I just spent a bit of time going back over garden photos from last year. For all the drought and heat waves we had, the garden was well ahead of most of this year’s garden. It’s amazing how much the extended cold and excessive moisture has set things back. At this time last year, I was picking at least a few summer squash, and even beans in the morning. As much as they struggled in the heat, the peas were starting to produce pods. The melons were setting fruit and looking really prolific, and even the Mountain Morado corn was starting to develop cobs. The cherry tomato mix and spoon tomatoes had sprays of green tomatoes, with some ripening and ready to eat, soon after.
This morning, I was able to give more onions a hair cut.
These are onions from seed, taken from the high raised bed, which had the most, plus a few from one of the low raised beds. We picked so many from the onion sets last time, most of these went straight to getting dehydrated.
Kitchen shears makes the job to much faster. After a more thorough washing, then trimming off the browned tips, it was quick work to snip them into small pieces. As I write this, they are in the oven under the warm setting, at 145F (the lowest temperature our new oven can go).
Even with the onions, there’s a difference. They they are looking pretty good, last year they were developing bulbs by now.
I got to taste our first strawberry from the transplants! It was so very sweet! Not the one in the photo; that one’s not ready yet. Nor the first one that developed. That one rotted before it ripened for some reason. There are plenty more developing, and lots more flowers, though, so I hope we will have a decent amount from our 4 little plants. Hopefully, they will also develop runners that we can propagate, to have more plants next year. :-)
Still nothing from the bare root white strawberries we got, though. Looks like a total loss, there.
Some of the Carminat pole beans are getting very enthusiastic about climbing! The pole beans on the other side of the trellis aren’t quite there yet. There are a couple of self seeds (or should I say, bird-poop seeded) sunflowers that I am allowing to grow. There are some in other beds that I’m letting grow, too.
I was sure the beans I planted at the tunnel were also vining types, but I’m starting to think they are actually a bush bean. They are getting bigger, but so far, I see nothing to show that they are climbers!
While the Chocolate Cherry and Yellow Pear tomatoes are not showing fruit yet, the tomatoes that were started so much earlier indoors are really starting to fill out! Almost all the plants are starting to show fruit now. The photo above is one of the first Sophie’s Choice tomatoes to develop, and it’s getting surprisingly large, from what I can tell for the variety.
There is a distinct shape difference between the Sophie’s Choice and the Cup of Moldova tomatoes. In fact, it looks like the row that I thought was all Sophie’s Choice actually has a few Cup of Moldova in it. There are a LOT more of the CoM than the SC tomatoes.
The big surprise are the giant pumpkins. Do you see that flower above? And all the buds around it, both male and female?
That’s on the pumpkin I found with a broken stem. The one I didn’t think would survive. Turns out that pushing the broken surfaces together and burying them was enough to save it.
The rest of the squash nearby are not really doing well. Most are still very small, and even the ones that are growing more are nowhere near as big as they should be for this time of the growing season. I am starting to think we might not get any of the winter squash in this patch (the Red Kuri at the chain link fence is doing really well, at least), and we’ll be lucky to get any summer squash, too. The melons are all so small, I just don’t see them making it. Squash and melon all need lots of water, but it looks like they still got too much, this wet-wet spring, and just aren’t recovering. Unless we have a ridiculously long and mild fall. Some of the hulless pumpkins seem to be doing better, but I still don’t think they’re recovered enough to get a crop this year.
We planted SO much this year, and it seems much of it is going to be wasted effort. Hard to believe that it’s pretty much all having a much harder time this year, with so much moisture and more average temperatures, than last year with the heat waves and drought. I would have expected it to be the other way around. Looking at what is working and what isn’t, it definitely confirms that we need to go with the high raised beds. Even the low raised beds, while better than what’s at grade, are not all doing as well as one would expect. The tomato bed is the only thing I would say is doing really well. Most of the onions are doing all right, though even the shallots from sets planted near the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes are struggling at one end of the bed. Though the bet was raised about 4 inches when we framed it with bricks, the end near the vehicle gate had a lot of water around it. So much, it even looks like the shallots at the end were largely drowned out. At least there are more, further down the bed, that escaped nature’s wrath!
I’m struggling with disappointment right now. We planted more then we “needed”, with the expectation that we’d lose some, so that we could at least still be able to preserve food for the winter. Now it’s looking like we’ll barely have fresh produce for the summer.
I just got back from the wonderful person who is letting me take cardboard from her food waste deliveries.
