It still might not survive the winter, but for now, it’s doing just fine.
Unlike this one.
This is the crab apple tree by the old compost pile. Last year, it had good eating apples. This year… well, the ones that aren’t infected taste good. :-( About half of the tree has yellowing leaves with brown spots, and even the apples on those branches are more yellow have have spotting on them. I’d hoped to have cut away the infected branches in pruning it, but the fungus had clearly already spread further.
I’ve been looking at some of the other crab apple trees and thinking of what to do with them. Like many trees here, they were planted too close to each other. Some had already died and were cut away, others show signs of fungal infection, and most… well, they’re just not good apples. When I do my rounds and check on them this time of year, I do taste the occasional apple. One tree had me spitting it out right away. Another has the most bizarre combination of being really sweet and really sour at the same time – so sour, I end up spitting that one out, too. Others are so tiny, they’re just ornamental. The grosbeaks and deer eat them, so even though we can’t use them, they are still feeding critters. In that respect, I’m okay with them.
However…
Partly because they are so close together, partly because of the spreading fungal infection, I am increasingly thinking of cutting most of them down to save the two trees that have good eating apples, and are still healthy. I hate the thought of cutting them down at all. There is even the sentimental side of things. My late father planted these, though it looks like the parts he grafted have died and only the suckers from the bases are still growing.
If they do get cut down, they won’t go to waste. One tree with particularly disgusting tasting apples is quite large. If that one were cut down, I’d find all sorts of ways to use the wood. It’s base is large enough, I can see carving some decent sized bowls out of the wood.
In the long term, we are intending to plant a nut orchard in the area, having found a place that specializes in trees that grow in colder climates such as ours. We will also be planting hardy varieties of different fruit trees. Hopefully, we will have apples, pears, and plums in this area, too. Taking out any sick trees, poorly placed trees, or any fruit trees with inedible fruit, would free up space needed for food trees.
*sigh*
I know we’ll need to take them down. I just don’t like having to do it.
All in good time. Aside from the diseased ones, there is no urgency to it right now.
I recently harvested the two biggest heads of sunflower seeds that were done blooming. They are now hanging in the basement to dry, where the birds can’t get at them.
As for the rest of them, we’ve got seed heads at all stages! Not all will have time to mature before the growing season ends, but we should still have a decent number of them to harvest and dry for the winter.
Click on the images to see larger sizes, though they are all 25% of the original size.
That one mutant sunflower, with all the extra seed heads developing, is one to keep an eye on! We might actually get a couple of seed heads mature enough to harvest before the end of the growing season.
While going through some of the photos I took with one of my daughters, she was suggesting I make some available for sale, in various forms. We’re still trying to come up with ways to be able to raise funds for things like a new roof, when I cannot get a job (for the new folks following this blog; as we are living on my husband’s health insurance disability payments, anything I earn would be deducted from his payments. If I were to earn more than his payments, he would lose his plan, which means no more coverage for his prescriptions). I was considering offering things up as fundraisers: all proceeds go towards replacing the roof, or getting yard cats fixed, or building a wheelchair ramp, etc.
So I’m putting the idea out there. If I were to, say, make photos available on, say, Redbubble, as prints, mugs, t-shirts, etc., would this interest you? I’ve had it suggested to put a donation button up, but I don’t like to ask for something for nothing. Other people use sites like Patreon, where there are rewards for different tiers. Of course, there are always affiliate links, like with Amazon, where the site would earn a commission. All proceeds would go to specific things, such as a new roof (long term goal) or getting yard cats spayed and neutered (short term goal) or building a wheelchair ramp (mid term goal), etc. It would have to be fundraising for a specific project, not an income for us. We would have to be very careful about that.
Today, we took advantage of the warmer weather and dug up our two potato beds.
The first one got done fairly early in the morning, before we headed to the city. Having already dug up a few of them earlier, I had some idea of what to expect, but I have zero experience with growing potatoes the “Ruth Stout” way.
I first pulled up the potato plants, then carefully used my potato fork to lift off, then “rake” the mulch away. Here, you can see some of the potatoes I uncovered in the process.
I also uncovered several chilled little frogs! I carefully moved them to the mulch by the squash, where they could warm up in the sun.
