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Big garden area, progress

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Today, my daughter and I got some progress done on the old garden area that we mulched with straw this spring.

We didn’t put anything under it, so things did start growing through it.

This is taken from one corner, next to the gooseberry bush and raspberries.

It looks a lot worse than it is. Partly because some of the weeds are so big, they take up more space on the surface than what they take up through the mulch. Partly because the mulch itself had seeds in it, and we’ve got oats growing in there, now.

We wanted to cover it, but first, we needed to kill this stuff.

Yes, we used herbicide on it. No, I’m not the least bit bothered by that.

Before we started, we tried to set up a hose to wash up later – and to spray any kittens who might come too close.

I’ve had some problems with the hoses. We’re down to two again, despite my repairs to them. There is, however, a garden tap. Basically, it’s a tap at the garden with a pipe running to the house, then a section of hose that can be screwed on to the water tap at the rear of the house. We’d never needed to test it out last year, so this was a good time to do it!

Yeah. That’s water spraying out of the ground, next to one of the wood piles.

I tried turning on the garden tap itself. Some water did start to come out, which turned really brown, then stopped altogether.

So I tried hooking up a pair of shorter hoses to the house tap, instead. One of them was spraying like crazy at the tap. When I switched to the other hose, it was fine.

So… we were down to one hose. *sigh*

While my daughter sprayed the garden, I worked on taking the pieces of wire that sewed the two sheets of black tarp together, out.

There was quite a lot of it. Some of the pieces were quite long and were done in a running stitch. On one section, there were two pieces used to created a double running stitch!

Getting it out was a challenge.

The kittens were very interested in the tarps!

After I got the wire out – and got scissors to cut away the fraying pieces that were catching on everything, I was able to spread them both out.

When the spraying was done, we left this area for a while, and I went back to working on cleaning around the old wood pile. After hauling another wheel barrow load to the pile near the burn barrel, I took a side trip into the barn, where I’d seen some tarps. The two black tarps are big, but not big enough!

While moving things to be able to access on of the tarps. I took a closer look at the old hoses that were in the way, and decided to try one of them out.

Much to my shock, it works just fine! No leaks or cracks, even though it’s really stiff from being in the barn for who knows how long.

So, we are back to two hoses. :-D

Later, my daughter and I spread the two black tarps over as much of the mulched area we could cover, while still making sure there is overlap. Then we checked out the two rolled up tarps I’d found in the barn.

One turned out to be an insulated tarp. We weren’t going to use that, even if it weren’t too small. We’ll save it for something else.

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It turned out to be really huge!

Plus, it has grommets, so we can use tent pegs to pin it down.

We started to do that, but the ground is so hard, we actually bent some of the pegs.

Then, we had a visitor. A mom and her daughters came to look at the kittens to potentially adopt one. They stayed and played with the kittens, and took some pictures, for quite a while. I learned they got our phone number from the vet in town.

I had gone to the vet this morning, with updated pictures of the kittens, and little write-ups about each one, printed out. This family had actually phoned this clinic, asking about kittens, since they are also a shelter, and were given our number.

They will think about which one they will take and get back to us in about a week.

At least I hope so. I’d hate to get ghosted again. :-(

By the time they left, all the aches and pains were kicking in, and I had definitely overdone it on my broken toe, so I didn’t go back to get pictures of the tarps on the garden area, nor get back to working on the wood pile area.

It’ll be at least a day before I get back to it, since we’ll be doing our monthly shop in the city tomorrow. I’ll also be picking up a 5 kilo bucket of liquid honey I ordered yesterday, before we head out. My daughter is wanting to try her hand at making mead. :-)

Until then, it’s time to shower off the bus spray and herbicide, pain killer up and go to bed early!

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: old wood pile area, a bit of progress

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I didn’t get as much done cleaning up in the old wood pile as I’d hoped, but a little is better than none!

This is most of the area I focused on today. I got more old pallets out, and a bit more rotten wood. For the most part, it’s too rotten to even pick up, but I’m hoping to at least get out the pieces with nails. I also cleared out some saplings that were in the wood pile my sister and her husband had made in the big garden, the summer before we moved out.

