weighted down with sticks that used to be part of our old pea and bean trellises. I set the old rain barrel up closer to the area. When we set up the hoses, I’ll keep it filled with water so we can water things with ambient temperature water rather than the cold hose.
Oh, before I forget… the apple variety is a Cortland apple, and it’s grated onto a Siberian Crabapple root stock. I made sure the graft was well above the soil line.
Along with the plum, we will be getting two cross pollinator haskap varieties. So we’ll need to dig holes for those, too. I haven’t quite decided where they will go, yet. I was thinking in front of the apple and plum trees, but they can grow 4-6 feet tall, with a 3-5 foot spread, while the gooseberry can grow 3-4 feet tall. I don’t want to shade out the gooseberry, so they will probably get planted in line with what I planted today.
The next job, however, will be to plant the walnut sapling, plus the 8 walnut seeds. These will be planted in the outer yard.
It’s going to be even harder to plant out there than it was to plant year!
In the long term, though, it’ll be worth it!
We’re planting a LOT more trees for the food forest this year than originally planned on. This will put us years ahead of “schedule”, so that’s a good thing. Ideally, we would have done this years ago, but there’s only so much we can do at a time!
My daughter and I left rather early to take in a homesteading event near the city. We stopped for gas on the way out and picked up some sandwiches (made by the one restaurant in our little hamlet) and drinks for breakfast, and some pastries (from a very popular bakery in the town to the north of us) for later on. I picked up some lotto tickets, too, so that totaled about $76 and change.
I’m glad we gave ourselves extra time, because the entrance to the location was really hard to see! We drove right past it – then had to find someplace we could turn around!
It was held in a building that was on grounds that included a church and cemetery, and was surrounded by trees. The few parking spots were full, plus there were the vendor vehicles parked closer to the building, rushing to finish unloading. We found a spot to park, though I’m not entirely sure it was actually part of the parking area! We were early enough that we stayed in the truck for a while before going in. Things hadn’t started yet, but it was already full. The room was not particularly large, but it wasn’t small, either.
One vendor caught my attention very quickly; someone local had saplings for sale. He was talking to a customer while frantically trying to put labels and signs up before he had to dash away, so I heard him talking about a few things he had. His was the first talk of the day, though, and he soon had to disappear. I had to ask one of the other vendors where the talks were happening, as I thought it was in another room, but I couldn’t see any other rooms. It turned out to be behind a curtained off area at the far end of the room. When we got there, all the seating was full, and more people were crowded against the far wall, blocking off the canteen! Unfortunately, with all the people talking in the market area, I could hardly hear anything he was saying, though I could make out some of it. My daughter tried going to the opposite corner of the curtained off area to see if she could hear better. She couldn’t, but she did end up talking to the vendor that was there. She had a display of skin care products next to a display of honey products her husband was covering. It turned out they were the organizers for the event! With my daughter discovering she’s allergic to ingredients in a lot of shampoos, deodorants, etc., she was very interested in the skin care display. After I finally gave up trying to hear, I joined them. The vendor not only made all of the products, but grew all of the plants, berries and herbs used in them, plus honey from their own bees. We ended up getting a sample pack of their products, plus a tube of hand lotion made with sea buckthorn, among other things, for the scraggly skin on my hands. Both together cost about $45. I didn’t bother getting a receipt for it.
The vendor with the skin care products was also doing the next talk, which was on regenerative farming. My daughter and I snagged a couple of seats right in the front. It was a very enjoyable talk. It was a lot of stuff I was already familiar with (what is now called regenerative farming was what used to be called subsistence farming, when I was growing up here), but with her, it was all from the perspective of planting for their bees, so heavy on successive flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar from when the bees first emerge in the spring to when they settle in for the winter.
After each talk, there was 10 minutes scheduled for Q&A. I left my daughter to that while I went to hunt down the tree guy. He was busy with customers, so my daughter caught up to me before it was my turn. We ended up looking at another vendor nearby that had soaps, bath bombs and other related products. We ended up getting a bar of herbal soap there that cost about $12. I would normally never spend that much on a bar of soap, but I’m willing to do it once in a rare while!
Then it was my turn with the tree guy. Quite a few of the things he had, we already have, but what really caught my attention was the walnut. I’ve been looking at getting walnut for years, but while they will grow in our zone 3, our growing season isn’t long enough for the nuts to fully ripe.
Well, he not only had year old saplings, but walnut seeds, already cold stratified. He grows them himself, in a smaller city a few hours drive to the west of us. If he can grow walnut to the seed stage there, that means we can, too!
Bundled together is a gooseberry and a zone 3 variety of eating apple; he showed me so many different ones, I forget the name of the variety I chose. I’ll be able to see the tag when it’s unwrapped. In the pot in a year old walnut, and the bag has 8 walnut seeds in it. He said the trees grow pretty fast, too, and can get up to 40 feet high. He recommended planting them about 20 feet apart. I already know where I intend to plant those. The gooseberry, which already have leaf buds, and the apple tree will go into our food forest area, where we already have highbush cranberry, silver buffaloberry, sea buckthorn and mulberry.