This filled most of the back of the van, with room for me to still see through part of my back window.
The stack looks so small, on the ground! :-D
The next step will be to douse ourselves with bug spray, then go through each of the boxes to remove any tape, plastic labels, etc. Once that is done, we can start laying them around the saplings as a weed suppressant. Priority is around the saplings, but the space between them will also be covered. The cardboard needs to be thoroughly soaked – rain would be very handy right now! :-D Once we have it, it will be covered with wood chips.
I will easily need at least one more load of cardboard to cover the area, so no hurry on the wood chips right now.
We also got a bonus with this load!
These boxes are corrugated plastic. From the looks of it, they mostly held corn. After they get cleaned off, these will work very well for when we need to store potatoes and other things in the root cellar over winter. :-) Plus, as you can see, they easily fold flat for storage. I think I got 10 or so of these. I think they will be very handy for a lot of things!
An extra bonus is, I got to see their baby chickens and turkey, pigs, donkeys and alpaca. They’re already doing a lot of things we are working towards and, once we get our chicken coop built, we’ll be able to buy chicks from them!
I am so happy to have found this family. :-)
In other things, my husband got notification that my new keyboard was ready for pick up, on Monday. I went to the post office to pick it up and there was no card in the mail box. Today is Thursday, and I stopped by on my way home, but still no parcel.
Once I got home, my husband looked up the order.
It was sent by Purolator.
So while I was unloading the van, my husband called the nearest drop off location, since we are not in their delivery zone. Normally, we would have received an automated call from Purolator, if it was being sent there. When I got back inside, he was on hold – with Purolator. It wasn’t at the drop off location, either.
It turned out to be in the city.
How we were supposed to know that, I have no idea. This information was not included in the delivery notice. It just said that it was delivered.
It’s now being rerouted to the drop off location, and we’ll get a call when that happens.
Places that don’t deliver to PO boxes are a real pain in the butt.
Since planting trees and bushes are more long term than our usual gardening, I decided to start a food forest category.
Including for things that were already here before we moved in, like these Saskatoons. It’s so nice to see them blooming again – though you can very clearly see how high the deer ate the twigs and branches! Hopefully, we’ll have berries this year. Thankfully, these are very flexible, so we should be able to bend them down to harvest them.
We are, however getting a frost advisory tonight. !!! Well, our June 2 last frost date is just an average, after all. It’s supposed to dip to just barely freezing, so most things should be all right.
Including…
The 20 out of 30 silver buffalo berry my daughter was able to transplant today!
She does not take progress pictures, though, so I just got a picture at the end of the day.
Even with the holes already dug, it was a huge job. The soil that was removed was so full of roots, rocks, weeds and gravel, she was using garden soil from the remains of the pile we got last year – which is clear across the garden area. After sitting there for a year, it’s full of roots, too, which she picked out as best she could.
She started at the north end of the double rows, next to the highbush cranberry, as the ground is slightly higher there, and the holes were mud rather than filled with pools of water. It didn’t take long before she was having to deal with standing water, though.
Towards the end, I was able to help her out, adding the mulch and watering it just enough to keep it from blowing away. By the end of it, my poor daughter was so knackered, she could barely lift the shovel on its own, never mind with soil in it!
So the remaining 10 silver buffalo berry (I just realized, I’ve been calling them bison berry, because we don’t have buffalo; we have bison. The label says buffalo) will be planted tomorrow. Holes still need to be dug for the sea buckthorn, but there’s just 5 of those. Then there’s the Korean pine, which is going to be planted in the outer yard.
While she did that, I worked on the main garden area and got some decent progress done, too – but that will be my next post.
I’ve made a post that’s now pinned to the top of the main page on this blog, while we’ve got a fundraiser going for the Cat Lady. I got a call from her while I was outside this morning and got some other news.
With her new cat rescue organization started, she had an interview with a community paper. Not one we get in our area, though. Anyhow; she wanted to let me know about it, because they had asked a lot of questions about Cabbages’ history. She assured me she was careful and tactful about it, to respect our privacy, but also used our situation to illustrate the need for affordable spay and neuter programs in rural areas. Which I greatly appreciated.
