July 2022 Gardening Journal

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Really, there's not much to journal about except the drought and the heat. The plants in the garden were still hanging in there at the end of June.

The garden on June 29, 2022.

But according to my little sister's records, for rainfall, we only got:

• 0.39" on June 6.
  
  
• 0.11" on June 7.
  
  
• 1.67" on June 9.
  
  
• 0.61" on June 10.
  
  
• 0.02" on June 18.

2.8" of rain for the entire month of June, most of it coming in the first 1/3 of the month.  Nothing to speak of since then, but the temperatures were in the mid- to upper-90s for almost the entire second half of the month.  By the end of this first week of July, it's becoming pretty apparent that we're in big trouble.

Two days in the outlook for July where we might get some rain, but chances aren't very good on either of those days.

So here we are again.  I'm thinking back to last summer when I started my blog, about how hot and dry it was, and how I was trying to keep a few things alive, but it wasn't working.  This year is worse so far as the rain and heat are concerned.  

Watermelon vine suffering in the heat.

Last summer I lost my little Carolina Buckthorn tree (Frangula caroliniana) because I didn't water it.  I made the mistake of assuming that because it was a native tree, that it was adapted to the hot dry weather and while it might shed its leaves, it would just sort of "hibernate" and bounce back in the spring.  It didn't.  

So this year, I'm trying my best to keep a few things alive with water and mulch, and also by shading them from the hot sun.  I'm not so sure the plants can even survive just with water.  That sun is relentless, beating down on them, heating the leaves and surrounding soil to well over 120° F - day after day after day. 

Some of the plants, including the blueberries, the blackberries and the apple trees, get a bit of relief from the sun when the shade from the pecan trees moves over them in mid-afternoon.  But others things, including the strawberries, the American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) and the Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida), aren't in the shade until very late in the day.

I don't have any proper shade cloth, so I've resorted to using an old bed skirt over the strawberry bed, and have suspended some old sheets over the dogwood and hazelnut trees.  I've also tried to shade part of the row of Rutgers tomatoes.

I have mulched around the Purple Coneflower plants in the west flowerbed, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough to save them without some shade.  They went from pink and beautiful to brown and dead-looking in just a matter of days once the temperatures started to hit the upper 90s and low 100s every day.

Three of the four rain barrels have been connected together, but they've already been emptied twice this spring (that's over 300 gallons of water!).  After we missed out on the rain last week, I finally used the garden hose to fill them back up with "city water."  But after only a bit of watering yesterday and this morning, the first barrel is already 1/3rd gone.  On a somewhat positive note, I think the straw mulch is helping.  I tested the soil under the mulch around several plants with my finger and the soil was still damp and cool around all of them. 

I just think the intense sunlight is going to be a big problem even for plants that have a heavy later of mulch.  So I'm looking at buying some rolls of burlap to use as shade cloth (because I HATE the thought of using plastic shade cloth!).

The phone rang just a few minutes ago.  Our County Judge has issued a burn ban until further notice.

Saturday, July 30, 2022

We've made it to the end of July, but there's only one way to sum up the month:  July 2022 has been bad.

Until this past Thursday, our last rain was on June 18, when we got 0.02" - really just enough to dampen the grass.  While the last week of June was pretty nice (highs only in the low 90s), summer came back with a vengeance in July.  

July 2022 daily highs and lows, from accuweather.com.

We've had day after day after day of temperatures above 100° F, low humidity, and no rain.  It has been even hotter than the July outlook said it would be.  Everything is suffering from the heat and the drought.

The cucumbers that were looking Ok at the end of June gave up pretty quickly to the heat.  I watered them once, but decided it was really a lost cause, and just quit on them and let them die.  We weren't getting many cucumbers anyway, and the vines were not going to start putting on new fruit even if I kept them alive.

But I kept trying to water other things.  Every morning and/or evening, I would fill my little green plastic watering can over and over and over, making many trips back and forth from the water barrels to the garden; to the flower beds; to the blueberries; to the blackberries; to the dogwood; to the hazelnut trees; the strawberries; the pumpkin; the watermelon....

My little green plastic watering can from Atwoods.  It's cheap and flimsy, but I like using it.  I think it holds about two gallons of water.

But the water alone didn't really seem to be making much difference.  The sun was just killing everything, and as I told my sister when she asked how my tomatoes were doing, "they're boiling in their jackets."  

