I put together a video of the work I did yesterday. No audio, so I wanted to add music to it today.
I spent so much time trying to find public domain music that fit the mood I wanted. Then my daughter came in and helped me pick music that was already in the software I’m using, in a matter of minutes.
She’s now interested in making videos. I have no doubt she would do a better job than me! So at some point, you might start seeing better quality videos getting posted.
For now, this is what I got done yesterday.
We settled on this location for the new Liberty apple tree for several reasons. The main one is, it is a zone 4 tree, which means it will need more protection in the winter. Where I was thinking of planting it originally is far more exposed, and will remain so until the silver buffalo berry reaches maturity.
Here, it will get full sun, but also be sheltered from the north by the lilacs. It also needs another variety of apple tree for pollination. While I took down the one crab apple tree, there are the ornamental crab apples in the old kitchen garden, plus another crab apple tree, though we’ll see how well that one does. It will likely be taken down, eventually.
The little plum trees were also removed; we’ll see how the larger ones do this year. These are not edible plums, though my father did use them for wine making sometimes. They have almost no flesh around their pits.
If all goes well, we’ll start having apples to harvest in a few years. The new apple tree can reach a mature height of 18-20, so if we do plant any other fruit trees here, we will need to keep that in mind. If we do end up taking out the one crab apple, and possibly the remaining inedible plums, I figure we have room for one more fruit tree here.
My parents planted so many things in this little area over the years; I remember there being mountain ash (there are none left at all now), a pear tree, other crab apple trees, plus I thinned out caragana and lilac. Oh, and there’s the big linden tree at one end, now. It’s one of the few things that is doing well! I’m sure there were other things that came and went in the 30 or so years I’ve been away.
Now that I’ve cleared as much as I have, the lilacs will hopefully grow better. When I first cleared the area of dead stuff back in 2018, I found most of the lilacs had stretched to very unusual heights. They had leaves pretty much only at the top, as they struggled to get sunlight. They are recovering, but still a lot lankier than lilacs normally would be.
The main thing, though, is that the new apple tree and the tulips have that barrier around them. It’s small enough that I hope no deer will consider it worth trying to jump it. Over time, we will add things to the wire to blow, flash and make noise in the wind.
One thing I noticed only after watching the time lapse video I took.
I had a LOT of cats running around while I worked!
This morning I headed into town to refill our big water jugs and pick up a few things at the grocery store. By the time I headed back, our post office was open. I’d checked the tracking last night and knew our Veseys order would be in today, but when I got there, she still hadn’t had a chance to finish processing all the parcels that came in. She found them for me, though – among several other boxes from Veseys that I could see! They are a popular company, with good reason.
For the potatoes, we got a total of 4 pounds each of Red Thumb fingerling and Purple Peruvian fingerling. We really liked the Purple Peruvian when we grew them a couple of years ago, and I’m hoping we’ll have enough to save seed potatoes for next year.
There is also a 3 pound back of Irish Cobbler.
Irish CobblerRed Thumb FingerlingPurple Peruvian
Two of the above images are from the Veseys website. The Purple Peruvian are some of our own harvest.
I can see that the potatoes have already started to sprout. We’ll need to lay those out for air circulation as much as for chitting. I’ll have to go through the old feed bags we have and see how many are left, since we’ve stopped buying deer feed and bird seed. We have too many slugs and not enough garter snakes or toads, to try growing them in the ground again.
Then there was the box with our trees.
Would you look at those mulberry trees!!
I knew they would be small, but I didn’t think they would be THAT small! Normally, there would have been a single, larger, 2 yr old sapling, but they had a shortage of that size. Instead, they sent out two 1 yr old saplings for the same price.
Liberty appleTrader mulberry
The above pictures are from Veseys. Hopefully, in a few years, we’ll have apples and berries to harvest!
Right now, I’ve got them out of their plastic bags and set up in the living room, safe from the cats. I find myself seriously considering leaving them to grow indoors for a year but… well… I don’t know that their chances for survival would be any better indoors than out! We will have to make sure to put a cloche over them when they are planted, to protect them. The funny thing is going to be transplanting these tiny little things with their fully grown size in mind. They can grow 15-20 ft high. This variety is supposed to be hardy to our zone, but winter protection is still something we’ll want to ensure. At least for the first couple of winters.
