February 28, 2023 Gardening Journal

Today has been an unseasonably warm day...I remember at one point RAF told me the temperature was 79° F.  That's just crazy for the last day of February.

And so what that means is that we're in for another round of severe weather, and this round sounds like it might be really bad.

Severe weather outlook from the National Weather Service (Little Rock, AR (weather.gov)) accessed 2/28/2023.

Right now, we're in the area designated as "Slight Risk" but really too close for comfort.  We'll have to keep a close eye on this as we get closer to Thursday.

But since it was so nice out, I decided to set some of my seedlings and module trays outside in the sunshine.

Plants and seeds in module trays enjoying the sunshine.

The old well house actually makes a great place to set seedlings.  I do need to add another piece of plywood to the south side so I'll have room for all of the plants I expect to have in pots by next week. (I potted up 10 more tomato plants this evening, so I'm quickly getting lots of pots that are going to need lots of space!)

After I finished work this afternoon, I decided to go ahead and plant some carrots.  I gathered up some well "cured" cow patties from the field and crumbled them up over a small section of garden row to make a nice smooth surface.  After a good watering, I planted three little rows of carrots, trying to be careful not to get them too thick like I did last year!  I topped them off with more crumbled-up cow manure, then covered everything with a board to keep them from drying out (or washing away!) before they germinate.

Using a board to protect carrot seeds until they germinate.

I had thought I might set out my green peas this afternoon, but with the potential for large hail, I decided to only set out a few of the biggest ones and hold the rest back until the weekend.  The pea roots are starting to reach out the bottom of their toilet paper tubes, but they aren't intertwined like the roots of the Fava beans were.  I think they'll be Ok until the weekend.  I hope they'll be Ok.

Yesterday afternoon I had fastened some chicken wire to the south side of the cattle panel where the peas will be planted.  This should keep the rabbits from reaching them from that side of the panel.

To plant, I just stuck the little trowel into the dirt up to the handle and leaned the trowel over so I could drop the cardboard tube into the opening behind it.  Not "no-dig," but very little soil disturbance compared to what I used to do with the tiller! 

Getting ready to set out some of the green peas.

What I found really surprising was just how easy it was to push the trowel into the ground and move the soil out of the way.  Last year the cucumbers were planted in that row, followed by a "cover crop" of purple hull peas.  I didn't remove the roots for any of the plants in the row...I just cut everything off at ground level when I cleared the row in the fall.  It was really an exciting thing to find the soil that loose, and it makes me hope that the "no-till" approach is really helping improve the soil. 

But back to planting.  After I set each tube into the ground, I firmed them in and made sure to cover all of the cardboard with soil so moisture wouldn't wick up out of the ground.  And finally, I put scraps of metal from the fence in the ground beside each tiny stem to hopefully keep the cutworms from chewing the little stems in two.

Scraps of metal fence wire to try to deter cutworms.

I only planted six tubes of peas then decided that was enough to start out with.  The last step was to put up a temporary barrier on the north side of the cattle panel to try to keep the rabbits from eating these first plants until I can get the chicken wire put up on that side.

Scraps of fence material to hopefully protect the peas from the rabbits.

Because I learned the hard way that rabbits can easily go through 2" x 4" wire, I used two pieces of scrap fencing, and offset the top piece so that the openings right by the peas were only 2" x 2".  I hope that's enough to protect the peas for a few days.

And maybe if it does hail, the wire will also help protect the peas from that.  I really, really, really want some peas, doggone it!

February 26, 2023 Gardening Journal

The weather is quite dreary today.  There was a heavy mist or something when I took Mo around the yard to do his business - it was actually heavy enough that some was dripping off the house.

I had thought I might go back down to the woods this morning and cut some more privet limbs to shred, but since it was so wet out, I decided instead to do a bit more seed planting instead.  In the toilet paper tubes, I planted:

• Florence Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
• Jewel Nasturtium (Tropaeolum nanum)
• Empress of India Nasturtium (Tropaeolum minus)
• Common chicory (Cichorium intybus)

That used up the last of my saved toilet paper tubes (insert sad face here).

In one of my Charles Dowding CD-60 trays, I planted:

• Picotee Cosmo (Cosmos bipinnata)
• Carpet of Snow Alyssum (Lobularia maritima)
• Imperial Rocket Larkspur (Delphinium consolida)
• Apple Blossom Snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus)
• Rose Snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus)

Although Charles Dowding has very good luck with his CD-60 module trays, I've struggled with them.  They seem to dry out so fast!  I've tried to keep on top of watering them this year and so far, maybe I'm having better luck with them.  It is nice that they use such a small amount of potting mix, but if I had it to do over, I might go with a bit bigger size cell.  Jury is still out on that.