I finally gave up on the pumpkin, the watermelons, and the Rutgers tomatoes.  I wasn't going to be able to save them.  I tried saving the corn, but it was obvious when it started to tassel that it wasn't going to make anything...the tassels where white and didn't have any pollen on them.  I gave up on the corn too.

Bell peppers that have dropped from the heat.  The day I took this picture, I picked up 17 peppers just from the first few plants in the row.

The bell pepper plants were late getting started (for some reason I couldn't get my seeds to sprout this year).  So they were just starting to set fruit as the heat and drought arrived.  Even keeping them watered wasn't enough.  The little peppers might get up to the size of a half-dollar and then I'd find them on the ground under the plants.  The ones that didn't drop off looked like they'd been dipped in scalding water.

I finally went ahead and ordered a 40% shade cloth to go over the strawberries.

It seems to work very well, and I like that I can water the bed without having to pull the cover off, which is what I had to do with the old bed skirt that I was using. (The bed skirt disintegrated in the sun, by the way, and was ripped to shreds when a dust devil tore through the garden one afternoon.  That dust devil messed up so many things and I was already so frustrated by the heat and drought that it was all I could do to keep from grabbing the weed eater and just cutting everything down to the ground!!!!)

So I took some more old sheets and another bed skirt and tried to shade the peppers, hoping that at least a little bit of protection from the sun would keep them alive and hopefully allow them to set some fruit.

It looked pretty tacky.  And several times the wind caught the sheets and the panel that was leaning up over the beans fell over on them.  RAF helped me drive some t-posts at the ends of those rows, so the panel is now secured to the posts and won't fall over.  I think the peppers are looking better, but I'll just have to wait and see if I actually get any peppers in August.

All in all, I guess I should consider myself lucky to have kept alive the few things that I did manage to keep alive.  And THANKFULLY, WE FINALLY GOT SOME RAIN!

We didn't get much today (we're in the area with no rain on both radar shots).  And we haven't gotten as much as some other areas (notice the flash flood warnings up near Ponca and Rogers) but as of yesterday afternoon, little sister said we had gotten right at 1.75" and I'm thankful for every single drop!!!!

I've spent a lot of time since last summer trying to learn more about no-till and one of my favorite YouTube channels is the No-Till Growers channel.  Farmer Jesse did a video this summer where he said, "Just keep planting."

I had quite a few empty spots in the garden, so I figured why not give it a try? 

In the row where the cucumbers were, I've planted more purple-hull peas.  They may not make anything, but at least they might be a good summer cover crop for that space.  Happily, it looks like most of them have come up, and with this good rain, they've already grown a lot.

I've also planted some pumpkins and spaghetti squash in some other "blank" spots in the garden, and planted some old sprouting potatoes where the broccoli plants were (the broccoli never even tried making any flower heads).  My thought with the potatoes is to try growing them as no-dig potatoes. The potatoes weren't planted in the dirt...I just sort of buried them a little bit in the compost that was around the broccoli and covered that with straw.  If they start to grow, I'll just keep piling straw and compost on them I've seen several other no-dig/no-till growers do on "the YouTube."

I'm afraid the rain has given me a false sense of hope for a fall garden, but I guess I do have a plan for the rest of 2022.

I'm going to just keep planting.

Killing them with Kindness

I really am an idiot.

I spent money on really nice bagged potting mix to start my little plants in.  I spent money on little plastic pots.  I spent money on seeds. I spent time planting the seeds, potting each little plant into its own pot, and babying them along, hoping for some late tomatoes and pretty flowers next year.

And then I thought, "They might need just a bit of nitrogen if they're going to stay in these pots for a while."  I put two teaspoons of Urea (46-0-0) in a gallon of water and set the pots in a tray to soak it up.

What was I thinking???? (The question is probably not even relevant because I'm not sure I was thinking at all.)

When I looked at the plants the next morning, I knew immediately that I had screwed up.

It was like giving a baby two or three dozen cups of coffee.

By day three after I burned their little roots off with that supercharged nitrogen water, it was apparent that most of them weren't going to make it.  I took the three that looked the least ill and put them in the garden, trying to knock off as much of the contaminated potting mix as I could.  But I doubt they'll survive since the sun is so intensely hot.