The apple tree is quite a bit larger! It started raining as I got home, so it might be a little while before we plant it, so I opened the plastic bag and set it up next to the mulberries. I didn’t take it out, since it’s packed in sawdust.
The planting instructions for the mulberry state:
Unless you have heavy clay soil, there isn’t much to do in terms of soil preparation. You can add amendments such as compost or peat moss to the soil and/or a layer of mulch over the root area after planting will help retain moisture, especially during the first year. While it may be tempting to add fertilizer or manure to your freshly dug hole before planting your new tree, PLEASE resist! Fertilizer or manure in close contact with the root system could chemically burn the roots and potentially kill the tree.
Mulberry trees can grow quite large, up to 15-20 feet tall. Avoid planting near walkways and driveways as the fruit will drop and create stains. Mulberries are self-fertile and require full sunlight.
Where we will be planting them, the soil is very rocky and hard packed, and a whole lot of sun, so we’ll be giving them some garden soil to grow in, and plenty of wood chip mulch around them.
It’ll be different for the apple tree. The planting instructions are:
Plant apple trees 5-6 meters (15-18 feet) apart in the spring in a full sun location with good air circulation and drainage. For best results, two varieties should be planted to ensure successful pollination and fruit production. Dig a hole large enough to accommodate all of the roots without bending (approx. 18 inches). Place the tree in the hole with the graft union about three inches above the soil surface. You should be able to see the soil mark on the trunk where the tree has been taken out of the ground, it should be planted no deeper than this. Mix compost with the soil to fill back in the hole once the tree is set in place, and lightly firm to ensure good soil root contact. Water surrounding the tree to ensure good root establishment. Water every two to three days if your season is dry.
It will be planted closer to the crab apple trees for cross pollination, but far enough away to hopefully protect it from the fungal disease that is killing them off. This variety is also a zone 4 tree, which means it will need shelter for the winter.
Hhhmm… I’m rethinking where to plant the apple tree. There are some dead and dying trees in the west yard that need to be cleared out. Better shelter, full sun, and close enough to the ornamental apple trees in the old kitchen garden for cross pollination.
We’ll figure it out. That’s now our job for the day!
It has just reached noon as I begin writing this and apparently we’re at only 14C/57F out there. That can’t possibly be right, because it felt so much hotter while we worked outside!
Today, we made our newest addition to what will be our food forest area.
I picked up our Royalty raspberries from Veseys at the post office this morning. They’re even showing leaves already! Getting these in the ground became our top priority.
This is where I decided to start planting raspberries (we will be adding more, as we are able). You can see the remains of the row where we’ve been planting peas for the past two years.
Because there is a phone line buried nearby, we are keeping an area open that’s large enough to drive through on the north side, where I am standing to take this picture.. With that in mind, these first raspberries were lined up with the cranberries that mark the ends of the berry bush rows we planted last year. That sawhorse on the left is over one of the cranberries.
Of course, I was hitting a lot of rocks while I dug the holes! One of them had more roots than rocks. After this, I watered the holes a bit, then went and got some of the soil in the garden we sifted free of weeds and roots last fall. This is soil we’ve been working on and amending for a couple of years now. It’s been covered by black tarp since then, so I knew it was still clear.
My daughter, meanwhile, brought over the raspberry transplants – and a lopper to cut those roots out!
The canes were planted into new, root-free, soil, then given a bit of a watering. Each of them got a tomato cage to protect from the deer.
Last of all, a deep mulch of wood chips was placed around them, then a final watering. The sod that was removed got broken up and spread out, while the rocks from the holes, plus rocks that had been left at the ends of other rows we’d grown in last year, were collected. Thse all got dumped into the new groundhog hole we found next to the house when the snow melted. It still doesn’t look like it’s being used, nor does the original one beside the dining room door steps, just a few feet away. For now, we’re just going to block off the one. The other one is behind a mock orange bush, so I’ll want to fill that one with soil, first, if it keeps looking unused.
