Though we have been grabbing lettuce and spinach leaves, as needed, this morning we our first harvest from the garden!
One bed with onion sets planted around it got a hair cut. They were trimmed down to about 6 inches, and that almost filled the colander. I did see one that was starting to form a bulbil, so I left that to go to seed. Onions are bi-annual, but with sets, their time in dormancy has them acting as if they are in their second year, instead of their first. With the onions we grew from seed, I would like to leave some to overwinter, so we can get seed next year, but I have to figure out how to do that and have them actually survive the winter.
I also gathered the very last of the scapes in the big garlic. The other garlic that is behind is not yet showing signs of scapes.
In the high raised bed, the first spinach we planted was starting to bolt, so I pulled them all up, before they could get too bitter.
After trimming off most of the leaves, the remains were laid along either side of a row of onions to act as a mulch. They are more on the wood chips than against the onions. These onions are from seed, and are looking like they could use a trim, too, though they are quite a bit smaller than the onions from sets.
The other row of spinach looks like we’ll be pulling it fairly soon, too.
Once those are out, we can plant something else. I still have radish and chard seeds that would work. Most likely, chard will be planted. We’re not big on radishes and, if the conditions had been better, they would have been planted much earlier to try their pods, rather than for their bulbs. It’s too late in the season to grow radishes for their pods, I think.
We’re nowhere near the stage where we can be harvesting something out of the garden every morning, so it was really nice to be able to have something like this now. What we don’t use fresh right away will be cleaned, trimmed, chopped and either frozen (at least the onions), or dehydrated (that worked really well for the spinach, last year).
If we do any dehydrating, though, we’ll be doing small batched in the oven, rather than using the screens. All the mint we had dehydrating, and by the time they were done, there was only enough left to barely fill a small jar. The cats wrecked the rest! At least with the mint, there is still lots in the garden.
I popped out to see if the weather would allow some lawn mowing, and discovered a whole bunch of adorableness, just outside the door!
When I first opened the door, they were next to the water bowls (while mama was inside the kibble house, eating), and all four of them were moving towards me, all in a row. :-D Then they went around the back of the cats’ house, stopping long enough for me to get a couple of pictures.
There was a mama cat and kittens on the laundry platform steps, and they all started towards the cats, like they were synchronized. :-D After getting the pictures, I shooed the mama out of the kibble house and they all left.
Once the skunks were gone, the kitties were a lot more relaxed.
Except Sad Face, with his permanent tragic expression, and always looking ready to dash off.
Checking the weather radar, we had our frequent climate bubble in effect. The severe weather system split, with the large portion of it going to the north of us, and a smaller portion to the south. I was able to get some mowing down around the garden area, though it was so hot and sunny, I stopped when I ran out of gas, rather than filling and continuing.
Further south, however, another system went through. My brother’s place got hit with driving rain and hail! Everything is okay, though.
In other things, I called the tree company that cleared our power lines and roof a few years ago. Someone will be coming out over the next few days to give us an estimate. My plan had been to take down dead spruce trees myself, but considering where some of them are in relation to the house, and to each other, it would just be more efficient to hire someone. They can do it all in a day – and with greater safety! When I first called and left a message, I made a point of mentioning that I want to keep the wood for building with. I also mentioned getting things chipped.
With that in mind, before I started on the mowing, I got out the orange marking paint I remember to pick up more of at the hardware store. I then went around and marked the ones closer to the house, as well as the one by the garage. I’d marked as many dead trees as I could get to, last year. The marks have faced, but I could still see them. Last year, I’d counted about 22 or 23 dead spruces, with the possibility of more that were not accessible, in total (I hadn’t bothered marking some of them at the time).
We lost more trees over the winter, though. This time, I marked 22 dead spruce trees, and that was without going around the East side of the spruce grove, and trying to get through some of the underbrush.
That’s a lot of trees that can be used to build more high raised beds! Assuming they are all still solid, and from the looks of it, they are, though a couple of them have been dead and drying long enough, they have split lengthwise.
That spruce grove is going to look really empty once all the dead trees are cut down. Once things are cleared up, the plan it to turn part of the area into a sheltered seating area, with trunks supporting benches and tables. Fruit or berry trees that need more shelter may then be planted, as well as more spruces transplanted into the spruce grove.
