food trees

Our 2022 garden: gourds, ground cherries, and one. Just one!

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While doing my rounds this morning, checking the remaining garden beds, I found myself giving the ground cherries a closer look.

They do have frost damage, but a lot of the leaves are still looking just fine. The entire patch is all leaning over, making it hard to reach to pick anything. I’ve found that the plants, as strong as they appear to be, are actually quite fragile, and branches break off easily. There are still so many green berries on there! I’m not too worried about missing any ripe ones that have fallen off, though. Part of the reason we chose this location, was so they could self seed and hopefully come back every year on their own.

With how big they got, and how easily they fall over, though, I’m thinking we will want to add a support structure of horizontal wire mesh. Maybe two horizontal layers of them, with a mesh of about 4 inches square. That way, the plants can grow through the wire mesh, and still be supported during high winds, or when the weight of their own branches start pulling them down.

Oh! I just remembered. I’d dug out a roll of fence wire from a shed last year. It has 4 inch square mesh. It would be perfect for the job! I’ll just have to figure out what to use for vertical supports.

But that can wait until spring.

I finally remembered to get a picture of this crab apple tree this morning.

It has SO many apples on it, and they’ve turned such an incredible red colour. They are like beautiful ruby ornaments! The apples on this tree are not really edible – at least not for humans. The birds and the deer like them, though. The apples will be left on the tree to freeze. Every now and then, in the winter, I hope to be able to get to the tree to knock some of the apples down for the deer. Otherwise, they stand up on their hind legs to reach, and end up breaking branches.

This tree still looks pretty healthy, so we will be able to keep it while we cut away the dead and diseased trees. It may not produce apples we can eat, but it will serve as a cross pollinator. We plan to eventually plant apple trees that are not crab apples, and they often need a tree like this nearby, to help with pollination. Of course, there is the one big crab apple tree that produces some tasty apples, still. We will be down to only two apple trees in this area, from the dozen or so that used to be here. They were planted way too close together, which certainly didn’t help. We just need to get rid of the diseased tree in particular, and hopefully will be able to keep the remaining trees nice and healthy.

After covering the eggplants and apple gourds last night, I went over to the trellis to check on the Ozark nest egg gourds. Having confirmed the vines were completely killed off by the frost, I decided to go ahead and pick them, this morning.

I am just so happy with how these gourds turned out! Like everything else, they had a rough start, and yet they still produces so many little gourds! A few are still more on the green side. Imagine how many we could have had if it had been a good growing year? We will definitely be growing these again, and I hope to have some seeds I can save from these.

I’d brought pruning shears to harvest them. Those vines are pretty spiny! I also harvested the Tennessee Dancing gourds. They snapped off their stems quite easily; no sheers needed. As I went around to the inside of the tunnel trellis to pick more, I spotted what at first looked like a little snake, hanging in the air!

There we have it. Our one and only Red Noodle bean. Just one! It’s about half the size it could have been.

I now have to decide if these are something I want to get seeds for and try growing again. Under better growing conditions, they should have done just fine in our area. I’d like to at least know if they are something we enjoy eating.

Here are all the gourds I gathered – and my little buddy, who kept me company the entire time! She is such a little sweetie.

I rearranged the chocolate cherry tomatoes to make room for the gourds to cure for a while. Eventually, they will be brought indoors, given a wipe down with a bleach solution, then set up somewhere to continue curing all winter. Probably in the old basement, where the cats aren’t allowed. It may get damp in there during the summer, but in the winter, it is incredibly dry, so that should work out.

The onions my daughter braided yesterday are so heavy, with such thick necks, they started falling out of their braid. I remembered the hooks I put up that held our lights for the seedlings we had set up over the swing bench, so after the gourds were laid out, I strung the onions on some sisal cord to hang them. Once they were hung up, I ended up adding two more cords to help hold the weight! These are definitely the heaviest of all the onions we grew this year!