The morning drizzle/mist didn't last very long, so although it was still cloudy out, I was able to get outside and collect some of the daffodil bulbs that were dug up when I moved the American Bladdernut tree away from the Black Walnut.  These are going to my older sister's house - she wants to plant them in her orchard around her apple trees.

Next project was to clean up the asparagus bed. 

Asparagus bed, with the old fronds all broken and tattered looking.

I took my pruners and cut the old fronds down to about an 1", topped each clump with some of the partially composted cow manure, then covered them back over with leaves and straw.  I wish I could have put a deeper layer of compost on them, but at this point, I'm still struggling to come up with enough compost to really pamper beds like that.  So they just get what they get and I hope that's enough.

As it turns out, it was a good day to do the bed cleanup.  Several of the plants are already starting to put up little shoots!  I don't think I cut any of the shoots off, but I sure wasn't expecting them to be there, so if I didn't cut them, that's just dumb luck.

Pale white asparagus shoot that I uncovered as I was cleaning up the bed.

I put some new stakes in the ground to try to hold the wire cages up this year.  Always when the fronds get very tall, they lean over, and the cages usually get pulled up out of the ground.  I don't know if I even need cages on them, but with the rabbit problem being what it is, I'm not sure I want to take them off only to find out that rabbits love asparagus too!

The asparagus bed, all cleaned up and ready for spring!

I could tell as I was working that the clouds were getting thicker and it was getting darker.  I decided to get a start pulling Bermuda grass out of the flowerbed at the south end of the house before I quit for the afternoon.  Overall, that bed isn't in very bad shape at all, but on the west end where I didn't pour a concrete footing for the rock border, the Bermuda grass comes in from the yard very aggressively.  I'm determined to get it out of there this year and do my best to keep it from creeping back in!  I'll do the same thing I've done around the garden...once I get the rhizomes dug out, I'll put some cardboard under the rock at that end and try to keep the grass hoed away around the outside.  Devil grass.....

I saw Mo going after a mole at the end of the new Hügelkultur row and was sad to discover that he had actually caught it!  I took it away from him, but I think he killed it.  I put it back in the hole he dug in the Hügelkultur row and covered it with straw.  I hope it was just playing dead, but I don't think so.

As dreary as it was this weekend, there are still reminders that spring is on the way...asparagus shoots, and a little drop of purple in the grass.

A tiny grape hyacinth (Muscari sp.) poking up in the back yard.

By next weekend, it will be March.  The gardening season will get going in earnest next month and I'm so ready!

February 25, 2023 Gardening Journal

It seems a shame to not have much to write about on a Saturday, but for some reason, I just don't feel like I've accomplished much of anything today.  I did get the Jimmy Nardelo pepper seedlings potted up this morning.  But after that, other than a quick run to town to pick up something, I don't know where the rest of the morning went.

After a quick lunch, I gathered my tools and headed back down to the woods with the intention of clearing the rest of the privet on the hillside where I've been working.  I parked the cart at the top of the hill and kind of gave the area a look.  There were two privet trees growing on the north side of the oak (I've been working on the south side) so I thought, "I'll just take those two out real quick before I go on down the hillside."

It sounded like a good plan at the time, but it turned out to be a much bigger job than I thought!  

There were lots of slender straight shoots coming up off the trunk of the first tree, so I started cutting those off and stripping the twigs so I could put those aside in a "shred" pile.  

After I got several of the straight limbs out of the way, I decided it was time to cut the tree.  But when I started cutting, Walter's bar got about a third of the way into the trunk and then just didn't seem like it was going anywhere.  I thought the tree would fall down hill, but I think there were limbs caught up in the top that were pulling it back uphill as I cut???  Anyway, I decided that maybe I needed to take off some of the "uphill limbs." After much pushing and pulling, I was able to get Walter's bar back out of the cut (it seemed that the bar was pinched in the cut), and I started limbing the west side of the tree to try to get it down to a more manageable size. 

But even after I had removed most of the uphill limbs, I couldn't get the saw to cut.  I tried using the handsaw - same thing.  It made me wonder if maybe the tree had grown up around a piece of metal or a rock and I was ruining my chain!

I ended up just cutting the tree off at a higher point and treating it.  Not the right way to do things, I know, and it will probably sprout up, but maybe the herbicide will knock it back a bit.

I finally gave up trying to cut this one off at ground level and just went up about 18" to cut it.

As it turned out, Walter may have just been choking on wood chips and sawdust!  I took the cover off the chain sprocket and the area was packed full.  After I cleaned that out, he seemed to zip along fine again.  I probably could have cut the stump down at that point if I hadn't already treated it with the herbicide.  Oh well....

That tree made quite a pile of limbs!  It was actually bigger than it looked, and I ended up spending probably an hour working to get it cut down and treated.  Not a very efficient use of time.