She also expects to be able to take another cat to the vet she has worked an arrangement out with. It sounds like it will be one at a time, at first. It will be Turmeric. She has Saffron and Nicco listed on her new website, and has noted that Saffron’s sister will soon be available for adoption, too. She was asking me about keeping Saffron and Turmeric together or not. Saffron is apparently the most chill and adaptable cat she’s ever worked with. Nicco has been getting along well, too, but there doesn’t seem to be any bond between her and Saffron. Which doesn’t surprise me. Nicco never really had a chance to bond with any of the other cats here, as she was on the bottom of the pecking order here. I think she will be much happier somewhere with much fewer other animals around! The Cat Lady will contact us again when she has timing worked out between the vet and the foster families.
Speaking of bonding…
Check this out!
Nosencrantz joined a cuddle pile!!!
She was snuggled right up to David’s butt.
A lot of the cats like to snuggle up to David. :-D
This is HUGE, because Turmeric and Beep Beep are right there, and they tend to hiss at Nosencrantz pretty regularly. They hiss at the other cats, too, but as the new kit on the block, Nosencrantz hasn’t learned to just roll with it, yet.
There was another cuddle pile happening.
It involved me.
Fenrir decided to snuggle into my arms and take a nap on my chest while I was at the computer earlier.
This is Fenrir being all sweet and cuddly.
Yeah. She always has that “murder” look in her eyes.
It took almost 5 hours, but I’m done. I’ve sent photos and info to get cats fixed and adopted out.
I had to pause part way through and get a daughter to help me take pictures of Nico and Susan.
It took some doing to send these. She wanted it all texted to her phone.
Which means texting from my phone.
From a cell phone dead zone.
Yes, I have my phone set up for WiFi direct, but it doesn’t seem to work.
My first message was to confirm it was going to the right number, and that took almost 10 minutes to send. I even paired my phone to my desktop, so I could access the photos and type on a keyboard, but it still sent using data on my phone. I was able to leave my phone in the living room, though, where it got a better signal, while still doing everything from my desktop, which ended up working rather well.
It would be good to get the outside cats adopted into indoor homes. No more keeping their butts warm at the melted spot over the heat bulb! :-D
As we worked out on the phone, I started with pictures of Butterscotch and Nosencrantz first, with Nosencrantz being up for adoption, but not Butterscotch.
Then I found (or have to take) pictures of Saffron, Turmeric, Tissue, Nico, Cabbages and Big Rig, for getting fixed and adopted. Beep Beep was included to be fixed, but not adopted. Susan and Layendecker were also included for adoption, though they are already fixed.
Then I sent pictures of Agnoos, Tuxedo Mask, Chadicous, Potato Beetle and Chadicous to add to the list of outside cats that can be caught. So 6 more cats to get fixed and adopted out.
Once those are done, the next focus is the cats that are not at all socialized, or not socialized enough. I mean, we might be able to catch Rosencrantz, but that’s it. Rolando Moon is already fixed and not adoptable, anyhow. For the others, they will lend us traps to catch them, so we wouldn’t even consider it until summer, anyhow.
Of the ones we can catch, there are a total of 9 females, at $75 each, plus 5 males. I don’t know what the rate is for males, as we didn’t talk about it. Usually, it’s half the cost of getting a female done.
Can you imagine trying to get all the females done at $350 each?? Then another 5 males at $175? Plus the cost of vaccinations, on top of that? And then there would be the cost of the cats we’d need to trap.
As I was working on sending the info, I got a call from the shelter.
Talk about a completely different attitude! Not at all like that first call. She started by asking if I’d heard from the person she’d sent my contact info do, and assured her that yes, she had called me, and we had an excellent conversation and worked out a plan that will span months. I made sure to thank her again for getting us in contact with each other. She was happy to hear that.
Then she got to the real reason she called! :-D
She remembered I had mentioned a new cat showing up fairly recently, and she asked if I lived around a certain area several miles to the north of us. That is where a long haired cat, white with black spots, has gone missing. Our Distinguished Guest is a long haired black cat with a white blaze on her chest and white socks. So we traded descriptions. We’re a bit far from the white cat’s location, but it is possible it might find its way here. She asked about the Distinguished Guest and her condition, and she does appear to be healthy. She wasn’t starving or anything, when she first showed up. I did tell her I think we’re dealing with a cat dump, not a lost cat, but you never know. Someone might actually be looking for this cat, so it’s good to have the word out. It’s not like we can check the cat for tattoos at this point.
All of this is going to be done slowly over the next few months. If all goes well, we’ll have half of our indoor cats adopted out, and most of the outdoor cats, before next winter, and any remaining outdoor cats will be fixed. Which should basically be just Butterscotch and Rolando Moon.