Once those dead trees are down, though, we can get back on track for building the cordwood outdoor bathroom, with a composting toilet rather than a pit, that we were looking to do as a practise building. After we no longer need to use the space to access and drag out the dead trees, we can start working on building up a foundation for it. This year’s flooding showed us that, while the space we’d chosen for it didn’t end up underwater, like so many other spots, it did eventually get very muddy. We definitely need to build things up at least a few inches. Though the plan is to make an outdoor bathroom, it will have a solid floor, and the composting toilet will be easily removed, if we ever want to repurpose the building to be just a regular storage shed.
The dead trees we plan to use for building high raised beds had been intended for building the cordwood shed, but garden beds have become more of a priority. I expect we’ll still have plenty of wood that can be used for it, anyhow. Plus we’ll be making bottle bricks to use for light, instead of windows.
This is a project that will take much longer to get done than we originally planned. At least we still have the old outhouse all cleaned up inside and can use that, if we lose our septic again!
Also, if we do the floor right, we won’t have to worry about groundhogs digging dens in the pit, like we found under the outhouse!
The mock orange is blooming beautifully right now!
I pruned away a lot of dead branches this spring, but the rest is just thriving!
The other one at the side of the house is still just budding. It doesn’t get as much direct sunlight as this one. I’m actually amazed it’s still alive. The groundhog has dug a tunnel behind it, damaging and exposing quite a lot of roots in the process. I keep filling the hole in, pushing back the dug up soil with a hoe, sometimes taking a hose to it, too. It can stay filled in for days. Then the grog will suddenly be back. I happened to be at the door above the steps when I saw it going by with a mouth full of nesting materials.
Despite all the root disturbances and damage, that mock orange looks like it’s going to have massive blooms, too.
At some point, I’d like the move both of them. The one by the house doesn’t get enough sunlight, and is far enough under the eaves to get hardly any water when it rains. This one is right up against the laundry platform. It gets in the way when we try to use the clothes line, even with all the pruning. Plus. we need to paint the platform. We have not yet decided on a new new spot for them, though. I still want to keep them close to the house. Just not too close!
With company coming tonight, I headed out this morning to do a couple of errands.
I’m glad I was able to do at least a bit of mowing around the driveway yesterday, so our guests will have someplace to park. Even if the grass had not gone to hay, I couldn’t have mowed all of it, as there is still open water along one side of the driveway.
Definitely a place to dig a drainage ditch.
As it was, just mowing along the edges took quite a bit of going back and forth, even though I had the mower set higher than I usually do. The rest will have to be done with the scythe.
Since all the dandelions have seeded and died back, we could actually keep the hay we scythe for mulch in the garden, now. As long as we cut it before the seeds are fully developed. Otherwise, we’d just be planting lots of grass in our garden!
My errand of the morning was to head to our little hamlet’s general store/post office/gas station/liquor store to pick up some booze for our guests. We’re all out of our home made hard cider (looking forward to making more!).
They have a small seed display from Lindenberg Seeds Ltd, and I ended up picking up a couple of packets.
The spinach we planted in the high raised bed is doing well. The spinach we planted in the low raised beds, not so well. In fact, they’re barely there. I can’t tell if they’ve been eaten by insects, or if it was just too wet for them. I know they haven’t been eaten by critters, because the beds have onions planted around them, and if anything had gone through, the onions would be flattened in places. They care completely undisturbed.
We do have seeds from one variety of spinach left, if I remember correctly, but I decided to pick up two more. Bloomsdale and Hybrid Olympia. It’s getting too for spinach now, though. These will be planted at the end of July/early August for a fall harvest. Hopefully, we will have generous quantities like we had last year, that we can dehydrate for later use. It was very handy to be able to add a spoonful of dry spinach to dishes every now and then. We’ve been out for a while, though, and I miss it!
Spinach is definitely one of our favourite greens, for all of us.
This morning, after finishing my morning rounds, I headed over to a town north of us to pick up our freezer pack of beef that we ordered from a local rancher. I had a chance to chat with her about the flooding this spring. The town had some massive road damage, and it’s still being repaired. Their farm, however, is slightly elevated from the town, so they had no flooding. The way she put it, if they ever got flooding where they are, the town would be under water.
The moisture and rains have been both a blessing and a challenge. Because of the weather, their cattle got put out to pasture later than usual, but for the first time in many years, the grass was already high. Last year at this time, there was almost no pasture at all, and everything was crispy. They grow their own feed as well, and her husband finally got out to finish seeding just today. It’s late, but if we get another long fall, that should be fine.
