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.
It’s supposed to start snowing later, so it’s a bit of a now or never day to get those beds mulched before the ground freezes! I’m so glad my mother decided to have me come over to her place tomorrow instead of today.
If you scroll through the Instagram slide show above, you’ll first see the carrots that we are overwintering in the soil, harvesting them as we need to, rather than harvesting them all at once and having to process them for the winter. Quite a few people swear by this, and say the carrots taste so much better when stored this way. There was the remains of a pile of grass clippings next to that bed, so it was the fastest to get done. I used up pretty much the entire pile – I didn’t bother digging too far into the snow around the edges – and piled it right on top of the snow layer. The snow will also act as an insulator, as well as add needed moisture, come spring time. I put the cover back on, partly as a way to store it, but also to keep the grass clippings from being blown away. This is the only bed where that would be an issue.
Next is the old kitchen garden. All the garlic now has a thick layer of mulch, plus the chamomile, thyme and strawberries grown from seed are covered.
I also finally picked that last big luffa gourd. I’d forgotten about it! It’s now sitting in the living room to dry out.
I also remembered to put a deeper mulch on top of the saffron crocuses, plus a nice, thick “donut” of mulch around the Liberty apple tree. Both are zone 4 plants, so they need extra protection in our zone 3 temperatures. Some time ago, I added the tree protector. It’s wrapped around the stem and the bamboo stake together until it reached the bottom branches, and then got wrapped around the bamboo stake. As the sapling gets taller, the wrap can be adjusted accordingly. This area also has the fencing wire around it, so it should be safe from deer, but this will also protect from rabbits and other critters. Mind you, the yard cats do a great job of keeping the small critters under control, so we don’t have any rabbit or mouse problems, but there are other creatures that might try to eat a nice, juicy young sapling!
All of this pretty much finished off the huge pile of grass clippings that was next to the high raised bed! There’s just the dregs along the edges, buried under snow. Those are really full of crab grass rhizomes, anyhow. I was pulling quite a few of those out of even the deepest parts of the grass pile!
Last of all, we covered the asparagus and strawberry bed, and the sunchokes. We ended up not harvesting any. I decided to leave them to propagate, and we’ll have more plants to harvest from, next year. In theory. Instead, I decided to use the loppers to cut the stems and lay them down while my daughter raided the straw pile for more mulch.
The surprise was discovering half the sunchoke plants had lost their tops! Some time between when I did my morning rounds, and when we came over to tend to the bed, a deer had come around and eaten them!
The straw we used is what had been moved off the area the trellis beds are going on. It had been used for our Ruth Stout method of growing potatoes and melons that instead got flooded out, in our 2022 garden. So it’s had some time to break down, and the pile was quite damp! We used most of it to make a nice, deep mulch over the asparagus/strawberry, and sunchoke beds.
In the spring, these mulches will be removed (the carrot bed should be empty before then) to allow for the plants underneath to get sunlight and warmth and start growing. In the wattle weave bed, the chamomile should have reseeded itself by now. The thyme in there might actually survive the winter. It’s hard to say, as they are close to the wall of the bed, which means they’ll get cold from the side. Even with the mulch, they might freeze too much. This is why I made sure to plant the garlic well away from the walls of the raised beds they are in.
If all goes well, we’ll have a nice head start to our 2024 garden!
Oh!!! I just found out our lysine order is in already!
The before and after pictures. I was losing light by the time I was done, so the second shot turned out pretty bad. Sorry.
My goal was to take care of the one at the end of the row of crabapples; far left in the photos. I’ve been tasting apples from different suckers, and there were two that have good apples on them. Everything else got cut away. Quite a bit of it was already dead. In the second photo, you can see the remains of the original tree that, from how rotten that stump is, died a very long time ago.
As I was clearing that one, I found quite a few branches from the tree next to it were entangled, so I started pruning that one, too. It has lots of little apples on it, but they are inedible. I was pretty ruthless in pruning it. The trees are too close together, and I don’t mind if we lose that one. The critters can eat the apples, though, so as I cleared away the branches, I made sure to shake off all the apples onto the ground. I’m sure the deer will enjoy them.
Since I still had some light, I did some work on the next tree. This is the one that has the really tasty little apples – a wonderful combination of tart and sweet. Unfortunately, this tree is dying. There were several large dead branches that I cut away, and wow did that ever open the whole thing up! One of the branches was so entwined with others, I had to cut it into three pieces, just to get it out.
All of the trees could use more pruning, but I did as far as I could reach. I could bring the little scaffolding over to work on them, but I think they’ve had enough pruning for this season. I don’t want to over do it. I’m not going to bother with the other crab apple trees, since they really should be cut down. One of them, diseased as it is, still has lots of tiny apples on it that the grosbeaks love to eat in the winter. I don’t want to remove a food source if I can wait. It will be a while before the silver buffalo berry start producing berries but, once they do, they are supposed to be quite prolific and should make up for the loss of crab apples as a critter food source.
Before starting on this, I went through all the tomatoes outside, boxed up the ripe ones and brought them inside. Tomorrow will be a day of preparing and freezing most of them, and maybe setting more up to dehydrate in the oven. We’re also supposed to be warm and dry over the next few days, so I hope to be able to get back to work on that trellis bed. Plus, our garlic should be arriving next week, so I want to make sure to have a bed prepared for them, too.
Lots of work to get done, before winter comes!
Oh, that reminds me. No word from the financing lady today, so I don’t expect to hear from her until Monday. It’s probably quite a challenge for her to find a deal that fits our budget for monthly payments!