I absolutely love those nest egg gourds. They are beautiful, and even a pleasure to hold. I have some ideas of what I can do with them. What I do end up doing will depend on how many fully cure properly. The greenest ones probably won’t, but I think most of them did get a chance to become fully ripe. This is from two or three plants. We planted four, one died, and one never fully recovered. They’re so intertwined, it’s hard to tell them apart, but I don’t think that one smaller plant ever produced any gourds. Eighteen gourds from two (possibly three) plants during a bad growing year is pretty awesome! I want to plant more next year. The Tennessee dancing gourds also did really well under the circumstances, and I hope to plant more of them next year, too!

It should be interesting, once everything is in and we can do an assessment of what we got, and use that to help decide what to do next year.

The Re-Farmer

A morning harvest

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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.

I’m quite looking forward to this!

The Re-Farmer

2022 garden: morning in the garden

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Just a little big of progress in the garden.

The sour cherry tree by the house has lots of ripe berries, ready to be picked. I’ll have to get the girls to do it, though. A ladder will be needed to reach the ripest ones at the top. This is the most cherries we’ve had since moving here.

We got a pretty decent amount of yellow bush beans this morning. Not enough to make it worth blanching and freezing, never mind canning, but enough for a couple of meals this time.

The purple pole beans are getting more pods, though they are still very thin. I saw the first of the green pole bean pods this morning – tiny wisps of pods! Still no sign of pods, or even flowers, on the red pole beans, while the shelling beans still have lots of flowers, but no pods that I can see.

We should be able to harvest the garlic from this bed pretty soon.

One of the Baby Pam pumpkins is starting to turn colour. This variety doesn’t get much bigger than this. From the looks of it, these are going to be the only winter squash we get out of this patch, other than maybe one kakai hulless seed pumpkin. Even the Teddy squash, which are a very small variety with only 55 days needed to maturity, will likely not get a chance to produce anything. The green zucchini still isn’t producing; they did have female flowers, but no male flowers bloomed at the same time to pollinate them. We do have some golden zucchini developing, though, and some Magda squash I should be able to pick in a few days. Maybe even a yellow pattypan squash or two.

The paste tomatoes, at least, are coming along nicely, with more of them starting to blush.

I was able to harvest more green onions from the high raised bed. Most of these will be dehydrated, and there are lots more I can harvest.

The handful of pea pods are almost all from the second planting. The first planting is, amazingly, still blooming!

Most of the onions seem to be growing well. Some of the red onions have very different shapes, and they are starting to be noticeable. I’m thinking of picking one or two for fresh eating, just to see how they taste.

The one surviving type of turnips are finally starting to have visible “shoulders”. We might actually be able to pick some, soon.

I don’t know what to make of the potatoes. They’re done blooming and we should be able to harvest young potatoes now, but I want to leave them as long as I can. The plants themselves are nowhere near as large as potato plants normally get. There was so much water in that area, I’m sure it stunted the growth of the ones that survived. I still might dig one plant up, of each variety, just to see what there is to see. Will the lack of foliage translate into a lack of potatoes, too? I was really hoping to have a good amount of potatoes to store for the winter. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to last the entire winter for the 4 of us, but it will help us decide if these are varieties we will get again or not.

Every time I’m in the garden, I’m thinking of next year’s garden. One thing is for sure. It is nowhere near big enough to meet our goal of providing sufficient amounts of food to last us until there is fresh produce again. We planted so much, with the expectation of losses, but this year the losses are just too great. Which has really surprised me. I did not expect to get less productivity this year, compared to last year’s drought. Mind you, during the drought, we were watering the garden beds every day, twice a day. This year… well, adding water is easy. Keeping water out is not. Still, even if everything had gone well, we would still probably need double the garden size to meet our long term goal. Short term is to have enough to supply our needs for at least 3 months – the hardest winter months, when we might find ourselves snowed in or the vehicles frozen.

Every year we garden, we figure things out a bit more, from what weather extremes we need to work around, to how much of anything we need to grow, to what we like enough to grow year after year. More me, half the enjoyment of gardening is analysing the results and using that information to make decisions for the next year!

That’s one good thing about having hard gardening years. You do learn more from it, than from years were everything goes smoothly.

The Re-Farmer

Before the heat hits?

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Well, I tried.

I headed outside earlier than usual, to try and get some work done before things got too hot. My goal of the day was to take the weed trimmer to where the berry bushes are. Tomorrow, I’m getting another load of cardboard and plan to lay it down around them as a weed barrier.