My daughter is quite happy with the raspberries. The ones we planted before, that I got her for her birthday, were eaten by deer and hit with drought in their first year, and never really recovered. It’s too early to tell for sure, but I don’t know if they survived this past winter. If they did, we’ll probably transplant them near these ones, in the fall. As we add more, the rows will extend to the south, with more rows added to the west, were we’d been planting beans and peas.
This is why we’ve been planting vegetables so far from the house for the past couple of years. To give the food trees we’ll be planting here a better chance of survival!
Oh, and while I was digging holes, my darling daughter fixed the sun room outer door that wouldn’t close. It turned out to be the latch plate was coming loose. The door does still stick at the top, but it at least closes now. It seems the wood is rotting, and that’s why it came loose. The main thing is that we can use the outer door for now, and leave the inner door open, for air circulation. When my daughter came out through the sun room, she noticed the windows were starting to steam up!
Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.
2022 saw us making some significant steps towards our perennial and food forest plans. This included getting nitrogen fixing berry bushes that will also act as privacy barriers and wind breaks, and annuals that are known to easily reseed themselves and can be potentially treated as perennials.
Let’s start with the berry bushes.
The majority of what we got in 2022 were silver buffalo berry, which came in a pack of 30 bare root plants.
As you can see by the first picture, they certainly got affected by the flooding! Mostly just at one end, though – around where you can see the old saw horse in the second picture.
We also got a package of 5 sea buckthorn, which were planted along the lilac hedge, to fill in a gap in the hedge that the deer jump through.
Those are the nitrogen fixers, but we also got a couple of highbush cranberry, which were planted at the ends of the rows of silver buffaloberry, not far from the sea buckthorn. Unfortunately, one of the cranberry saplings got chomped by a deer.
Twice.
That sapling now has the sawhorse over it, to protect it.
The deer seem uninterested in any of the other saplings.
Unfortunately, of the 5 sea buckthorn, one transplant didn’t seem to take at all, and another died soon after. A third got broken somehow and never recovered. So we are down to just two sea buckthorn.
As for the silver buffaloberry, they all seemed to survive. We might loose one of them, but that’s my fault. While I was weeding around them, I accidentally pulled one up. I replanted it immediately, but we won’t know if it survived until next year.
Conclusion:
I’d say our first food trees did okay, for their first growing season here.
We will need to get more sea buckthorn, but we were going to do that, anyhow. Sea buckthorn requires 1 male plant to pollinated up to… I think it’s 5 female plants. The problem is, there’s no way to sex the trees until they are at least a few years old. It’s entirely possible all the saplings we got were female. We were planning to get more later on, which would increase our chances of having both male and female plants.
With so many silver buffalo berry, even if we loose some, there should still be plenty to have the privacy barrier they are partly meant to be.
Now, if we can just keep those two highbush cranberry alive, that would be a good thing!
Thanks to getting the branch pile chipped this summer, we also had plenty of wood chips to place a thick mulch on the carboard around the berry bushes. That should help them a great deal.
It will take a few years before we know how well these do. They are all supposed to be prolific berry producers. If it turns out we don’t like sea buckthorn or silver buffalo berry, they will still serve to help feed the birds, and as nitrogen fixers, privacy screens and wind breaks.
As for increasing our food forest, we currently have two different varieties of apple trees on order. We have a lot of crab apple trees, but we’ve found only one of them tastes good. The very small apples are good for making vinegar and hard cider, plus we have made apple sauce with them. There was a second crab apple tree that had tasty apples, but it seems to have died over the summer.
We’ll have to cut down others that have either died, or have a fungal disease. We will likely end up with just two crab apple trees in the row along the main garden area. Those will be able to serve as cross pollinators that the eating apples we ordered will need.
Also on order is a pair of mulberry bushes specific to our zone, which will arrive in the spring, about the same time as the apple trees. Little by little, we’ll be adding other cold hardy fruit trees, such as plums and pears, but we really need to get started on planting nut trees, as those can take a decade before they start producing.
Speaking of which…
We also planted 6 Korean pine, in the outer yard.
Of the 6 we planted, one promptly got dug up by something. I found the seedling and replanted it, but it did not survive. After that, I picked up some dollar store picnic protectors to put over them. The white fabric made them easy to see, too.
