While my husband and I were gone for our medical appointments, my daughter finished watering the rest of the garden beds and transplants, including the trees.
She sent use this sad photo.
One of the Korean Pine was gone! Not only was it dug up, but even the wood shaving mulch was gone! There was nothing left but a hole in the ground.
So disappointing.
When my husband and I got home, my daughter and I headed to town to see what we could find to protect the rest. My original plan had been to pick up some metal mesh garbage cans at a dollar store somewhere – it was a recommended suggestion I found when looking up how to care for the Korean Pine. Somehow, I just never found any.
The local Dollar Store was no different. They’re about half the size if the city stores, so that’s not a surprise.
I did find something else to try.
These are food covers to keep the bugs away while eating outdoors. I picked up 5 of the smaller size for each of the remaining Korean Pine. I used the last of our ground staples on a couple of the, and tent pegs in the rest, to secure them to the ground. Obviously, they won’t stop a determined critter, but they should be enough to keep away any that are not determined!
When I went to where the lost one was, I looked around the area, just in case it was just a critter digging, and that the seedling itself wasn’t eaten or dragged away. There was no sign of it, unfortunately.
With so much open water around this spring, and especially in this part of the outer yard, the mosquitoes are insane. All I could hear was the whining of clouds of mosquitoes. Since I wasn’t going to be long, I didn’t use any bug spray, so I was lunch! As you can imagine, I tried to finish up as quickly as I could. It wasn’t until after I’d covered the remaining Korean Pine and brought the support poles back to the house that I realized I’d forgotten the one by the lost pine. So I battled my way through the clouds of mosquitoes and went back to get it.
Since I was there anyhow, I looked around again. Because once you’re bitten a hundred times, what’s a few more?
I found it!
The poor little seedling was hidden in the grass, just a couple of feet away. I’d walked right past it, at least twice, while looking before!
I quickly replanted it and returned as much of the soil as I could – whatever dug the hole had certainly spread it far and wide! Then I went and grabbed one of the remaining tomato cages and filled a watering can. The tomato cage is now over the seedling, with the support post running through it for extra support, and it has been thoroughly watered.
I intended to get a picture, but I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, so I ran away as soon as I could!
Hopefully, it will survive it’s brush with whatever dug it up. My thought is it was likely a skunk, digging for grubs, and it dug there because the soil was looser.
So we are back to 6 Korean Pine… and will hopefully stay that way!
My younger daughter planted the last of this year’s tree orders today.
These got planted in the outer yard. Because of how big they get at maturity, we had some issues deciding where to plant them, since we also need to keep a lane open from the driveway to the back gate, plus have open lanes from the garden area, and the fire pit area, gates. Eventually, the old, collapsing fence line on that side of the inner yard is going to be removed completely, and there will be no barbed wire gates at all, but the renter’s cows still sometimes get into the outer yard, so the fence stays for now.
Hard to believe these teeny things will eventually grow at much as 18m/60ft tall, with a spread of 9m/30 feet. It’s that spread that is the kicker. In the end, she planted them in two rows of 3, on either side of the lane from the driveway we want to keep open. We had talked about planting 1 in a corner between the back gate and the garden gate, then the remaining 5 in a row on the west side of the lane we want to keep open, but with spacing them to their mature sizes, that would have put at least one, maybe 2, in an area that is still basically a pond right now. So she winged it.
For now, they are marked with tall stakes, since they are so small they disappear in the tall grass. They are slow growing for their first 5 years, and these are 2 yr old seedlings, if I remember correctly. They are sold out as I write this, so that information isn’t on the website anymore.
If we can manage extension cords from the pump shack, we should be able to get out there with the weed trimmer and clear further around the saplings. We can’t get at some areas here with a lawn mower at all.
I also want to put something around them to protect them. I don’t know if deer will eat them – they don’t seem to bother pine trees – but if the renter’s cows are on this quarter and get through the fence, they might stomp on them or something.
It will be quite a few years before they reach the age to start producing pine nuts, but when it comes to trees, we’re planting for future generations! The main thing is, they are finally in the ground.
While I spent most of my time with the kulli corn, my daughters took care of other things.
My younger daughter got the sea buckthorn planted. These saplings are quite a bit larger than the silver buffalo berry! This will eventually close the gap of the hedge along the north fence line, where the deer jump through. Hopefully, we have both male and female plants, and will have berries. We do plant to get more, over time, but it will probably be another year or two before we know for sure.
