I’m actually starting this post on Wednesday night, and scheduling it to publish in the morning, so when I say “today” at any point, it will actually be “yesterday” when it gets published.
I have just spent most of today outside.
After doing the morning routine, I started to shovel, while the snow was still light and fluffy. I got the paths around the house and to the feeding stations, around the fire pit, to the wood piles and even to the compost pile before I finally stopped and headed inside. My daughters, sweethearts that they are, had a hot breakfast waiting for me when I came in, though it was closer to lunch time than breakfast by then!
I completely forgot that I needed to go into town today. One of my husband’s meds is a “controlled substance” so he can only get refills when they are almost out. He called it in on Monday, and the pharmacy had to order in the refill, which was ready for pick up today. He did not have any left for tomorrow, so this wasn’t something to get delivered. They *really* cut it tight with that stuff.
I wanted to talk to the pharmacy anyhow.
It was shortly past noon when I headed into town. Props to the poor pharmacist assistant that was helping me out! It took some doing to figure out if they could even do what I was asking.
For my daughter and I, who share a doctor, requests have been sent to update our refills, so that we can fill 3 months worth (slightly less for one of my daughters’ meds, as we’re coming up on the cut off date for her pharmacare coverage). I’ll get a call when they have a response. Some of the items have to be special ordered in.
On looking at my husband’s file, though, we just won’t be able to do it. He’s got the injections, for starters. Yes, he has a medication fridge, but they would be past their “best before” date before he finished them. Bubble packs are only done 4 weeks at a time. No more. Some of his meds are also controlled substances and they are not allowed to dispense more than a month’s worth at a time. Potentially, we could talk to his doctor about changing that, but since he can’t get 3 months worth for most of his meds, there’s really no point.
Hopefully, we will won’t have a winter that will leave us snowed in or whatever. Yes, my brother has his snow blowers out here, but there are “tricks” to starting them, and I don’t know what they are. He’s got snow clearing equipment that are much larger and get pulled by a tractor, but his tractors need work.
Thankfully, this truck can handle deeper snow than our previous van could, but we’ve had so many weird and unexpected issues crop up, I really don’t want to take too many chances in winter. Of course, meds can be delivered, but if the roads are such that we can’t get out with the truck, the delivery driver sure as heck isn’t going to make it with his car! Nor would we want him to even try.
After getting as much of that straightened out as possible, I let them know that my credit card on file to pay for anything not covered is now listed as “lost”, so it won’t work anymore. She took the information out of our files completely and, once my replacement card comes in, in 3-4 business days, I will give them a call with the new information. Then I got my husband’s single refill that he needed before picking up some gas (prices went up to $1.199) and headed home.
It was still light out, but I knew that wouldn’t last, so as soon as I got everything settled, I was back outside. This time to break out little Spewie.
We put that little electric snow blower (I think it’s actually considered an electric snow shovel) through so much more than it was made for!
I used it to clear out a large enough space in front of our garage for the truck to be able to back up, turn around, and go into the inner yard. I didn’t go down the driveway to the road, though. At one point, I was hearing something odd over the sound of Spewie. It turned out to be our vandal’s tractor going by. I couldn’t see if he was driving it, or his wife. I was going back and forth and basically ignoring it, but saw that he’d actually parked the tractor in a spot where I could just see it through the trees, so something was going on, within view of our driveway. So once the area in front of the garage was done, I switched to working in the inner yard. At one point, I heard the tractor again and, when I later came out to switch out the memory cards on the trail cams, it was gone. I’ve checked the files and he (or his wife) never got close enough to trigger the motion sensor, so that’s just fine. I only care what happens at our own driveway.
So there is still about half the driveway, through the gate to the road, that needs to be done, plus a couple of paths in the outer yard. By then, I was getting really cold, even with my (old and ratty, but still really warm) down filled coat. I did quickly take care of feeding and watering the outside cats, since I was still dressed for outside, and did my evening rounds before calling it a day.
Definitely a pain killer day. I might even be taking extra anti-inflammatories before going to bed. I can already feel my joints stiffening up and getting painful. I don’t feel any of that while I’m working outside, but once I’m inside, in the warm and settling down, my entire body starts to stiffen up and hurt. Hopefully, I didn’t over do it and I’ll be able to walk normally tomorrow.
I seriously considered skipping working on this post, but it really shouldn’t take long. I’m not going to spent too much time looking for old photos, etc. for this one. I’m just too tired.