I also uncovered slugs.
I did not rescue them. ;-)
Almost all the potatoes I found were just sitting on top of the soil! Some took a little more raking away of the mulch to find, but not much more.
What had been rock hard ground when we started, the mulched soil was so much easier to work – even with all the rocks.
I took advantage of the situation and dug up the entire plot, so I could pull out as many weed roots as I could. The crab grass came out pretty easily. Then I hit a solid mass of roots near the surface, with a tap root of some kind that continued deep into the ground. I could not get it out with the fork! If I’d had the spade handy, I might have been able to cut through it, but since it seemed to be dead, I left it. It will be buried.
I did find a couple more potatoes in the process!
The end result looked like a 4×8 foot grave! :-D
When I finished pulling up as many roots as I was able, the mulch all went back – along with the potato plants that had been pulled up.
These are all the potatoes I got out of the one bed.
Also, note the one slightly darker potato with the arrow pointing to it. I’ll explain that, below!
When we got back from the city, I continued working on the second bed.
Once again, I was finding most of the potatoes on the surface of the soil as I pulled away the mulch.
These are all the potatoes I found, before I did any digging at all. Unfortunately, quite a lot of them had holes eaten into them. :-( After digging, I found maybe 5 more.
Speaking of 5, do you see those 5 darker potatoes on the side?
Those are the original seed potatoes! The other bed had only one. While they had stems and roots that I broke off of them, they are just as hard as the day I planted them. I found the remains of some other seed potatoes, all mushy and used up like one would expect at the end of the growing season.
I got two 3 pound boxes of seed potatoes, which gave me 3 row of 6 potatoes in one bed, and 3 rows of 5 potatoes in the other, plus an extra. That’s 34 potatoes – and 6 in total never grew more potatoes!
As with the previous bed, I dug it all up, finding a few more potatoes, a whole lot more slugs, and pulling out weed roots.
Would slugs be the cause of those holes in the potatoes?
This bed had quite a few more rocks near the surface that I got rid of, too. My fork was hitting many more as I dug down, but I didn’t try to get them out, since we will continue to build these beds up. The mulch and old potato plants went back over the soil.
I then took all the harvested potatoes and laid them out on the dry straw mulch between squash beds, so they can cure (is that the right word for it?) in the sun. Except for the tiniest ones, which will be cooked and eaten right away. :-)
I then had the 6 original seed potatoes. What to do with those??
Yeah. I planted them, almost the same way they were planted in the original beds. The only difference is that I did loosen the soil a bit, first. Not to bury the potatoes – there are so many rocks along this end, I could barely do more than scrape away the mulch on top! No, it was so I could push in the bamboo poles to mark where they are. Even then, I don’t think the poles will be able to stay up for long. I could barely get them into the soil at all. No matter how I shifted and searched, I kept hitting rocks just inches below the surface.
What will most likely happen is that the potatoes will freeze over the winter, and nothing will come of them. Another possibility is that they will be protected by the mulch and, as soon as it gets warm enough next spring, they will start growing and we’ll have early potatoes started.
We’ll find out next year!
As for now, the potato beds are put to bed for the winter. I don’t know what we will plant in those spots next year. We do intend to do potatoes again, but in a different location. We don’t want to entice the Colorado potato beetle by planting in the same location again. We didn’t see a single one this year, but one of my neighbours a mile up the road mentioned that his potatoes had been decimated by them! My parents always planted lots and lots of potatoes, and I well remember going through the rows, picking off the beetles or their larvae, and hunting for the eggs to crush. Even with several of us doing that every day, some years my mother had to resort to using a poison powder of some kind, to get them under control.
I’d really rather not have to deal with them at all, if I can avoid it!
