Friday, April 1, 2022
We had a freeze last night. I didn't think to cover the asparagus and it looks like it took a pretty good hit. The spears that had come up are all bent over and they look frozen.
It seems impossible that March is already over. March...I had so many things I was looking forward to planting and now the month is just gone. I did get some things planted, and I do have a few plants growing in pots, but it just seems like the month "went missing" or something.
My beautiful raised rows have been invaded by fire ants. They have also invaded the compost bins.
The Enterprise apple tree and the Gala apple tree that I bought from Stark Brother's nursery are putting out leaves. I don't know if they'd have taken the frost last night, but they got covered up with some old sheets just in case and they seemed fine this morning.
The American Hazelnut trees I ordered from Arbor Day Foundation came last week. I got them planted out in the back yard.
Bought 20 10' t-posts at the Co-Op for the new "deer fence," along with two rolls of 2"x4" horse fence from Atwoods. Hope to be able to start setting posts in the ground this weekend. We'll do a little on this project at a time, just working as we can.
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| Rangemaster "Horse Fence" from Atwoods. The openings are 2" x 4" and it looks and feels like a good quality wire. This 200' roll was $309.99. |
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Happy Easter!
April is flying by, just like March. I can hardly believe we're already halfway through the month. It kind of makes me sad, because April is one of my favorite months of the year. All the plants start to "wake back up" from their winter dormancy, and the summer birds and insects start to trickle back in. The cow pasture is a brilliant emerald green, although lots of the green is from meadow buttercups (those yellow flowers, the generic name we give to them). But it's still pretty.
It always amazes me how fast the chickweed grows. It seems like one day the flowerbed is brown and lifeless, and overnight it's covered with chickweed a foot high. But I don't mind the chickweed. I can go through with my hands and rip it out of the flowerbed with very little effort...and it makes a great addition to the compost bin.
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Chickweed spreading into the flowerbed.
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It's really been a busy month if I stop to think about it. As each day goes by, it seems like I'm making absolutely no progress at all in the garden, but looking back now, I see lots of small things that I've done that altogether add up.
We've had quite a few days where the forecast called for severe storms.
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| An "edge" of a thunderstorm approaching from the west on the morning of March 30. This storm just brought us some gusty wind and heavy rain. Thankfully, no damage. |
There have actually been tornadoes to our west and to our east, but we've so far been lucky and not taken any type of storm damage.
This screen capture from Monday, April 11 shows an area of rotation approaching Scranton. I heard from my dad that a tornado did touch down briefly at Scranton, and did some damage. This one eventually went south and east of us over Knoxville. A friend of my younger sister who lives in Knoxville said they could hear the storm roaring as it went by. Thankfully, it didn't cause any damage in that area.
An earlier storm had moved along that almost exact path, only the first storm did produce a tornado that moved through parts of Pope County, and stayed on the ground for quite a while.
So with the threat of hail, I have put off transplanting things into the garden. The tomatoes and onions were starting to look especially stressed, so even though we still have the possibility of severe weather in the forecast, they got set out in the garden late this week.
The other weather threat has been the cold. We've had one night where there was a pretty solid freeze (low temperature that night was 27° F according to my little sister). While I did cover up the apple trees and the little raised bed, I forgot about the asparagus, and it took a pretty severe hit.
The second night of cold wasn't quite so bad...just a light frost. I don't think it would have hurt things, but I went ahead and covered the apple trees and lettuce beds that night as well. Again, the asparagus took a little hit, but nothing nearly so serious as the first freeze.
We've had lots of cloudy days though, but not an overwhelming amount of rain. I think we're actually below normal on rainfall for the month. I have managed to get my water barrels all full again.
Fire ants...oh how I hate them. There was a large nest of them at the base of the old pecan tree and I never did anything with them for fear of hurting the tree. They actually hurt the tree, building their nest up under the bark on the south side. But by not taking aggressive action against them, I think they built tunnels out horizontally, into my compost bins to the east, and into my raised rows to the west. So far, I've discovered them in the first foot or so of every row in that part of the garden. I've been pouring boiling water on them and that seems to knock them back for a bit. The question will be if that caused them to move somewhere else, or if they'll repopulate the area after I get things planted in it. If they do, the plants may have to be sacrificed. I would hate that, but I have learned the hard way that you can't give those devils an inch or they'll take a mile!
The vetch took off growing like crazy in mid-March and I started cutting it down to prevent it from going to seed in the garden. I have all but a row and a half cut...that row and a half HAVE to be cut this week, or I'm afraid I'll have waited too late.
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| Vetch/winter rye is being cut down and left on the row as a mulch. |
Here's what I can remember that I've transplanted or planted in the garden up to this point:
Carrots; Bibb lettuce; Cherry Belle radish; Early Texas Grano onion; Sugar Snap peas; Detroit Red beets; Tendercrisp celery; Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage; Commin dill; Cilantro; Calendula; Petunia; Broccoli; Brussels Sprouts; American Flag Leeks; Empress of India nasturtium; Cherokee Purple tomato; sweet basil; German chamomile; and Borage.
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| Cherokee Purple tomatoes, with sweet basil interplanted throughout the row. The plants have cages around them now to protect them from the rabbits, but will be tied up to the cattle panel when they get tall eough. |
The flowerbeds have had several things planted, including snapdragons; larkspur; calendula; petunia; zinnia; sunflower; verbenia; purple prairie clover; wild bergamot; and other assorted flower seeds that my mom gave to me in an envelope last fall.
RAF and I did make more progress on our very big gardening project yesterday. We now have the stretch of fence along the south part of the yard (almost) put up. It's not perfect, but then nothing I am involved in is ever perfect. If it keeps Mo and Lola in and keeps the deer; rabbits; cows; other dogs and groundhog (and Mr. Groundhog is back, by the way) out, then it's a win.
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| The new fence. We left the existing barbed wire fence and posts up (the shorter orange posts), but added new 10' posts between each short post, and put up 2" x 4" horse fence on the outside over the barbed wire. |
I'm not positive we got it stretched tight enough, and I'm not at all happy at how we got it fastened around the pipe fence at the corners, but it seems pretty solid. And while I wish it could have been straight all across the top, we just went ahead and followed the dips in the yard so that the wire comes into contact with the ground all the way across. We might could have bent it at the high points, but that would have meant bending the majority of the wire past the shop and I just didn't think we could do that. It was a much harder job than it should have been, mainly because we didn't have much of a clue about what we were doing, but in the end, we were able to get it fasted to the posts most of the way across and we got three wires wrapped around the post on the west end to hold it. We'll need to put tension back on it to finish, and I have lots of fence clips to install and tighten, but I'm not at all unhappy with our progress yesterday.
I plan to pick up the two wooden posts needed for the H-brace at the north end of the west fence this week, and once we have those concreted in, we'll be ready to stretch that wire. I think it will go better for us because we learned some lessons on this first installation.
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Tomorrow is a big garden day!
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
They're here! My order from Nourse Farms was delivered today, with 25 Galletta strawberry plants and three blueberry plants!
The order came with a nice little instruction book and a packet of Agri-gel. The plants were well wrapped, but I wish they had put some crumpled up newspaper in the box. One of the blueberry plants had the end broken off. I don't think it will hurt it though.
I put all 25 strawberry plants in the section of the raised bed that RAF helped me finish. It has Ocean Forest® potting soil from Fox Farm on top of the clay. I hope that works out. I know they're really too close together (they're spaced only about 1' apart), but hopefully I can move some of the runners next spring after I get the back part of the raised bed finished up.