Most of the pile in the foreground is what I’d move there last year. I had intended to find uses for it, but I have access to better types of wood than I knew of back then, so I will be adding it to the chipping pile. I’ve got cherry wood set aside, and I have more than enough to work on, so any more cherry I take down is going to the chipping pile, too. There is still some apple wood I’d set aside by the old dog house. I’ll see what condition it’s in as I move it, before I make any decisions about it.

The pile of debris is growing, and I’m at a loss as to what to do with it. With the possibility of nails being in there, I can’t compost it, but there is so much soil in there, I just don’t think it’ll burn well.

I think, after I clean up more around the outhouse, I’ll spread it in the back. There is an access to the pit under the outhouse there, so it can be emptied as needed, so it should be kept open and clear. It’s not an area that will get traffic, to the risks of people finding nails is lower, and we certainly won’t be gardening or anything back there.

That’s one possibility, anyhow.

I did find a few things while moving pallets out.

A bent piece of sheet metal, two electrical insulators, and a perfectly intact tea cup – not even a chip on it! – buried under the pallet fence.

Weird!

In between working on this, we got some progress on the garden area we mulched, and had some company, but I will write about that in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: old wood pile, progress

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Things actually got chilly last night, and we had a wonderfully cool morning! I was really looking forward to getting some progress in the yard.

Of course, by the time I actually got out there, it had warmed up considerably. :-D It was nice, working in the shade, though.

With the way things have been doing this year, I decided that getting this old wood pile cleared was my one primary goal for the summer. Anything beyond that was gravy.

I may have messed myself up with this particular goal! :-D It’s turning out to be a more challenging job than I expected!

This is why.

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Bonus pictures

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Taken recently while in town, at a park near the lake.

This is in a park I sometimes go to to play Pokemon Go. :-D

I don’t know what type of lily that is in the top picture, but the bottom picture is yarrow. They have some in bright pink as well, and you can tell they are starting to cross pollinate.

Yarrow is one of those things that grows wild where we are. Growing wild in hard soil, watered only by the rain, they don’t get big like these ones. Some consider them a weed, but I like them. I’ve read that adding their leaves to a compost pile will speed the composting, but I haven’t really had the chance to confirm that.

The Re-Farmer

Transplants finally indoors… mostly

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So most of the indoor plants that I transplanted have been sitting outside all this time. The only ones that came inside where ones that I could hang up.

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The ivy went back to the living room, but is now in the middle, with the two types of ivy strung out onto hooks on either side. One container of little succulents went to hang at the kitchen window, where I hope they will get better light. Another bowl of succulents that the cats just loved to try and eat is now hanging in the dining room.

All of these are on hooks that were already up when we moved in, which has worked out rather well.

Inside the house was one big jade tree that did not need to be transplanted, but also an odd collection of succulents in a large planter that used to have our avocado tree. Half of that got broken off during the move, then the last of it just up and died. I think it was simply too cold in the house for it. So what I ended up doing was sticking succulent leaves that the cats kept knocking off into the dirt, and most of them took. Meanwhile, I started two more avocado seeds, and they have been ready to transplant for a while now.

Yard work has been put on hold again. Yesterday, I didn’t get back to it because we had hours of wonderful, glorious rain. It came down hard enough to take out our internet at one point, but none of us complained!

Today, we were back to the heat. So I focused on getting the indoor plants taken care of.

I started by removing the succulents from the pot I needed for the avocado pits. I realized I needed potting soil for them, though. It seems weird to be buying soil when we have so much of it outside, so I checked the compost pile.

No go. It’s got too many sticks and crud in the older stuff for it to be useful, and the areas we’ve been adding to aren’t composted well enough, yet.

So I ended up digging out an old plastic colander that was hanging behind the wood stove in the old kitchen (it used to be ours, from when we last moved out of province) and ended up using it to sift garden soil into a bucket. The garden soil is not only very rocky, but filled with all sorts of grass, clover, and weeds, so I wanted get that out. I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes as I did it, though.

While working on transplanting the avocados, I ended up going out for more soil, this time from a planter my mom made out of an old cream separator basin. I’ve left it where it was, so the stump it was sitting on would be more visible.