We also talked about our arrangements to get a quarter beef in the fall again. Ordering so early helps them plan things out. As for the monthly payments, my thing is, if I’m going to have to set the money aside anyhow, I would rather the money go to them, to help feed the cow we’re going to be eating! :-D It’s a win-win, for sure. :-)
Since we met in the grocery store parking lot, I quickly popped in to pick up a few things. We are confirmed for company in a couple of days, and I’m still hoping for a cook out. Then I took the opportunity to go to the hardware store. I’m happy to say, I was able to find the trellis net I was looking for!
I got three, just in case, and I’m glad I did.
The nets are 12 ft long, but these rows are about 20 feet long, at the centre poles. The actual planting area and the A frame uprights are a bit less than that, but not much. With the second trellis I wored on, on the right, I’d had one trellis to lay out on one side. It’s long enough to reach across 4 upright poles, with twin to lash them taught. With the first one I worked on, on the left, I hadn’t had enough poles to do the cross pieces on the bottoms at first, so I put two on each side, alternating which pair of poles they were attached to. When I put up the 2 nets we had left over from last year, so that they were attached to the bottom poles, that meant the empty gaps were at opposite ends.
For the trellis on the right, I was able to put up a new net across from the one I’d put up before, leaving the space between the last poles open. That allowed me to take a second net and wrap it around the end, where the big rock is.
With the other one, I had to got the last net in half to cover the gaps at opposite ends. I’d much rather have not had to do that, but the alternative would have been to undo and move one of the trellis nets that were already up.
They are VERY thoroughly lashed in place.
I wasn’t going to do that. :-D
The trellises are now ready for the pole beans, peas and gourds to start climbing!
One of the things I did while in town was pick up a package of green bush beans. The ones we planted with the sweet corn are not coming up at all, so I decided we can replant them. With bush beans, we can get away with planting this late. That’s something I’ll be doing later today.
My other project outside was to see if I could get my daughter’s old market tent frame useable again. A couple of summers ago, we had it set up near the fire pit in preparation for a cookout when we suddenly got high winds. A couple of pieces that were joined in the middles at a pivot point, snapped. It’s a really good tent, so even though it was broken, we kept all the pieces.
We used the frame to support the surface used to harden off our seedlings. I’d made an insert to join the snapped ends and keep them from bending too far, then duct taped the ends together. Today, I took a couple of very short metal pieces from the canopy tent I dismantled once things thawed out enough to remove the tree that fell on it, and taped them to the broken bars to support them even more. Then I dug out the tent roof and set it up near the fire pit. Once the roof was on, the tent fully set up and I confirmed the patch was holding, I folded it all closed again. It was too windy to leave out. However, it is now ready for us to use near the fire pit. I want to set the picnic table up inside it, and have at least two of the walls hung, so we can set up some citronella candles to help keep the mosquitoes at bay!
The big problem with that plan is, the picnic table is on it’s last legs. Every time I’ve moved it, some other part either bends, or pops off it’s screws. Which is to be expected. We cleaned it up and painted it, but it was still very rotten, and we knew it wasn’t going to last much longer. We can still use it, as long as we’re gentle with it.
Which means no more moving it around with just one person!
Yesterday, I weeded mint out of the beet bed – one entire end was completely stunted because they were shaded out – then kept on going, harvesting mint from the path as well. The sump pump drains into here, and the growth is absolutely lush! By the time I was done, I had a huge arm full! This is all mint that was here before we moved in, so we have no idea what variety it is. I know it’s not spearmint. I don’t think it’s peppermint, either, but I really can’t say for sure.
Once inside, I took the best leaves off the stems and gave them a wash. Then I cleaned up and dragged in the old window screens we used last year for curing onions, drying spinach, etc. I covered the mesh with paper towels, then set out as many leaves as I could fit onto them to dry.
I didn’t even use half of what I’d gathered!
Yes, this is the drying mint!
I used small glasses and jars as spacers so we could stack the screens on top of each other, but the cats were incredibly interested in what was going on. So we put more little jars as spacers on the top and covered the whole thing with a cloth. We still caught them on top of the stack, but at least the cloth kept the leaves clean.
Then, some time later, my daughter got Cheddar out from under the cloth at one end. *sigh* We tucked the ends under the bottom screen as best we could.
When I lifted the cloth on one side this morning, however, I found the cats had still managed to get under it!