The only trees left to plant now are the Korean Pine.
My other daughter started on the tomatoes.
Along the chain link fence, she planted the dozen Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. That’s a variety I got specifically as a gift for her. :-)
Last year, tomatoes did REALLY well in this location. This year, we’ll see how they do in other locations!
The next tomatoes she and her sister transplanted here were the Cup of Moldova and Sophie’s Choice tomatoes.
The row on the left, and in the centre, are all Cup of Moldova, while the Sophie’s Choice are the row on the right.
There are still two Cup of Moldova waiting to be transplanted, but they ran out of space.
While they worked on that, I transplanted into the blocks we finished adding along the chain link fence this spring.
The Red Kuri/Little Gem squash went into these. I hope they do well here. Last year, we had only 2 plants, but they produced quite a lot of squash. Unfortunately, with the drought, the squash developed so late, we only really got 3 that were mature enough to be edible. The girls and I found them delicious (my husband is finding that he’s not a fan of winter squash), and we look forward to having enough to store for the winter.
While one daughter worked on the bed of tomatoes in the main garden area, adding more support posts and winding bale twine back and forth to help support the tomatoes as they grow, my other daughter and I made use of the newly available bed next to the kulli corn.
There was a total of 13 Yellow Pear tomatoes to transplant. Once they were in, we got the box of red onion sets and planted them all along the outside of the bed in a single row, then fit the rest into the middle, in 2 rows.
The last thing we needed to do before heading inside was putting netting on the kulli corn and the Red Kuri squash. Those were the only two things that were most at risk of betting eaten overnight!
The net is hard to see. I used pipes hammered into the ground to hold the net away from the squash. The blue bits of pool noodle shoved into the tops of the pipes are there to protect the net, as there are some sharper edges on some of the pipes. Last year, we had chicken wire at an angle over cucamelons and gourds, and the vines kept wanting to attach to the chick wire, instead of the chain link. There’s no way the net could hold the weight of squash climbing it, so I wanted to keep it away from the plants as they start growing large enough to reach the fence and start climbing. On the inside, the edge of the net is held in place with ground staples. The excess net went over the fence, and my daughter rolled it up and zip tied it down. We still want to be able to access and tend the plants as needed, which will mostly be done from the inside.
The last thing the girls did was lace up the ends, so keep the critters out. A determined critter could still tear through the net, but hopefully, they won’t want to be bothered.
In the background, you can see some wire “fencing” has been added to the outside of where the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes were planted. It will get netting as well, but the only thing in there that is in danger of critters are the carrots, and they aren’t even germinating yet, so there it no hurry, there.
We have a lot more to transplant, but work needs to be done to prepare for them, first. The supports for A frame trellises need to be added, and beds need to be weeded. The rows we used for the bush beans last year, as well as the straw mulched mounds we grew summer squash in, are completely hidden by the crab grass that has taken them over. The squash tunnel, which will be a pole bean tunnel this year, needs minimal work at least, and the summer squash can be planted in the deep mulch near the potatoes. After we’ve transplanted the squash, gourds, melons and cucumbers, and planted the pole beans, we’ll have a better idea of where we can plant the yellow corn, and the popcorn. We have more bush beans and peas we can interplant with the two types of corn, too.
We also have another variety of baking poppies and dill to plant, but I think we’ll have to skip those for this year. I know where we will plant the Wonderberry, but have still not figured out where to plant the ground cherries. All of these will be treated as perennials, as they will reseed themselves year after year, so they need permanent locations.
We’ll figure it out.
As for tomorrow, I’m finally going to make our second stocking up trip to the city. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to do any work in the garden, but we shall see. It’s hard for me to stay out of the garden, now that the weather has finally turned nice, and we can catch up! :-D
It feels so good to finally get things into the ground!
Since planting trees and bushes are more long term than our usual gardening, I decided to start a food forest category.
Including for things that were already here before we moved in, like these Saskatoons. It’s so nice to see them blooming again – though you can very clearly see how high the deer ate the twigs and branches! Hopefully, we’ll have berries this year. Thankfully, these are very flexible, so we should be able to bend them down to harvest them.
