Fall cleanup

I have slowly been cleaning up my gardens for fall; after being promoted at work late in the summer it feels like I have no time to work outside.  Between my two jobs I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, and it has been months since I've had an entire day off.  I've had to get a little creative when it comes to getting things done in my garden.

Things are getting done outside, but not nearly as quickly as I'd like.  The longer the weather holds out before winter gets here, the better it will be.

Today I went out and raked leaves from under the maple trees, and used them to mulch my herb bed, which is full of sprouting garlic.  We had enough cardboard saved to lay between the rows and smother the weeds, and I was able to pile a good 18+ inches of leaves on top of the cardboard.  The whole garden looks fluffy!

I would like to hem in that particular garden with a wattle fence...we'll see if I can come with the materials and time.

My next yard project is to paper and mulch the empty flower garden.  I ran out of both cardboard and leaves today, but will be running errands tonight close to my cardboard supply.  The crabapple by the barn and the oak tree out front still have to drop their leaves...they should be enough to mulch the flowerbed.

After that, the main garden!

Early Summer 2015

Welcome to a new year and a new garden season!  I have a few confessions to make...

Since my last post, I have probably written a dozen or more posts that just never got posted...for no particular reason.  I can say that I have been busy (I had two days off the entire month of February, for example), I have been bored, I felt conceited after finishing what I wanted to write about...the list goes on and on.  I think it boils down to I have a tendency to not follow through with anything, because I am already thinking of the next few things.  Right now I am making the commitment to myself and to you, the rare dear reader, to keep up with my blog.  My goal right now is a post a week, hopefully two.

My next confession....is that my garden looks no better this year than last year.  Because of a crazy work schedule, I started my seedlings very late...and managed to get my garden tilled on time.  After waiting patiently for the last spring frost, I plunked my little darlings in the ground.  Over the next three weeks, we had no less than six more frosts, and hard ones at that.  It was the last of these, one night where the temp dropped down to ten degrees below the forecasted temperature  that nipped all my seedlings in the bud.

Not to be deterred....I bought plants.  Gophers ate them, my barn cats dug them up...you name it.  It has rained every two days for the past three weeks...you could bale the grass in my yard right now!

I am determined to wrestle at least something from my garden this year...we will have to see what turns out to be!

Garden Plans, fall 2014

Here is my plan for the rest of the year for my garden:

1.) I am ditching the basics of the Back to Eden gardening method.  While I loved the idea in theory, in practice it didn't work for me.  I had a very hard time finding compost and mulch at acceptable times in the quantities I needed.  My soil never drained under the areas that were heavily mulched from last year (they were still sopping wet after a month of no rain)...and when I pulled up the plants last fall, none of them had deep roots.  I want my plants to grow roots as deeply as possible to get to the minerals deeper in the soil.  I want my soil to dry so my seedlings don't drown, either.  Heavy mulching is not my friend.

To add to my problems, my lack of compost has upset the nitrogen-carbon balance in my garden.  It's going to take me some time and effort to repair that.

As a side note, the mulch method didn't even eliminate weeds.  The mulch I laid down last year did much, much better at preventing weeds than the mulch I laid down this year, despite being the same layers of cardboard and straw.  The morning-glory like weed that has taken over my gardens this year (including my flowerbeds), did not penetrate last year's mulch.  Those areas are still bare.

2.)  As soon as it frosts, I am pulling out all of the tomatoes in my garden, removing all of the hard-scaping (pea fence, tomato stakes, etc), and tilling the whole mess under.  Then I'm going to add all of the leaves I can lay my hands on, a bunch of grass clippings from my yard, and hopefully some horse manure and tilling it in again.  Maybe a few times.  If I can find it and plant it in time, I might sow some rye or winter wheat as a green compost to be tilled in before planting in the spring.  I have six to twelve inches of straw to offset with nitrogen.