I salvaged what I could and set it up again on the old dishwasher that’s still waiting to be taken out to the junk pile. Since the leaves have shrunk, I was able to fit them closer together on the screens that needed to be redone. For now, we’re keeping the sheet off, so they can get more air circulation.
Drying things on screens like this can work quite well, but protecting it from the cats is a problem!
Meanwhile, I used fresh mint to make a big pot of strong mint tea this morning, and there is still lots left in the fridge. There is much more to harvest in the garden, as we want, too.
The chives are blooming right now and ready to harvest if we want to make infused chive blossom oil or vinegar again. We have the olive oil to do that now, but I won’t be picking up more of the white wine vinegar I like to use until we do our next city trip. I might just harvest the chives, anyway, and freeze the extra until we are ready to make the infusion.
I love that we can already start harvesting things and preserving them!
I am so, so glad the girls were able to get the clogged downspouts cleared yesterday! We had a thunderstorm last night, and are currently under weather alerts for more severe thunderstorms.
This is the one, draining into the north yard, that was causing the most problems. It is under this corner that the most water is leaching into the basement. This basement does have weeping tile, but they are not working as they should anymore, and are probably clogged at this end.
There is another downspout at the south end, but it had only the short piece of eavestrough at the end to divert the water away from the house. For some reason, we’ve got about a dozen or more downspouts in the garage, so I grabbed one for them, and they set it up to extend into the bed where the dwarf Korean lilac is. With how tall the grass is in the outer yard, it was actually a struggle to get through it, to reach the barn!!
I’ll put up with the extension blocking the path along the house. It’s not as bad as the north corner, but we do have water seeping into the basement a bit in the south corner, too. The wall is partly damaged by the roots from the Chinese elm my mother planted for shade in front of the kitchen window. :-(
While they worked on that, I worked on the trellises.
I decided I’m just going to have to buy more of those bamboo stakes once pay comes in. A pair of them was set up at each of the uprights for the two rows that need trellising. That left me with 4 stakes left. I lashed them to the bottoms of alternate A frames, for 2 on each side. To finish the job on both rows, I’ll need 10 more of these 6′ bamboo poles. Then I used the net from last year and set that up, lacing twine along the ends and at the bottom stakes, to snug it up. We need to get more of this type of net. The spacing is large enough that we can reach through to harvest our beans, peas or cucumbers. The other net we have is 1/4 inch mesh.
After this, I also put a simple rope fence around where we have squash, beans and corn planted. At this point, I just want to stop the deer from walking through it. They’re not after anything there – yet. You’ll see that set up in a photo below.
During the night, the skies opened and the rains poured down! I actually slept through it, awakened only by one exceptionally loud peal of thunder. While doing my rounds this morning, however, I could not believe how much water there is, everywhere! It must have been quite the deluge! I’m still holding out hope to be able to mow the west and north lawns, but that’s not going to happen today, that’s for sure! The west lawn is now mostly under water. Most of the north lawn as well. I’ve never seen that much open water in those areas before.
The squash patch is very wet – thankfully, the straw mulch is helping keep that under control. We’ve had paths between the low raised beds filled with puddles before, but not this much around where the grow bags and the small potato bed are.
I’m actually surprised the mosquito netting has held out. Their purpose is to keep the plants from being pounded by rain or hail, while still letting the water through, and it seems to be working. They’re only held in place with wooden clothes pegs!
I’m standing in water to take the above picture. There is even a large puddle next to the remains of the straw bale. The melons are likely good with the wet – they do need a lot of water, normally – but I’m concerned that some of the potatoes might get drowned.
This is the patch I “fenced” off last night. I used some old conduit pipes I found in the barn and pounded them in place as fence posts. They’ve got 2 lengths of twine running around them, far enough apart that we can just bend down and step through to get to the plants. I also dangled lengths of bells in different places, so even if a deer decided to step through, it would hopefully make a noise and distract it away. I added one of the pinwheels we have to the top of a pipe for the distraction. Little by little, we’ll set up more distractions and noise makers around the garden beds. Eventually, we will probably have to put a hardware cloth fence up, to at least protect the corn.
Assuming the corn and beans survive. As you can see, the sprouting corn is under water in places. The north end of the row with the popcorn in it is all under water. Still no beans coming up next to the sweet corn. Will they survive? I have no idea.
Even the area where the trellises are is full of water. This corner of the yard has been notorious for being incredibly dry and baked hard by the sun. Thankfully, the rows themselves are slightly elevated with the addition of garden soil and mulch, and even our digging and weeding before planting means where the plants are growing, the soil has better drainage.