Pile of privet limbs.  Most are from the first tree I cut, with a few that I cut weeks ago tossed on top to get them out of the way.

I realized by the time I finished cutting and treating the first tree that I was already running very low on herbicide.  There wasn't as much in the bottle as I thought.  I did have enough to cut and treat the second tree and a few small privet sprouts in that same area, but that was it.

So instead of sticking with my original plan to work on the privet that was on the south side of the downed oak tree, I took Walter back up the hill to the north and cut the tops out of the larger privet trees that were growing just east of the barn.  Honestly, I should have probably had RAF help me with that because the trees were on a small, but steep drop off, and I wasn't quite sure which way some of the limbs were going to fall because they were intertwined with other tree limbs at the top and can swing unpredictably when they're cut.  But I guess I'm just stubborn and I wanted them cut, so I just went ahead and cut them.  I'll come back later to cut the larger limbs into more manageable sizes and drag all of the branches into a pile.  The tree trunks themselves probably won't be cut and treated until next fall.

Before I headed back to the house, I decided to pull the Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) out of the top of a small wild cherry (Prunus serotina) that I had noticed growing there on the hillside.  Luckily the honeysuckle had probably only started twining around the cherry tree last summer, so it hadn't yet damaged the bark of the little tree.

Wild cherry tree, free from the stranglehold of Japanese Honeysuckle.

I may have included a picture of this little tree in a previous post, and if so, I'm sorry for repeating myself.  But this is what happens when Japanese Honeysuckle is left to strangle a tree.

Deep grooves cut into the bark of a young tree that was being strangled by Japanese Honeysuckle.

I think this is a small oak tree, but I'm not sure of that.  I just hope I got the vine off in time to save it. 

I also noticed a tree nearby that I think needs to go....

Maybe a Bradford pear?

I'm not positive, but I think it is a Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana), another invasive that needs to be taken out.  I left it this time but will do some reading to learn how to identify Bradford pear for certain, and if that's what it is, it will be flagged to be taken out next fall.  It didn't show any signs of blooms, so hopefully it's not old enough to make fruit just yet.

I found a rusted-out foot tub down in the woods where I was working so I put that on the cart to bring home with me. I wish it had a bottom in it, but I think I can make it work even so.  I'm thinking it can go over by the compost bins to hold my American Groundnut (Apios americana) tubers (if they are still alive!).  I'll just let the vines grow up on the compost bins.  I hope they make some blooms this year.  I've seen them in bloom growing up in a brush pile out in The Barber Field, and they are gorgeous!

American Groundnut, Apios americana observed August 29, 2015 in The Barber Field.  "Hopniss" or "Indian Potato" as it is also called, is a host plant for the Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus).

With the cart loaded up with sticks, my foot tub, a nice little rock and all of my equipment, I headed back to the house.  I don't feel like I had very much to show for the 2+ hours that I spent working down there today.  It was a discouraging feeling to be heading back home having accomplished so little.

But in order that the afternoon didn't feel like a complete waste, I decided to go ahead and shred the privet limbs when I got back to the house.

Privet limbs to be shredded, and my old rusted out foot tub.

Little Joe made quick work of the limbs since they didn't have all of those little twigs on them to clog up around the cutter!  Maybe the time I spent stripping the twigs off the privet limbs was worth it after all.

Shredded privet.  The limbs made enough chips to cover about a 2' section of a walking row with about 4" of wood chips.

I know it doesn't show up in the picture above, but that little bit of green beside the Fava bean packet was my cilantro plant...key word being "was" because apparently rabbits like cilantro too.  

What I planted today:  Dill (Anethum graveolens) in toilet paper tubes and Cilantro (Coriander sativum).

February 24, 2023 Gardening Journal

(Warning:  Even more terrible, terrible pictures taken with my worthless phone camera!) 

I actually thought today was supposed to start off cloudy and cold, but that the sun would come out and warm things up.  It never did.  

So instead of trying to do anything outside this afternoon when I got off work, I just took Mo around the yard then came back in and potted up some of the little tomato seedlings that I had started earlier.

Cherokee Purple seedlings.

I potted up 10 Cherokee Purple tomato seedlings (started from seeds I saved last summer) into individual pots, then divided the other seven between two pots (those are my "spares" in case something happens to any of the 10).  I don't plan on putting all 10 of those into my garden, but I went ahead and potted them up thinking I might give them to my daughters.  Oldest daughter has grown lots of things in her tiny backyard before, and now youngest daughter is getting interested in growing some things too.  She and her boyfriend don't own their own place yet, but I told her she can grow things like tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in containers, so I think that's what she's going to try to do.  Cool! 

And speaking of seedlings...boy do I have a bunch to get potted up!  

Seedlings, ready to be separated into their individual pots.