This morning two of the Foxglove plants are wilted over and it doesn't look like they'll recover (but that could be from their roots being baked by the sun through their little pots!).  The leaves on the little purple coneflower seedlings are starting to turn brown on the edges too.  I moved the healthiest of the coneflowers into new pots, again, trying to knock as much of the contaminated potting mix off of their roots as I could.  The orange coneflowers had just come up, so I hope I got them pricked out in time and that they will be ok.  The artichoke plant still seems ok too, but just as a precaution it got moved into a new pot as well.  

All of the contaminated potting mix will go into the compost bin with the remains of one of my poblano pepper plants that I killed by overwatering (again, more isn't always better).

Sigh.

June 2022 Gardening Journal

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Wow.  It's almost mid-June already and I never really even posted anything in the May gardening journal.   So just a "catch up" post here.

It's been a sad couple of weeks.  A man who was a my former boss and long time dear friend died on May 30.  I still just can't believe he's gone. 

RIP, rotto.  

I promise you I'm going to "steal a piece of pie" one of these days.

The garden seems "slow" this year but then maybe I'm just misremembering how things have been in years past.  The squash seemed to take forever to start to grow, and we just got our first little squash off of the plants last week.  Bad thing is that there are absolutely no pollinators visiting the squash blooms.  The only blooms that have set squash are the ones I've hand pollinated.  Very sad and depressing.  

Thankfully, squash is easy to hand pollinate.  I just have to remember to check the blooms every morning and I've not been very good at doing that.

Three little hand-pollinated squash. Within a couple of days after this picture was taken, this vine had completely wilted, probably due to a squash vine borer.

The cucumbers didn't set any fruit for a good while either, but we have finally gotten three small cucumbers and I have seen some pollinators in among the vines (including a hummingbird).  I think one of the main problems with my cucumbers is that the plants are too thick.  Gardener Scott said, "It's Ok to kill your plants," and I should have listened.  I think every cucumber seed I planted came up and I didn't thin them at all.

My jungle of cucumber vines.

I'm not sure we're going to get very many cucumbers at all.  The ones I picked today were already starting to be "deformed" by the heat, and once that happens, the cucumbers are usually done for.  It was 96° F with a 79° dewpoint (heat index of 121° F).  But we'll see.  If I keep water on them maybe they'll keep producing.

We have harvested one nice little head of cabbage and a few carrots.  The carrots weren't very big, but I cooked some in the air fryer last night and they were very sweet and good.  

I've also picked a couple of little banana peppers that we just ate raw.  Those were pretty tasty too.  

The broccoli and Brussel's sprouts aren't going to amount to anything.  I'm just leaving them so the different kinds of insects that feed on Brassicas will have something to eat.  There are just so few insects around this year!  I'll try those again this fall and hopefully will have better luck.  Interesting update on my broccoli experiment, where I planted three in cardboard boxes filled with compost.  The ones planted directly in the ground are probably three times the size of the ones in the cardboard boxes, so I think the box method didn't work out.

Cross-striped cabbageworm (Evergestis rimosalis) feeding on my Brussel's sprouts.

The fennel has already started to bolt, and since I don't really know anything about growing fennel or what to do with it once harvested, I guess I'll just let it go.  I didn't realize it smells like licorice until the other day when I pinched off the top of one where it had turned black.  Nice!

The strawberry plants have what I think is "Common Leaf Spot."  That's too bad.  I wonder if that came from the wild strawberry plants that I have growing in my flowerbeds, although I don't remember ever seeing anything like that on those plants.  Maybe it won't hurt them too much.  

The Gala apple tree has Cedar Apple Rust, but that was fully expected.  

So far I've not seen any sign of it on the Enterprise apple tree, but it does have some strange gray spots on some of the leaves.  Not sure that those are...possibly powdery mildew?

I gave up on that first corn and okra I planted, and on the second corn and okra I planted, and started over for a third time.  But this time, I went ahead and dug out some more raised rows, put a trench down the center of each row then added some of my aged cow manure in the trench.  My thinking is that I can water down in the trench and avoid the "water runoff" that I've experienced with the first raised rows I made.  The  corn was planted on either side of the trench, giving me the equivalent of four rows in the space I used to use for just one row.  I think that will be fine...the plants on either side of the rows are about a foot apart, so there should be plenty of space for them.