3.)  Over the course of winter, I will add the contents of my ash bucket for calcium and potash.  I don't add much, but I do try to spread a thin layer over the garden every winter.  If I had another way to safely store my ashes until spring, I would...

4.)  Invest in a few good quality tarps to lay over the surface of the garden.  The horse manure will produce heat as it decomposes, allowing the garden to "work" at composting into the depth of winter.  Covering with a tarp will help trap the heat produced by the manure and the winter sun, while at the same time prevent the topsoil from being carried away by wind or water, or destroyed by UV.

5.)  Fencing.  I need some.  I learned this year I have a chipmunk infestation, and several times caught deer grazing just a few feet away from my garden.  What kind of fence keeps out both chipmunks and deer?  I need to research this, clearly.  As much as I love the company of my two barn cats, they need to be kept from the garden as well.  They like to use it as a litterbox, and I'm pretty sure they are the source of the invasive weed taking over everything.

6.)  Planning and Research.  I want to keep better records of everything.  Weather conditions, precipitation, costs and harvests, etc.  I have a lot of books on companion gardening, permaculture, and organic gardening methods on my waiting list to read this winter. I have recently discovered www.smartgardener.com, which I like much better than growveg.com.  It helps me make the best use of my space, succession planting, and tells me which seeds will or will not grow in my climate's growing season.

I already have conquered the biggest obstacle for next year's garden...money.  This year things were tight enough I had to choose between buying seeds or the soil to start them in.  Next year I won't have that limitation; I have already set aside money to make a large seed order the first week of January 2015.  Now I just have to finalize my garden plans so I know what to order!

Having a plan for 2015 has taken some of the sting out of this year's failures and given me hope for next year.   How has your garden grown?

2014 Garden Update

Hello, world!

I just wanted to pop in and leave my notes from this year's garden progress up to this point.  Sadly, there isn't very much to say.

My garden failed this year.  In a big, big way.  I planted things; they didn't come up.  I planted more things; a few sprouts popped up, and were promptly eaten by chipmunks.  Or rabbits.  Or deer.  Or well...you get the point.

After that, I gave up and bought plants...and somebody got happy with a weedeater one evening and cut down all of my peppers.  After spending hours laying down cardboard and mulch, the barn cats or birds or something introduced a particularly invasive vining weed....which promptly took root despite six inches of straw mulch, and overran everything.  In all of my gardens.

I have dozens of theories as to why nothing grew this year, and what I can do next year to make it better.  This year has been a total loss.

I was able to harvest a handful of radishes this year, a batch of spinach, and a few cucumbers and zucchini.  There are a few tomato plants growing along the ground (had a minor disaster with being allergic to the baling twine I was going to use to tie them with...all of the sisal twine you can buy here is coated with pesticides.  I have migraines even being in the same room with it...let alone touching it), that are have tomatoes on them, but at the beginning of September I have yet to get one ripe tomato off them.  I planted them in April.  They're so covered with the viney weed that it's hard to find the tomatoes anyway.

My cucumbers for pickles grew, but never produced enough cucumbers at once to make pickles.  The list goes on and on and on.  My garden was a complete failure this year.  I was able to harvest a few peas, a couple of radishes, a little spinach.  A few cucumbers.  The only crop that did well this year was my garlic.  I harvested 64 cloves out of the 72 I planted last fall, the smallest about the size of a ping pong ball, and the largest approaching baseball size.  Most of them were larger rather than smaller.

Right now my garden is nothing but a giant patch of knee high weeds.  I am hoping to get enough tomatoes for one batch of salsa (anything else will be made into freezer tomato sauce).  I have one fist-sized watermelon I am watching like a hawk.  As soon as I can harvest the watermelon or it frosts, I am going to get tough with my garden.  It will hurt me far more than it will hurt it, I think.  I have a Plan....here's hoping it works for next year!