So, without further ado, let’s start analyzing our perennial and food forest items.
The New Stuff – asparagus, strawberries, walnut, plum, apple, gooseberry and haskap.
Asparagus and Strawberries.
I’d picked up some new varieties of asparagus, since our first bed turned out to be in a very bad location. I also wanted to try some new strawberry varieties. I’ve tried the white strawberries before, but they never grew.
Those ended up going into a new bed I made for them but, unfortunately, it took so long to get to planting them, I really didn’t know if any would make it. If I’d known it would take so long, I would have stored the bare roots differently to keep them going, but I really did expect to get them in the ground sooner. I made sure to pre-soak the bare roots before planting and hydrated the soil before and after planting.
In the end, none of the strawberries made it. Much to my shock, four out of five Jersey Giant asparagus showed up. Even when one got rolled on by a cat, in spite of the protective garden stake it was growing against, it sent up a new shoot! No sign of the Purple Passion, though.
Opal Plum, Haskap, Apple and Gooseberry
I was very excited to find a self pollinating variety of eating plum through Vesey’s that is hardy to zone 2! I also picked up a cross pollinating pair of haskaps, since the first ones we planted just aren’t thriving. Then, at a homesteader’s event, I was able to pick up an eating apple sapling (I’ve already forgotten the variety and don’t have the energy to look it up), a gooseberry bush and black walnut – a 1 yr sapling, plus seeds.
All but the walnut got planted in the same area.
In the above picture, the Opal Plum is on the right, the apple on the left, and the gooseberry in the middle. We had to say goodbye to our elderly cat, Freya, this year, and we buried her where the Opal plum is now planted.
It did really well!
Until the deer got past the protective frame and ate the leaves.
They got to the peas that day, as well.
The plum got more protective fencing around it, along with pinwheel distractions, but that wasn’t enough, either. We ended up having to add chicken wire around it, too. The deer really wanted those plum leaves!
Happily, they started growing back quickly.
The new leaves stayed until well past several frosts, too.
With the drought and heat, I did make sure to water everything regularly during the summer. The old rain barrel we had set up there now leaks near the bottom, so I took advantage of that. I set it up between the apple and gooseberry. While the barrel was being filled with a hose, I used a watering can on everything else. By the time everything else got watered, the barrel would be pretty much full, so I just left it to leak. That basically gave the apple and gooseberry a slow, deep watering of about 40 gallons.
The area we’re planting the food forest in gets full sun all day in the summer, and absolutely baked. Something we have to compensate for, until things get large enough to provide their own shade on the ground below.
By the end of the year, everything seems to have survived. Now we’ll just have to see if they survive their first winter!
The black walnut, however, went much further afield.
The above image is what I got at the homesteader’s event; the year old walnut is the one in the pot. The wrapped ones are the gooseberry and apple. Then there’s the bag of walnut seeds, already cold stratified.
The sapling got planted first. The walnut went into the outer yard, well away from other things, due to the juglone from their roots. It took me way too long to get to the seeds, though – long enough that some of them pre-germinated!
So those got planted and mulched first.
I marked off spots for all of the seeds, but aside from the ones that pre-germinated, only one more got planted, on the grave of little Kale, a kitten that didn’t make it this year.
The year old sapling leafed out rather nicely.
It was some time before the pre-germinated seeds broke ground.
Then, of course, the deer happened.
*sigh*
They only got the year old sapling, though, eating some of it. It did recover and start growing back. One of the saplings from the pre-germinated seeds also got disappeared by something. Not just eaten leaves, but the entire sapling, gone. I even dug around and there was nothing in the soil. Whatever got it, pulled it out by the roots. I’m not sure that’s something a deer would do!
The one planted over little Kale never showed up, and there are several other seeds that we just never had a chance to plant. Maybe they’ll survive another year? I don’t know.
In the spring, the current black walnut saplings will get chicken wire around them. I hope to get the last of the seeds planted, too. If they won’t make it, at least it’ll be easier to plant something else in their locations, later on.
If I remember correctly, it’ll be about 10 years before we get walnuts, if they survive that long. Normally, walnuts would not have enough season for the nuts to fully ripen out here, but these are from a nursery in the same growing zone as we are, so these might be better acclimated. Even if they don’t get a chance to fully ripen, they can still be used as a dye and, if they survive another 20 or 30 years, the trees could be potentially harvested for their wood. The last I looked, a fully mature black walnut tree could potentially be worth about $250K in lumber.