I would SWEAR that I only put nine seeds in each pot, but in looking at the San Marzano pot, it looks like I put three times that many in there!  Maybe I was thinking about the last time I tried growing San Marzano tomatoes.  A bunch of them turned out to be deformed - they only had one central leaf that came out from the cotyledons, instead of the normal two.  Those were never going to grow into anything so it would have been good to have some extras.  But goodness....

There are also Arkansas Traveler and Rutgers tomatoes to be potted up, along with the Jimmy Nardelo sweet peppers, the Poblano peppers, Jalapeno peppers, Cayenne peppers, and Banana peppers.  I hope I don't run out of pots!

The broccoli, cabbage and kale were separated out into six-packs earlier, and they're looking pretty good now.  They'll be ready to go out into the garden in a couple of weeks I think.

Green Calabrese broccoli.

I'm also very pleased with the Early Frosty peas.  I don't know why I made the toilet paper thing so hard last year.  I've used it now for the Fava beans, the Snow Peas, and now the Early Frosty green peas, and I'm loving them!  The Early Frosty peas have germinated very well and are now about 1" to 1 1/2" high.  I'll probably put them out into the garden sometime in the next few days.  I've decided they'll go on the north side of the trellis where the cucumbers were last year, but I will be sure to put some chicken wire around them this time to protect them from the rabbits!  I'm going to put the cucumbers on that same trellis, but they'll go on the south side, and this year, I'm going to pinch out the side shoots so they don't just overrun the entire row.  Last year they were so thick and un-pinched that I couldn't even find the cucumbers to harvest them!

Early Frosty Peas, two per toilet paper tube.  These are almost ready to go out into the garden.

And finally, an update on the Early Texas Grano onions.  They are up to around 4" high now, and appear to be pretty strong and healthy in spite of the cloudy days we've had off and on here lately.  I'm not quite sure when they'll need to go out into the garden, but I'm thinking maybe week after next?

Early Texas Grano onions (short day variety)

I think I probably had about 80% germination on the onions, and since I tried to only put one seed per module, that left a few blank spots in the tray.  I actually put some leek seeds in those the other day and a few of the leeks have started to come up.  I expect the leeks that overwintered in the garden will go to seed this spring, and I'm ok with that.  It will be fun and interesting to save some seeds from them.

All in all, the seed starting hasn't been a total flop like I was afraid it might be.  Not sure why I thought that...maybe I just lost my confidence after last year.  But since I've started separating things out into individual pots, it's time to get the last two new grow (shop) lights set up somewhere so they'll have a place to live for the next month or so.  It's exciting to think that we're almost through February, which means spring is not very far away (at least not by the calendar).  

The weather forecast models show warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moving back over the southeastern United States, so when the next two cold fronts come through, again we'll have a risk of severe weather.  It's still too far out to know for sure what kind of severe weather, and how bad it might be, but hopefully nothing too serious.  I don't want it to come a hailstorm and take out my Fava beans and peas!

I guess "uncertainty" is really the name of the game when it comes to gardening/farming, isn't it....

Faith in a Seed

(Warning:  Terrible, terrible pictures taken with my worthless phone camera!) 

 

"Though I do not believe a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."

Henry D. Thoreau, Faith in a Seed

Last fall and into winter, I had collected some acorns, hoping I might get at least a few to sprout so I could plant a few oak trees on the property.  I had put them in pots, labeled them, and set them aside to wait for spring.

Well, today as I was misting the Blackhaw (Viburnum prunifolium) shoots, I happened to notice a tiny little sprout in one of the pots. 

Oak sprout at the edge of the pot (about the 11 o'clock position).

To my surprise, when I picked the pot up for a closer look, there were large white roots coming out the bottom of the pot!

Roots coming from the bottom of the pot.

I should have planted the acorns in deeper pots to begin with, but I don't have any of the "tree pots" to use for that kind of thing.  But a while back, when I had decided to try to root some cuttings from the old grape vine, I had pulled some of RAF's plastic creamer containers out of the recycling, cut the bottom out of them and turned them upside down to make some deeper pots.  Since then, I had started saving the creamer containers, thinking I might have a use for them at some point.  And today was that "some point."

Creamer containers being repurposed as "tree pots."

Four of the creamer containers fit perfectly in a plastic ice cream bucket, so I now have eight of the sprouted acorns planted in these deeper "pots."  

I tried to be very gentle handling them, so hopefully I didn't break any of the roots or the little sprouts.  The acorns that hadn't yet sprouted, or were just now starting to sprout, were left in the smaller pots since I ran out of creamer containers.  The creamer containers are all sitting in the south window now.  Five of them contain Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata) acorns that I collected from the huge old tree in the front yard.  The other three are acorns I collected down at the creek.  I'm not sure what kind they are, but I'm pretty sure they're from a tree in the red oak family - I think the leaves have pointy ends on them anyway.  The acorns were quite large, about 5/8" round-shaped, with a cap that looks like a little hat.  I wonder if it's a Pin Oak (Quercus palustris)?  If they live, I will find out!