Over the summer, one other seedling died, so we are now down to four. They started to get too tall for their covers, so I used chicken wire, sprayed with orange marking paint for visibility, to create larger protective cages for them. My mother gave us an ash tree she’d grown from seed, and that was planted in one of the spots where a Korean pine hadn’t made it, also with a chicken wire protector around it.
Conclusion:
With the Korean pine, loosing 2 out of 6 is not a major concern. One mature tree would be enough to meet our needs. Anything beyond that is gravy. It’ll be a few years before we really know how they do. These are 2 yr old seedlings, making 2022 their 3rd year. I’ve read that they grow slowly for the first 5 years, then suddenly start getting huge. They are still considered a slow growing tree, and we’re looking at another 6 years before we can expect to harvest pine nuts.
These trees can potentially reach 30 ft wide and 60 ft high, which meant we had to plant them far apart, and take into account other ways we use the area – such as keeping a vehicle sized lane open to access the secondary gate. Over time, we will probably plant other nut trees in the area, as many of them have a chemical they release into the soil, so they have to be planted well away from our vegetable garden and fruit tree areas.
This is all long term stuff. Let’s take a look at the short term stuff now!
This year we planted Aunt Molly ground cherries, and Wonderberry.
The ground cherries are something we’ve grown in containers on a balcony when we were still living in the city, so we at least knew we like them. I’ve seen this on lists of things not to grow, because they reseed so easily, but for me, that’s a bonus.
The Wonderberry is something we’d never grown before, but they were also described as being something that reseeds itself easily, and comes back year after year. We had never tried them before, but the berries are supposed to be good for many things and, if it turned out we didn’t like them, they would still be a good food source for birds.
Which meant that, for both of them, we had to consider planting them in locations where we could allow them to come back, year after year.
The Result:
Based on research, we started the Wonderberry indoors quite early. They were among the seedlings that got damaged by cats and had to be restarted. In the end, we had three plants that could be transplanted, and they actually were doing a bit too well!
The Wonderberry quickly became too large for our indoor growing spaces, including the plant shelf we set up in the sun room. They ended up having to be on another shelf on the side, where there was nothing above to constrict them. They were blooming and forming berries before we could transplant them! We put them around the stone cross in the yard, after pulling up the invasive bell flowers as best we could. Hopefully, the Wonderberry will crowd out the weeds, instead of the other way around!
The ground cherries were planted in a new bed near the compost ring. I had concerns that the transplants would not make it, as the ground was so incredibly saturated. Make it, they did, and they thrived in that location! They got so big that they could barely hold themselves up. After high winds knocked some down, I had to set up supports on one side. They kept right on growing and blooming, and setting fruit.
Conclusion:
After transplanting, the Wonderberry seemed to take a while to recover, and they never got much bigger. However, they continued to bloom and produce berries until the frost finally got them.
The berries themselves are… not anything special. They didn’t live up to their descriptions. They were surprisingly prolific, considering how small the plants remained. We were fine with eventually leaving them to go to seed, and we shall see if they come up again in the spring. The only problem is their location: I kept forgetting they were there, when I was weeding and watering! So they were a bit neglected. I think they can handle that all right, though!
The ground cherries, on the other hand, were amazing! They got very large, and started continuously producing so many flowers and berries! The plants got so thick, it was actually difficult to reach and harvest the berries. Mostly, I picked what had fallen to the ground, as I knew those would be ripe. Ultimately, though, I just let it go, so that more could fall to the ground to grow next year.
If they do start growing, I want to put in a support structure using some horizontally placed 4″ square fence wire we found, to help support the plants as they grow taller. In fact, I might put two layers of the wire supports, given how tall the plants got!
These berry bushes, whether shrubs or annual plants, are all part of plant to feed not only ourselves, but birds and even the soil. I think we got a good start on the whole thing. This is definitely an area that requires long term planning, and careful decision making. As much of a problem the flooding was, it did give us information that will be quite useful as we make these decisions.
We haven’t even done a thorough assessment of our 2022 garden, nor fully decided what we plan to grow next year, but I’ve gone ahead and made our first order for next year’s garden, today.
