Saturday, January 29, 2022
After a cold start this winter day turned out to be very nice. So nice, in fact, that I couldn't resist the temptation to plant some seeds!
I planted Early Frosty green peas; Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts; Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage; and broccoli seeds I saved from the plant that went to seed in the garden last year (I'm pretty sure the plant was the variety called Waltham 29). The peas are in the south window out on the inside porch, but the others are in the living room sitting in plastic containers on the Dish receiver. The electronic equipment makes a good "heating mat" so long as I don't spill any water!
I am a bit worried about my onions and leeks. After what seemed like such a promising start, they look weak and spindly to me. But then they are in the Allium family, so maybe they're supposed to look spindly?
The blueberry bed got another dusting of Sulphur this afternoon. I'll need to weigh the bag now to see how much I've put out altogether, but I bet it's close to 1 lb. That's getting very close to what I calculated the bed would need.
And finally, RAF helped me add four more cartloads of cow poo and three cartloads of leaves to the new compost bin. I was surprised how much it had settled since Tuesday, but with today's additions, it's almost full - filled to about three and a half feet high. I need to get my thermometer ordered so I can keep an eye on the temperature. I sure hope the stuff gets hot enough to kill any grass and weed seeds that I've added. I suspect there have been quite a few where I've scooped up poo mixed with uneaten hay. Wouldn't that be horrible, to add smartweed seeds onto my beautiful raised rows!!! I also decided today that I really need a manure fork. The poo is easy to scoop up from the field with a flat shovel, but a shovel just isn't going to work to turn the pile.
Unfortunately, I've not had any luck finding any pallets for the additional compost bays. There's someone in town who apparently goes around and loads up all of the discarded pallets from the local businesses. I may end up having to find something else to build those bays from. What a shame that would be.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
RAF helped me put two more loads of cow poo and leaves in the new compost bin yesterday during my lunch break. It's now about two-thirds full, and I plan to add enough this weekend to fill it up. If it doesn't work out, I'll have a lot of poo to undo.
He also helped me get a measurement on the west fence this evening to see how much wire I will need to buy. Rough measurement was 168 feet. I've pretty much decided to go with this wire:
Now that I know approximately how long that stretch of fence will be, I'll need to get a measurement on the south fence. I think that two rolls are going to be enough though.
After tossing and turning for a few nights thinking about the fence, I've decided to just make a "parts list," figure up how much it's going to cost, and just buy everything and get it built. This is one project that I don't want to see get half-finished and left undone.
Saturday, January 22, 2022
Little sister said the low last night was 11 degrees...it's been a cold week!
The sun was out today though, and when I took Mo around the yard this afternoon, I decided that I would go ahead and start to put some of my spring garden plan into action.
Although it's still too early to plant the green peas, I've got the panels ready to go. They'll go in the row where the tomatoes were last year, so hopefully between the cover crop of vetch and the green peas, the dirt in that row will be "refreshed" a bit before I plant the cucumbers there in late April or early May.
I expect I'll plant the peas in early February unless the forecast is calling for another Arctic vortex like we had last year. The target date I have in mind is February 12...three weeks from today. The lettuce and radishes might get planted in the raised bed on that same day. I'll have to double-check the planting calendar to make sure. But I'm so excited! Spring is not too far away!
Since there wasn't much else I could work on outside, I really wasted some time this afternoon playing around in PhotoShop, transferring my paper garden plan into a digital version. My thinking is that I'll have a blank "template" with my little crop symbols at the top, and each year I can plan out the garden using that template. By looking back and my past garden plans, I can help ensure that I rotate my crops in a smart way. Seems like I always tend to plant things in the same spot every year, and I need to get away from doing that.
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| My homemade digital garden planner. |
I told RAF that when I was drawing out my garden plan on paper, it made me think of the old "Pig in the Garden" game that we had when we were kids. He didn't know what I was talking about, but Daughter #1 did! My digital planner is even MORE like the old game. I just hope I can get my fence put up in time so my garden doesn't turn into a real live version of "Deer/Groundhog/Rabbit/Neighbor's Cow in the Garden!"
The onions and leeks have really taken off growing this week although I'm a bit worried that the air in here it too dry, because the tips of the leaves are brown. I'll have to keep an eye on that and if they get worse, find another home for them until time to set them outside. The onions are going to end up in the raised bed where the "purple circles" are. The leeks will go in the strawberry bed, which I plan to put in around the cellar. I have to get those beds built before the strawberries ship in April, but really need them ready for the leeks by early March. Wow...that's only about six weeks away!
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| One-week old onion (left) and leek seedlings. |
Monday, January 17, 2022
I could hardly believe it when I started seeing what looked like onion and leek sprouts on Saturday evening. But sure enough, the little seeds are already coming up! I've put the old fluorescent grow light right on the tops of the pots for now, but they're going to need a better setup in a few days. Germination on the onions looks really good, but I'm still waiting to see how many of the leeks come up. I'm very happy with these seeds from Eden Brothers!