Unfortunately, the Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) acorn that my older sister gave me probably isn't going to sprout.  I'm not giving up hope, but since it's in the white oak family, I think if it was going to sprout it would have already done so.  

Seeds really are little miracles, aren't they....

February 19, 2023 Gardening Journal

When I went to bed last night, I realized I had never gone back out to put metal sticks beside the Fava beans to protect them from cutworms.  Surely it would be too cold for them to be out and about, right?

Poor little Fava bean.  :(

Well, maybe not.  I don't know if it was a cutworm or a rabbit, but one of the beans was flopped over, its little stem chewed almost in two near the base.  Very suspicious, like cutworm damage.  I got my little pieces of wire and stuck one wire by each plant - that has seemed to work in the past.  And for good measure, I put metal cages around the plants to hopefully protect them from rabbits - just in case it was a rabbit that chewed the stem of that one little plant.

Fava beans, staked and caged.

Next, I decided to go ahead and set out some plants in the raised beds around the cellar.  I put radishes and lettuce in the east bed.

Tiny little plants, set out into the big world outside.

And because I didn't want to take a chance that my snow peas would get their roots all intertwined like the Fava beans had done, I went ahead and set them out too.  The top parts of the plants were still very small, but they already had roots coming out the bottom of their toilet paper tubes!

Little snow peas in the west raised bed.  The dirt wasn't very deep here, but I hope it's enough for them.

After lunch, I had a nice walk with my younger sister, then decided to finish up the Hügelkultur row.  I packed in a few more limbs and sticks.  Then I want out into the field to gather up some more straw, but the more I thought about it, the more worried I was that doing that was just bringing weed seeds into the garden.  So instead, I just loaded the cart with fresh cow manure.  I put some of the straw I had bought down over the logs, then topped that with a good layer of manure.

Some pretty fresh manure....

Then it was time to move the dirt back onto the row.  Now that was some hard work.  The dirt had been rained on, not once, but twice and was very, very heavy!  But one forkful at a time, and eventually I had most of it back over the mound. 

The row is finally finished.

Another layer of straw, and I can now mark that project off as done.  Wow...I actually finished something!!!

It was too late to cut any privet, so I decided to just try to finish up shredding the last of the limbs RAF helped me bring up from the woods yesterday.  I figured out that it's better to strip off the small twiggy ends of the limbs because they don't shred anyway...they just zip right through the shredder, or worse, get wrapped up around the blade.  I can hear the shredder bog down when that happens, and have to turn it off, unplug it, open it up, and untangle the little twigs from around the rotating assembly.  Not only that, but I watched a video about a man who put privet limbs in his Hügelkultur bed, and - horror of horrors - they took root and started growing again!  I have lots of little twigs in my walking rows now, so I'll definitely have to be on the lookout for anything that tries to start growing and rip it out before it has a chance to take ahold.  Wouldn't that just be the ultimate kick in the teeth....

Anyway, it was getting pretty late by the time I was finishing up, and about that time the neighbor in the trash trailer decided to start a fire.  Burning trash, I suppose?  But he made the most frightening roaring fire that shot black smoke straight up into the sky!  And because the winds at the higher level were from the West-Southwest, when the smoke got high enough, the smoke was picked up and carried right over my head!   And it took the smoke a long ways!  We could see a big black trail going all the way to the mountains east of us.

The smoke was so bad that my aunt texted me and asked what was on fire.  They saw the smoke from their house and were afraid it was my sister's house burning.  Lots of trucks went up and down the road in front of our house - volunteer fire-fighters, I'm thinking.  I doubt the guy called the number to let the Sheriff's office know he was going to burn anything, so everyone who saw that black, black smoke was afraid it was a house fire.  My sister said he had a pile of old furniture out in his yard, so I'm guessing it was the foam cushions spitting that toxic smoke up into the air.  

Even about 30 minutes after the fire was lit, it was still shooting black smoke into the air.

I wish I had thought to take a picture of the fire when I first saw it but I was too busy trying to figure out how anyone could be such an idiot to start such a big fire with all of that other junk so close by.

As I told my sister when I texted her about it, "Now that's a FAR!!!!"

February 18, 2023 Gardening Journal

The Old Farmer's Almanac said that Fava beans should be planted anywhere from January 6 to January 20 in our area.  I didn't get them planted until January 24th, but I actually think that's probably a good thing.  It turned off quite cold at the start of February, so I don't think I could have planted them outside anyway if I had started them as early as the almanac said.