While doing my rounds this time of year, I like to grab some crab apples from the one tree that has tasty apples to nibble on as I walk. High winds have knocked down a lot of the apples, so I don’t know that we’re going to bother harvesting them this year, but there are enough in reach that I can snack on them.
I grabbed a couple this morning, buffed the dust off one of them on my shirt, and was about to take a bite, when I saw something move!
This wasp had been asleep in the apple! It was still very groggy in the cool of the morning, and eventually squeezed itself out and promptly fell to the ground. 😄
We had another cold night last night, for this time of the year. Temperatures dropped to 6C/43F. It’s coming up on noon as I write this, and we’ve warmed up to 21C/70F, with an expected high of 23C/73F. I made sure to get outside to do my morning rounds a bit earlier, as we got word that my brother and his wife were coming out with the repaired riding mower, and it was just beautiful out.
Of course, I was checking all the garden beds, and saw so many of these…
A lot of the purple corn seem to have exploded with tassels emerging, overnight! I had expected them to get much taller, first. I may have made a mistake in choosing pole beans to plant with them, instead of bush beans! 😄
I also was able to pick a handful of the wild-ish raspberries growing around the old compost pile. Until this year, I would usually find enough to nibble on a few while doing my rounds, but not usually enough to be worth picking. They’re just starting to ripen now, and I’m already finding more than before – and that’s just in this patch. There are still the raspberries growing wild in other areas that we can pick from.
I even found a couple of fully ripe pea pods to nibble on, and some Saskatoons. The peas will have more ready to pick soon. So will the Saskatoons, if we can stay ahead of the birds! Even the sour cherry tree by the house is starting to ripen.
When I later put the washed raspberries on the kitchen counter, I had a good laugh. My daughters can be so silly at times! Last night, my younger daughter made mint syrup for the first time, and set it aside on the counter to cool, with a Post It note to let everyone know what was in the bowl.
Her sister added to the note…
Too funny!
My brother and his wife came out in their truck; the riding mower fits quite well in there. Once it was out, he showed me the things he replaced and repaired, and some of the things he found. There was one wire connector, for example, that he found was completely off. Which means the mower blade could not be lowered. Even if the chain he replaced was working, we couldn’t have use the mower! I have no idea when or how that happened, because the last time I tried to use it was right after it had had the chain put back on. The chain immediately fell of, so I never got to a point where I’d have tried to engage the mower.
He replaced the seat. I didn’t even think it needed replacing, but he explained it to me. It seems there was some video of me he’d watch, riding around on the mower, and the bottom of my sweater was on the top of the mower – a part that spins! This seat has a back on it, so that won’t happen anymore.
He’d replaced the battery cables and the corroded connectors, and they are now covered with a protective grease. He also found a new battery holder. That was one of those things where I’d seen something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. There was a vertical metal bar that was wobbling around. I knew it should be attached to something, but couldn’t figure out what. It turns out it was one of the bars that held a plastic piece that was supposed to be holding the battery in place. There was no sign of the plastic piece. It was held in place with a couple of nuts and washers. This is something that can only be seen if the seat and cover are lifted. How or when the plastic piece fell off, I don’t know, but it had to have been fairly early on, because I have zero memory of ever seeing it there in the first place.
After showing all the changes to me and my younger daughter, who’d joined us by then, he started it up and tested it out on the outer yard grass before driving it into the garage.
As for their mower, the best I could do was make sure the tank was full, have it out and ready for them to load, and clean it off. They were happy to get their mower back. It’s slightly narrower and can store in their garage – ours was too wide! It’s also too wide to fit between some of their trees, so they couldn’t use it for that, either.
I am so thankful that my brother was able to do all this for us. He’s so sweet!
Once done with the mowers, we did a “tour” of things. They checked out inside the shed with the roof that collapsed; there’s still quite a bit of stuff in there, and my brother even borrowed the wheel barrow so he could move some of it to the barn, so it wouldn’t be exposed to the weather anymore. He was able to identify some of the things in there, including some things that really had me wondering why they are there at all – they are for equipment that the farm has never had! My SIL found some ripe cherries to try out, and we all got to snack on Saskatoons. She’d never had them fresh off the tree before, and loved them. They planted a Saskatoon bush at their place, but it’s too early to be producing yet.
We talked a bit about some of the trees we need to deal with. The elm in front of the kitchen really needs to come down, but that is one for the professionals, as are the dead spruces closest to the house. The cost is prohibitive, though. My brother, being the sort of person he is, just sort of took off suddenly and went on the roof to empty the eaves toughs. While there, he checked out the elm tree, which has branches overhanging the roof. At the very least, those need to be cut back, so they don’t damage the nice new shingles!
Altogether, we had a wonderful time, wandering around the yards and chatting about what we’ve been doing, what needs to be done, and what we’d like to do.
They had another surprise for us, though that will be brought out later. They found themselves with an air conditioner they’d bought for someone else, but is no longer needed. It’s been used for only a year. They have central air and don’t need it themselves, so they will be gifting it to us. It’s not the kind that fits in a window, though. It’ll need to be installed in a wall, and near a 3 prong outlet. We have a limited number of those. My brother walked around the house, talking to my daughter about where to install it. It was decided there was no way to install it upstairs and be able to plug it in. It also can’t go into any of the log walls. Since we have cat proofed the living room, that’s where it will be installed. So we will have to do some rearranging in there… again… in preparation for that.
It won’t be the most efficient location for air conditioning, but it’ll still make a world of difference!
They are so awesome!!!
So now I’m looking forward to using the riding mower around the main garden area. I didn’t want to use their riding mower for that, because it’s so rough, I was paranoid about breaking their machine.
I think today would be a great day to finally get that done! Or at least started. 😊