All of these together cost $73.50 after taxes – the total before taxes was actually higher, but he gave me a discount, simply because the mental math was easier! 😄
While there were many other talks my daughter and I were interested in, it was too busy and too noisy, and we were already reaching our limit. They definitely need a larger venue, and a separate room for the speakers. Which is a good problem to have! As we were trying to leave, I ended up having to exit through the entrance simply because parked cars were blocking my way to the exit. When we got to the highway, we found more cars parked on the shoulders!
From there, we headed to another area of the city to do our non-Costco stock up shopping. By then, it was almost noon, so we went to the international grocery store, first, where we could have some dim sum and sushi for lunch. I honestly can’t remember how much that cost, but it was under $30.
There wasn’t a lot that we needed at this store, this time. This is what $175.36 looks like.
We got the short grain rice my daughters prefer (and it does very well, cooked in the Instant Pot), plus some salmon, frozen cooked and frozen raw shrimp for them. I got a bunch of teas that were on sale, including something called Breakfast in Paris. There is also a bag of instant milk tea. We picked up a goat gouda with honey to try, regular milk plus oat milk for my lactose intolerant daughters. There’s the oyster sauce they prefer, plus the soy sauce my husband prefers. We two pieces of slab bacon, one applewood smokes, one regular smoked, a flat of eggs to tide us over until we get our usual double flat at Costco, plus I got myself a Cherry Coke Zero, since I neglected to get myself something to drink with our lunch. Our loyalty card savings came out to $23.54, which was nice.
After we were finished here, our next stop was the Walmart. That turned out to be a much larger trip. This is what $417.73 looks like.
The main things we needed to get was cat food to last us until Costco and feed store trips. There are three 7kg bags of kibble, plus two 32 packs of canned cat food buried in there. My husband requested some sours, but they didn’t have the kind he prefers in stock, so we got two packs of mixed sours that hopefully will still work. There’s a case of Coke Zero and a package of facial tissues under the basket, plus a small package of paper towel buried in the cart.
We went a bit nuts on the frozen heat and eats. These are all things that my husband can cook himself in the multifunction air frier/toaster oven we got to replace the broken microwave. With his medications, his hunger cues and appetite are pretty messed up, so having something he can cook for himself when he does feel able to eat comes in handy. So there are a whole bunch of $10 bags of different types of stuffed chicken, popcorn chicken, meatballs and even corn dogs. Plus, some Pizza Pops to be our heat and eat supper when we got home.
There is a bag of carrots in there, two clamshells of strawberries, four different types of cheese, frozen Basa fillets, three different flavour packs of bouillon cubes, a couple of loaves of bread that my daughter chose and, completely hidden in the cart, a dozen cans of Monster energy drinks, to be split three ways. Last of all is a cold Gatorade my daughter got for the drive home.
So, including the items not pictured, we spent around $830 in gas, groceries, etc., though the food forest items did come out of a completely separate budget.
By the time we got home, it was late enough to feed the outside cats for the evening, but our day wasn’t over yet! My brother and his wife had come here to the farm while we were gone. They had a few things to do around their trailers and stored items, but they also did a huge job that I was able to help out with – which I will cover in my next post!
The cherries at the edge of the spruce grove are blooming like crazy right now. We might actually have berries from them this year. The one by the house – the one we plan to keep – is just starting to bloom. Usually, it blooms before the ones in the bushes.
The different types of lilacs are showing flower buds, but only the double lilac in the old kitchen garden is starting to show a few open blossoms. Most of the crab apple trees have buds, but the one big one that has tasty apples just sort of exploded in flowers this morning.
The grape hyacinths have their flower cones up. Little spots of purple, all over the area they’re in. Unfortunately, they are almost completely hidden by the purple bellflower that has taken over every open space among the trees. The area is too large to weed by hand, but I don’t want to use tools or the weed trimmer, and risk accidentally taking out the grape hyacinths.
I’m really looking forward to when the lilacs start opening. We’ve got five different kinds that my mother planted, and they all bloom at different types. Everything smells amazing for weeks!
I also made sure to check our little strawberry patch. Something – likely the cats – keeps digging into the mulch, but not the strawberries. I just need to put the mulch back in the morning, and everything else is okay.
It looks like 8 out of 9 are doing quite well right now. The 9th one does have leaf buds on it, so it will hopefully recover soon. Considering we ordered a package of 8, that one’s a bonus, anyhow!
Hopefully, these will do quite well where they are – as long as the bed doesn’t get invaded by those Chinese elm roots again!
Okay, this is early, but I’ll take it as a good sign.
The mulberry bushes we got last spring were so tiny, we ended up just potting them up and keeping them indoors.
They grew quite a bit, then dropped their leaves in the fall. So for the past few months, we’ve been looking at bare branches, hoping they were still just dormant and not dead.
Well…
They are definitely not dead! There are tiny leaf buds all over both trees!
It’s early for them to be coming out of dormancy, but for now, I think they will be okay. We will start hardening them off in the week or two before our last frost date, and hopefully, this will mean nice, big, strong saplings to transplant in June. This variety is supposed to be hardy to our zone 3, So as long as they get a good start, and nothing eats them, they should be able to handle our winters all right.
I’m looking forward to seeing how they do. They are supposed to get quite tall, so they will be planted near the lilac hedge, along the north fence. While they are small, the lilac hedge will shelter them, and when the get bigger, they will fill in gaps in the hedge the deer are getting through.
The Re-Farmer 