Things that got done today

July 22, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

It was hot, muggy and gross out there, but stuff still needed to be done!

My daughter and I finally got to picking the sour cherries from the tree next to the house.

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We picked as many as we could reach using the little household stepladder. The ground is too uneven to safely use the bigger A frame ladder, even with a spotter. Which is okay. We can leave the rest for the birds! We almost filled the colander we were using to gather them. Then my daughter used one of the window screens we found in a shed that have been so handy to lay them out. She gave them a good washing and picked over them to get rid of any damaged or bird eaten ones that got missed. I think we still had about 5 pounds of cherries when she was done. I’m thinking we might make a syrup out of them, but will look up different ideas to try, first.

We’ll have other fruit to harvest, too.

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There are SO many grape clusters! I’m still amazed. The most we’ve ever since since moving here. It will be some time before they’re ripe, though. The chokecherry tree by the compost ring and low raised beds will be ready to harvest soon. Actually, there are two of them, very close together. There’s a larger, healthier looking chokecherry tree by the main garden area, but with the tall trees beside it, it doesn’t get anywhere near as much sun as the one by the low raised beds. The berries on there are still mostly green, and there are far fewer of them. These trees are still pretty spindly, as they were quite choked out until we cleaned up around them, but they are just covered with berry clusters, weighing down the branches.

While checking the grape vines, I was on the lookout for more of those caterpillars, but accidentally knocked a big brown one onto the ground!

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I tried to pick it up to put it back, but it kept flipping, uncurling and curling. It was remarkably strong! In my attempts to use leaves and twigs to move it, it flipped itself onto the step, which made it very convenient to take photos! I did finally get it on a grape leaf and back onto the vine.

Then I went to get one of the vines out of the spirea, where I found the green spotted caterpillar. So pretty! I was able to untangle the vine without disturbing it.

While I had the timer going for the sprinklers in the garden, I finally finished attaching the fence wire to the raised bed cover frame.

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What a pain in the butt that was!

While setting up to work on it, I noticed that a screw in one corner – top right in the first photo – had snapped, allowing the pieces to rotate slightly. Not good!

Propping the frame up with boards helped steady it, but it was a real pain to attach that fence wire. Plus, Gooby decided that rolling around on the ground and sticking his head or feet right were I was hammering was a good idea.

It was not a good idea.

He was very determined, though!

I did finally get the fence wire attached. Between the snapped screw in one corner, and the likelihood of the U nails simply popping out while the frame is being moved, I decided adding extra boards to sandwich the fence wire was a necessity. I cut spare pieces to length, but by then I had worked my way through the sprinkler and soaker hoses, and needed to do the rest of the watering directly. My daughter was a sweetheart and attached the new lengths to the frame for me. That definitely made the whole thing stronger.

The lengths of fence wire for this was 5′, which made for a rather tall arc. This would be perfect for things like the bush beans on the high raised bed. For the next one, though, I’ll use 4′ lengths.

What I will not use, though, is that fence wire again! The twisted wire at every join is just too thick, making attaching it to the wood less secure. I still want to have something structurally sturdy, though, as it has to support any mesh, plastic or netting that is laid over it. Either that or I will need to add hoops to support the material. Hardware cloth or chicken wire would not be enough on their own.

With this one, I plan to cover it with the black netting we have, closing up the ends in the process. That will make sure no cats will get into the beds and lay down on our vegetables!

The buggers.

Meanwhile, the garden got a good watering. We hit 28C/82F today, as we did yesterday, but did not get any of the scattered rain showers that were predicted. Tomorrow, at least, will be a slightly more pleasant 23C/73F but it’s supposed to reach that temperature by noon and stay there until 7pm. To top it all off, we’ve got air quality advisories from all the wildfires. It was definitely on the hazy side, today! Just moderate air quality advisories for our area. Others are listed as extreme, so we don’t have much to complain about, that’s for sure.

I gave up trying to go to bed early today – at least not as early as the last couple of nights. Still debating whether I should try sleeping on the couch to reduce the interruptions by kittens.