Spring Has Sprung! First Planting and a Lack of Compost

After a long hard cold winter, we are finally seeing the first signs of life from the garden!  We had a spate of unseasonably warm days scattered through the last few weeks, so I have been outside working in my garden.  Our last frost date in this area is April 13th, but on the 5th I went through a bunch of old seeds from last year and planted some early spring seeds to give them a head start in the garden.

I planted:

1. Peas:  1 packet of Guisante Super Snappy peas from 2011 and 1 packet of Burpeeana Early from 2013
2. Broccoli:  Organic Romanesco from 2013
3. Cabbage:  Earliana Cabbage from 2013
4. Lettuce:  Lechuga Looseleaf Blend from 2013
5. Beets:  Organic Detroit Red Beets from 2010
6. Cauliflower:  Early Snowball A from 2013
7. Cherry Bell Radish from 2013
8. Catskill Brussel Sprouts from 2011
9. Swiss Chard Neon Lights mix from 2013
10. 6 celery plants started from the ends of store-bought celery

I am not expecting the older seeds to sprout, but i wanted to give them a chance.  If they sprout, they have saved me from buying the seeds for this year.  If they don't sprout, I will have used up the seed anyway without just throwing it away and wasting it.  I planted all of these in the western bed, which was tilled up from lawn last spring and mulched with straw over a mixture of newspaper and cardboard for weed barrier.

The Back to Eden gardening method I started last year seems to be working out fine...the half of the garden that did not get papered and mulched last year is nothing but a pit of weeds and mud atm.  It needs tilled before I can even think about planting anything it, and the tiller man (otherwise known as Dad) is a farmer heading into planting season, which takes priority over everything that isn't immediately life-threatening.  My new garden bed and tilling the exposed half of the existing garden will have to wait until he is free and the ground is dry enough, which could be as late as the end of next month (If it is dry enough to till, it is dry enough to plant).  I am planning on using those spaces to plant heat-loving veggies and melons.

The half of the garden that did get papered and mulched last year turned out wonderfully...I was able to just scrape back the remnant's of last year's straw to expose ground to plant in.  The cardboard underneath had already decomposed and the straw, which i laid down ankle-to-shin deep last fall is maybe two inches thick now, and the bottom half of that is already black as it decomposes further.  I was able to just dig my trenches for rows and stick the seeds in and recover them all without tilling.  The soil beneath was rich and dark, and full of earthworms.  I found one dandelion growing in last year's mulch, and a few sprigs of grass on the very edges of the mulched garden...easy enough to remove.

Compost is a big part of the back to Eden Method:  I wanted to put a load of horse manure from the farm I work at on all of my garden beds late last fall  and let it "work" over the winter, but that did not work out.  Somehow a nasty bacterial infection commonly called Strangles worked its way into the barn in November and we are still fighting it five months later.  A proper compost pile should get hot enough while it works to eat or destroy any remaining pathogens, but the manure at the horse farm is only piled up for about a month before it is removed, not nearly long enough to gain the kind of heat it needs to be safe.

Strangles is highly contagious, and I don't want to risk bringing it onto my property with uncomposted manure, and then possibly taking it from here back into the farm at work.  The horses who had it this time will be immune, but we have a lot of horses in and out for short amounts of time, and I don't want to risk exposing them to it and having them carry it to other farms when they go home.  Once our last sick horse recovers and the manure is removed one last time I will start bringing home the uncomposted manure from work and adding it to my compost pile here.  Right now my plan is to stick a few old rubbermaids in the trunk of my car and fill them once or twice a week and adding it to my pile of old much, yard waste, and kitchen trimmings.  It will be stinky and smelly (I really need to get a truck so I can just bring home a load of it about once a month), but my garden needs the nitrogen and I know exactly where this comes from and what's in it, so to speak.  That is worth any amount of hard work and bad smells, and by doing the work myself it's all free!

