Today has been a lovely day, though it is getting quite windy right now.
A perfect day to get things done, and we were even feeling well enough to do it.
The first order of business was a trip to the general store to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, and check the mail.
We had a surprise waiting for us.
This box had one side completely covered in stamps, plus two ends! This was the alternate chair my husband ordered to replace his broken one, after his last order completely failed. It’s more of a frame that holds and exercise ball that acts as a seat. It came with one that was remarkably small. We didn’t expect one to come with the chair, and my husband already had an exercise ball – a larger one, more durable one – to use on it.
So far, he’s quite happy with it. He replaced the wheels with the heavy duty ones he’d put on the broken chair, right away. The new chair has 4 legs, though, and the broken office chair has 5, so we have a spare. For now, the new chair’s wheels are on the broken chair. Once we wrangle it to the junk pile for hauling to the dump, we will keep all the wheels. The ones from the new chair can be locked, which is nice. I’m sure we’ll find a use for them at some point. For now, the old chair is waiting in the dining room.
The cats like it.
I got a picture of Big Rig on it, but several cats have been taking turns napping on the seat! 😄
After we got home from the post office, and my daughter refilled the kibble bin for the outside cats, she headed straight for the food forest to start digging. By the time I joined her, she had dug another 5 holes for the 10 large potted transplants. While she continued digging, I watered the finished holes, then started getting the haskap out of their pots and setting them into the watered holes. After a while, my older daughter came out and she buried the root balls, and we kept that up until all 10 were in the ground.
While my older daughter finished burying the root balls, my younger daughter started to water them. With the remaining marked spaces, I raked the spaces that were deep tilled level again. That done, I grabbed the largest, strongest looking plants from the trays and laid them out at each spot before digging small holes with a hand trowel in the leveled spots for them.
There wasn’t enough for all three of us to do at that point, so my older daughter went back inside to work on commissions while my younger daughter kept watering, including the smaller holes I’d dug. While she did that, I started sorting through the remaining plants, pulling pots with larger live ones out of the trays until I could start putting them all together again, with no empty spots. There were quite a few empty pots, empty spaces and a few small plants that were beyond saving.
Before I finished that, my daughter finished watering the holes, then went inside. She was already in pain before she started digging, and simply could not bend to work with the smaller plants at all. Which was fine. I was feeling well enough to do it, and got the last 13 spots planted, then finished sorting the trays. The remaining plants needed some very serious watering! In the end, I was able to refill three trays of 18 plants.
I also brought over some taller bamboo stakes and set out one for each smaller transplant, except for the corner that got a stake with a pinwheel on it. The bamboo stakes got water bottles added to their tops to make them more visible, then I used garden wire to secure the stems to the stakes. Being the size they are, this will not only keep them growing straight, but will protect them from snow load in the winter.
Here they all are!
A grid of 90 haskap planted in rows 6′ apart, with each transplant 4′ apart in their rows.
Ninety.
Plus another 54 transplants in the trays. I moved those in between some of the rows, out of the shade of the crab apple trees, which you can see in the second image above.
We have spaces to plant some of them, but not another 54!! I don’t know what we’ll do with the extra!
Then there are the little spruces left over. I have no idea what we’ll do with those!
The trays all got watered well. They had so little soil in each pot, they will dry out quickly. A lot of roots escaped their pots and grew along the bottoms of the trays that are now exposed, which is not a good thing. Nothing we can do about that unless I can find a way to just cover them all with soil until they can be transplanted.
All the pots are garbage. They are too brittle from exposure to be used again.
I was cleaning up when my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers, which I was starting to need by then. I over did it a bit and, as I write this, several hours later, I find I am having difficulty sitting or standing up straight because of it. It’s been worse, but it’s not at all comfortable, that’s for sure!!
Aside from seeing how many more of the little ones we can transplant, we have more to do around the 90 that are in the ground now. We’ll have to go through with the wheelbarrow and pick all the bigger rocks. Once those are removed, we’ll need to rake the loose soil from the digging and level things out. The larger ones will all be getting a water trench made around them. The smaller ones don’t need it, as they are properly below grade in an area large enough to create drainage towards the roots, rather than flowing away into the paths. They will all also need to be watered regularly for their roots to start growing out from the root balls before the ground freezes.
Looking up on how to care for these, one of the biggest issues we can expect to have is problems with birds eating the berries. We won’t be able to set netting over the bushes, which would be the most effective protection. Instead, we will look into setting taller stakes set up all over the area to make “scarecrows”. Most likely with lots of reflective pinwheels and whirligigs, or other reflective things to flap in the wind.
For now, the main thing is done. All those big pots are now transplanted and the marked out space is full. Any other transplants after this is bonus, though if they don’t get in the ground soon, they’re going to die.
I’m definitely paying for it, though. Pushed things a bit hard. Hopefully, things will be better for tomorrow, when I go in for my appointment at the cancer clinic. With my SIL’s offer to drive us in from their place and dropping us off, so we don’t need to hunt for parking, we don’t have to leave quite as early in the morning.
It’s barely past 4pm as I write this, and I am so ready to go to bed right now.
Tomorrow should be interesting.
The Re-Farmer