This picture was taken just after the corn had come up, so you can still see the trench down the middle of each raised row.  I've since covered the trench and sides of each raised row to try to help hold in moisture.  The corn is now about four inches high.  For the most part, the plants at the south end of the row where things normally don't grow so well look almost as big as the plants in the rest of the row.  That might be from the added cow manure, or it could be from having their roots up a bit higher so they weren't sitting in water for several days after our last round of rain.

If I had any doubts about pesticides in my composted cow manure, I don't have any now.  Tomatoes are supposed to be one of the crops most susceptible to those herbicides, so I planted a cherry tomato in the center compost bin to see what would happen.

Tomato plant on May 12, 2022.  It looked to be growing Ok, and even had a couple of little tomatoes on it.  The celery plants also seemed to be growing fine, with no ill effects from being planted in the compost.

Same plant on June 5, 2022, now a sprawling monster of a vine with lots of tomatoes and blooms.  The celery is being almost completely crowded out.

I can't seem to get my cantaloupe vines to grow this year.  The first two were planted in the same wide row as the squash, and the first one is blooming, but it's just a tiny little thing...very disappointing.  I've planted a third hill in some of the "candy dirt" in the north side of the garden and will be interested to see how those plants do. 

The radishes and Bibb lettuce were done a long time ago, but I've left a few of them to make seed.  I'm not sure why I would want more radish seeds, because I've decided once and for all that I just don't care for radishes, but thought it might be interesting to try to save some seeds.  RAF does like them, so I'll at least try to grow a few for him.

There are lots of other pictures that could be added, but I've probably rambled on enough for one day.  I'll close this this one:

The south flowerbed has just been showing off!  In this picture, butterfly milkweed, dill, cilantro, larkspur, Rudbeckia, Echinacea, and not yet in bloom, Monarda.  Not shown are the orange day lilies (ditch flowers, as my friend Kim calls them), catnip, and green milkweed.  While it's beautiful to look at, it's sad that there are so few insects visiting the blooms.  I don't know what we're going to do when the insects are gone.

May 2022 Gardening Journal

Sunday, May 1, 2022

It's May...already.  

May just might be the biggest growing month of the year.  It doesn't seem like I made very much progress in April.  It seems like April was cooler than normal, but that could be totally wrong.  I did get quite a few things planted, but things just don't seem to be growing like I thought they would.  So I expect to see lots of change over the next 30 days.  It might be fun to take some pictures today then compare them with how things look at the end of the month.  If I had done that in April, I might be surprised to find that my "things don't seem to be growing" perception is totally wrong!

The first four months of no-till are behind me, and for the most part, I am really liking it.  I've already figured out some mistakes I made, but I think those mistakes can be corrected this fall when I put the garden to bed for the winter.

My first mistake was making some of the raised rows too narrow and steep.  When I water, the water wants to run down the sides of the raised row before it can soak in from the top.  So this fall when I top the rows with compost, I'll be flattening them out some so the top rows have more of a plateau for planting.

Green Pea Experiment: Initial Results and Ultimately, a Failure

All of the peas in the toilet paper rolls had a long,
vigorous root coming out the bottom.

Back in January, I thought I'd get a head start on my green peas by starting them indoors.  And I decided to try starting them in two types of biodegradable containers to see what worked best.

The peas started in the peat pots germinated at a much better rate than the ones in in the toilet paper rolls, but by the time I was ready to set them out in the garden, the toilet paper roll peas were much larger, and had a much better developed root system.  I think if I had kept them watered when they were trying to germinate, the toilet paper rolls  might have been the clear winner between the two containers.  I was satisfied enough with them that I've been saving the rolls again for another try with something.

Because I've been battling rabbits for a while now, I  decided to cover the peas every night.  I cut the bottom out of a bunch of saved milk jugs, strung them together on a string that I tied to the cattle panel, and every night I went out and set a jug over every plant.

It seemed like a good idea, and it did keep the rabbits away from the peas.  But unfortunately, when we had the ice storm in February, I thought I should leave the jugs in place to protect the peas from the ice.  They were protected from the ice, but because I didn't take them off when the sun came back out, the milk jugs acted like little "ovens" and the peas were severely damaged by the heat from the sun!  When I finally took them back off, the plants looked like they were deathly sick...pale yellow and burned looking.  

Sure enough, within a week they were all pretty much gone.

Covering the peas during the winter storm seemed like a good idea...it might have been if I had removed the jugs when the sun came back out.