I probably won’t be around, by then! 😄
That’s it for the new stuff this year, and I was very happy that we were able to get so many new things for the food forest. It basically put us a few years ahead of what I had expected to be able to do. Assuming they survive!
The Old Stuff: Korean pine, rhubarb, walking onions, grapes, haskap, sunchokes, asparagus, strawberries, wild Saskatoons, strawberries, mulberry, silver buffaloberry, sea buckthorn and crab apples. Plus, surprise raspberry and saffron crocus!
Let’s start with the Korean pine.
Okay, we’re done.
Yeah. Nothing.
These were planted a few years ago. They were 2 yr old saplings, and from what I’ve read, they grow slowly in their first 5 years, then shoot up and grow quickly. Which should have started last year.
We have three of the original 6 left, and they did not grow at all.
It’s entirely possible I’ve been watering dead saplings.
Rhubarb.
We have two areas in the old kitchen garden with rhubarb that predate our living here. Usually, the one in the south corner does well, while the one in the north corner does poorly. This year, however, I pruned back the ornamental crab apple tree in that corner, allowing more light to reach the peppers bed. That meant more light for the rhubarb in that corner, too, and they did really well this year!
We had plenty to harvest for baking, and even enough to freeze.
I do think it’s time to transplant these, though. Maybe not next year, but now that we have the new asparagus and strawberry bed in the main garden area, I’m thinking we can plant more perennials in that section, slowly over the seasons.
Next is the walking onions.
When we first moved here, there was a single walking onion that kept coming up, only to get knocked down or broken by something, fairly early on. One year, I managed to protect it long enough to form bulbils. I planted those along the tiny raised bed, and they’ve been going great there, ever since. This spring, they were already growing as soon as the snow was gone!
As for the original, it never came up again.
We use the walking onions for their greens. I didn’t want them to start “walking” too far, though, so we harvested bulbils for eating, too. The remaining bulbils, I made sure they ended up in the area I want them to grow in, against that little raised bed, rather than spreading into the yard and in areas we have other things planted. These guys are very strong and did very well this year. The poor growing conditions we had this year didn’t phase them at all!
Grapes
We still haven’t transplanted these! I have not decided on a good new location for them.
This year, they did rather well, in spite of the fact that I kept forgetting to water them!
These caterpillars showed up again this year, though not for long.
We got a lot of grapes and they were probably the biggest we’ve seen since we unburied them from the spirea that had grown over them. Still smaller than they probably should be (we don’t know the variety, but they are probably Valiant). We ended up not harvesting much, though.
Here you can see some of the grapes we included with a harvest of Spoon, Sub Arctic and Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, herbs, Custard beans and a single Royal Burgundy bean, walking union bulbils and nasturtium seeds.
Mostly, though, we just snacked on the grapes whenever we were puttering around the yard.
Then, they were all gone.
Given the lack of damage, I’d say the birds got them. Which I didn’t mind too much, this year. When we do finally figure out where to transplant them, protecting them from birds and raccoons is going to be a priority!
Haskap
*sigh*
The original haskap we planted – two “Mrs. Honeyberry” and one “Mr. Honeyberry” are in a bed near the chain link fence. This year, as in previous years, the “Mr. Honeyberry”, which is much larger, leafed out and bloomed ealier.
One “Mrs. Honeyberry” that was planted the same year did show a few flowers and even had a berry or two. This spring, it looked so dead, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it never got any leaves at all. The second “Mrs. Honeyberry” was planted the next year and, while it gets leaves, it hasn’t been getting any bigger, and didn’t bloom at all this year.
The “Mr. Honeyberry” is self pollinating, and we did actually get almost a handful of berries this year. Probably the most, since we planted them, though not by much. By the end of the season, odd brown patches starting showing up on the leaves. I hope they didn’t end up with some sort of fungal disease!
They just don’t seem to be doing well in this location. We should have bushes covered in berries every year by this point, and it’s just not happening.
Which is why I bought two completely different cross-pollinating varieties. Varieties that should both bloom at the same time!
Sunchokes
These have never grown to the point of blooming, but we still get tubers out of them. They are not supposed to be affected by things like heat and drought that much, but they were much smaller this year than in previous years. I think the smoke, plus the elm tree near them needs to be pruned back again, contributed to that.
In the end, I only harvested part of the bed, leaving the others to keep growing as long as possible. They didn’t seem any smaller, even though the plants were! The unharvested tubers should mean a lot more plants for next year.