The nearby sea buckthorn is high enough to not be in puddles – and they are finally unfurling their leaves! Nice to see they all took.
The silver buffalo berry is also doing surprisingly well. Moving south, the land slowly slopes downwards, so the last 10 or so silver buffalo berry are in pools of water. At least three of those have been in water for quite a while, and are still okay. They seem to be quite resilient!
The beds in the east yard are almost surrounded by water. Remarkably, the ground cherries are doing all right. I think that grass mulch is acting as a sponge, keeping them from being drowned out completely. There are pools of water right next to the mulch.
The paths between the low raised beds, and the entire lawn in front of them, is full of water. There is basically a pond in front of the outhouse. Thankfully, the raised beds are making a difference. There is increased growth visible in the Kulli corn, and the beans between them are looking very healthy. The tomatoes and onions are also looking strong – and those onions are really taking off! The 6 transplanted garlic at the far end of the third bed may not all make it, but the rest of the garlic is finally looking like they are taking off. I figure they are at least a month behind the garlic in the main garden area.
The other beds in the south yard are all high enough to be out of water. It looks like all 10 of the sunchoke tubers planted are now sprouted; some of the tubers have multiple stalks coming up. The asparagus and strawberry bed are right next to the vehicle gate, which is full of water, but the bed is doing well. Likewise, the beds along the chain link fence, on either side of the people gate, are above water and doing well. Still no signs of white strawberries.
The old kitchen garden has a slightly different situation. We’ve deliberately built it up over the past 4 years and have the retaining wall at one end, so it’s above the water that is in the lawn surrounding it. The house itself also usually keeps parts of it from getting rained on as much, not to mention the ornamental apple trees. However, the sump pump hose drains into the sun room garden, and that pump is going off quite frequently. It drains next to the bed where we’ve got the beets planted. I shift the end every now and then, so it’s either draining straight down a mulched path between the bed and the laundry platform, or it’s draining into the mulch at the end of the bed, and partly down the path on the other side.
These are all areas that are normally drier than everywhere else. Until this year, the sump pump basically never went off, because we’d been so dry. Now, not only are we getting more rain, but there’s all that nice, clear water from the sump pump reservoir being added. There is currently so much lush growth along the house side of the old kitchen garden that the path we made using salvaged cap stones, bricks and rocks along the house is almost hidden. The high end of the beet bed is almost overgrown with mint – and I dug up and transplanted as much of the mint from there as I could, last fall. Then again in the spring, I pulled up more of it when getting the bed ready for planting! The path is also full of mint at that end, along with loads of crab grass. Moving north along the house, it’s more of those invasive wildflowers, some of which my mother planted deliberately, not knowing they were invasive, and some are the same ones we’ve got taking over all over the place. I don’t mind them in the paths too much, but they’re coming up in the L shaped bed, too, and choking out the lettuce.
We have a drainage hose for the sump pump, but it’s currently being used for the washing machine to drain outside (it sounds like whatever is causing the water to back up in the pipes is still a problem). I’d like to add an extension so that the sump pump drains further away. With the length these hoses come in, we could even move the end to different areas of the old kitchen garden that might need more water, if we wanted. The area it’s draining into right now is getting to be too much of a jungle! :-D
We had already determined that we’ll be building high raised beds for mobility reasons. For some crops, like corn, tomatoes and vining plants, we would still want to have low raised beds. High raised beds are notorious for drying out quickly and needing more water, which is why we are using modified hügelkultur methods to fill them, with all those layers of wood and organic matter acting as a sponge to hold water. This spring has shown us that even for a wet year, there are benefits to having raised beds, as they are keeping things from being drowned, too. Even a few inches of elevation or a mulch is making a difference.
When we get around to building permanent high raised beds in the outer yard, from what I’ve been seeing so far, water like this will be less of a problem. There are patches with water collecting in them, but where we are planning to build the beds seems clear. We’ll see better once we finally get that overgrown grass cut. It’s about 3 ft high, at least! I almost feel like asking one of our neighbours if they have a grazing animal we could borrow. Otherwise, it feels like such a waste to cut it all!
With the ground too wet to mow, it’s time to see if we can restore my dad’s old scythe to cutting condition. Here is how is looks now.
That’s looking really rough. I think we can get the rust off and give it a good sharpening, though.