I planted a bunch of old seed (and I mean OLD, OLD) but none of them came up.  So I bought another packet of seeds from the feed store in town and tried again.  Most of them came up, but because I wasn't covering them at night anymore, I think I have exactly five of about 30 plants left.  The rabbits have apparently had themselves a nice little feast.

I just don't think it's in the cards for me to have any peas again this year.   Maybe I will try again this fall.

Composting and battling the "What-ifs"

When RAF first helped me fill my first bins with cow manure last winter, I didn't really have a clue what I was doing.  I had never composted on that scale before, and had never done any "hot" composting.  I just saw the method on videos by Charles Dowding and Huw Richards and thought it looked like an easy way to make lots of compost...something I saw as a must-have if I wanted to switch to no-till gardening.

Besides having no experience in hot composting, I also didn't have a soil thermometer at the time I decided to set up the first bin..  But I ordered one on Amazon, and it arrived about a week after my second bin was filled.  I was absolutely shocked when I took the temperature of the pile...it was almost 160° F!

Being the type of person I am (if I don't have something real to worry about, I make something up), that temperature reading stuck in my head and that night I tossed and turned all night long, worrying - or battling the "what-ifs" as my Mama calls it.  

What if the bin catches on fire?  

Is it heating up even more right now? 

Is it dry enough that the fire would get out and burn down the shop?  

How would I put it out?   

How hot is it right now?  

Do I need to go check it right now?

I wonder how hot it is right now.... 

I think the frost would keep the fire from spreading.

Will the frost keep the fire from spreading? 

Luckily, common sense won out and I didn't get up at 2 am to go check the temperature of the bin!  When I did check it the next morning, it was still the same temperature.  And after asking The Google about it several different ways, I felt a bit better, because it sounded like the pile would have to get up to around 200° F before it was at any risk of spontaneous combustion.  

Really, 160° F is too hot for a compost pile.  That means the bacterial action has gotten so intense that the bacteria are generating so much heat that they are creating conditions they can no longer tolerate, and are actually killing themselves.  But while the quality of my compost might be degraded by that temperature, my small bin wasn't going to catch fire.

And as the articles I read predicted, the temperature pretty quickly dropped to around 140° F and it stayed right there for the next few days.

At that point, the bin started cooling much more quickly and finally fell to around 90° F.  

Time to turn the pile.

I learned a lot during that first turn.  First, I learned that I hadn't set up my bins correctly.  I had filled bin #1 with manure (the one at the far left as I faced the bins) and then I filled bin #2.

So when I got ready to turn the piles, I had to move the material from bin #1 into bin #3.  That meant  carrying every shovel full of manure six feet to the south, to the empty bin.  

Rather than do that, I decided to put the manure into my cart - but that still meant loading it into the cart, pushing the cart over to the empty bin, then unloading it.  Wow...I didn't realize I had put so much poo in there!  It took probably a good hour and a half of work to move the pile!  

At first, I was able to empty the cart by just tilting it up and dumping it, but as I moved more and more of the manure, I had to tie the front pallet up to keep everything from spilling out into the yard.  That meant every shovel-full had to be lifted into the cart, and every shove-full had to be lifted out of the cart and over the pallet.  It was quite a workout, to say the least.

Notice I said "shovel-full."  That was mistake number two.  While the frozen cow patties were easy to scoop up off the ground with a flat shovel, scooping the patties out of the bin with a shovel (technically a spade) was extremely difficult!  The patties were turned every which way, so when I tried to put the shovel in, I would invariably hit a patty  that was turned at a different angle, or hit a layer of leaves.  It would have been so much easier to turn with a manure fork (which I subsequently bought!).

Patties...that was mistake number three.  Because the cow patties were frozen when I scooped them up off the ground, I just dumped them into the bin as they were.  I didn't make time to try to break them up into smaller pieces to expose more surface area for the bacteria to work on.  That meant that active decomposition was really only happening on the outside of the patties.  When I turned the pile that first time, I tried my best to break them up into smaller chunks.

And the leaves...that was mistake number four.  Not only did the leaves form a surprisingly solid layer that was difficult to penetrate with a shovel, apparently it was also difficult for the bacteria to penetrate.  At the first turn, I couldn't tell that the leaves had broken down any at all.  They just looked like wet, matted leaves.  Mental note to self:  if you use leaves in the compost bin, try to shred them first!