Then the deer got them.
*sigh*
At least it didn’t happen until almost the end of the growing season. They’ll be fine over the winter.
Asparagus
Next to the sunchokes is the old asparagus bed. Though we didn’t have the flooding in the area we have had in previous years, I really didn’t expect anything to come up. These were planted long enough ago that we should have been able to harvest plenty of spears, every spring for the past two or three years, but it’s just not happening. We did have a few surprise spears show up, though, which I just left alone.
One of them, however, was a massive, thick asparagus spear that quickly grew into a huge fern, and went to seed.
I now have asparagus seed collected, and am looking to try planting them next year. The new purple asparagus we got this spring didn’t survive their delayed planting, so that would be a good spot to try planting seeds next year.
Albion Everbearing Strawberries
We planted these last year, and they did surprisingly well in their distant bed, though the deer got at them, too. This year, that bed was thoroughly neglected. It did have chicken wire over it, though, and some of the runners survived. After it became clear the new varieties I got did not survive their delayed planting, I dug up all the Albion Everbearing strawberries I could find – which was a surprising number of them, considering the conditions – and transplanted them were the failed strawberries had been. One of them even bloomed and produced a couple of berries! If they survive to next year, though, I expect to see more strawberries. I’ll be in a better position to maintain them in the new location, too.
Saskatoons
Some of you might know these as serviceberries.
These grow wild in several areas in our spruce grove. Most of them quickly get some sort of fungal damage? Insect damage? I’m not sure, but it renders whatever berries develop, inedible.
Near the house, however, we have some that produce good berries.
Once again, we didn’t really harvest them, but did snack on them, while we could. I also tried to prune away things that were growing back and crowding them out, and I cut away all the chokecherries that were crowding them. We don’t need that many chokecherry trees, that’s for sure. With the drought, the Saskatoon berries weren’t as big and juicy as they could have been, but they were still quite good.
Then they all disappeared.
Birds.
At some point, I’d like to buy specific varieties of Saskatoons for the food forest area, but for now, we are just fine with the wild ones.
Mulberry
These had a mixed up start. When we got them, it was two 1 year saplings instead of the one 2 yr sapling we ordered. They had run out of the 2 yr ones, so they were sending out pairs of 1 yr old saplings instead.
They were so small, we ended up potting them up and keeping them in the house that year, then planted them outside the following spring.
I’m happy to say, they survived their first winter, but seemed to struggle by the end of this season. I’m really hoping they survived their first drought! We’ll know for sure, in the spring.
Sea Buckthorn.
We have two survivors of the original five planted. This year, they seemed to do quite well, in spite of the conditions. They’re supposed to be quite hardy to the prairie weather, and they seemed to demonstrate that this year.
I still don’t know if we have two females, two males or one of each. It might be another year or two before we can figure it out. We’ll know when they finally start blooming. Which was not this year.
However…
Silver Buffaloberry
We saw our first silver buffaloberry berries this year!
Which means we got to taste them.
I don’t think a drought year is a good time for tasting these. They were quite bitter and unpleasant.
These are being grown as a privacy screen, and if we don’t like the berries, they should be enjoyed by the birds, so no loss there.
Highbush Cranberry.
Now, onto the highbush cranberry.
Aaaannnd… we’re done.
Yup. Another one that didn’t seem to do anything this year. They got leaves, but did not get any bigger at all, even though they were among the things that got regular watering. Not sure why they’re not growing, though several possibilities come to mind.
Crab Apples.
With our weird spring, one of the crab apple trees never really bloomed and had almost no apples on it. That tree doesn’t have edible apples on it, anyhow, and gets left for the birds and the deer.
Of the ones that did produce, this one matures first.
They are small but, once ripe, they have really delicious sweet apples. Once again, we didn’t deliberately harvest much of them. I made sure to gather an ice cream bucket full for my mother. As the season got colder, I started to shake some of the branches so the apples would fall to the ground for the deer to eat. That way, they would have no reason to break any branches, trying to reach the apples.
Unlike on this tree.
This tree produced larger crab apples that mature about a month later than the first ones. My mother go a bucket full of these, too. She was quite happy with both types!
Then, one morning, I found a branch and been broken. It didn’t have enough apples on it for it to have been the weight of fruit to break it, so it was most likely a deer trying to pull off an apple. The broken branch didn’t die, though, and the apples remaining on it continued to ripen! I’ll prune that away in the early spring, when I can get a ladder to it.