I had decided to give the toilet paper tubes another try.  While the tubes were such a disaster in the past, they worked really well this time.  So well, in fact, that once the beans sprouted, they grew like crazy, and really just about got away from me. (I'm actually using the tubes for my green peas this year too.  The snow peas that I planted last week are coming up, and last night I planted my Early Frosty shelling peas in tubes.)

The beautiful Fava beans, that needed to be set out probably a week ago.

While the tops looked really healthy, I was really worried when I tipped the plastic box up and looked at the bottom.  The roots were thick across the bottom of the box, and I am afraid that may mean the poor little plants are going to suffer from some serious transplant shock.

The roots were almost covering the bottom of the plastic box, looking for somewhere to grow.

So even though we had a pretty hard frost last night, I decided they just had to be put outside, or they were not going to survive the transplanting.  I decided to put them in the spot where the stick pile used to be, but that meant I had to dig out some of the Bermuda grass that had tried to creep in under the sticks.

Bermuda grass rhizomes that had to be dug out of the garden.

I did my best to dig it out, but I'll have to keep a close eye on it this year to make sure it doesn't come back and try to take over.  That stuff is devil grass, for sure.

A nasty garden pest - a cutworm - that I dug up while clearing Bermuda grass rhizomes.  This guy got tossed way out into the grass away from the garden.  I hope the bluebirds see it and eat it.

With all of the visible rhizomes removed, I put the plants in a double row, at a spacing of about 8" to 12".  I hope the roots didn't get ripped up too badly when I separated the cardboard tubes.

Transplanting the Fava beans.

It sure was nice to just dig a hole and put the plants in...no-till is great!  The soil in that spot really looked pretty good, probably because of the sticks that had rotted down there.

Fava beans, ready to stretch their roots!

Once the beans were planted, I decided to try to finish off the "walking row" between the beans and the grass in the yard.  My hope is that by putting cardboard down around the perimeter of the garden, covering it with a thick layer of wood chips and keeping the grass hoed just outside the cardboard, I can keep the Bermuda grass from invading the garden.  But we'll see.  If I've buried rhizomes under the cardboard, they'll find their way in, that I'm sure of.

I had a few privet limbs that were already cut, so I got my little cart out, hauled those back up to the house, and Little Joe and I got to work shredding them.

Little Joe, ready to get to work.

There are only 10 days left in February, and that means I'm quickly running out of time to cut and treat the privet this winter.  So after lunch, I headed back down the hill to work on another section below the barn.

Because I was getting deeper down into the woods, it was a long drag to get the limbs back up to my brush pile.  I decided that on this section, I'd just pile the cut limbs and trees into the hole left by the roots of one of the trees that had blown over.

Making progress down the hillside.

I did a no-no with the chainsaw today though.  I always try to move any rocks away from a tree that I'm getting ready to cut, but today I missed one that was just within reach of the tip of the bar and ended up hitting that rock with the chain.  Boo!   I'm hoping it didn't hurt the chain too much -- I hope I caught it pretty quickly and stopped the saw before it did too much damage.

Big privet stump

Most of the privet down in this area were fairly small so I was able to cut them with the loppers or with my hand saw.  But there were a few bigger ones that required the chainsaw, and boy am I happy that I got that little saw!  It needs a name, doesn't it!  I mean if the shredder is named Little Joe, then I guess I'll name the chainsaw Walter?

Walter did seem a bit "tired" today, and I decided that the battery probably needed to be charged.  But he was still able to cut several of the bigger trees.  Goodness, those things are HEAVY!!!!  I ended up using the loppers to cut the tops out of some of them so I could throw them on the pile, but by the time I cut this big one, I was getting very sore and very tired, so ended up just kind of dragging and heaving it over to the side sort of in a pile of its own.

Large privet tree that was just about too heavy for me to move without cutting it into sections.  I think the stupid thing was close to 15' tall.

It was very satisfying to look back up the hill when I quit for the day and see a clear area all the way up to the top.

Most of this section has been cleared with the exception of the tree in the upper left and the one in the upper right.  I'll get those next time.

To finish up today, I planted a few more walnuts down there and pulled a few privet seedlings.  I figure in the upcoming months I'll need to make a point to go through that area several times to pull up any new seedlings that might pop up.  I am so hopeful that the black walnuts will come up, and that they might help control this stuff!  I just really don't see any way that it will ever be eradicated, especially since it's still being sold and planted on purpose. 

I was dragging the limbs I had set aside for the shredder up the hill when I thought I heard a vehicle.  I looked up and could just see the top of IXR (that's pronounced Ick'-ser, after the license plate that was on the truck at one time), my red truck, coming through the field.  Bless his heart!  RAF had come to get me!  I must say it was a welcome sight because that meant we could load the limbs in the bed of the truck instead of on my little cart.  I wouldn't have minded bringing the limbs back to the house on the cart, but since I was feeling quite near "finished" for the day, it was a much appreciated lift.