Finally, mistake number five.  I had piled some sticks and small tree branches at the bottom of the bin, thinking in my naïve mind that they'd break down.  They will, but not that fast.  So as I got near the bottom of the bin, I began to hit sticks that were intertwined and weighted down by the manure on top of them.  I pulled some out, and tried to get as much manure off the top of them as I could, but I finally just gave up and left the last bit of manure in the bottom of the bin.   The lesson?  If you put stuff like that in your bin, cut, chop, or break it into small pieces!

As I dug down into the center of the pile, the leaves and manure looked like they had been covered with a thin coating of ashes.  It again made me worry the the bin had been about to catch on fire!  Asking The Google about it didn't turn up much, but there was one page on Houzz.com that had quite a bit of good discussion, along with some funny comments about the gray ashy substance.   

But there was also a comment about a man who died after breathing fungal spores from compost.

I looked it up, and that did, in fact, happen.  

The 47-year-old welder from Buckinghamshire, who has not been named, died in intensive care a week after being engulfed by "clouds of dust" when he opened bags of rotting plant material that had been left to fester, in a case reported in the Lancet.

Source: TheGuardian.com; accessed April 17, 2022

So there it was...more ammunition for "the what-ifs."  That night, I couldn't stop thinking about the gray powdery stuff, and tried recreating the day's events in my head to see if I might have breathed in any of it.  I finally exhausted myself with worry, and decided that first, I probably didn't breathe in anything because the wind was blowing pretty hard from my back as I was working; second, if I did breathe in anything, it was probably only a very minor amount; and third, if I did, it was too late to worry about it anyway.  

I've turned the two bins three times now, and while I did try wearing one of my N95 masks at one point, I eventually gave up on that because it was a pretty warm, sunny day, and I decided I might be more likely to die of suffocation than from breathing in fungal spores.  

After the third turn, the temperature in the bins never did go up above ambient, and there were quite a few beetles, earthworms, and other assorted critters down in the compost.  Oh...and fire ants.  I was quite annoyed to find that the fire ants had made themselves at home down near the bottom of the bin, but I don't know what I can do about that.  I just went ahead and turned them over into the new bin.  I sincerely hope lots of them got trapped in the now disorganized pile and died!   

It was also interesting to me on the last turn how the material in the bins looked different and actually smelled like a forest floor...it had a nice "earthy" smell instead of a raw cow manure smell.  I know there is still quite a bit of undecomposed material in the pile, but I think at this point, I'll just leave them be and see what happens. 

Compost bin after a turn.  Lots of undecomposed leaves on the top, but overall, it was starting to look pretty nice after only two turns.

I couldn't resist trying some of the compost now though, even though it's probably still pretty "hot."  

In Charles Dowding's "no dig" gardening approach, he puts down some type of barrier to block weeds, tops that barrier with compost, and then plants directly into the compost.  

I didn't have enough "finished" compost to do that, but I did try an experiment with three of my broccoli plants.  I put cardboard down on the ground, then piled some of my not-quite-finished cow manure compost in a mound on top of that.  I then took three small cardboard shipping boxes, filled them with finished compost from my old "passive" compost bin, settled them down into the center of the composted cow manure pile, put a broccoli plant in each box, then covered the cow manure and compost-filled box with straw.  So far I can't tell that it has hurt those three plants, and they might actually look better than the others that were just planted right into the ground. 

And since celery is also supposed to like really rich soil, and since I've never grown celery before and really don't know what I'm doing, I decided to do another test.  I had 12 celery plants...I put six of them in the ground in the garden, but the other six I planted in my middle compost bin.

Celery in the compost bin.  I hope the compost isn't still too "hot" for the plants to survive there.

Now...the "what-ifs" have already started in on me about the celery in the compost bin, but I'm going to ignore them.  I'll just be sure to wash the celery really well in case there's any Escherichia coli contamination on them!

April 2022 Gardening Journal

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. 

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.

Chickweed spreading into the flowerbed.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

March 2022 Gardening Journal

Thursday, March 17, 2022

And we did get more snow...

 

 

With the temperature hovering right around freezing, the snow didn't stick on the roads this time, and although we probably got around 2" total, a lot of it melted before nightfall.  The sun was out on Saturday, and most of the snow was gone by that afternoon.  

The skies got cloudy again early in the week, and it just seemed chilly outside.  But mid-week the sun came back out, the temperatures warmed back up, and it really is feeling a lot more like spring.