This is how it looked when I started.

I shoved the stick into the ground as a post to mark the end one of the rows of bushes.

Can you see the silver buffalo berry?

The row on the left, you can see the sawdust mulch around several of them, but the row on the right just disappears in the trimmed weeds and grass.

I ended up using sticks that were used to hold trellis lines last year, to mark where the saplings are. A few of them got two. They were so buried and trimmed material, I didn’t want to risk accidentally hitting them with the weed trimmer! I’ll be looking to make sure they all have at least two sticks marking each of them, when the cardboard get laid down.

From this end, the two saplings marked in the foreground are the two highbush cranberry.

It took adding one more length of extension cord, but I was able to trim around the sea buckthorn, too.

Since I had the trimmer in the area anyhow, I used it around all the trellises, the hulless pumpkin patch, and the bean tunnel.

The goal was to beat the heat, but I failed. By the time I was working on the bean tunnel, the thermometer attached to it was reading 30C/86F in the sun. Our high of the day is supposed to be 25C/77F, and we are now under a severe thunderstorm watch. When I headed out this morning, we were being warned of possible thunderstorms on the weekend, and just possible showers later today!

I kept at it, though, and was able to use the trimmer around the crabapple trees. The one I’m standing next to, to take this picture, died over the winter and will need to be cut away. There are a couple other sickly ones down the row that need to be removed, and the others need some pruning, but that will have to wait.

I’m hoping to be able to head out again with the lawn mower, set as high as it can go, to finish around the garden area. Even the lowest spot near the branch pile in the background is finally dry enough to mow.

The metal ring in the foreground was something I brought to do burns over old crabapple tree stumps that were infected with a fungal disease. It’s over a taller one that hadn’t been burned completely away. Currently, the ring is full of an ant hill!

We have SO many ants this year!

In other things, whatever happened to our phone last night was no longer an issue this morning. We can use our land line again. I did get an email response from the phone company to try disconnecting all but one phone and seeing if it was still an issue, which I’d done (there’s only 2 lines to disconnect; the extra handset for the cordless phone doesn’t connect to the land line on its charger base). I wrote back to explain that it was working again this morning.

It sounds like there is a short somewhere. Possibly due to rodent damage somewhere. I’m guessing the cause of the problem is outside the house itself. If it’s a short, we could lose our connection again, at any time. In my email response, I did include that possibility. It would require a tech to come and test the lines, though. They’d be able to do that at the pedestals at the fence lines, one of which is hidden by trees in the first two photos at the top of this post, at first. From there, they would know if they have to come to the house and test again or not.

For now, I’m just happy the phone started working again on its own!

The Re-Farmer

Rescue!

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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!

The Re-Farmer

Food Forest: Korean pine are in!

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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.

Little by little, it got done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: tomatoes, squash onions, and food forest additions

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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! 😀

It feels so good to finally get things into the ground!

The Re-Farmer

Out of order, but it’s getting done

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It had been my intention to work on clearing out that last low raised bed in the main garden area, at the very least, but once I got outside I changed my mind. There was less standing water in the yard, and the grass was getting out of control, so I decided to try mowing.

We have a large yard.

I was also using the collection bag to save those wonderful grass clippings to use as mulch. It doesn’t hold much, so there was a lot of stopping and starting to empty the bag.

After several hours, pretty much the entire inner yard was done. There was just one place that still had so much water that, even with the mower set higher than usual, it was just too deep. I even opened up the gate in the fence near the fire pit and mowed into the outer yard. I like keeping a lane in the grass to the back gate mowed, as an extension of the driveway. There’s too much water do to it in the usual areas, but I was able to clear a lane from the fire pit area, to where the lane would be. If we absolutely had to use the back gate, we would be able to drive through the inner yard to access it. We certainly wouldn’t be able to get through, the usual way!

Another of the goals will be to trim away some small trees taking over a corner, then mowing the areas where we will be planting the Korean Pine.

But not today!

Did I mention we have a large yard? 😀

The rest of the main garden area should get a once over with the mower, before going over it again with the weed trimmer, as close to the ground as possible, but I was just too exhausted to work on that today.