Oh, we had something else nice happen in the middle of all this. While at my computer, I spotted some movement on the garage cam live feed. It was my daughter heading for the gate. She had received notification that UPS had delivered a package for her. I hadn’t seen the truck, but sure enough, UPS had found us, and tied the package to our gate.
The last time we tried to get something delivered by UPS, it was delayed something like a week, because UPS couldn’t find us. It looks like our new sign has already made a difference! Our physical address still doesn’t show up on any maps, but the package still got here, without any issues.
So all in all, it has turned out to be a really good day!
As the year winds down, it’s time to review the goals we’d set, see what worked, what didn’t and what we want to accomplish next year.
Among the goals we had:
Starting a cordwood shed to use as an outdoor bathroom, with a composting toilet, to replace the outhouse over a pit.
Well, that didn’t happen. Which is turned out to not necessarily be a bad thing.
The location we want to build it is in that open space behind the compost ring. One of the things I did this past summer was go through the spruce grove and mark most of the dead spruce trees I found. I marked almost 2 dozen, and there were several others I didn’t bother marking, or couldn’t get at. These were trees that were intended to be used for the cordwood walls, however priorities have changed. They will now be used to build high raised garden beds. Right now, the space we want to build in is going to be needed to drag logs out of the spruce grove. Thanks to my mother, we now have a wood chipper that we can use to break down the branches, so we’re not adding to all the branch piles, and will have plenty of wood chips for mulch.
Until we can build the outdoor bathroom, we do still need something to use the next time we have plumbing problems, so the inside of the old outhouse was fixed up and made pretty (the photo here is from before it was finished). A goal for 2022 is to remove the old, moss covered shingles, extend the roof to create an overhang above the door, re-shingle it (or use some of the left over bits of metal roofing we still have in the barn), and do any repairs on the outside before giving it all a final paint job.
We did find that a groundhog had got into the pit and dug a den under the floorboards somewhere. Sadly, if we get an average amount of snow, this will likely result in a drowned groundhog. Our first two springs here, we found that snow melt would form a large puddle in front of the outhouse, and I could see in the hole under the door, which is now fixed, that the pit filled completely with water. There is nothing we can do about this. Hopefully, the groundhog will wake up early enough and leave the den before this is an issue.
Another of our goals is to have the branch piles chipped. While we now have this awesome new wood chipper, which can chip branches up to 3 inches thick, it is very slow going. The branches have to be trimmed of any sticky-outy bits, and be straight, or it won’t go through. For the sake of efficiency, it will be better to hire the tree guys and their massive chipper. When we got their estimate, they figured it would take 6 hours to chip all our wood piles. For our budget, I’m hoping that we can have them come out for three hours in the spring, to get at least the big pile in the outer yard done, and maybe the little ones in the maple grove. Then we can see about hiring them again, maybe in the fall, to do the remaining big piles. With the new wood chipper, we should at least not be adding more to the branch piles, as we clear dead trees out of the spruce grove!
Another goal that we once again failed to meet, was hiring someone to haul the junk pile away to the landfill. This irritates me, because that pile is getting so large, and we are getting to a point where we need to start cleaning up on that side of the chain link fence. If our budget allows, I’m hoping to at least have smaller loads removed, as we can afford it. The name I have for a guy that hauls junk uses a pick up truck, so if we can get him to come by a few times throughout the year, even that would be a help.
Our gardening goals were mostly met, as far as drought conditions allowed. We used poplars we’d cleared out of parts of the spruce grove to build trellises, and those will be used for another year. We planted in areas far from the house, partly to prepare the soil for permanent plantings. The corn and sunflowers were potentially there to provide privacy screens, too, but the drought and poor soil conditions prevented that. Having to use 300 feet of garden hose to water things, and still just barely being able to reach some corners, during a drought and heat waves, was something we could have done without! Add in damage from deer and groundhogs, and it’s a miracle we had as much produce as we did.
For 2022, our garden plans will continue, and this year we will start with the permanent plantings. We are pouring over websites and looking over what bushes we will be planting in those far flung areas. In one section, we will be closing off a gap in the hedge along the north fence line that the deer go through. My mother had been planting lilacs along this fence, but we are looking to plant berry producing shrubs and bushes, instead. We will also be planting them along the east side, both to help keep deer out and to create a privacy screen. We still need to make sure we can access the east fence line, and there has to be a lane kept open, over where the telephone wires are buried, so we will use other methods to close that off to the deer. We’ll have a better idea of what we can buy in January, when many of the nurseries will have their new inventory available. We might be going with sea buckthorn, if the other varieties we were looking at don’t come back into stock.