Interesting that the blade is Austrian, but the handle is American style. I know nothing about where it came from.
I also have no idea what happened to the original handle.
That looks like an old chair leg!
Whatever. It works!
I do like the swoopy, ergonomic design of the American style handle. I took a few test swipes. It’s very light and easy to handle.
Dull as anything, though.
So that’s going to be a pet project, and will likely take several days. Since we’re not making hay, it doesn’t matter if everything is still wet when we scythe it. It just needs to get done. At this point, the grass is so tall and thick in the outer yard, we can barely through it. Plus, there’s all the mosquitoes hiding in there and, I’m sure, plenty of wood ticks, too.
I do wonder, though. We’ve got clouds of mosquitoes, but I haven’t been seeing any dragon flies. They eat mosquitoes. You’d think the abundance of food would mean a population explosion of dragon flies, too!
Perhaps they will show up later in the season.
Until then, we’ll be investing in lots of bug spray!
We had quite a lot of rain yesterday, with temperatures much cooler than forecast for the first day of summer. The cool was much appreciated! It was nice being able to open up more windows again.
The problem is how wet everything is. Even the new part basement now has water pooling in places. Unlike the old basement, we can’t sweep this into a drain or a sump pump cistern. All we can do is keep a fan on it, really.
We’re supposed to have a couple of days that are warmer and without rain. Hopefully, that will be enough to let the grass dry out enough that I can finish mowing the lawn tomorrow. No chance of being able to get it done today, even if I wasn’t going to be at my mother’s for her home care assessment appointment. After that, however, we’re looking at possible thunderstorms and more rain for several more days.
While doing my morning rounds, I saw a couple of the kittens under the cat’s house again. I’m glad to see them, after they got so frightened by the lawn mower. I caught a brief glimpse of the little calico’s face. Her one eye still seems gooby, but otherwise all right.
The garden plots seem to be holding out all right, though I noticed a lot of pole beans at the trellises seem to have lost their leaves. I can’t tell if it’s because they were eaten by something, or because they wilted and fell off from excess moisture. There are still lots of plants, though, so we should still be good.
I’m pretty sure one of the lilacs at the corner of the storage house has been totally drowned. The few leaves it managed to grow are gone. If it survives, I’ll be amazed. There are others that aren’t quite as bad, and I think they’ll make it.
The Kulli corn seems to finally be recovering from transplant shock, looking more green and actually growing. The bush beans growing with them are progressing nicely. The first planting of spinach and one type of lettuce are getting big enough we should be able to start harvesting leaves and thinning them out.
As much of a problem the excess rain is, after last year’s drought and having to water every day, twice a day, throughout the summer, I’m really happy with how things are growing right now.
Still, it’ll be nice to have a couple of days break from the rain!
The rain held off this afternoon, so I headed out to where we finally decided to transplant the ground cherries.
After thoroughly dousing myself with mosquito repellant!!
This spot by the compost heap has been covered with that sheet of metal for about 2 years. The metal was placed there as something to put grass clippings on top of, so they’d be easier to collect and use later on.
Isn’t it amazing that, even while under metal, things were still trying to grow under there? !!
The soil was so soft under there, I could easily push the garden fork deeper than the length of the tines, and probably could have gone deeper if I’d wanted to. The ground was also pretty saturated, so it was muddy work to loosen the soil and pull out any roots – including some thoroughly rotted roots from the old tree stump under the compost pile nearby! No watering needed after they were planted, that’s for sure. In fact, I’m a bit concerned it might be too wet for them. We shall see.
The groundcherries got a good mulch with some of the grass clippings I had to move off the sheet of metal in order to move it. Here, they can be left to self seed, and hopefully we’ll get them year after year. We’ll just have to make sure they don’t spread too far and become invasive, which I’ve heard some people have had problems with.
The sheet of metal, meanwhile, is now sitting on top of the tall grass and weeds next to the ground cherries, weighted down with rocks to keep it from blowing away. Hopefully, it will help keep the crab grass and other weeds from invading the ground cherries.
When my daughter came out to help, we went looking through all the garden beds, talking about what needed to be done in each, before she started working on where we decided to plant our corn.
First, she dug a fairly narrow trench for the Tom Thumb popcorn, between the green patty pans and the Boston Marrow. These have a slightly longer growing season – 85-90 days – so we wanted to get them in first.