This was in the full sun, so while I wasn’t being eaten by mosquitoes, I was instead dripping sweat into my glasses!

Later, I decided to get more, this time digging out a huge stainless steel colander we no longer use in the kitchen, that fits nicely over a 5 gallon bucket. I used bug repellent and tried getting soil from the garden again. This time, however, I found the tiniest of red ants in the bucket, so I went back to the old planter.

I only needed a relatively small amount of soil, so it didn’t take long. I brought the whole bucket inside and transplanted a jade tree, then started bringing plants in from outside.

As I walked past the bucket, arms full of aloe vera, I found the bucket staring at me.

Fenrir had jumped in and was just sitting in the dirt, looking at me!

All the cats were really interested in what I was doing!

In the end, I got most of the plants outside, in. It did mean changing things up quite a bit.

I tried putting the big aloe back where it was in the dining room, but it’s just too big. Not only were the branches getting hung up in my daughter’s orchids and taking up space needed for other pots, it’s tall enough that it even gets in the way of the plant hanging above!

The big planter with the avocados in it had been where the huge jade tree is in the above photo, but I moved it to the other table, thinking I’d be able to get more around it.

This works a bit better, but my goodness, that aloe is difficult to move. It’s not just the size or weight of the pot; its leaves are very stabby!!! And they have teeth!

The bigger pot with the avocado was heavier, but much easier to move! Even with water sloshing around.

The flags around the edges are to keep the cats out.

This pot is self watering, with an inner pot that absorbs water from the bottom, and the outer pot gets filled when the float shows it’s getting low.

As you can see, it was pretty full of water when I moved it.

The plant hanging above it is the one the cats like to try and eat. It is doing very well, now that it’s hung up!!

I don’t know that the avocado are going to make it, though. While the root systems were very strong, when the pits split, they took up more space. The little glass jars I was using to sprout them are slightly narrower at the top. I ended up having to split the pits apart to pull them out, one half at a time, place them back together, then stick them in the soil.

It looks so weird to have this huge pot and just a couple of sprouting stems in the dirt! LOL

If they do survive, this should be a better location for them. There is a heat vent in between the shelves, and it’s right at the end of one shelf. It should get more heat in the winter than in the previous location.

This jade tree is doing so very well! Can you believe, this was started from broken leaves from the original tree?

This group of succulents used to be part of a tiny succulent “garden” my daughter got, years ago. After the move, they weren’t getting enough light where we had it, so they were getting very long and leggy. These are from our attempts to save them, by rooting leaves.

They don’t seem to have liked being outside.

I think I’m going to have to put stakes around this pot, too – I’ve already had to chase DahBoy out of it! The cats had gotten spoiled by having access to the tops of these shelves after the plants got moved outside.

Unfortunately, we still have 3 pots with aloe vera outside, and I have no idea where to put them. Other windows are either too dark for plants, or have other things around them, with no space for plant pots.

I’m thinking we need to put more hangers up.

And maybe, I should stop propagating the succulents. I still have a bunch that need to be potted!

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: spruce grove perimeter, starting on the old wood pile

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This morning, thanks to cooler temperatures that I was able to take advantage of, I was able to finally get back to cleaning up around the east perimeter of the spruce grove. It was only about an hour and a half before I had to get out of the heat, but I think some good progress was done!

Here’s where I started.

(photo heavy post ahead! :-) )

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Ripening Cherries

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The cherries by the house are getting beautifully red!

We’re already seeing sparrows eating them. They’re not quite ripe yet, though some are very close. I tasted one that seemed the most ripe that I could reach, and WOW are they sour right now! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: spruce grove, west perimeter

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Finally.

FINALLY!!!!

I got some clean up started today!

The area I planned to work on stays shaded for a while, which allowed me to work later into the day than otherwise. Dragging the bigger trees I cleared to one of the wood piles outside the yard really showed me what a difference that made! Walking into the sun, the heat hit like a hammer.

After a while, I stopped dragging them out and started a pile in the yard, instead. We’ll drag them out when it’s cooler!