Other things we intend to order for 2022 are raspberry canes and, if all goes well, Korean Pine. These require shade for their first 5 years, so they will be planted just north of the spruce grove. If budget allows, we’d like to get new Saskatoon bushes, too.
We will have to take out more of the crab apple trees, to remove diseased trees. There are two trees that produce the best apples. If I can protect those, I will be happy. However, we will also be getting other types of fruit trees including, hopefully, a hardier variety of mulberry tree to replace the one that we bought last year, that got killed off by that one cold night that also killed off all the flowers that would have given us fruit and berries this past year. I’m not sure how many we will be able to squeeze out of our budget this year, but the more fruit trees we get, the better, as they can take many years before producing fruit. Berry bushes are also high on our list, as they will start producing much faster.
This past year, we expanded our garden plots significantly, but with our long term goal of growing as much of our own food as possible, we will need to continue to expand and prepare new ground. Now that we have a working chain saw, we’ll be able to clear dead trees out of the spruce grove and clean that up faster. Many of these dead trees appear to have no rot in them yet, and we plan to turn many stumps into benches and tables. We will also need to clear out the fallen rotten trees, and other fire hazards. Once things are cleared out, we will be planting more spruces in the spruce grove, as well as fruit and berry trees that require more protection from the elements. We’re also looking at getting some Rugosa roses, though they will likely be used more as a deer barrier!
Where the trellises are now will eventually be converted to our food forest, except for the lane that needs to be kept open over the buried phone line, but we will use them where they are for one more year. We ordered quite a lot of seeds already, from Vesey’s (including replacement seeds) and Baker Creek again, plus two orders from Heritage Harvest, which is a new company for us this year. The only seeds we’ve ordered that are still en route are the kulli corn. The only other seeds I still plan to buy are peas, but I will pick those up from a local store when they come available, rather than ordering them in. We will also be making use of seeds from our inventory left over from last year. Which means we will need to build more trellises, once we decide where, because we’ll have quite a few vining plants, and there’s only so much we can plant along the chain link fence. ;-)
Along with the saplings, canes and root stock we plan to order, we will be ordering potatoes and sunchokes. This time, we will not try to grow potatoes in bags, but will use the Ruth Stout method again, as part of preparing new areas for either more garden plots, or permanent plantings, the following year.
At this point, we have three low raised bed boxes built, and one high raised bed. Next year, we will continue to use the current beds in the main garden area. The goal is to cut the dead spruce trees to size so that, after things are harvested in the fall, the remaining beds will be converted to high raised beds before next winter. With how much watering we had to do during the drought, filling the beds hügelkultur style will be an important part in moisture retention. Even under normal conditions, high raised beds are notorious for drying out too quickly, but with how we fill them, coupled with the judicious use of mulch, we should be able to prevent that from being a problem.
We will also be making new beds for corn and the many types of squash we have for this coming year, but those will be in areas that will eventually have trees planted in them. Ultimately, we will be building accessible high raised beds in the outer yard to the south of the house, where they will get more sunlight. Eventually, we intend to build a greenhouse or polytunnel out that way, too. It’s not something we’ll be able to start building in 2022, but we should be able to start preparing where they will eventually go. The renter plans to build new fences next year (maintaining the fences was part of the deal they’d originally made with my late father), since their electric fence has been not working as well as intended. I hope to talk to them again about putting a new fence line across the old hay yard, which will be much shorter (therefore, cheaper) than rebuilding the existing fence, but also takes away an area of pasture. We would need a gate in there, though, so that we can eventually haul away those old vehicles to the scrap yard. As that would not be something they’d normally include, I’d be offering to pay for the gate portion. If they are willing to do the new, shorter fence line through the old hay yard, we will be able to get rid of some old, messed up fences and a shed that looks ready to collapse pretty soon. Then we can start building new garden beds out that way. This is also the general area where we want to build the outdoor kitchen, as well as planting a wind break. None of which are worth starting, while there is a chance the renter’s cows can get through. There are also old, collapsing fences around the inner yard we want to take out completely, rather than repair or replace, but again, it can’t be done until the outer yard is fenced in. Long term, though, we won’t have an inner and outer yard anymore, but just one really big yard.
Which means that, on top of continuing our work in the inner yard and garden, we need to get more work done on cleaning up the outer yard. There’s a limit to what we can do, without heavy equipment, but we can at least get a start on it. That was something we should have worked on this past year, but accomplished very little. Hopefully, this coming year will not have the drought and heat waves that made heavy manual labour a very bad idea!