As for the squash, for now I have stopped harvesting any more of the sunburst squash, though there are a couple of zucchini that are almost large enough to pick. I prefer them when they are quite small, but with the sunburst squash, I want to give them as much of the remaining warm weather as I can for them to grow. As I write this, past 6pm, we are still at 21C/70F. We are supposed to stay fairly warm over the period covered by the long range forecast, with no more frosts expected overnight. That should give our produce a bit more time before we have to harvest what we can, then prep for the winter – and next year’s gardening! :-)
Our first year gardening since moving here has been quite interesting, and quite the learning experience. We will, for sure, continue using the Ruth Stout method until we are able to start making the accessible raised beds that are the ultimate goal. The extensive use of mulch is making a very noticeable, positive difference in the soil, even after just one year. My mother may be disappointing in our gardening, compared to what she had here, years ago, but I’m happy with our progress so far! :-)
The girls and I made our trip into the city. While I didn’t need anything myself, I did take advantage of the trip – and summer clearance prices.
While we had cleaned and painted the old wooden bird feeder and replaced it on its metal post, not a lot of birds are using it. I believe it’s just too crowded by the novelty lilac, next to it. I’ve seen some of the smaller birds around it, but the larger birds, such as the mourning doves, are still trying to find seed on the ground by the old platform feeder (where we stopped adding bird seed, since our supply filled the newly painted one).
If I could get that metal post out of the ground without having to dig, I’d transfer it to the other end, where the platform feeder and bird bath are. It seems the better location for it, plus we can see them from the living room. We can’t see the metal post set up from inside the house.
The platform on the platform feeder, however, is in really bad shape. So today, when I spotted supports for bird feeders or hanging baskets on clearance, I grabbed one.
I’ll… go back and straighten that out, later. :-D
It’s a lot shorter than the platform feeder. Perfect for short little me to reach!
The old one was constantly being blown over in the wind, until we stopped actually hanging a bird feeder on its hook. One of the hanging feeders hit the ground so often, it no longer holds together very well. The base wasn’t very stable and, as you can see, where it was touching the ground is rotting.
The platform is also a complete loss, but the hook itself, and the pressure treated 2×4, are just fine.
I am thinking of removing the rotted platform, the pieces on the bottom, and cutting off the rotten end. If I can figure out a way to make it more stable, it might be worth making a new platform and setting it up again. Having hanging feeders is good, but some types of birds prefer the platform to feed from. Plus, with two hangers, we can have the suet feeder out again, too.
We shall see.
Meanwhile I wanted to share a really terrible, zoomed in photo I took this morning, before we headed to the city… :-D
The kittens were playing on the steps at the other door! I had started to move their food bowl further from the junk pile, to encourage them to come closer to the house, but Butterscotch beat me to it. :-D
Ultimately, I’d like the kittens to start coming around to the south side of the house. I’ve started to place food bowls near the entrance to the old doghouse my brother brought for them to use in the winter. It would be great if the whole little family would just move into there. As this litter is so much younger than the other kittens, they are more at risk when the cold weather hits. There is enough room in there that all of the yard cats can fit in there and be nice and warm, just like they used to all pile up together on the swing bench in the sun room. Petty differences between the cats seemed to disappear when it came to staying warm!
It was very encouraging to see the kittens playing by the house. What an adventurous bunch they are! They were just loving those stairs. :-D
I’m happy to say that last night’s frost seems to have had no effect on the sunflowers at all.
The only leaves with frost damage that I saw were leaves that had first been broken by the high winds we had a few days ago.
Right now, we’ve got seed heads at pretty much all stages of opening and ripening!
The birds seem to have finally discovered this one. Based on what I researched, I should be able to cut this seed head off and set it up to dry, but in the video I saw that demonstrated this, the guy was able to easily brush off the flower heads from the seeds. That isn’t happening on this seed head at all! The ones that haven’t already fallen off on their own are still attached quite well.
The girls and I will be heading into the city tomorrow, but I might harvest this seed head after we come back. If not then, then the day after. I’m planning to dig up the potato beds as well. We’ll see how the timing of things goes.
Hopefully, tomorrow’s trip to the city will be more productive than today’s – but that will get it’s own post later!
My husband has an appointment at the heart clinic in the city today, so I was out a bit earlier to do my rounds this morning.
As I write this, it’s still only 1C (33F), with a “real feel” that has warmed up to -2C (28F) since I last checked. Our high today is supposed to reach 15C (59F), which is warmer than the last few days. We’re then supposed to go above 20C (68F) for a couple of days, before dropping back to the mid-teens, which is more typical for this time of year.