Speaking of kittens, Question has absolutely glommed onto me today! She’s constantly climbing up me, whether I’m standing or sitting. While bending over to pick up the adult cat food bowls, I suddenly had a kitten hanging off my butt. Question had been on the bed behind me and went for it. When I stood up, she climbed her way up to my shoulders and stayed there! After feeding them, I sat down to work on the computer with my own supper. Even though she ate her own food enthusiastically, she was determined to eat mine, too! She was not happy that I would not let her! When we were done giving Leyendecker his medications, I settled at the computer again, only to have her climb up me again, to nap on my chest. As I write this, I’m leaning way back in my chair as she sits on my belly. I think she’s nodding off! None of the other kittens behave like this. Mind you, while her sister has been improving in health, Question is still really gooby, and doesn’t have as much energy as the other kittens.

What a handful the litter bugger is, though. Literally. She’s just a tiny little handful. They all are! Not for long, though. They sure are growing fast!

Well, I need to make up my mind on where I plan to sleep tonight.

If I sleep tonight.

The Re-Farmer

Fall planting: the last of the flowers, plus other progress

October 13, 2020 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Along with the three types of garlic that came in, my daughters’ flower bulbs arrived.

The tulip collection included 10 bulbs each of Orca, Pinksize and Brownie, and 8 bulbs each of Black Hero, Pamplona and Vanilla Coup. There was also 6 bulbs of Gardenia Daffodil.

So while I was having fun working in the soft soil, planting garlic, the girls did the hard work of digging holes for bulbs in hard soil, and between roots!

They did not take pictures of the process, unfortunately.

The tulips were planted not far from where they’d planted the Bulls Eye tulips that came in earlier. This area was selected for its combination of sunlight and drainage, and because they’re not supposed to be watered, and this is not an area where they might accidentally get watered along with something else.

The tulips need to be planted up to 12 inches deep, if we want them coming back year after year, but that depth includes the depth of any mulch. So they planted the 50+ bulbs at 6 inches, adding a 6 inch leaf mulch. Leaves, however, crumble and settle quite a bit, plus the wind was threatening to blow it way, so they also wet down some peat, which we still have lots of, and added that to the top.

The Gardenia Daffodil had different requirements, so it was planted with the Eye of the Tiger irises planted along one side of the old kitchen garden.

When we are next able to, we’re thinking of picking up a couple of bags of soil to scatter on top of the mulch. The soil under the mulch in the old kitchen garden is much improved from before, but the straw itself, and even the grass clippings, aren’t breaking down very quickly, making it not at all conducive to planting in it. It’s all just too stringy! :-D And now there’s the excess flax straw from inside the cat shelter. Adding some soil and peat, as well as moisture, for the microbes and worms to do their stuff should help it break down faster.

We also got a couple other things off the to-do list today.

Now that the soil around the support post has had a few days to settle (and get stomped down some more, every now and then), our new bird feeder is now hung up. Hopefully, this less decorative design will not get flung around in the wind as much as the church and barn shaped ones were, and with the support now buried in the ground like a fence post, we don’t have to worry about it being knocked over any more!

I also had a chance to work on the grapes, while the girls were still digging holes for tulips.

The first thing that needed to be done was prune them. I hope I did it right. From what I’ve read, they should be pruned above the second bud from the ground, as grapes will be produced on first year vines. The problem was, I couldn’t see any buds at all! So I tried to err on the side of caution.

I had to move the trellis supports so I could get behind to harvest the grapes. Today, I finally set them into the ground in their new locations, so we can squeeze behind them again, if necessary. On the right is a long piece of rebar, but the white support on the left is actually two plastic tubes on a shorter piece of rebar. The bar wasn’t long enough to hold the trellis wire, but it is long enough to support the plastic tube. I had to lift off the piece that was woven into the wire mesh, then reset the position of the other two pieces.

When I set this up as a makeshift trellis, I was able to bang the rebar into the ground with a piece of broken brick I’d found while cleaning up around the storage house. I tried that again, but it broke. So I dug around in the sun room, among the things we’d found in there while cleaning it up. There was an old hammer with a ball peen on one side, and a heavy flat head on the other. Much heavier than a regular hammer. For the long piece of rebar, I had to stand on the stairs to reach the top and start hammering it in.

The head fell off the hammer.

It turned out the handle was rotted out at the head!

Thankfully, I still had the new handle I’d found while cleaning up the old basement. I’d intended it for something else, but it didn’t fit right, so I’d left it for later.