With what we’ve learned from the past year, we know that this year, we will need to focus on protecting our plants from deer, groundhogs and racoons. We will also be focusing on permanent plantings that are drought tolerant and can handle poor soil conditions, even with the amendments we’re working on. We are also looking into planting forage trees and fodder well away from the house and gardens, to give wildlife less reason to invade our yards, looking for food.
As we build our raised garden beds, we will also be ensuring they will all be the same size at the top, so that any covers we build can be interchangeable. The low raised beds are boards and are 3′ x 9′. The high raised bed is 4′ x 9′, and we plan to build them all that size. With the thickness of the logs, the actual growing space inside is closer to 3′ x 8′. So if we build covers to fit the low raised beds, they should also fit the high raised beds.
While most of our goals are going to be expanding or continuing previous goals, a new goal I want to add is to have chickens. For our egg needs, we would only need about half a dozen birds. The problem is, we don’t have anything to keep them in. I am wanting chickens to be part of our soil reclamation progress, which means being able to move their coop and enclosure regularly. Buying a new chicken tractor is well beyond our budget, but we don’t have the materials to build one, either, and with the cost of building materials right now, it’s as out of reach as buying a new one. Of the many, many videos I’ve looked at for making quick, easy and inexpensive coops and shelters for chickens, none of them are suitable for our climate. Oh, they could be temporary structures for the summer, and I do plan to build versions of them that will fit over our raised garden beds, but none of them would keep chickens alive during our winters.
That is something I need to work on. I’d love to get able to get chicks this spring, but if we can’t shelter them once they’re big enough to leave a brooder, there’s no point.
So there we have it. We did accomplish some of our goals for 2021, but many of our goals are multi-year things, so it’s more progress than accomplishment.
Now we’ll see how much we manage to get done next year!
As our day warmed up in the afternoon, I took advantage of it to get some stuff done outside. Now that the sign’s lettering is done, I used the paint, which I chose for its durability, to get the floor of the outhouse painted, first thing.
The first thing to do was remove the remarkably heavy piece of … whatever the stuff is called … out, then sweep and scrub the floor as best I could. Unfortunately, there are cramped spaces on either side of the door frame that I just can’t get into. At least not without making efforts I’m just not willing to make for an outhouse! LOL
I just painted over the crud. I figure, if it’s stuck to the point I can’t get it out with a brush, it can stay there.
Of course, in the time it took for me to turn around and set the paint can and brush down, a leaf blew onto the wet paint!!
I was able to reach it without getting into the wet paint myself, though. :-D Then I quickly closed the door before more leaves blew in!
I don’t think I’ll bother with a second coat. If you look really hard, you can see some of the mint paint through the blue a bit, but most of this will be covered with the mat. I just wanted to protect the wood, really, and I think this will be just fine. If it isn’t, we can always add another coat next year, when we get more of the mint paint. The girls want to give it a final coat in semi-gloss.
It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to redo the roof before winter, so I’ll probably cover it with plastic before the weather turns, though at the state it’s in, it probably won’t make much difference if we don’t.
Which means that, once the paint is dry and the mat is returned, our emergency bathroom is now done for the year! :-)
Today worked out to be a longer day than planned. I had intended to do a Costco trip to the city tomorrow but decided that 1) I didn’t want to deal with weekend crowds and 2) Halloween is around the corner, and I didn’t want to deal with even bigger crowds because of it! So I headed into the city this morning. After this, we’ll need to go over what’s left that we need to pick up, then make one more trip – after Halloween!
Once that was done and everything was put away, I headed to the finished high raised bed, to start filling it, modified hügelkultur style.
While making the bed, I tried to put all the scrap bits of wood inside, so the first order of business was to spread those out more evenly. Then the short logs that had been used to frame this bed over the summer were added to the bottom. There weren’t a lot of those, but we have plenty of piles of wood to raid. I tried to put the bigger pieces on the bottom, then smaller pieces on top, using them to fill gaps as best I could. Then I started adding bark to fill gaps, too. Ideally, there would be no gaps, but with so many odd shaped pieces of wood, that wasn’t really an option.
Thankfully, we have lots of bark debris. This spot used to have a pile of logs between the two spruces. There is just one long one with a weirdly shaped end left. It needs to be cut up before we can use it.
The nice thing is, along with the partially decomposed bark, I was able to pick up quite a bit of spruce needles. Not enough to increase the acidity of our very alkaline soil, but every little bit helps!