We don’t have what we need to be able to cover plants as large as our squash right now, so this morning was more about surveying the damage.
I will check them again, after we get back from the city. Some look like they’re completely killed off, but others might still make it through the rest of the season.
I’m pretty sure the pumpkins are a total loss, though.
This is the largest of them, and you can see where the frost was on the pumpkin itself.
This pumpkin hill is the one that’s the furthest South – which means that it gets more shade from the trees than the others. It isn’t much, but as you can see by the plant, it doesn’t take much, either. This plant still had visible frost on it.
The other two hills were pretty much clear of frost. The developing pumpkins don’t show signs of direct frost on them – but from the state of the plants, I think they’re likely complete losses, too. We shall see.
Remember this little birdhouse gourd, bravely blooming just yesterday?
This is how it looked this morning.
*sigh*
Well, this year was our year to figure things out, and we’ve learned a lot.
We will have to work on finding different ways to cover and protect our plants from late and early frosts. Especially since we do want to keep growing squash, which are more easily damaged by the cold. The beets, carrots and parsley are just fine. Even the cucamelons showed less frost damage than the squash, which surprised me.
Altogether, though, we did far better with our gardening this year than I expected. It really has been a successful year, for the circumstances!
You’d think, having grown up here and helped my mother with the gardening for my entire childhood, I would already know what is needed, but everything is really quite different than the garden of my childhood. Especially with my parents planting or allowing so many trees to encroach into the garden.
While we will continue to have garden plots in this area, my mind is already starting to look at the outer yard, towards the barn, for possible raised beds, polytunnels or greenhouses for vegetable gardening.
Today, I headed out to pick the apples off of one of our crabapple trees.
This is the one that has such bright red, sweet apples. It also ripens earlier than the other trees.
Last year, most of the apples disappeared before I had a chance to harvest them, so I wanted to get them before the … deer? … get them first.
When we were cleaning things out, I was flummoxed by finding a grabber with spoons attached to it. My mother eventually remembered that my dad used it to pick apples.
I’m happy to say that it works absolutely beautifully!
Since there were so many apples to pick this year, I laid out a sheet on the ground for them to fall on. It also made it much easier to move the apples into a bucket.
I was able to fill a 5 gallon bucket just with the apples I could reach with my hands, or the grabber. I did try shaking the trees, too, but the branches are a bit too thick to be able to shake much at that height, so I didn’t get a lot that way.
Using the step ladder, I was able to fill another 5 gallon bucket. I could have gotten more, but by then, it was getting too dangerous to try and get the apples, even with the grabber. The remaining apples will be for the birds. :-)
Ten gallons of apples is so awesome! Last year, I used the apples from this tree to make apple cider vinegar. After trimming and chopping, I filled a quart jar 3/4s full.
That’s it. That’s all we had.
This year, I plan to make more apple cider vinegar, then juice at least a gallon, to make hard apple cider. There should still be plenty to give to my family, when they come out this weekend, if they want some.
For the hard apple cider, we have gallon jugs, bungs and airlocks to use. When we made apple cider vinegar in a quart jar last year, it was a success, but there was a problem with fruit flies being attracted to the coffee filter covered jar in the cupboard. So this year, I plan to use an air lock (they’re so cheap, I’ve been buying extras).
I’ll be using a repurposed gallon sized pickle jar for this, which means I need to find a way to get an airlock into the lid.
Which I’ve already gotten started, and will show how in my next post. :-)
One of the things I’ve been checking every morning of late, is how the crabapples are doing.
In the row of trees by the spruce grove, there are really just two trees that we can use. The others have such small apples, they’ll be left for the birds and the deer.
One of these two trees gets such bright red apples!
There are lots of them, too. I have actually thinned them, and with this tree, the easiest way to do that is just grab a branch and shake. They fall off a lot easier than the other trees!
This tree produces remarkably sweet apples. Last year, oddly, by the time we went to pick the apples, most of them had disappeared. I wasn’t even seeing many on the ground. Very strange, considering how full of apples it was, just the day before! Anyhow, I used them to make crabapple cider vinegar. You can read how that went in parts one, two and three of the process. I want to do this again, but this time, we’ll be using an airlock! Using a coffee filter was messy, and attracted fruit flies. We still don’t have fermentation weights, but we’ll figure something out.