We are, however getting a frost advisory tonight. !!! Well, our June 2 last frost date is just an average, after all. It’s supposed to dip to just barely freezing, so most things should be all right.
Including…
The 20 out of 30 silver buffalo berry my daughter was able to transplant today!
She does not take progress pictures, though, so I just got a picture at the end of the day.
Even with the holes already dug, it was a huge job. The soil that was removed was so full of roots, rocks, weeds and gravel, she was using garden soil from the remains of the pile we got last year – which is clear across the garden area. After sitting there for a year, it’s full of roots, too, which she picked out as best she could.
She started at the north end of the double rows, next to the highbush cranberry, as the ground is slightly higher there, and the holes were mud rather than filled with pools of water. It didn’t take long before she was having to deal with standing water, though.
Towards the end, I was able to help her out, adding the mulch and watering it just enough to keep it from blowing away. By the end of it, my poor daughter was so knackered, she could barely lift the shovel on its own, never mind with soil in it!
So the remaining 10 silver buffalo berry (I just realized, I’ve been calling them bison berry, because we don’t have buffalo; we have bison. The label says buffalo) will be planted tomorrow. Holes still need to be dug for the sea buckthorn, but there’s just 5 of those. Then there’s the Korean pine, which is going to be planted in the outer yard.
While she did that, I worked on the main garden area and got some decent progress done, too – but that will be my next post.
After much discussion with my daughters, we have made our “seed budget” purchase for this month, and it is trees.
We’ve been going through a number of websites for nurseries that supply cold hardy trees. Among the ones we want to get is a nut orchard collection, and the nursery that sells the one we’re looking at has scaled down the package deal, making it much more affordable. The collection, if planted spaced out as recommended, would cover 1 acre. However, some of the trees in the collection have the potential to reach 100 ft tall. That’s almost 40 feet taller than the tallest trees in our spruce grove! Which means we have to plant them in the outer yard, or even beyond, where the renter’s cows pasture, and we are just not going to be ready for that this year.
Beyond that, some of the sources we have been looking at just don’t have new stock listed yet. Among the things we are eyeballing are fruit trees, such as apple trees to replace the diseased crab apple trees we will have to cut down, pears, plums, Saskatoons, highbush cranberry, as well as different types of raspberries, etc. There’s only so much we can do in a year, though, and only so much space we are ready to plant into.
For this year, then, we settled on buying from Tree Time. They do a lot of shelterbelt trees, but also have fruit, nuts, berries, etc. They also come highly recommended. They are a reforestation nursery, which you can read about in their “how to order” page. Right from the start, they say:
We are a reforestation nursery that makes it easy for Canadians to purchase large quantities of tree, shrub, and berry seedlings at low prices.
Shop with us if you want convenience, selection, low prices, outstanding service, a guaranteed ship date, and high quality stock. Our customers tend to enjoy doing things themselves and watching their trees grow.
We grow our trees for maximum survival, not height or aesthetics. We mostly grow 1-2 year old trees because they have the best survival rates and are easier to ship in the mail.
We decided to focus on two areas. First, creating our privacy barrier/living fence, and second, our first nut trees. Because of how they bundle their trees, the numbers we are getting are quite different than they would have been, elsewhere.
This is what we are getting (all images belong to Tree Time nursery).
When talking about what to get as barrier trees, we were thinking of setting these aside for another year, but the way various things have changed since then, we’re going for it.
This is a zone 2b tree, so well suited to our zone 3. They are good in poor soil, are nitrogen fixers, and their berries are edible and healthy. They can grow up to 15 ft in height, with a 12 foot spread, and should be planted at 3-4 ft spacing, so they will do very well as a living fence/privacy screen, as well as a deer barrier, once they grow big enough. Plus, they will provide food for birds.
These will come as year old, bare root trees. We will be getting their smallest bundle, which is five trees. Sea buckthorn requires 1 male tree to 4 females to produce berries, but at only 1 year old, there is no way to know what sex the trees are. It may be a few years before we can tell! The males do not produce berries, but hopefully, there will be at least one male in the bundle.
Where we plant these will be partially dependent on how far we go with this next batch.
This is one that disappeared from other sites we were looking at, so we were very happy to find them at Tree Time.
These are a super hardy, Zone 2a tree. Like the Sea Buckthorn, they can also handle poor soil and are excellent for attracting birds. They can grow to 18 ft in height, with a 10 ft spread, and should be planted 3-4 ft apart, so they should also make a good barrier and privacy screen. These will come as 1 yr old bare root stock.