I
spentwasted some more time this weekend looking at deer fence ideas, and found one I really like.
How to Make a Modern Deer Fence for your Garden by Sunny Side Design
I've started sketching out plans on paper to see how much it might cost to build this across the north end of the west yard, and to see how much the rest of the fence is going to cost. I just have to keep telling myself that little Mo and all the good garden produce we'll have are worth it!
Saturday, January 15, 2022
The seeds from Eden Brothers came last week and when I opened the package I thought, "This isn't my order! I ordered onion seeds!" LOL Me and my tired ol' brain! We forgot that we also ordered American Flag Leeks, Sweet Banana Peppers, and Poblano Peppers! Why it was almost like Christmas!
I planted the leek and onion seeds one evening and have them sitting by RAF's TV receiver thingy (no idea what they're called...sound processors?). I didn't set them on it, because I didn't want to take a chance that any dirt might fall into the electronics. But that thing gives off lots of heat, and by putting the pots right beside it, I suspect it works almost as well as a heating mat.
The "long day onions" I planted back on January 1 had started to come up, although I must say I'm pretty disappointed with their germination rate. They're now under the little old grow light, also in the living room. It's too cold out on the inside porch for them right now.
And speaking of cold....
It's snowing!
I lazed around in bed this morning, listening to the sound of the rain dripping off the roof onto the window air conditioner (that's a great sound for "sleeping," by the way!). But RAF was up early, and said the temperature when he got up was in the 40s. By the time I took little Mo around the yard, the ran was changing over to what looked like little white Styrofoam balls and the temperature had dropped to 39 degrees. Within 30 minutes, the little white balls had changed over to small snowflakes, then to big snowflakes that look like feathers. Absolutely beautiful!
Light dusting of snow on the garden at 10:21 am.
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| Garden is almost covered just over 30 minutes later. |
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| Snow tapered off a bit, so not a huge difference between 11 am and noon. But the temperature has dropped to 32 degrees, so whatever else falls will not melt quite so fast as it did at first. |
I have put on another pot of pinto beans, because snowy days just seem like a good day to have a bowl of hot beans with cornbread. I say "another pot" because I started one yesterday, and if it hadn't been for RAF, I might have burned the house down cooking them!
After they had soaked for an hour and been rinsed, I had put them back on to cook, only I put the burner on high to get them started, then left the room intending to set a timer on my phone. But me and my tired ol' brain promptly forgot all about them until I heard RAF yelling.
Although the kitchen was full of smoke, and my favorite cooking pot was charred in the bottom, the beans weren't burned above that bottom layer, so there would have still be a little more time before they'd have burned completely up, and I hope I would have remembered them (or at least discovered them) before that happened. But yikes! I can't be doing stuff like that!
"Stupid Mistake #2 for 2022" -- or maybe this was "Dangerous Mistake #1 for 2022" instead....
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
I got my soil sample results back yesterday, and as expected, the pH of the little blueberry plot was quite a bit too high for blueberries to do well, since they require an acidic soil with a pH of 4.5 to 4.8.
The report recommended applying elemental sulfur at a rate of 750 lbs./acre. So doing the math....
According to The Google, there are 43560 square feet in 1 acre. My blueberry plot is about 5 feet x 15 feet, or 75 square feet. That means it is 0.00172 of an acre.
At the application rate the suggested, that would be 0.00172 * 750, or 1.29 lbs. Since I bought a 5lb bag of sulfur, I should have plenty. LOL
Sunday, January 9, 2022
Another dreary cold day, so I thought I'd spend some more time researching fence materials and reading about how to build a fence.
I think I've decided to go with 2x4 woven wire on the part of the yard where the current barbed wire fence is and either put up some of the mesh deer fence or more barbed wire strands above that. My dad said just stretch the woven wire up over the barbed wire. I can do that on the south run of fence because it has good metal corner posts and braces. But the west fence is another story. The corner post at the very north end rotted off years ago, and the fence is basically just hanging on the T-posts. (Thankfully, the cows haven't figured that out.) Since I'll need to set new posts on the north end of the new yard fence anyway, I think I'll just take that barbed wire down, re-stretch it, and put the woven wire over that.
I've built barbed wire fence before, but have never worked with woven wire. The wire I was looking at on Lowes.com comes in 100' rolls, and my fences will be longer than that. So can you splice the wire? I think so. Will it need wooden support posts set at intervals along the way?