Now, I’m glad it didn’t fit the other thing I’d meant it for!

Mind you, it didn’t fit the head of this hammer, either, but I was able to shave the corners of the top, and got it on. I was able to finish the job!

After hammering the rebar supports into the ground and getting the plastic tube in the wire mesh back in place, I was able to use foam covered garden wires a darling friend found for me, to tie the pruned vines to the mesh. Then I used one of the bamboo poles that we’d used in the squash beds as a support for the top. With the grapes growing so well this past summer, I was able to see the weight of the vines were pulling the wire mesh downwards, so this should add some extra support.

Now, all they need is for some mulch to be added to protect them from the winter’s cold. From what I’ve found out about growing grapes in our zone is that they should be just fine with snow as insulation; the vine would be laid down on the ground to be covered. Planted against the storage house like this, that doesn’t really work out, so mulch it is!

We now have all the flower bulbs we ordered planted – 200 grape hyacinth, 100 snow crocuses, irises, gladiolas, and almost 70 tulips – plus the garlic.

That’s it for fall planting this year.

Now, we need to assess how our vegetable gardening went, and decide what we want to plant next year! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Harvest

September 4, 2020 / Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

This morning, I finally harvested all of the grapes.

There is actually a zucchini and a couple of patty pan squash under there!

I’m really happy with how the grapes did this year!

Our first summer here, we didn’t even know we had grapes at all, at first. We even had some to pick, then made some small batch jelly with it.

What a difference in how they looked, two years ago, and now! The above photo is from 2 years ago. This year’s grapes are easily double in size – and these are not a large fruit variety!

It’s even more appreciated, since after cleaning out and trellising them last year, we didn’t get any grapes at all last summer. Not a one.

In picking the grapes this morning, I did have a bit of a problem. Most of the grapes were on the other side of the trellis. Which is when I realized the trellis was so close to the wall, I couldn’t get at them.

Thankfully, the trellis is just on a couple of bars pushed into the ground for support. I was able to move them a few inches away from the wall, and that was enough for me to be able to get back there to harvest the grapes. I’ll have to go back to them to pound the supports into the ground more, but I will likely do that when I prune the vines before winter.

At the moment, we’re not really sure what we want to do with the grapes, so they’ll be given a wash, then frozen, like we did with the chokecherries. If we do decide to do something like a jelly or syrup, or add them to the must when making mead, freezing them first will make it easier to extract the juice.

I must say, for a variety that clearly isn’t a table grape (my mother doesn’t remember what they were), they taste quite good, just as they are!

The Re-Farmer

Morning battles! and, a rescue?

June 8, 2020 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

The kittens now being able to climb to the top of the stairs makes visiting them in the morning rather treacherous!

Getting into the basement is difficult enough as it is, with the door opening over the stairs the way it does. Doing it while juggling a pitcher of fresh water, a bucket for the old water, while dodging kittens who want to climb my legs or dash into the entryway before I can close the door makes it that much more challenging! :-D

The cats upstairs, and the kittens downstairs, have discovered the space under the door.

Oh, and to make things even more challenging, I had Beep Beep trying to climb me, too!

Thankfully, the lure of wet cat food was enough to draw them away, so I could leave safely! :-D

While doing my rounds outside, I had to check out the grapes.

Because I may have killed one. :-(

Now that they are leafing out, a couple of evenings ago, I took the pruners to cut away the old, dead growth that should have been pruned away last fall. A piece I cut away twisted as it fell, and I suddenly realized that a fresh vine I thought was growing from behind and below, was actually growing out the back of the piece I’d just cut.

I was so upset with myself. This was a strong, healthy vine I’d just killed.

Could I save it?

I cut the live vine from the stem and tried to see if I could bury the end, so it would root itself. Attached to the trellis as thoroughly as it was, I couldn’t pull it down far enough.

Well, there’s a tire planter right there, with a giant insulator I’d used as a shallow planter last year, in the middle of it.

I attached the vine to another piece to hold it in place, then added soil from the planter to the bottom. Once the cut end was buried, I watered the whole thing, thoroughly.

Can you tell which vine got cut?

I came by, fully expecting the cut vine to be drooping and dying, but it’s looking as fresh and green as the others!

It’s the one on the far left of the trellis.