The main reason is, there are things I wanted to order before they have a chance to be out of stock. Particularly with trees for the food forest we are slowly developing. These will be shipped in the spring, and we won’t be billed until they are shipped. I ordered seeds as well, because I used a sponsor promo code from Maritime Gardening, which gives free shipping if there is at least one package of seeds in the order.
This is what I ordered today. All images belong to Veseys, and links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊
The new Trader Everbearing Mulberry is the main reason I wanted to place an order right away. We tried a different variety before, that promptly got killed by an unusually cold night shortly after it was planted. Cold enough that even if we had this variety, it likely would not have survived, so soon after being planted.
Here is the description from the site (in case you’re reading this years later, and the link is dead).
Morus alba x rubra. There are so many things to love about ‘Trader’ Everbearing Mulberry! First, the tree itself is absolutely beautiful and can be grown as a single trunk or multi-stemmed shrub. Big, glossy black fruit are present throughout the summer and are an irresistible blend of sweet and tart. Even the leaves are starting to be considered a super-food and can be made into a powerfully healing tea. ‘Trader’ is winter hardy (Zone 3-4), vigorous, long-lived and disease and pest resistant. We ship 8-12″ non-grafted tree.
Please note: Due to a crop shortage, we are not able to supply the Mulberry in a 3.5″ pot. We can supply in a 2.5″ pot. Since these are smaller, we will send 2 of the smaller size for spring 2023.
That last bit about pot sizes is another reason we wanted to order the mulberry right away. They may be smaller, but we’ll be getting two trees for the price of one. Which means chances are better for at least one of them to survive!
The other tree we ordered was Liberty Apple. From the website:
Malus. Superlative variety resistant to a host of diseases. This apple has outstanding flavour and is aromatic and juicy. The conical red fruit is among the very best and as an added bonus is excellent for cider. Crispy, juicy apples right in your back yard. Good Scab resistance, making them much easier to look after. For best results, two varieties should be planted. We are offering 1 yr. whips. approximately 18-24″ in height which have been grafted onto hardy rootstock. They should mature to about 15-18 ft. Hardy to zone 4.
Yes, it says zone 4 and we are zone 3, but we will just have to take extra care in where it’s planted, and to protect it while it’s small. We have crab apple trees, but no regular apples. One apple tree should be enough to provide for our needs, and the crab apples will be the second variety pollinator.
Then there are the seeds.
While we didn’t have much to show for peppers this past summer, that had more to do with our horrible growing year in general. My pepper loving daughter had thought we would be ordering several varieties for this past year, but I’d only ordered the one type. I think we learned enough about growing them to order more varieties, so I ordered a sweet bell pepper combo.
Early Sunsation: Bright yellow and big. Very heavy yielding with thick, juicy walls. This variety stays nice and crisp even when fully yellow. 3 lobed fruit. Resistant to Bacterial Leaf Spot races 1-3. 65 days to green; 80 days to yellow from transplanting.
Early Summer: Elite, early and extra large! Early summer is an early maturing, yellow bell pepper. The fruit are large at 5″ and an elite disease resistance package gives Early Summer a winning combination.
Dragonfly: Sweet and colourful. Dragonfly’s early production was a standout for our trial staff. Fruit emerges green and turns deep purple when mature. Dragonfly continues to produce fruit into the fall even after temperatures have dropped.
The Early Summer is new to Veseys for the 2023 growing season.
There was another new for 2023 item I just had to order.
The Caveman’s Club Gourd! This is definitely something for the “just for fun” list. 😁
Truly different! This 12-16″ gourd produces a dark green, ridged, alien-like, bulbous fruit that are not like anything we have seen before! Growing them on a trellis ensures a straight neck. Plant early for best results. Matures in 120 days. Approx. 15 seeds/pkg.
I just couldn’t resist. This will be an ideal thing to try growing on the new trellis tunnels we will be building in the spring.
After we’ve taken the time to assess things from our 2022 garden, then gone through what seeds we still have, we’ll start making final decisions about what else we want to order for the 2023 growing season. One thing we will almost certainly be ordering are different raspberry bushes, that mature at different times. Any raspberries we order won’t start producing until their second year, so what we order to plant in 2023 will be to have raspberries in 2024. As we add to our perennial food producers, while still staying in budget, it’s a balancing act between ordering things that will take years before they start producing, like the apple and mulberry trees, and things that will start producing more quickly, like the raspberries.