I asked The Google:
See what the first search result was? A post called "How to Install a Woven-Wire Fence" on diydiva.net. I read that post, and it was so funny and authentic that I spent a good two hours reading other posts on the site. I got lots of good chuckles out of her experiences at renovation and especially at some of the pictures she posted of work on her old farm house. I laughed to myself at lots of her posts and thought, "Yep, been there, done that," and "Yep, I have some electrical wire sticking out like that," and "Yep, I have some projects that I started 10 years ago that still aren't finished."
Sadly, she hasn't posted anything since May 2021. I can't help but wonder in this day and age if she died from or was disabled by Covid-19, or if she just got burned out. I hope she is just burned out. I hope she is spending time working on her farm and taking care of herself.
1/15/2022 update: I got an email from Flickr about new posts made by people I follow, so I popped over there to see what I had missed. I haven't looked at Flickr in a long, long, long time. But as I was scrolling through all the pictures I had missed, I saw one that I recognized from the diydiva.net website. It turns out that I've been following "Kit S" for some time now and didn't even remember! I don't know when or why I followed her, but maybe that's why The Google put her post at the top of my search results? I'm glad it did though, and glad I was following her. She has some great albums on Flickr and I think I'll enjoy looking through them. :)
Saturday, January 8, 2022
This year has started out with some pretty cold weather. Earlier today we had drizzle and with the temperature hovering around freezing I wondered if we might have some ice on the elevated surfaces.
Since it's been too cold to do anything outside, I've had lots of time to think about the springtime garden, specifically how we're going to keep the critters from eating it all up. I've pretty much decided we're just going to have to put up a fence of some sort.
A fence will really serve two purposes. First, it should help keep the deer, rabbits, racoons (and that groundhog!) out of the garden. But second, it will also give little Mo a place to run. He doesn't get to go outside unless he's on his leash or on a chain because I'm terrified he'll end up getting shot by the neighbors, or will chase a rabbit or cat out into the road and get run over by one of the idiot drivers who come flying down our narrow little county road to "jump the hill" below us. The only time he gets to run is when we go walking out in the field. We haven't done very much of that lately (deer season, ticks, etc.). He's starting to get quite fat.
So what kind of fence?
From everything I've read so far, for a fence to really be "deer-proof" it has to be at least 8' tall, go all the way to the ground so they can't crawl under, and be made in such a way that they can't wiggle through. Some websites suggest you can use a shorter fence if you set a second fence a few feet inside of the first one. The thought is that deer have bad depth perception, so they get confused by that second fence and aren't sure how far away it is. Others think that the deer don't want to get themselves in a spot where they might be trapped.
Regardless of what we decide to build, it will need some type of woven wire around at least the bottom part so Mo can't get out, and the smaller critters can't get in.
I haven't actually taken the tape measure to the yard, but just looking at it on this image from Google Earth, I'm estimating that I'm going to need 450' to 500' of fence if I want to enclose the area outlined in orange. I could probably knock 100' off of that if I move the fence back to the end of the house, but I was really thinking I should put the American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) trees/shrubs I've ordered inside the fence too. I think the deer REALLY like them. I would actually like to make that back yard a little naturalized wooded area with the hazelnuts, dogwoods, red buds and flowers, but I'll just have to see where that goes.
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| Map legend: Orange = proposed new fence. Purple = north fence boundary if I don't have enough money to do the back yard. Pink = probably a better place to run a deer fence, since the lawnmower can go out the little door to the fence yard, or out the big door for the rest of the year. Yellow = spot where the blueberry patch will be. Green = asparagus bed. White = storm cellar. Map from Google Earth. |
And as I fret over what kind of fence I need to build and what kind I can afford, I've started thinking I might like to make the north piece of fence more of a "privacy" fence. I always feel like the neighbors across the road are "watching me" when I'm out piddling around in the flowerbed or taking pictures of insects on the flowers. It sure would be nice to be able to work out there without feeling self-conscious!
Of course there's no way I can afford a real privacy fence, but I might be able to accomplish the same thing by building a fence out of old pallets. RAF probably thinks that's a bad idea, but I think, done right, it might be a perfect solution for that fence line. I might be able to get the pallets for free at some business that wants rid of them, and that would just leave me needing to buy anchor posts for the ends and where the gate will be. (Because of course, it has to have a gate! Otherwise how will the propane delivery man get to our tank?!)
Saturday, January 1, 2022
Thanks to the rain last night, the neighbors didn't shoot off fireworks this year, opting to fire a few shots from a loud gun of some sort instead. Poor Mo...the new year always starts out as a stressful experience for him. I fear the fireworks will come tonight.
The rain is a wonderful way to start off the new year. We've had about 2 1/2" of slow steady rain over the past 24 hours. It's the kind of rain that soaks in, and was very much needed.
I am thankful because, as my brother-in-law said, now the ponds are full again.
Happy New Year indeed!
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| A welcome rain to start 2022. |