Here is the base of it. There are even fresh new leaves, still strong and healthy looking.

Could I have actually have managed to salvage my mistake?? Does anyone reading this know much about grape plants? Will this root itself and survive?

I certainly hope so!

The rest of my rounds included checking the garden plots, and I was disappointed to find one area of carrots looked like something had dug them up. It turned out a cat had used it as a litter box. :-(

It also looks like we lost at least one more sunflower to something, but in total, there are more seedlings today than yesterday.

My rounds, however, were very fast this morning. The mosquitoes were insane! While we did not get the predicted storms – they swooped even further south than I thought they might, and we didn’t even get much rain – it is hot and muggy and perfect conditions for mosquitoes.

Once the morning rounds and chores were done, I had to make a quick run to the post office, then into town for some errands, so I’m a bit behind on things I intended to do outside. I’m going to have to start on clearing away where we’ve decided to build the cordwood outhouse, and since it’s too wet to continue working on the lawns, today would be a good day to get into that.

I will have to slather myself in bug spray, first, and hopefully not sweat it all off in the first few minutes. :-/

The Re-Farmer

Babies of a different sort, and wasted day

June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I just got back from a much needed walk outside, to do at least part of my evening rounds. I would happily have stayed out longer, but the mosquitoes were out in their masses, and I didn’t want to cover myself with bug spray, this late in the day.

While out, I checked on a different sort of babies we’ve got growing right now.

Baby grapes!

Our first summer here, I had no idea my mother had grapes. They were completely engulfed in spirea. They did produce some bunches of grapes, though, which was really awesome. They were pretty small, but quite delicious. :-)

I did a lot of clean up around there, including cutting away the spirea from the grape vines (there turned out to be 2 of them) the next spring, and making a trellis for them. After a very harsh winter, I wasn’t sure they had survived, but I fastened what I could to the trellis and was diligent about watering them.

They did survive, but there wasn’t a single grape.

We had some harsh conditions this past winter, too, and for a while, I wasn’t sure they’d made it through, but they are finally leafing out, and there are quite a lot of little grape clusters showing! Now that they are no longer being strangled by the spirea, I am hoping we will have nice big bunches of grapes.

It was cheering to see them, after a rather frustrating and unproductive day. I had two time dependent things on my schedule; one was an afternoon telephone doctor’s appointment. Nothing urgent; just some follow up questions. Once that was done, I was going to pick up the rest of my husband’s prescriptions, which needed to be done before the pharmacy closed, but otherwise was just slated for “the afternoon”.

I got a call from the pharmacy late in the morning. They didn’t have enough of one of the meds to fill all the bubble packs, but they would have more tomorrow. Did I want to just get a week’s worth today, or wait until tomorrow?

Thankfully, my husband has enough to last him the rest of the week, so I said I would come in tomorrow.

With the timing of things, I was never able to get outside to do the transplanting I had intended to in the morning, and by afternoon, it would have been too hot for the job, anyhow. I figured, since I no longer had to go into town, I could do it after the phone call.

The time came and went, and there was no call.

After about 45 minutes, I finally called the clinic myself. Was there a problem? Was I the one who was supposed to call? No, I was still scheduled, and the doctor would still call me.

So I waited. It meant I couldn’t start anything that couldn’t be stopped instantly, so nothing particularly useful could be started while I waited.

And waited.

Eventually, it got late enough that the clinic would have been closed, but I still waited a bit longer, in case he stayed late.

Nothing.

I can’t fault the doctor. He was the on call doctor, so for all I know, he ended up in the emergency or something. It still left me feeling like my entire day was wasted.

Here’s hoping I can get at least the transplants done tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Finally getting rain – and, ouch

July 11, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Things have been hot for the past few days, and will continue to be hot for the next while. It’s not even noon as I write this, and we’re already at 25C, with a “real feel” of 29C. We’ve also had a lot of thunderstorm warnings, but aside from one quick pass, they have been missing us. We have, however, been getting some decent rain. I haven’t heard locally, yet, but the municipality next to ours announced their burn ban has finally been lifted. I expect ours is, too.

This afternoon, we’re supposed to get temperatures of 29C (feeling like 36C) and thunderstorms through the evening. If rain is all we get again, I’ll be quite happy.

The grape vines are quite appreciating the moisture.

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