It was a very early morning for me today. The cats got active at about 4am and wouldn’t stop! I finally gave up and did my morning rounds while the girls were still cooking down the crab apple sauce for me to can later.
Parts of the province got frost warnings last night. We did not, thankfully, though the temperatures did go down to 5C/41F. It was still only 6C/43F while I was outside. I actually had to wear a jacket!
Today is our average first frost date and, while it was chilly last night, it is expected to warm up again over the next few days, and stay mild for the next couple of weeks, at least.
The garden is on borrowed time right now!
We actually have a few tiny little Purple Beauty peppers ripening! They are much, much smaller than they should be. These should look much like your typical grocery store bell pepper, in size and shape. That we got any at all still amazes me, though.
The one Little Finger Eggplant that is producing fruit is growing so fast!
No, I’m not pointing to anything there. I’m just moving a leaf while not blocking the view of an eggplant at the same time. 😁
The other plant sharing it’s space is blooming, but still no eggplants, while the plants in the low raised bed aren’t even blooming, yet.
As for this morning’s harvest, we got a first today!
We actually had grapes ripe enough to pick! There are still come clusters that are not ripe, yet. There isn’t a lot in total, but last year we basically had nothing, so that is no complaint at all. I’m not sure what to do with such a small quantity, though.
I finally remembered to go into the outer yard and get a picture of the Korean pine. Here, you can see three of the four surviving pines.
You can just see a mowed path going off to the left. That leads to the fourth surviving pine. The six pine had been planted in pairs on either side of the lane we want to keep open to the secondary gate that I normally would have kept mowed.
The chicken wire covers painted high-viz orange seem to be working out so far. My only concern is that chicken wire isn’t very strong. If the renter does let his cows through to graze in the outer yard, it couldn’t take much for a cow to crush one of them. I’m counting on them simply avoiding the cages, instead. Or deer, for that matter. We’re more likely to have deer going through here than cows.
You can see the other big branch pile on the right of the photo, with some fresh branches on top. Now that the other piles are chipped, any new prunings will be added to this one. Today, I pruned a bit around the stone cross, opening things up and even giving a bit more sun to the Wonderberry. I also started to break down one of the dead crab apple trees near the one that we harvested from. The dead branches are well entangled in the other trees, so it will be done piecemeal at first.
One of the other things I got done, though this was last night, was go through the pile of logs the chippers left next to the burn barrel. I’d already set aside a stack of pieces that are not rotten, quite straight, and useable. The rest of the pile of unsalvageable wood is now moved.
I laid it out around the pile of burnable junk we’d been stacking against the branch pile. Much of it is old newspapers and catalogs we’d cleared out of the sun room when we cleared and cleaned it out the first time. We intended to burn it in the burn barrel, but it’ll just be easier to do a bon fire! The straw is what was cleaned out of the cats’ house, so it’s not something we can use as mulch, or even for the compost.
Once we do have a day to start a burn, we’ll have to take turns keeping an eye on it. This will take a long time to burn through! This is something that could smolder for days. Plus, I plan to drag over branches from the pile next to the garage that the tree guys couldn’t chip, to clean that up, too.
When the girls saw this, the first thing they said was, “nice funeral pyre!” 😂
This afternoon, I headed out to see what I could get from the one crab apple tree that has tasty apples. Most of the apples were well out of reach, but after trying a couple of things, I found I could use the hook at the end of the extended pole pruning saw, at its longest, to grab branches and give them a shake.
Then ducking, so I wouldn’t get beaned in the head. Those things are hard!
Then it was just a matter of gathering them off the ground. The damaged ones got tossed towards the spruce grove, so I wouldn’t have to pick through them again when I had to shake the tree again. With so many apples, I could afford to be picky.
The deer and any other apple eating critters will be in for a treat, tonight!
I got somewhere between 15-20 gallons of apples, and I only shook the tree twice. There are still lots on the tree, but I was out of buckets.