I took before and after pictures from two different views. Here are the before pictures.

The area around the old dog house is where the wood pile was, when there was still a wood burning furnace. It has a pallet fence, and pallets on the ground, all of which are falling over or rotting. My ultimate goal for this year is to get this area cleared.

In the process, I also wanted to clear things a bit further back into the trees towards the outhouse, to access a fallen tree I want to clear out.

There turned out to actually be two of them. After taking pictures, I went to pull out what I thought was a fallen branch, only to find it was actually another dead tree – just a long and skinny one, with about 8-10 feet buried in the tall grass that I didn’t see!

I also cleared some poplars that were growing too close to the outhouse.

The dead tree I wanted access to was also longer than I expected. It extends quite a bit further into the trees, and in the third picture, you can see how its top has landed on other trees, causing them to grow bent.

I’m debating with myself whether I want to cut it into more manageable pieces and haul it out, bit by bit, or just drag the whole thing out in one go.

The lazy part of me says, drag it out in one go. :-D

While working my way towards the elm tree with the tire around its base, I made a discovery.

I’d been able to somewhat see the log someone leaned against the tree trunk through the dying cherry trees, but what is that metal thing under it, and the fallen branch?

It’s a metal chair frame.

Because… of course.

I’m keeping this.

I’ll turn it into an art installation. To go with all the toilets I’m finding! :-D

Clearing around that elm meant I also finally reached one side of the pallet fence.

There’s a poplar growing through it.

I also uncovered a dead tree and some fallen branches.

There are some branches that I put in the area (you can’t see it in the picture) that I saved from the pile in the big garden area that my sister and her husband had pruned before we moved here. Some of it is apple wood. I also kept some of the dead and dying cherry trees I cleared today. I plan to cut them into discs, or other shapes, to make things with them.

It’s hard to see, but as I was trying to clear away the cherry and poplars, I found some of them were growing through the remains of pallets.

There’s going to be a lot of that, as I work my way into the area.

By this point, it was getting simply too hot to keep working outside, and I had to stop for the day. Checking the temperatures before I started this post, I found it was 30C, with a “feels like” of 33C. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue tomorrow. They’re predicting thunderstorms, but we shall see!

Here are the after pictures of my progress so far.

That reciprocating saw made the job so much easier! The only other tools I had to use were pruning sheers for stuff too small to use the saw on, and a rake, to try and find the bases of the trees I was taking down.

Of the self-sown cherry trees in the area I cleared, I did actually keep one. It even has some cherries ripening on it! I’m hoping it’s far enough away from the elm tree to get adequate sunlight.

Clearing and thinning the trees is the easy part. The hard part is going to be dragging the dog house out (it’s on a pallet, which is rotting and collapsing under it), then digging all the old pallets, pieces of carpet, and who knows what else is buried in there!

The Re-Farmer

More growing things

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While investigating the sounds of the visiting toms asserting their dominance this morning, another noise caught my attention.

A deep, continuous buzzing noise.

This is the linden tree, looking slightly paler than usual. That is because the upper branches are blooming, and there are so many flowers, you can see them more than the leaves. Pollinators love linden blossoms and, even from the ground, I could see constant movement of little black dots of insects. I tried to take some video, hoping to capture the sound, but there was too much wind. The digital zoom didn’t do well in capturing the insects, though when I uploaded it and tried watching it on the big screen, I realized I’d caught at least 2, maybe 3, hummingbirds!

Lower down, there are almost no blossoms at all. If we wanted to harvest the flowers, we would probably need a step ladder taller than what we’ve got and, frankly, it wouldn’t be safe to do it.

Ah, well.

Since I’m supposed to stay off my feet to let my toe heal (I’m not very good at that!), my daughters did the rest of the rounds for me. They found me a little present.

Our first ripe raspberries! :-D

They’d eaten some and brought some for me. The few raspberry bushes we have, have not grown well this year even though I did try to keep them watered as much as I could. Being shaded by an apple and a chokecherry tree isn’t helping either; they should be getting a lot more sun to produce well. I don’t expect to be getting more than a small handful at a time.

Even a little bit is nice, though. :-)

The Re-Farmer