I added a couple of wheelbarrow loads of bark into here, and even went around the bed to pick up little bits of wood and handfuls of sawdust to toss in. I wanted to fill the gaps as much as I possibly could.
Next, a few shovels full of soil was added. This is the soil that had been dug out of this bed before the high raised bed was built. Just a very thin layer was added to fill in the gaps a bit more, and give the breakdown of the wood a bit of a boost of soil microorganisms.
Next came a nice thick layer of corn stalks that we saved, just for this! If we did not have the corn stalks, this layer would have been straw, because straw takes longer to decompose than the other things that will be added.
Yes, we have straw, now!
This got delivered while I was working on the corn stalk layer.
I broke that baby open almost right away!
With the layers, I was alternating between “brown” and “green” layers. The corn stalks were a brown layer, so the next layer (after a bit more soil) was grass clippings, which are considered a “green” element.
I stole the grass clippings from the nearby garlic bed, replacing it with straw. I was concerned the grass clippings might smother the garlic. Later, we will replace the grass clipping mulch on the other two beds with straw as well.
But not today.
With each additional layer of soil, I added a bit more than the previous soil layer. The layers were still pretty thin, comparatively speaking, but I could already notice the weight of it was causing the looser layers below to settle and sink. If I had any, I would have been using compost or manure to layer instead of, or in addition to, the soil.
The next brown layer was leaves.
The final green layer got all the bitter lettuce and frozen chard that had been pulled from the other beds. The kitchen compost buckets got added as well, so there’s also things like egg shells and coffee grounds in there.
Now, it was time to add the rest of the soil. This job actually took the longest, because I frequently stopped to spread it out, pull out the roots and rocks, break up clumps, and make sure any worms that hitched a ride were gently and safely buried.
I stopped adding soil when I was getting too many crab grass rhizomes and rocks to make it worthwhile anymore, and the last of it got raked out evenly, as did the soil in the raised bed.
The very last layer was a mulch of wood chips. Thanks to my mother’s generosity in getting us the wood chipper, we had enough to add a couple of inches to the top.
I expect the contents to settle and sink over the next while. We’ll probably be down a few inches, by spring. Which is okay. We will continue to add more organic matter to build it up.
I must say, I am so thrilled with the height of this. It is SO much easier on the back to work at this height! I don’t even have a back injury. I’m just old. ;-) It might be a bit low for my husband, if he ever wanted to do a bit of gardening, but he would be able to reach while sitting in his walker just fine.
One down, five more to go!
Eventually. :-D
Temperatures are expected to continue to be mild over the next couple of weeks; a few degrees above freezing during the say, and just barely below freezing overnight. We’re expecting some rain tomorrow, then possible rain and snow over the next couple of days. Which means we can still continue preparing garden beds for next year. I might even be able to start cutting down more dead trees before things start getting too cold. It would be good to have the lengths pre-cut to build more beds, even if building them ended up waiting until next fall. Mind you, there’s nothing stopping us from adding more beds to the main garden area, other than possibly running out of material to layer with. My only hesitation is that we intend to expend our garden area into the outer yard, where there is better sun exposure, and those will all be high raised beds. Perhaps by the time we’re ready to build those, we’ll be able to use materials other than salvaged dead spruce trees!
Oh, my goodness, what a difference having that new chainsaw made!
But before I could break it in, I needed to drag down the stuck tree, so I could use the wood in the high raised bed. Thanks to my husband very securely attaching the hooks I got to the rope I got – rope rated to 450 pounds – it was a simple matter to use the van to pull it out.
My goodness, where those top branches ever entangled! When I started pulling it, it didn’t fall, but stayed stuck until I got far enough that the tree was no longer dragging on the ground, but lifting up. At which point, it rolled up and got dragged over the compost ring, then finally it broke free from the branches and dropped.
Right on the cherry trees we are intending to cut away, so there’s no loss there!
After replacing a large divot of sod that got dragged out, I then used the baby chain saw to start cutting away the branches, and cutting away the top of the tree.
Then it got rolled onto the compost ring, so the rest of the branches could be trimmed off.
Finally, it was time to break out the new chainsaw!
Of course, I took the time to read the manual, first, then added chainsaw oil to the reservoir.
Then I measured out and cut a pair of nine foot lengths from the tree trunk.
The bucksaw does a great job, but the chainsaw did in mere seconds what would have taken me probably 5, maybe even 10, minutes, per cut, by hand!