With so many apples, I scrubbed out the wheelbarrow, then used it to give the apples a cursory wash with the hose. The amount in the photo is from the two smaller buckets.
I had to prep a third bin to hold them all.
I love these bins! They interlock to hold together, and even when stacked one on top of the other. They are still just corrugated plastic, though, and can only hold so much before they start bending under the weight while being carried.
For now, the bins are sitting in the dark and relatively cool of the old kitchen. I’ll set aside a bucket for my mother. When she was last here, she insisted in picking apples into her walker, but they were nowhere near ready for picking. They are in their prime right now, and taste so much better. We do have crab apples on some of the other remaining trees, and I do try them every now and then (except the one tree with apples so small, it’s basically an ornamental tree). They don’t taste very good when ripe. When not quite ripe yet, they’re pretty awful. There was one tree that tasted pretty bad right up until the ripened, when they suddenly became tasty and sweet, but that part of the tree died over the winter, leaving only the suckers that had been allowed to grow, so only the not-tasty parts of that tree are still alive. 😕
Tomorrow, I will start de-stemming the apples and cutting them up, and will be using the fermentation bucket from our wine making kit to make a large batch of apple cider vinegar. There will be apples left over, even after taking some out for my mother. We haven’t decided what to do with them. In the past, we’ve made apple jelly, but our Bernardin canning book with the recipes we used is still missing.
I wonder if I lent it out to someone? I can’t remember. I do remember offering to lend it to my SIL, but she just took photos of the recipe she wanted and left the book. I do have other cookbooks with canning recipes, but I’m less sure of their safety.
I suppose I could just go look at their website, but having the book is really handy.
Anyhow, we’ll figure out what to do with the surplus. Then also decide if we want to harvest more, or leave the rest for the birds.
While the girls worked on the cats’ house, I did my morning rounds. No harvesting in the garden today, but check out this pumpkin!
It’s almost completely changed colour! The second one is just beginning to show the tiniest change in colour at the blossom end, but is otherwise still very dark green.
Once the regular rounds were done, I headed out with some buckets and started our first harvest of crab apples. Mostly, I just shook the branches that I could reach, then picked up what fell.
I got about 10 gallons of crab apples that way. There are still lots on the tree, but I couldn’t reach the branches to shake them. Plus, I don’t have any more buckets available.
After bringing the buckets to the house, I used the hose to fill them with water to do a cursory wash.
I had curious company.
I help!
Then the apples got transferred out of the buckets.
These corrugated plastic bins are the handiest things!!
They have holes cut into the bottom, like what you can see on the sides, but a good layer of shredded paper made sure no apples fell though, while also absorbing water from their rinsing.
Shredded paper is something else we’ve been finding very handy. We shred only paper that is compostable, like fliers and the like. Printers switched to vegetable based inks decades ago, so they’re fine. Just no glossy paper or anything like that. Those go for the burn barrel.
We’ve used the shredded paper as mulch, as compostable layers buried in new garden beds, as a base under tomatoes ripening indoors, and now for crab apples. We even keep the shredder, sitting over a recycling bag on a wire frame holder, in the dining room all the time for convenient shredding.
The first thing we will be doing with the apples is to make crab apple cider vinegar again. That is the fastest and easiest thing to get started. Then we will be making more hard crab apple cider. We have so many crab apples on the one tree this year, we should be able to make more of both this time.
The “mother” left from our previous ACV is still around, but I don’t think it would be safe to use, so I bought some apple cider vinegar with mother to use as a starter. After experimenting with using an airlock or just covering the fermenting jars with cheesecloth, I’m just going to use cheesecloth this time.
The other thing we will be able to do differently this time is to use the big aquarium to hold the fermenting jars. It is already lined with rigid insulation from when we used the space as a greenhouse, so the temperature will remain quite even, and it has cat proof covers over it. It’ll be easier to keep an eye on it in the living room than in the old kitchen.
As for the hard apple cider, we should have enough crab apples to make it worth digging out the wine making kit and using the 5 gallon bucket and carboy for fermentation. We’ll make that decision after the vinegar is started, and we see just how many crab apples we end up with. We’ll probably need to break out the step ladder to pick more apples.