The ornamental apple trees are starting to bloom. So are the sour cherry trees, and all the lilacs are developing buds. Finally! That shows me that things have finally really warmed up, hopefully enough. I don’t know that we ever got frost last night, but the sweet potato slips are fine. I’m leaving the covers on them for one more night, though. Tonight is supposed to be the last cooler night, though I’ve noticed the forecasted overnight low has changed to quite a bit warmer than before.

Tomorrow, we start transplanting everything. The sun room is turning into quite the jungle!

We’ve had a very high germination rate this year – a huge improvement from last year! Even the Yakteen gourds, which I restarted, have a few seedlings. Some things had seeds germinate weeks apart, but they still made it. We even have a second tulip tree sprouting! We’d pretty much lost all expectation of any more tulip trees, or any paw paws, germinating, so that was quite a nice surprise.

Another nice surprise is that all the turnips have started sprouting already! My goodness, that was fast.

Today, the girls finished transplanting the silver buffalo berry, and prepped to plant the sea buckthorn tomorrow. After that, it’s just the Korean Pine for this year’s food forest additions.

My priority tomorrow will be to get the newest low raised bed next to the compost pile topped up and ready for planting. The Kulli corn will be going in there, and I want to get that done as quickly as possible. They really need to be transplanted soon. If we start them indoors again, I won’t do the toilet tube pots. It worked well enough, and it certainly saved space, but the seedlings quickly needed more room to thrive. Even if they were in just the red Solo cups, they would have fared well longer. Once the corn is transplanted, we’ll have to make sure to put a net around it right away, so they don’t get eaten!

The girls will start transplanting tomatoes along the chain link fence in the south yard. We have more tomatoes than will fit there, though, so others will be planted in the low raised bed that I finished prepping yesterday. There are so many, we might have to the last one that still needs to be weeded, too.

It’s going to be a flurry of transplanting over the next few days. The sun room is going to look so empty when we are done! 😀 We will also be direct sowing the pole beans at the squash tunnel, along with the 2 canteen gourds that are trying to claim their way out of their pots right now. Then there are the two types of corn to direct sow, and I honestly don’t know where we’ll be planting those. We’re really behind in preparing beds, but once those trees came in, they became the priority. Mowing and using the weed trimmer is also going to higher on the priority list, since the winter squash is going to be planted throughout the old garden area, not in prepared beds. Basically, we’re going to dig holes, add some garden soil and the transplants, and mulch around them. The grass is so tall right now, though, we couldn’t possibly get that done until it’s cleared.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Future forest

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I wasn’t feeling well and ended up lying down this afternoon, but before I did, I asked my daughters to start the paw paw and tulip tree seeds.

These are already cold stratified, so we had two options in the instructions. They could be planted directly into pots, or first put into slide lock bags with moist soil until roots emerge, then get potted.

What I want to do it first pot them in the degradable pots, so that when they need to be potted up, we won’t be disturbing their long tap roots. From what I’ve read, the paw paws are especially sensitive to damage to their tap root.

We got a dozen paw paw seeds and 20 tulip tree seeds. There is no way we have the space for 32 pots anyhow, but I don’t expect a 100% germination rate. Also, especially with the paw paws, the roots develop long before they start sending leaves up, so it will be a long time before we even know if they’ve germinated. So I figure if we start them in the slidelock bags first, we can then plant only the ones that successfully germinate into individual pots. Then, even if they take a while before we see anything, we at least know there are roots growing, out of sight.

My daughters don’t take progress photos, so I just have photos of the finished job.

They misunderstood my comment about wanting them in individual pots, so the seeds all went into individual baggies!

Which is fine, too. We’ll need to buy more baggies now, though. 😉

They don’t need light right now; just warmth. So the labelled bags all got pile onto an empty shelf in the mini-greenhouse. We’ll keep an eye on them, both for roots and to make sure they stay moist. The instructions said to make sure the soil isn’t too wet, or the seeds will rot, so it’s a bit of a balancing act.

Once I pick up more trays that will fit in the mini-greenhouse, we’ll arrange them so they’re not all piled on top of each other like this, but for now, they’ll be fine.

Our future forest has been started!