Liberty Apple
This zone 4 variety, planted in a sheltered area, has so far survived our zone 3 winters. It’s still too young to produce fruit, though. It’ll be probably another 3 years before we get to that point. We just need to keep it alive!
Now, we have a couple of surprises.
Royalty Raspberry.
We’d ordered a 3 pack of these a couple of years ago, and planted them in the food forest area. They actually stared to produce berries their first year, which should have happened in their second year. The next year, only one survived. Barely. This year, I thought for sure they were all dead.
Then one showed up.
It never got bigger than a few inches, though once I found it, I made sure to water it regularly. We’ll see if it survives to next year.
We did have plenty of regular raspberries from before we moved out here, most of which have taken over the old compost pile near the main garden area. Those were often part of my breakfast, while doing my rounds!
Then there was an even bigger surprise.
Saffron crocus
I got some saffron crocus corms that are from a Canadian source, but they are still zone 4. We’re zone 3. I figured if we buried them deep enough and mulched them well enough, they might make it. The instructions specifically stated not to water them (I cheated this year), and we were to expect them to bloom in August. They are also supposed to spread quite a lot from season to season.
We planted them two falls ago. Their first year, we saw their greens pop up, but couldn’t keep them free of the weeds in the area, and soon couldn’t even find their leaves anymore. I figured they were a lost cause.
Then, this spring, they showed up again! I did try to keep the area weeded, but eventually, the greens just disappeared again. Considering these were an experiment I didn’t really expect to succeed, I figured we could just cut our losses.
Then we had our septic tank cleaned out in November, which is quite late for us. While that was being done, I was on kitten duty, making sure none came to close to the open tank. A couple of them were hanging out in the fenced off area where we have the Liberty Apple, tulips and the saffron crocus planted.
Much to my surprise, I spotted new crocus leaves. From quite a few areas. They had clearly been expanding.
Then I saw the flower.
This is about two months late! There was one flower that had fully bloomed before getting hit by frost. Nearby was a second flower bud that never opened.
We actually had a single saffron crocus to harvest a whole three saffron threads from.
Since then, this bed has been heavily mulched for the winter.
We might actually get saffron crocuses again, next year! Hopefully, not so late as November. 😄
Final analysis
Most of this stuff is long term planting and it’s still too early to know how they are doing. It may be years before we see anything from them.
Others, like the rhubarb, walking onion, Saskatoons, we just need to leave them be, though I do want to eventually transplant the rhubarb to a better location.
It’s been unexpectedly difficult to get things going in the food forest. Which is a big deal, when it can take 10 years before something starts to produce food!
Also, we really need to get on top of putting protection around our new food forest stuff. The dollar store tomato support kits we got seem to have been enough for most of the new things, but even the larger version was not enough to protect from the deer.
It’s a good thing I still have quite a bit of chicken wire left.
Over the next while, we intend to continue to plant more fruit trees hardy to our zone, more berry varieties and so on. I’m also looking to try planting things near or around stuff in the food forest area to help them out. I’ve been reading that planting garlic around fruit trees, for example, can deter deer. There are also “guilds” of things that can be planted around them. Even things like winter squash can potentially be planted around them, to help shade the soil and keep critters away. Things to consider as we expand these areas.
We are slowly working on building trellis tunnels attached to pairs of raised beds. I am thinking that, as we keep expanding the garden beds, we can start building pairs of raised beds closer to the food forest area, with poly tunnels over them, instead of trellis tunnels. This would allow us to expand what we can add to the food forest. For example, one of the tree sources I use has paw paw seedlings available. They are zone 5 and would normally not survive our winter. The area I’m thinking of adding polytunnels to gets a lot of sunlight, so even in winter, they would be considerably warmer, giving things like paw paws a chance to survive. We might not be able to grow, say, citrus, but having such structures would really open up what we could potentially grow.
It might take a few more years before we get to that point, though. Unless I’m able to harvest a lot more of those dead spruces to build raised beds with faster, with the help of my brother and a tractor to pull the trunks out of the spruce grove. We shall see.
So, that’s our perennial and food forest for this year. I’m really hoping the new things we got will succeed. It was a rough year for the food forest, too, it seems. We even lost a couple more silver buffaloberry, though that started out as a pack of 30, so there are still lots to form our privacy hedge.
It’s slow going with this stuff, but it will be worth it in the long term.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 