By next spring I should have a nice pile of compost to spread over the garden.  Funds are tight at the moment and all my spare change is going towards buying seeds and seedlings, or else I would buy compost to add and build my proper layers of nitrogen and carbon to improve the soil.  Thankfully I have good soil to begin with, so I shouldn't see a huge decrease in garden fertility this year, but this is not something I want to do year after year.  I want to improve my soil, not deplete it!

Weather Update, and keeping outdoor cats warm in extreme cold

Right now it is -9 outside, clear, and breezy.  I am very happy to be able to stay snuggled up inside.  This third morning of double-digit negative temperatures I finally caved and let my two barn cats inside.  I know they can weather -12 or so without much trouble overnight with their current setup, but it's always been warmer (at least above zero) during the day, not this continuous bitter cold.

Right now they're happily tucked up in my spare bedroom with the heat register and the door closed...i think it's about 50 degrees in there, so not quite as much of a shock as coming into a 70 degree house.  They can't stay there long-term, I use that room for a refuge for my oldest cat...she's been declawed and the others tend to pick on her.  It's supposed to get up to about 20 degrees this afternoon so I will probably put them back out then.  These cats don't like to stay inside...they like to come in and visit for a few minutes and warm up before they go back out. After a half-hearted attempt to go back out after eating they've been quiet all morning, which tells me a lot about how cold it is outside.  I checked them over for frostbite and didn't see anything, but I will keep an eye on them with that in mind over the next few days.

This cold has made me rethink their setup...as much as I'd like to let them come in regularly during extreme weather it throws the social structure of the housecats off and that tries everyone's patience.

They only used their heated box on the porch during the first day until the wind picked up and blizzard conditions started.  This summer I need to focus on changing that setup so they don't feel the need to crawl under my house.  I want to make it animal-tight this summer--we've had problems with raccoons and possums in the past.  They can and have chewed on wiring, torn holes in the heat and a/c ductwork, pulled out floor insulation, and just made a general mess of things on top of creating a potential fire hazard.

Ideally I would like to get something like this for their house:  http://www.blythewoodworks.com/store/product/heated_dog_houses  Being able to set the temperature of their house at like 35 for the coldest part of the winter would take a lot of worry out of my life.  It's not likely to be in my budget this year (they'd probably need a new house to put that in on top of buying the heater), so I've been thinking about how I can make them more comfortable without spending a lot of money.

Their cat house has a sheltered porch area to use as a wind and water break, but the door is big enough for them to stand in and doesn't stop the heat from escaping.  I'd like to get some kind of flap on there before next winter.  I also want to paint the house a light color to reflect the heat in summer, and hopefully replace their current heated pad with a newer version actually rated to be used outdoors:  http://www.blythewoodworks.com/store/product/heated_pet_pads  It's almost as expensive as the heater, but I wouldn't have to cut more holes in their house.  I will also move the house next to the porch in the winter, instead of on it, and surround it with straw bales and a tarp as added insulation and weatherproofing.

For a more immediate fix to my problem of keeping the boys warm, there's always a DIY insulated house:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Winter-Cat-Shelter/  They're fast, easy to make, inexpensive, and I already have all the stuff needed to make one except for the foam cooler.  I might pick one up when I go out later this week and stash it under the house.  That would buy me some peace of mind if we get another extended round of bitter cold this winter before I have the money to fix up their house.  Once I get the foundation closed back up I can put the styrofoam shelter in the barn as a second refuge from the weather.

Their heated water bowl couldn't quite keep up with the worst of the cold...it starts to rim up with ice at about -10, and while it keeps the water from freezing all the way through, the ice is thick enough the cats can't break it.  I need to sit down and do some thinking about that.

My next post...gardening goals for 2014!

Winter Weather!

It is about to get cold here....very cold.  Not record-inducing cold...the record for cold in this area was the day I was born, more than thirty years ago.  The incoming never-seen-in-twenty-years cold snap?  Well, it's not quite there yet--I can actually remember it being this cold before.