A good problem to have! Especially after having none, last year.
We’ve been having rain off and one, and are still getting storm warnings for today as well. Nothing too excessive; our expected highs and lows are well within average, and the garden beds seem to be really liking it.
After doing my morning rounds, I was able to get the cardboard laid out along the saplings. The pile had been well rained on, which made it easier to lay them out, and less likely to get blown around if we get high winds.
This is the end I started at. The main thing was to get cardboard laid down close to all the saplings – but not too close!. The sticks I added to make them more visible (especially when using the weed trimmer) helped with that. Once all the trees had cardboard around them, I started filling in the spaces in between with what was left of the pile. It started raining again as I was working on it, which I didn’t mind at all. I’d have had to take a hose to it, otherwise.
The Sea buckthorn has all the cardboard they need, and are ready for when we have wood chips to lay on top of the cardboard.
I had enough cardboard to fill in the gaps all along one row, then start on the other, before I ran out. The priority is to cover the two rows, but if I can get enough cardboard, I want to fill in the space between them, too. That might take another 2 loads of cardboard to fill it all in.
We’re going to need a lot of wood chips to cover all this!
Once these bushes are fully grown in, this entire area should be a solid barrier of interlocking branches. There might be enough room to walk between the rows when they are fully grown, but not much. As they are bushes, once a good thick layer of mulch is laid down, they shouldn’t need anything more; they’ll basically be their own mulch, eventually. When we start planting fruit trees in the area, we’ll be working towards planting different edible cover crops into the mulch around them, but there won’t be space for anything like that with these, once they’re filled in.
The space between the saplings and the trees at the fence line is being left open as a lane to drive through. Once the berry bushes are getting to the point where they are starting to form a privacy screen, we’ll start cleaning and clearing up the rest of the fence line. Most of those fence posts in this section need to be replaced, and I want to open up access to it for that, for general maintenance – and to eventually replace the fence with something other than barbed wire! I’d like to also put a gate next to where the sign is, or some sort of fence crossing that will allow us to step over it, rather than trying to get through it. I really hate getting my clothes caught on the barbed wire when trying to go through it! 😀 We’ll figure something out.
I just got back from the wonderful person who is letting me take cardboard from her food waste deliveries.
This filled most of the back of the van, with room for me to still see through part of my back window.
The stack looks so small, on the ground! 😀
The next step will be to douse ourselves with bug spray, then go through each of the boxes to remove any tape, plastic labels, etc. Once that is done, we can start laying them around the saplings as a weed suppressant. Priority is around the saplings, but the space between them will also be covered. The cardboard needs to be thoroughly soaked – rain would be very handy right now! 😀 Once we have it, it will be covered with wood chips.
I will easily need at least one more load of cardboard to cover the area, so no hurry on the wood chips right now.
We also got a bonus with this load!
These boxes are corrugated plastic. From the looks of it, they mostly held corn. After they get cleaned off, these will work very well for when we need to store potatoes and other things in the root cellar over winter. 🙂 Plus, as you can see, they easily fold flat for storage. I think I got 10 or so of these. I think they will be very handy for a lot of things!
An extra bonus is, I got to see their baby chickens and turkey, pigs, donkeys and alpaca. They’re already doing a lot of things we are working towards and, once we get our chicken coop built, we’ll be able to buy chicks from them!
I am so happy to have found this family. 🙂
In other things, my husband got notification that my new keyboard was ready for pick up, on Monday. I went to the post office to pick it up and there was no card in the mail box. Today is Thursday, and I stopped by on my way home, but still no parcel.
Once I got home, my husband looked up the order.
It was sent by Purolator.
So while I was unloading the van, my husband called the nearest drop off location, since we are not in their delivery zone. Normally, we would have received an automated call from Purolator, if it was being sent there. When I got back inside, he was on hold – with Purolator. It wasn’t at the drop off location, either.
It turned out to be in the city.
How we were supposed to know that, I have no idea. This information was not included in the delivery notice. It just said that it was delivered.
It’s now being rerouted to the drop off location, and we’ll get a call when that happens.
Places that don’t deliver to PO boxes are a real pain in the butt.
The Re-Farmer 