After she dug the small trench, she moved to the space between the Boston Marrow and the Lady Godiva pumpkins. There’s more space there, and it’s where we will be planting the Latte corn, which needs only 65 days to maturity, and bush beans.
While she worked on that trench, I used the hand cultivator to loosen up the smaller trench, pulled out the bigger rocks, and as many weed roots as I could. Then it got a layer of shredded paper, and finally a about 1 1/2 wheelbarrow loads of garden soil was added. I also removed the divots of sod and dumped them under some trees. They are so full of roots and rocks, it wasn’t worth the time to try and salvage any of the soil.
The Tom Thumb popcorn only grows to about 4 feet. The instructions said to plant them 5 or 6 inches apart, and in rows 36 inches apart, in blocks of at least 4 rows.
Obviously, we didn’t do that.
What we did do was plant two rows, with all the seeds about 6 inches apart. Once the soil was ready, my daughter had finished removing sod in the other area, so I just went down the prepared row, poking pairs of holes into the soil while my daughter went along behind me, dropping the little bitty corn seeds in! :-)
I’m glad we got those planted, because the next job was a killer.
In the second space, I went over it with the hand cultivator to get some of the bigger rocks out, and the more obvious roots. There’s just no way we could get rid of all the roots. While I worked on that, my daughter used one of the old, busted up wheelbarrows to get grass clippings. A full recycling bag of shredded paper went into the bottom, then grass clippings got scattered over the paper.
After dumping the remaining soil in the wheelbarrow in, my daughter went to get more soil with the good wheelbarrow, while I used the old one to remove the divots of sod.
I was reminded of just how badly broken up that old thing was! I’m amazed we got away with using it for as long as we did. In the end, I had to switch to the other old wheelbarrow. It’s smaller and also busted up, but at least it didn’t try to tip over every time I dropped a piece of sod in it, or roll away!
After a while, however, my daughter was waving the white flag. It was pretty hot, and very humid. For all the bug spray we used, we were just sweating it right off. The mosquitoes were after my daughter more than me (I reapplied bug spray, several times!), and after all the back breaking labour of removing sod, she was just done.
After she escaped the clouds of mosquitoes, I managed to move some more of the sod – using the good wheelbarrow! – before switching to getting a couple more loads of soil, and that was it. I surrendered, too! I think we did manage to get half of the area covered with fresh garden soil. The other half will probably need at least 4 – 6 more loads of soil, depending on how full the wheelbarrow is. It’s a fair distance to haul the soil from the pile in the outer yard, and we have to go around through the smaller person gate, rather than the closer vehicle gate, because there’s water there again, so we can’t get away with over filling it.
It’s a good thing the Latte corn and the bush beans we will be planting with them don’t need a lot of time to grow, because we probably won’t be able to work on this area tomorrow, and not just because I’m driving my mother to another medical appointment. We’re supposed to start raining again tonight, with thunderstorms over the next two days – complete with overland flow flooding alerts! I’ll be using my mother’s car to drive her. Hopefully, that one patch on the road near our place will stay solid enough by the time I am coming home, that her little car will get through. Anyhow; with the expected weather, we might not be able to finish this area and plant the Latte corn for several days.
By the time we’re done in this area, it will be quite intensely planted. Between that and the straw mulch we intend to add, I’m hoping that should keep the weeds down. Before that gets done, we’ll have to remove the rest of the sod and the piles of rocks scattered about.
It would have been much easier if we could do the carboard and straw like we did for the potato beds, but we just don’t have the carboard for that. We could get more later on, but we really wanted to get these in as quickly as possible. This will be the last direct sown seeds, besides any successive sowing we might do for a fall harvest.
This is also about as close as we’re getting to the “three sisters” method of planting. Hopefully, doing it this way will have the same benefits as the more traditional way. The only real problem I foresee is being able to access the bush beans to harvest them, when everything is all grown in. If we focus on putting the corn in the middle and the beans on the outside, we should be able to reach them okay. It’ll be trying to walk around the Boston Marrow and hulless pumpkins that will be more of a challenge, I think! With the Tom Thumb corn, it will be less of an issue, since they won’t be harvested until the cobs are completely dry on the stalk. Once the mulch is down, there’s not going to be much more needed for them.
If nothing else, this will be a learning experience.
And an experience in humility, as we get driven away by hoards of mosquitoes, trying to eat us alive!
I’m now going to go borrow my husband’s bath chair and shower off the smell of insect repellant now!
The Re-Farmer 