Then, while I dragged the logs over to the high raised bed, I helped a daughter move the rest of the tree trunk aside, so they could set up the wood chipper. They cleaned up all the dead branches from the tree, as well as the little cherry trees we’d cut away to access the last tree we’d cut down.
They spent more time prepping the branches to fit the chipper and shredder, than actually doing the chipping and shredding! Unfortunately, the little spruce branches were so twisted, they ended up clogging the shredder chute to the point that my daughter had to take it off to unclog it. Once that was cleared up, they did a few celebratory shreds before heading inside to start on supper.
Meanwhile…
I started working on the high raised bed by first taking it apart! I cut away the notches in the base logs so that the cross pieces would sit lower, and no longer have that gap that was there before. I also was able to clean up the cuts and make adjustments, as needed.
The new nine foot lengths were thicker than I thought, so after I put the bottom cross pieces back, I used the new logs for the next level.
I ended up not needing to cut notches in them at all. Instead, I was able to just adjust and cut the notches in the next level of cross pieces to fit.
It was SO much faster and easier to cut the notches with the chain saw! Pretty much every notch we’d cut before needed modification.
I used smaller, thinner, logs at the top, which turned out to be a pain. These are from higher in the tree, which meant they were not as straight, and had more little branch stubs all over. I ended up having to trim logs along their lengths to get rid of lumpy bits, so things would sit against each other better.
Then I went and cut two more four foot lengths to do the last cross pieces.
There we have it! The high raised bed is built!
Standing next to a corner, it’s just barely reaches my hip. For mobility and accessibility purposes, we could probably have gone higher than this, but I think this will be fine.
Now, we just need to fill it! We’ve got old logs for the bottom, with corn stalks, leaves, grass clippings and garden waste to layer in. I’ll add thin layers of soil in between each layer of organic matter before topping it off with soil for about the depth of the top logs.
That will be a job for tomorrow!
I may have had to juggle the budget a bit to get that chainsaw, but it was worth every penny. There is no way I could have finished this today, without it. In fact, I have my doubts I would have been able to finish it before winter, at the rate things were going!
About the only other thing we might end up doing with this is maybe get some short pieces of rebar, drill holes through the top couple of logs and set the rebar in them to really make sure the logs stay in place.
It’s really a horrible, messy, slapdash job, but it will still probably last us many years.
Now we just need to cut down more dead trees, so we’ll have the material to build more!
While things were still pretty wet from rain this morning, I used some of the stuff I picked up yesterday and worked on the outhouse.
The chain latch was something we already had in the basement, and the handle was something I picked up yesterday. I got a second one that I put on the outside of the back door into the garage, so I don’t have to pry that open with my fingers anymore. :-D This door is kept closed from the outside by a piece of wood that spins on a nail in the door frame. Turn the wood over the door and it holds it closed, rotate it 90 degrees and it basically just pops open. When we get around to replacing the hinges and rehanging the door so that it is straight, it should close better again, but for now, it needs a way for the door to stay closed while someone is inside!
I didn’t find the switch plate LED light I was after, so for now, I just screwed in a cup hook and hung the LED light I’d already brought over for use in here. You can see the sunlight on the wall from the door – and the reflected light from the mirror, too! The switch plate light I’m after can be mounted either with screws that fit into slots on the back, or with self adhesive velcro strips. When it’s mounted, we’ll use it to cover the hole I made with the cup hook, and the hole left behind by a nail from before. I was going to put the cup hook in the pre-existing hole, but it seems that there is a piece of metal broken off inside the hole!
There was enough light in here with the door closed that the auto-flash did not turn on when I took the photo. :-)
The main thing I wanted to do was add the second shelf, not that I have brackets for it.
Of course, if there is a shelf, there must be something on it!
I rifled through the garage again and found these miniature picnic tables. I believe they are condiment holders. They have larger holes cut into the table tops that look big enough to hold those round mustard and ketchup squeeze bottles, and a pair of smaller holes look like they could hold salt and pepper shakers. There were a few of the same flowers I used to decorate inside the mirror cabinet, left in the garage, so I grabbed them, too.
It occurred to me while I was working that the paint I picked up to do the lettering on the sign would be perfect for the floor in here. I’m in no hurry to do the lettering, so the floor boards will probably not get painted until spring.
I had been concerned that things would start raining again, but the sun came out while I was working on this, which meant I could get the stuck tree dragged down, and finish the high raised bed!
The Re-Farmer 