The other tree in this row surprised me, last year. I would taste the apples from different trees to check their ripeness, and this one was… well, pretty awful tasting. We gathered what we could from the other trees, but left this one.
Then my mother insisted I bring her apples from the farm. I told here there weren’t many left, and the ones that were left didn’t taste good, but she said she would just be cooking them down and adding sugar, anyhow, so go ahead and bring them to her.
Much to my surprise, the apples actually tasted really good! They simply needed a lot more time to ripen, compared to the others.
This year, we cleaned out the dead part in the middle, and the remaining parts seem to be appreciating this.
Some of the apples are nearly 3x the size of the red ones on the other tree!
With the fungal disease attacking the row of crabapple trees, I would happily get rid of all the others, if it means saving these two trees.
There is one other crabapple tree, next to the old compost pile, that is ripening some pretty big apples. It should be ready to harvest soon, I think.
We should have lots of apples to make things with this year.
Maybe even enough try making some hard crabapple cider! :-)
I think it’s time to visit the brewery supply place in town. I’m starting to think that the 4 airlocks we have now are not going to be enough. Especially since we’ll be making gallon batches of mead, soon!
You know those times when you suddenly think of someone, and how you should talk to them… and then the phone rings, and it’s that person you were thinking about?
Yeah. That happened to me this morning!
Just as I was thinking that I should call my mother and ask if she needed help with grocery shopping or something, the phone rang. My mother was calling, to see if I were available to help her with grocery shopping!
Perfect timing.
So we arranged that for in the afternoon.
I had another nice surprise when I did my morning rounds. When I do the outdoors part, I always start with putting kibble out for the cats. The cats usually aren’t around in the mornings anymore – likely because it’s been getting so hot, so early! The last thing I’ve been doing in my rounds is going through the garden to pick what vegetables need picking.
As I came around the corner of the house to go to the garden, I saw this.
The tiny little calico was hungry enough to come out in the heat, all by herself!
Unfortunately, she ran off as soon as she became aware of me.
Ah, well. We’ll get them used to us, eventually!
At least, I hope so!
Meanwhile…
I got to my mother’s place, just before 2pm. So I was quite surprised when she told me she hadn’t had lunch yet! She wanted to go out to eat, and was waiting until I arrived. !!! She asked if one of the local restaurants was open again, since I had to drive past it to get to her place, and that’s where we ended up going.
This place used to be half restaurant, half convenience store. They’ve had to completely change everything, and the convenience store side is pretty much empty now.
Hopefully, they will get enough business to stay open. The shut down has been decimating small businesses like this. :-(
While we were eating, my mother started talking about garden sheds.
She has got it in her head to replace the old garden shed that’s here now, even though it’s a very low priority item. It’s come up a few times since we’ve moved here. However, there are a couple of places that have garden sheds in different sizes and styles on display, and she really likes them.
So we drove across the street to a hardware store to look at the one they had on display near the parking lot. She then asked me to go in and get information and a price for her. I ended up getting the information for several different kinds, including a couple of shed kits (which were decently priced) that we would have to put together ourselves, and several more fully assembled types (which are MUCH more expensive), as well as information about delivery and set up.
She then wanted to see where there is a display of 5 or 6 sheds, in the parking lot of an empty building, not far away.
Forgetting that today is Friday.
There’s a Farmer’s Market there, every Friday.
Which was fine, since both of us have been meaning to check it out, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
It was quite busy, but I did find one last parking spot – and found myself looking at the younger of my brothers! He was there with his chainsaw carvings. :-)
I made a quick dash to one of the display sheds to pick up their pamphlet, then rejoined my mother…
At my cousin’s honey display, right next to my brother!
She bought herself some honey, and I placed an order for a 9kg bucket of liquid honey.
We’re finally going to be making mead again!
I’ll be going to their honey farm on Monday to pick it up, as he didn’t have any buckets that big at the time. I keep driving past there and thinking I need to stop by and get some honey, without being able to stop during that particular trip! So I’m extra glad we stopped for the market.