I shredded a few more limbs late this afternoon and was able to cover about a 3' section of cardboard by the Fava beans with chips about 4" deep.  I will need about twice that many to finish up that walking row, but I know where I can get plenty more privet limbs to shred....

February 12, 2023 Gardening Journal

I went to bed thinking I might go back down to the woods early this morning and cut some more privet, but it was pretty cold last night and I was pretty sore from yesterday.  So instead, I poked around the house for a while, had some coffee and toaster pastries and waited on it to warm up a bit.

By 10:30 am or so, the sun had taken the chill out of the air, so I decided that I would do some more work on my Hügelkultur row at the west end of the garden.  I got the shovel out of the shop and started digging with the intention of just digging a little bit more.  But once I got started, I couldn't stop, and I ended up digging out the rest of the row.

 

The trench

I finished up right before noon and went in for a bite of lunch. Then it was back down to the woods to continue the work on the privet.

I think I took out 15 more trees of various sizes today, pulled up about 40 small privet seedlings and planted the rest of the black walnuts I had collected yesterday.  While I really wanted to keep going, I finally decided if I didn't stop, I was probably not going to be able to move tomorrow!  It wasn't really so much the cutting that was wearing me out...it was dragging the limbs up the hill to throw them on the brush pile.  I've pulled a muscle in my back once before and I have no interest in ever doing that again!

I just left the limbs that I set aside to shred down in the woods.  I'll just have to go back for them another day.  But that's ok...they will wait.

When I got back to the house, I sat in the recliner for a while to let my back rest.  RAF had planned on helping me with the rotting logs that are still out in the field...I wanted them in my Hügelkultur row but couldn't move them until they were cut up into smaller sections.  After I rested a bit, he went out and cut a few of them for me, and then I used my cart to bring some of them up to the garden.  Unfortunately, I didn't get finished bringing the logs up to the garden before I was again running out of energy...and daylight.  But that's ok...they will wait.

I don't guess it was a wasted weekend because I did get a few things done.  But it just stinks to have so many things you want to do, and then finally have to admit that you just can't do them all because of your stupid bad back.  It probably didn't help that I turned one of the compost bins the other day and turned part of another one this morning.  And I'm sure it didn't help to trying to heave those big privet limbs onto the brush pile.  I should have cut them into smaller pieces, so they weren't so heavy.  

I once had a T-shirt that I bought from a guy who wrote a book about using the Win32 API with Visual Basic.  The shirt said, "Work smarter, not harder."  I need to see if I can find that shirt.

Putting the new DeWalt chainsaw to work

This afternoon I took the new DeWalt chainsaw out for its first run.  And while I found that it was much different than my gas-powered 16" Shindaiwa chainsaw (which needs some work to get it running again), I'm satisfied that it's going to easily do the work I need it to do.  I absolutely love being able to pick it up, cut, and just set it back down...it goes when I say go, and stops when I say stop!

I started at the top of the hill and worked my way down.

The new saw, ready for its first cut.

Excited to get started, I pushed the trigger lock and pulled the trigger - nothing.  Maybe I didn't have the trigger lock pushed in enough.  I adjusted my grip on the handle, making sure I was able to completely push in the trigger lock with my thumb and pulled the trigger again...nothing.  "Oh, no!" I was thinking.  Was the battery not in right?  Had it not charged?  Was the saw a dud?

Turned out the problem wasn't the saw at all.  It was operator error (which is usually the case with me).  The brake was engaged.  

Once I figured that out and released the brake, the little saw buzzed to life!  It cut through that first privet trunk in no time.  It gave me great satisfaction to hear the trunk hit the ground with a "thud."

Cut and treated stump.

A ring of glyphosate herbicide from the Green Shoots foaming dispenser, and hopefully that one's as good as dead!

After that, I just worked my way down the hillside, cutting and treating the privet I had previously cut the limbs off of. The new saw made it really easy - just make sure the rocks and dirt were moved away from the cutting area, cut, set the saw down, grab the herbicide dispenser, circle the stump with the foam then pick up the saw and move on to the next one.

I had picked up 20 black walnuts from the yard, and as I cut down a privet tree, I dug a little hole and buried a walnut.  I piled up privet trunks around a couple of the buried nuts thinking that might help protect the young seedlings from being stepped on by the cattle.  Others, I just buried right beside the trunks of some of the downed trees, or in the hole where the roots were ripped out of the ground when the tree fell.

Privet trunks making a protective frame around a walnut.

Do cattle and deer eat walnut seedlings?  If any of the walnuts sprout, I guess I'll find out.