So what do I do during cold weather like this?  Mostly I stay inside.  It's not always possible; people have jobs and livestock to care for, but in this case I am very, very lucky.  The worst part of the snow and cold snaps are on my days off this week, so I can curl up inside and stay warm and safe.

Here are a few things my family and I did to prepare for this snow and cold snap.

1.)  I filled my woodbox as full as I could possibly get it when they started forecasting snow a few days ago.  My wood is stacked outside under a tarp, which keeps off most of the rain, but not all of the moisture.  Bringing it in early gives it a chance to dry in the heated area of the house.  I also have plenty of other firemakings on hand...paper, kindling, and some homemade firestarters.  If they had called for ice with this storm, I would have stacked as much wood as I could on the small porch off my sliding glass doors (a few steps from the woodbox), and covered it with another tarp to protect it from the weather.  Walking up and down icy steps carrying firewood is just a recipe for disaster if you're as clumsy as I am.

2.)  I am not actually burning firewood atm, and I don't plan to do so unless the power goes out.  Why?  First off, I have a fireplace, not a wood-burning stove.  It goes through a lot of wood.  My fireplace is very small, but it does have an electric fan that blows the heat into the house instead of letting it all going up the chimney.  I only have about two weeks of continuous-fire wood cut and split, and it can be hard to get more wood here in January and February.  It's an hour-long drive to the land where we get wood, and it can be tricky in bad weather.   Also the fireplace tends to heat the house up enough to keep the furnace from turning on, but it doesn't heat the whole house, only the central portion.  I want to keep regular doses of heat going to my pipes in this much cold.
     It's there if I need it, and part of me really wants the comfort of a nice crackling fire today.  The rest of me has lived through busted pipes in the winter, and doesn't want to do it again.
     Speaking of pipes...

3.)  I will turn my sinks on tonight before I go to bed, just enough to barely drip.  All of my water pipes are insulated, and most of them are heat-taped.  That said, I live in a home that sits on piers instead of a foundation, and they're all above ground.  Before there was siding on the house, they would still freeze in weather as low as ten degrees.  They haven't frozen since then, but still.  Busted pipes in this much cold?  A nightmare.  I will collect the water in big bowls and pots and use it to fill humidifiers in the morning and water my house plants.  As part of my general emergency plans, we also have about a dozen gallons of water stashed in various places in case the pipes do freeze and we're out of water for a while.

4.)  Windows.  I have fairly nice windows, but they're almost fifteen years old, and getting drafty.  I have all my blinds pulled, curtains drawn, and blankets draped over the curtain rods on windows that I know are particularly drafty or facing the direction the wind is coming from.  It doesn't look pretty, but it helps.  One of my planned projects for this year is to buy a roll of mylar-coated bubble-wrap insulation and make frames for the windows..something I can just set in and out of the windows in extreme heat and cold.

5.)  Animals.  I have no livestock atm to care for, which I am extremely thankful for atm.  I do, however, have two barn cats, and the barn is not exactly the most weatherproof building there is.  My outdoor cats have a decent sized box for them to curl up in, lined with a few layers of the mylar insulation and with a heated pet bed in the bottom.  The bed doesn't get very hot all, but it does provide some warmth the cat doesn't have to provide itself.  They also have 24/7 access to two different heated water sources, and I know for a fact that they can and have gotten under the house to sit on the heat-taped water pipes and snuggle up in the insulation there.  I've put a large amount of dry cat food in their house, so they can eat free-choice out of the wind, and during the extreme cold I also feed them soft food (a can split between the two of them) twice a day.  If I think they need it, I will give it to them three times.

While there is a lot more I could do (and probably should) this is what I managed with the time, supplies, and funds I had on hand.  I'm secure that my family has enough food, water, and heat to weather out this storm, and for that I'm very grateful.

Coming soon...goals for 2014, craft projects, and garden planning!