I probably spend too much time watching videos on The YouTube. But I have learned a lot, and there are a few channels I follow that have some really good gardening information.
Two that were especially helpful to me this winter were about how to prune grapes. After watching them, now I know what we never get any grapes from our single Concord grape vine. I've been pruning it wrong!
This morning, I took down the old section of cattle panel I had used as a trellis (it was way too small anyway), set four t-posts, and put up a 16' cattle panel for the grape vine to climb on. Since the vine has been there for probably 10 years or more, I figure it has enough roots that it can probably support four canes, so that's how I pruned it this time. I'm excited to see what happens with it this year!
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| The old Concord grape that I bought on clearance at Atwoods many, many years ago may be properly pruned for the first time ever! You can sort of see the four canes fastened to the second and fourth wires up from the bottom of the panel. |
I also watched a video from Daisy Creek Farms about starting grapes from cuttings and I have four cuttings in some potting soil, and a few others in some water. We'll see what happens. I've not had the greatest success with my cuttings.
I've also watched LOTS of videos about pruning apple trees and decided to go ahead and give that a shot today. I hope it's not too early to be pruning things.
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Other work today included chipping some more sticks with the little Sun Joe electric chipper that I decided to buy for myself.
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| My new little gardening toy: a 15amp SunJoe electric wood chipper. |
Corny, I know, but I think I should name it "Little Joe." LOL! He does a good job, although I don't feel comfortable putting anything in there over 1" in diameter (it says it will handle sticks that are up to 1.57"). Anything that's crooked, or which has a forked branch doesn't want to feed very well, but straight sticks zip right through! I'm pleased with it and have probably shredded about 2/3 of the stick pile that was in the garden (sticks that were picked up from the yard last spring).
My plan is to bring the privet branches back to the yard once I've removed the berries and run them through to get some wood chips for my walking rows. I've just pretty much given up on ChipDrop and the local arborists. They apparently prefer to pay to have their chips put in the landfill! So Little Joe and I will be making our own wood chips from that hateful privet. Might as well get some good out of that stuff, right?
I worked on my compost bins yesterday, turning the one that had cow manure in it into a new bay, mixing in layers of straw that the cows had left in the field. I guess they pick through the hay, eat the good stuff, and leave the big stems so I took my cart out in the field and brought back a few loads of that. That pile never did get hot. I'm not sure if it just wasn't big enough, wasn't damp enough, didn't have enough browns or something else. I'll see what it looks like in a couple of days.
I started filling the third bay again and managed to get three cart loads of manure and one cart load of straw before my back just gave out. That bay is now about 1/3 full.
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| Bays 3 and 4 at work. |
An update on the seed starting. It looks like something ate the top out of one of the Carolina Buckthorn seedlings, so I am holding my breath every time I go check on them, afraid that something will have happened to the other one. So far so good though.
The top of the second little pecan seedling is all black and dead looking, so I'm not sure if it will survive or not either.
The pot with what I think is Joe Pye weed now has five seedlings in it, and I was excited to see the central part of that first one is purple! Excited because Joe Pye weed has purple at the leaf nodes so I'm hoping more than ever that it is, indeed, Joe Pye!
I ordered a few more seeds from MIGardener.com and from Sow True Seeds. Looking at the Farmer's Almanac planting calendar, it's coming up on time to plant several things pretty soon. I'm not going to get into a rush this year. That didn't work out so well last year - it just wasted my time and my potting soil! I did go ahead and plant onions yesterday though, but I'm going to follow the method Jenna uses for her onion seedlings. Who is Jenna? Another YouTuber, of course! "Growfully with Jenna." She's in Ohio, so if she can start her onions now, then I bet I can start mine here too!
But my weekend is over, and tomorrow it's back to work. Maybe I'll be able to do a few things in the afternoons though. It's supposed to be warmer than average through Wednesday, when another big cold front is supposed to come through bringing more rain.