Looking at the needs for the two different types of trees, I am thinking we could actually plant the paw paws – or at least some of them – with the tulip trees. Paw paws are an undergrowth tree, and need to be shaded their first few years, though they fruit better in full sunlight. When the time comes, the pots with their seedlings will be kept in a sheltered area outside. They need to go dormant in the winter, and we could probably overwinter the pots in the sun room, at least for their first winter. Properly protected the pots could also stay outdoors, but I’d rather not do that until the seedlings were bigger and stronger.

First, we’ll see how many germinate. Then we’ll see how many survive being potted. Then we’ll see how many survive their first season in pots outdoors. Then we’ll see how many survive until ready for transplanting in 2 years. Then we’ll see how many survive being transplanted.

It’s a lot riskier starting trees from seed like this, but it does show just why buying seedlings from a nursery can cost so much. A lot of resources, time and effort went into them!

The Re-Farmer

Our van is home, the car is not… and the tree seeds are in!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

We have transportation again!! Yay!!

While waiting for a call from the tow truck driver, we had gotten the automated call from CAA assuring us that they hadn’t forgotten about us; they were just really busy. The tracker on the website did change to “dispatched”, noting that a driver had been found, but never got to “en route”.

Instead, I got a phone call from the driver, telling me, “I’m in your driveway right now, looking at your car.” !!!

I’m glad I opened the door this morning. 🙂

I’m also glad we had moved my mother’s car to where we normally park the van, because the driver would have been hooped.

What he ended up doing was backing his truck up until he could hook up and raise the rear wheels, then set up a dolly under the front wheels. We didn’t even need to put my mother’s car in neutral.

One of the things involved in hooking up the front wheels was to use a long bar as a lever to lift the dolly – and the car – in place. He could do it on once side, but on the other, there wasn’t quite enough room.

If the car had been in its usual spot, he could not have done it at all. There just isn’t enough space in that area.

He did have to very carefully pull the car out of the garage far enough to use the bar – a touchy thing, with it not properly put together, yet!

Once it was pulled back, it revealed this.

This dark spot in the dirt floor looks new and fresh.

Not good.

What was good is that I was able to ride into town with the driver.

We saw SO many deer along the way! He mentioned scaring some away from our yard when he came in, too.

When we got to the garage, there was no parking spot for my mother’s car. I quickly ran in and let them know. He gave me the key to our van and I moved it, and the tow truck driver very deftly maneuvered my mother’s car into the spot I’d just emptied.

While he was doing that, I went back in to pay for the work on the van. After taxes, it ended up costing $600.30 Then we talked a bit about my mother’s car, and I told him no hurry on that, because we can’t pay for work until next month – the van took up the budget for this month!

Once I was done there, I drove across the street to the grocery store and picked up some deli pizzas for supper.

Because I wanted to. 😀

Plus a bit of groceries. My husband’s main disability payment comes in on the last business day of the month, which would be the expected day to go into the city and do our big shop. However, the last business day is a Monday, and sometimes it comes in on the Saturday instead. Which would be nice. I’m not a fan of shopping in the city on the weekend, but I’d rather get it over with if I can. We’ll see, tomorrow.

Meanwhile, on the way home, I was able to stop at the post office just before it closed, and pick up the mail. Along with a package for my husband, we got these.

Our tree seeds are in!

Mind you, they probably came in days ago, but we haven’t been able to go to the mail since before my mother’s car died.

These are already cold stratified, so we should be able to start them right away. We’ll go over the instructions again, first. Until we can work on them, I put them back in the bubble pack envelope and tucked them into a fridge drawer, until we can get started.

There was another nice surprise in the mail.

We got a rebate check from our vehicle insurance company. We’ve gotten one for the past 2 years, and for two vehicles, they were a little more than $100. When it was announced that we’d be getting rebate checks again, that’s what I was expecting.

Instead, it was more than $500.

I have sent a message to the garage, letting him know we got our rebates in, so as long as a fix is under $500, we can do it right away and not have to wait until the end of March. He said he’ll check it tomorrow and let me know.

Here’s hoping!

Now I think I’m going to spend some time reading instructions on how to start paw paw and tulip tree seeds!

The Re-Farmer