We checked out my brother’s display, of course, but he was with customers, so we didn’t stay long. He’s been making some really nice mushroom lawn ornaments lately. I love his morels, of course, but the fly’s bane he’s been making lately are just adorable, with a tall one surrounded by little ones. My mother was thrilled to see them. As a child in Poland, she remembers picking mushrooms in the forest, and they had these. They could grow to knee height, she says! Now, that might be knee high to a child, but that’s still really tall! She says her mother would cook them, then leave them on the window sill, for the flies to land on and die. I knew they were used that way, but had never heard of them being cooked, first!
Once we were done at the market, we did her grocery shopping, then I stayed for a while as we talked garden sheds.
After going over the information I got and explaining things, I did offer an alternative.
That’s a lot of money, and we don’t really need a garden shed right now. With the roof on the old one covered with strips of metal roofing, the old one no longer has a leak, and is adequate to our needs. What would be more useful for us right now would actually be a gas powered wood chipper, so we can get rid of all those piles of branches all over the place.
To think, when we first moved here, I thought we would be able to use the wood I cleaned up in the fire pit, during cookouts. Aside from not being able to actually use the fire pit more than a couple of times, due to fire bans, we cleaned up far more wood and branches than I ever imagined. Even without a fire ban, there’s just too much to burn. I told her about the estimate I got, to have a company come out with their huge wood chipper. They estimated 6 hours to do the job, at $750 (though, after all this time, I would expect it to be more now). But if we had our own chipper, we could clean out the piles, and have something we could use, year after year.
Unfortunately, when I mention that we can also use the wood chips, she gets upset, because she’s never heard of anyone doing this before, she didn’t do it, so why do I want to do it?
…
*sigh*
Still, a chipper would be less expensive than a shed and, for us, more needed at this time.
I left the suggestion with her to think about. She told me she would talk to my older brother for advice. Which she has actually done before, at least once, that I know of.
In the end, I honestly don’t expect it to happen. If it does – either a shed or a chipper – I’ll be happy, but the likelihood is very low.
And that’s okay.
In the end, it turned out to be a very good visit. My mother got an outing she really, really needed, she got her groceries, and we even got to enjoy the market and see other family.
I got to follow up on a couple of things this evening.
We hit 32C/89F today, so once things got cooler, I headed out to water the garden beds.
Yesterday evening, after letting the silicon sealant cure for more than 24 hours, I filled the rain barrel by the garden, so today was the litmus test. I’m happy to report, there were no leaks at all at the cracks in the barrel.
With the barrel set up in the shade of a tree, the water in it was actually still cool! But not cold, which I’m sure the squash pants appreciated. Some of the leaves look like they got shocked by the cold, the last time I used a hose to water them.
While watering the beets and carrot beds, I startled a little friend.
It even gave me a chance to get pretty close with my phone to take pictures, before disappearing. This is the first time I’ve seen one of the green tree frogs jumping out of these beds. Gosh, they’re pretty!
While there, I decided to check on my other green friend, in the chokecherry tree by the junk pile.
The caterpillar is still there – and noticeably bigger! If you look at the veins in the leaf to compare between the two dates, you can see he’s quite a bit longer. The colouring has smoothed out, too. I’ll have to check again over the next while; he might get as big as the ones I found when I was a kid!
I’m happy to add that I saw flashes if kittens while making my way between the garden beds. While I was checking on the caterpillar, Butterscotch even emerged from the spirea to say hello and let me pet her. :-)
I’m glad she didn’t move her kittens.
The next thing I’ll be following up on is how things go tomorrow! We’re headed to the city for my husband’s first appointment with the pain clinic. I’m glad it’s finally happening, though to be honest, I don’t have much confidence in how it’ll go. After all these years, I think I’ve gotten way too jaded, but between the 2 years it took for my husband to get a 14 page form to fill out, and what was in the form itself, I am already not impressed with this place.
Mind you, I don’t think I’ll even be able to go in with him. They said he’ll have to wear a mask to go in, without anything about medical exemptions – and he has several conditions that would apply! I already know wearing a mask triggers my chronic cough, so maybe we’ll both be able to get exemptions, but I doubt it. Another reason for my expectations to be very low.