I started work at around 2:50 pm this afternoon.  The herbicide dispenser was only about half full, so I ran out and quit by 4:30 pm.  In just under two hours, I was able to cut and treat all but one of the privet trees I had already cut limbs from.  There were two privet trees I had started on, but they were really too big for my hand saw.  Using the new chainsaw, it was easy to cut those limbs off, cut them off at the ground and treat them too.  I think the biggest privet tree was around 6" to 7" in diameter at its widest point (it was an oval shaped trunk, so it wasn't that big all the way around!).  Happily, the little DeWalt cut through even that biggest privet tree with no problems!

The first section cleared of privet.

Altogether, I think I cut and treated 15 privet trees today.  I dragged most of the limbs up to the brush pile at the top of the woods and loaded the little cart with limbs to be taken back to the garden and shredded.  It's really amazing how much more open that one little section of the woods is.  

There are a few little Winged Elm (Ulmus alata) trees trying to grow in the shade of the privet.  As I dragged the last of the privet branches up the hill, I stopped by one of them, reached out and with great happiness in my heart touched its rough bark and said, "Now you'll be able to see the sun again."

 

February 9, 2023 Gardening Journal

Today started out cloudy, but by 9:00 am or so the clouds were gone and the sun was out again.  I think we got up to about 57° F by late afternoon.

But Tuesday and Wednesday were wet, wet, wet!  Tuesday started of cloudy, and I just managed to get Mo around the yard after lunch before the rain started.  And once it started, it was pretty steady for about the next 30 hours.

Slow but steady rain caused the National Weather Service to issue several flash flood warnings.

By noon on Wednesday, the yard was a mix of of little streams and ponds as the ground had become so saturated that it just couldn't soak up any more. 

By late afternoon, we could hear the roar of Little Piney Creek and RAF wanted to drive down the road to have a look.

(Sorry about the shaky video...that's just how my old hands are anymore....)

Flooded hay field

Flooded Slough

My sister said her rain gauge showed 3.88" just before 6:00 pm on Wednesday evening.  It rained off and on for a few more hours, but I'm not sure what we ended up with when it was all said and done. (Update 2/10/2023: Sister said the total rainfall came to 4.12".)

While there was a lot of water everywhere, it was by no means the most flooding we've ever had.  The rain came down slowly over a longer period of time, which meant a lot of it soaked into the ground before it actually started to flood.  And because it was a slow rain, it had more time to drain downstream.  I've actually seen the water in Little Piney up to within about a foot of the bottom of the bridge, which also meant that water in the slough was high enough that it flooded over the road.   Even though this flooding wasn't nearly that serious, it was quite impressive still.

When I checked my email on Tuesday, I had a message from Stark Brothers Nursery telling me they had shipped my Montmorency Pie Cherry tree and that it would arrive on Thursday!  Not an ideal time to be planting a new tree, but sometimes you do what you have to do, right?

So FedEx brought the package this morning, right on schedule.

Dwarf bare root Montmorency Pie Cherry tree.

I knew they planned to ship it sometime in February, and had already dug a hole in anticipation of its arrival.  But I wasn't counting on the rain...even by late this afternoon, the hole was still full of water.

So RAF helped me dig a new hole a few feet away from the water-filled one, and I set the little tree in the new hole and packed the muddy soil back in around its roots.  I topped the muddy dirt off with some partially rotted cow manure, put a cage around it, and called it good.  

The little cherry tree, settled into its new home.

So far, I have resisted the temptation to call my backyard a "food forest," but with the addition of yet another tree, maybe that's what it's turning into!

The cherry tree wasn't my only delivery this week.  Yesterday afternoon, a new weapon in my war on invasive plants arrived.

My new DeWalt electric chainsaw.

It seems to be pretty solid, although it's made with a lot of plastic.  I've not yet had a chance to put the battery in and test it out, but I think Saturday will be a perfect day to get back out in the woods and cut and treat those privet trunks that I've been working on.  I'm excited to see how much I can get cleared out now before the sap starts rising.

I have another order of plants from Food Forest Nursery in West Fork that is expected to ship the week of March 6.  As I was doing a bit more research about whether these plants are juglone tolerant  -because I want to plant the Serviceberry (Amelanchier aborea) near the black walnut tree - I happened to notice that privet is listed as one of the plants that is sensitive to juglone.  DING DING DING DING! Now I know where I'm going to plant a bunch of the walnuts that are piled up out in the yard - once I've cut the privet and treated the stumps with herbicide, I'm going to bury walnuts in the woods!  I can only hope that privet is really, really sensitive to juglone, and that the black walnuts sprout, grow, and kill every dang privet plant within 50 feet!

Back to my orders though. Today I also got my box of LED shop lights that I ordered from Amazon.  Just in time too.  The tomato seeds have started coming up, and it won't be long until it's time to separate the peppers out into their own pots so I'm going to need more grow lights!  While these are advertised as "shop lights" they seem like they'll work as grow lights.  They're very lightweight too, which I like.  Setting those up will be another project for this weekend!