Radishes are coming up in the little raised bed, and I set out a few lettuce plants and the few little onions that survived from January in between them.  Unfortunately, the rabbits found them last night, and one of the onions has been nibbled off.  So this afternoon I put up a wire hoop over the bed to try to protect things.  Hoop is made of some old 2" x 4" welded wire that was left over from some project I did long, long ago.  Hope the rabbits aren't able to get through openings that size.

RAF has helped me work on the raised beds that I decided to build around the cellar.  Although they're not perfect, I'm pleased with how it's turned out so far, and just hope that my strawberry plants will do well in the top bed.  

Two levels completed, then rain moved in.  I've since added boards for the bottom level, and have started working up the dirt getting the beds ready for planting.

 

 

Thursday, March 10, 2022

In the past couple of weeks, I've been pretty busy trying to get some seeds started, and pricking out and potting up some of the ones that had already sprouted.

We're in for a couple more pretty cold days, with more snow. 

 

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

The last week of February was just miserable.  But I think spring is trying to win out, and my gloomy-doomy mood is somewhat better because of that. 

 

February 2022 Gardening Journal

Monday, February 28, 2022

Wednesday morning started off cold, but dry, and I intended to get to the store for a gallon of milk before 10 am, which is when the weatherman said we might start to see some precipitation.  Around 9 am, I decided to go ahead and go, but before I could even get my boots on, the rain had started, and one step out the door changed my mind in a hurry.  The step was already glazed over with ice.

Luckily for us, most of Wednesday morning we had sleet rather than freezing rain, otherwise I'm not sure if we'd have had power through the rest of the storm.  By afternoon, the sleet had transitioned over to rain, with embedded lightening/thunder, and even cells with some rotation in them, if you can believe that!    

By Thursday night, when the rain finally moved out, I estimate that we ended up with close to 1/2" of ice, so a big shout-out to Arkansas Valley Electric for clearing out the right-of-ways so that none of the power lines were taken out by falling tree limbs.

It was cold without our propane heater, so we pretty much lived bundled up in one room with two electric heaters.  We didn't freeze to death, so I guess we survived it. 

 

2/23/2022 10:50 am - Everything is starting to get covered by a light layer of sleet.

2/23/2022 12:36 pm - Just over an hour and a half later, we were completely encased in a layer of sleet and ice.

  

Thursday, February 17, 2022

I guess RAF and I are in for a miserable night tonight, and several miserable days next week.  Our propane line under the house started leaking a couple of nights ago and the repair appointment isn't until Friday, the 25th.  So that means no propane heater in the living room.  The low tonight is supposed to be around 18 degrees F, but it should start warming back up tomorrow...until next Tuesday night.  At that point, temperatures are supposed to get cold again with the possibility of freezing winter precipitation of some sort for Wednesday and Thursday.  

I am so done with winter.   

 

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Update on green pea germination: 

Peat pots - 10 of 15 (67%)

Cardboard Toilet Paper Rolls - 5 of 18 (28%) 

First daffodil of the year bloomed today.

 

 

Sunday, February 6, 2022

The green peas have started coming up!

Update on the Green Pea seed starting experiment.  

The peas have started coming up.  So far, seven have come up in the peat pots, and only two in the cardboard toilet paper rolls.  One of the peat pots is starting to get quite a bit of mold on one side at the top.  There appears to be a very light film of mold on the side of one of the cardboard rolls as well.  The one cardboard roll that had started to unravel is almost completely unraveled now, with the soil starting to spill down the side.

A couple of thoughts about why the peat pots are "winning."  First, I think the seeds in the peat pots may have come up more quickly because the peat pots seem to hold the moisture better than the cardboard rolls. That could be because the peat pots, being square, are packed together more closely (the cardboard rolls have lots of air space between them).  It could also be that the peat just naturally holds moisture better. 

(In all fairness to the cardboard rolls, I've tried not to just saturate them with water this time, because I thought that might have been the reason for all of the mold, and that it probably contributed to the rolls coming unraveled.)

Second, I realize that I filled all of the cardboard rolls too full.  By filling them up completely to the top, the water tries to roll off the side before it has a chance to soak in.  So I'm not sure they've actually received an amount of water equivalent to what the seeds in the peat pots received. Were I doing this over, I'd leave about 1/4" of space at the top to help contain the water. 

 

Saturday, February 5, 2022

With all the ice, sleet and snow on the ground, I kept sending my dad text messages reminding him and my mom to be very, very careful when they were out doing their chores so they didn't fall.