We also got them in the smallest bundle of 30.
Which is triple what we expected to buy, when we first found these.
The area we planted the corn and sunflower blocks is where we intend to plant these. Right at the corner, along the north fence, the lilac hedge my mother slowly extended over many years, peters out. There is a gap there that the deer jump through. I am thinking that section would be a good place to plant the 5 Sea Buckthorn. Then, the Silver Buffalo Berry can be planted all along the east line, leaving a “lane” behind them to access the trees along the fence line itself, and also leaving a gap where the telephone line is buried.
With 30 of them, planted 3-4 feet apart, however, we will have WAY more than will fit in a row in that area. Since we will be slowly planting more food trees further west, we will be planting just the one row of them. Which means we’ll need to find another location to plant the remaining trees! I am thinking of the area we had originally considered planting the Sea Buckthorn later on, which is in along the north fence line in the outer yard. Or even filling in gaps west of the lilac hedge. This would go a long way to help reduce the road dust that drifts into our yard in those areas, every time a vehicle drives past on the gravel road.
Before the trees arrive, we will have to measure and mark out where we want to plant in that north east corner. Once we know how many we can fit into there, we’ll know how many we have to plant somewhere else. That is a lot of trees for how we want to use the spaces.
Now that I think of it, we could also gift some to my older brother, for the forest he’s been working on for the past couple of decades. :-)
Then there are our first nut trees. Pine nuts, to be more specific!
In other sources, we have seen these as being a Zone 2 tree, and some listing them as reaching up to 100 feet in height. !!! Considering where we intended to plant them, that was just not good.
These, however, are listed as Zone 3a, and reach “only” 60 ft in height – about as high as the spruces in the spruce grove. Which is about where we intend to plant these.
These also have a spread of up to 30 feet, but the website doesn’t list how far apart to plant them. We’ll get that information later.
We ordered two bundles of three, 2 yr old seedlings as plugs, not bare root. They have special requirements. For the first five years, they grow very slowly and need to be kept shaded, because their bark can be easily burned by the sun. This is why we want to plant them along the north side of the spruce grove, between the grove and the row of crab apple trees, where it is shaded for most of the day. At 5 years, they suddenly shoot up in height, and no longer need to be protected with shade. Since we’ll be getting 2 yr old seedlings, that should happen in three years.
I have some concerns.
The nursery we first found these at sells them with their roots in a plastic wrapped ball of soil – the only tree they don’t sell as bare roots – because they require a particular fungi at their roots for optimum growth. We may be able to buy the fungi to inoculate the soil, though. At least that’s what I learned from this other nursery. According to the Tree Time website, however, there is no mention of the fungi needs, plus it says they should be planted in full sun, not shade.
We’ll have to do more research on them, because this might be due to differences in varieties. We might end up having to plant these somewhere else. They would make a good shelter belt tree, and at 60 feet high, that would mean either along the north property line, or further out in the south, where we get hit with winds because there is a gap in the sheltering trees. Since we intend to plant permanent garden beds in the outer yard, anything we plant there has to be carefully placed so as not to create the very shade we are trying to get away from!
It’ll take about 7 years before these start producing pine nut containing cones. I don’t think I’ve ever bought pine nuts before, as much as I’d like to be able to use them for making pesto, etc. I enjoy them, but they are just too expensive. These trees have the potential to be a cash crop.
When placing our order, I chose a shipping date of May 30. Since our last frost date is June 2, I thought that would make the most sense. It also means that, in the week or so before they are shipped, we can get out and measure where they will be planted, and even pre-dig the holes (the ground should be thawed out enough), as well as making sure we have everything we need for planting, then protecting, the 41 seedlings we will be getting!
There we have it. After 4 years of living here, we are finally at the stage where we are starting to plant trees and shrubs in bulk. The first stage of a multi-year plan in planting food trees and reach our self-sufficiency goals. Given how long it takes for trees to start producing fruits or nuts, it would have been better if we’d started this years ago, but when we first moved here, we didn’t even know what we wanted, or how to get them. There is a big difference between planning for things that will live for decades, and can potentially become very large, and planning vegetable beds!
Placing this order really feels like a milestone for us!