So who was the one who fell on the ice?  Why me of course!  I guess I got my left foot up on the sloped ground around the storm cellar more than I realized and when I lifted my right foot to take a step, away I went!  Although I hit the ground pretty hard and rolled, I wasn't hurt other than just a bit of a sore hip.  It just goes to show you that I'm not very good at "practicing what I preach!"

Back in December, I decided to set up "events" in my Outlook calendar with reminders about when it was time to plant different things through the growing season.  This past week, one of my reminders popped up: 

 

That means it's officially time to start on the 2022 garden!  And while February isn't the busiest month for planting, there are a few things on the calendar. 

So today, I've planted some Emerald Giant bell peppers.  And because the Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage seeds I planted back in January have never come up, I planted some Early Dutch cabbage seeds too.  I'm pretty sure I planted some of the Early Jersey Wakefield seeds last year too, and they never came up.  I know the seeds are quite old, so it's probably time to throw them in the compost.  The Early Dutch seeds are very old too, so I may have the same outcome on them, which is to say, nothing.  No great loss, I guess.  I'm not a real big fan of cabbage anyway.

I had gotten in a rush last month and started the broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage earlier than the calendar said.  They've come up, and will go out in the garden in early March (if I can keep them alive until then).  

The problem I've always had with seeds started indoors is light.  I bought some LED grow lights last year and have fastened them to a piece of 1/2" plywood.  I've had the seedlings under that light for a few days, but either I didn't get them under it soon enough, or they're still too far away from the light.  Although their leaves are a healthy dark green, all of the plants are very "leggy."  

Leggy Brussels sprouts. The one on the upper left is almost 2" tall!  Very bad....

And my little onions and leeks that I was so excited about earlier?  Well, they weren't spindly because they're Alliums.  They're spindly because I almost killed them.

Poor, poor pitiful onions and leeks.

I'm pretty sure that I let them dry out.  Apparently the air in the living room is super dry and because I thought by looking that the pots were still damp, I didn't check them.  They weren't damp.  When I finally did poke my finger down in the pot to check the soil moisture, it was actually very, very dry.  

I gave them a good watering and put them under the LED grow light as well.  I can see new growth that has put up, especially on the leeks, so I hope I haven't completely lost all of them.  But I really started them way to early anyway, so if they don't make it I guess that's just a lesson learned early.  I'll have time to start more. 

 

Thursday, February 3, 2022

The back side of winter storm Landon is making its way across Arkansas tonight.  We were pretty lucky actually...we only got about 1/4" or less of ice topped by probably another 1/2" of sleet last night, topped by maybe another inch of snow today.  So far the power has stayed on and while it's very cold (39 degrees on the inside porch this morning) we've managed to bundle up and stay warm enough.  Our forecast is calling for less than one additional inch of snow, and it will be the dry, powdery kind, so we don't expect it to accumulate on the trees or power lines.

February ice, sleet and snow from winter storm Landon.

Looking at the picture of the panels in the garden, I guess it's a good thing I didn't try to rush and plant my green peas in the ground!  They've not come up yet, but the Brussels sprouts and broccoli seeds planted on the same day have!  

Mo was his usual happy self this morning when I put on his harness and leash...until I opened the door.  He took one look outside then actually shook his head "no!" and started backing up!  I had to laugh at him, and practically had to push him out the door.  We only stayed out for a couple of minutes - enough for him to pee on a clump of grass in the yard - then straight back in the house!

But this afternoon, with the snow over the top of the sleet, he didn't seem to mind being out at all, and he bounced along through the snow as we made our usual round around the yard.  He stopped for a couple of minutes on the east side of the shop, and while he was looking at something/listening to something, I took the time to gaze out across the absolutely breathtaking beauty of the countryside in the snow.  

Dark steel-gray-blue clouds hung low over dark steel-blue-green mountains, framed by the stark whiteness of the big American Sycamore tree out in the field.  The more distant trees were shapes etched in black on a background of white snow.  It was so beautiful - one of those things that messes with my brain.  I'm not sure if it makes me incredibly happy or incredibly sad.  When we got back into the house, I happened to look out just in time to see a flock of snow-geese, flying low, white silhouettes against the dark mountain, which was slowly shrouded by a heavy band of snow....  

I wish I could take pictures with my eyes.