wiredfool

One row of potatoes are in, and Guinness was drunk to celebrate the occasion.

The past weekend, 2 rows of strawberry plants, and before that, peas, favas, blueberry bushes and grape vines. And spring is really here, despite the snowball sized snowflakes that fell on Sunday.

We didn’t wind up getting the blueberries or grapes into their permanent places this weekend. The blueberries are going to be a bit larger than we had expected, so we needed more space for them, which lead to getting some old logs out of the way and taking down a couple of trees that I didn’t want to drop on new plantings.

The logs had been there since the house was built, just rotting and getting eaten by bugs. Well, except for the couple logs of really nice cedar. Only the outer inch of those was eaten, and one log was a good 5 feet long and 2 feet around. I didn’t realize it was nice dry cedar till I cut it up though. It did make a decent fire starter for the bonfire to burn all the other log pieces.

I can’t believe they just left it there to rot. And that it lasted 10 years with only minimal damage.

To punish me for thinking it was spring, we had snow the day after the last post.

But. Back to better weather. Today I got this year’s fruit trees in the ground. We’ve also gotten 6 blueberry bushes and 6 grape vines, to be planted real soon now. They’re haning out in the compost pile till i get places for them and holes dug.

Four fruit trees have been bought and stored at the nursery. A Jonagold apple (Tim’s tree, a birthday gift), a Frost Peach, Bartlett Pear, and an Asian pear of some variety that I don’t remember. I got one of the holes dug today, the others will happen soonish.

Seeds for the garden are ordered. Some of them can be planted this month, but the majority are for later in the spring.

It feels good to be back in the dirt.

In your end of the world, it might be Superbowl Sunday. But in my corner, it’s Chainsaw Sunday. This is the first weekend since the storms that’s been warm and mostly dry, so the neighbors and I were out dealing with the properties. Some cutting more wood, some dealing with nature’s contributions to the wood pile.

Yesterday I hacked up a few downed limbs, the biggest being a good 8 inch diameter. Also took down a few more alders and cut them up into little pieces so that they stack in a convenient woodpile. And today it was gathering some the waste wood from a milling operation, stacking it, and then cleaning up more alder. This alder went in the burn pile, then the burn pile got burned.

Today was also the first outdoor meal of the year, a candle light dinner by the fire.

POUSes? I don’t think they exist.

Well, the stuff (spinach, carrots, beets, chard) that I planted in at the beginning of August is doing well. It all sprouted really quickly, since we had a week of every-other-day rain. Nothing like heat and rain to do that. Unfortunately, it’s bringing out the slugs as well.

Then yesterday, we had a big harvest. A cauliflower. big. Two Broccolis, small and larger. A handful of beans. A carrot, a parsnip. A decent sized zucchini, 10 lbs of red potatoes, some chard that was getting de-bolted, and 4 pints of blackberries.

All of it good sized, all perfect looking and the sort of thing that would sell in the non-organic must look beautiful section of the grocery store.

The sunflowers are mostly about as tall as I am, the infrareds are out, the verigated ones are close behind. The giants aren’t out yet, and it’s getting hard to tell how they’re doing since I can’t see the top anymore. The pole beans have started to have little 1/4 inch beans show up. And the pumpkins are nuts. Huge and sprawly. And not small pumpkins either.

Monster version to come.

July is almost over, and we’ve had the first rains since July 3rd the last few days. Some notes and observations for next year.

* The hot weather stuff is happy with weekly or slightly more often watering, once they’re a decent size and have roots that go down deep enough.
* Seedlings and shallow rooted stuff aren’t as happy and need more water, and the reseeded carrots are really not doing well.
* The infilled beans and squashes are doing well.
* We’re getting our first zucchini flower now, with many to follow soon.
* The corn is still a disappointment. Spotty germination, slow growing, rabbit munching.
* The tomatoes are going nuts. The tomitillo probably needs more support than it has.
* The peas are dying out, and the trellising that we had put together for them flopped over onto the potatoes. We need to run two long rows of peas per bed next year, with a central trellis that we can get to both sides of. Also, more peas. We should have reseeded when the April seeding failed completely.
* Favas are tasty, but one bed is about 1 1/2 meals, if that. Thankfully, we’ll throw down a bunch of fava seed as cover crop for overwinter.
* The potatoes are now showing the difference between the two older plantings. We should plant more of them, and keep them together in the garden for watering purposes.
* In general, we need to think about the watering plan, so that things that need watering more often are closer together, without drought tolerant stuff in between them. Also, there’s one corner that’s in the rain shadow from a couple of firs, and that portion is a lot drier. That would be better for some of the better established stuff, since it’s also farther from where I usually water.
* Spinach & salads should be planted more at 6 week plus intervals, not monthly.
* Raspberries like a little water when their fruit is ripening. Also, ripe raspberries are like nothing else.
* The first of the overwinter and fall stuff is planted. Spinach, Carrots, and Chard, and Beets because we finally got around to planting them. I need to be careful to keep these beds moist. I’m thinking of covering the carrots with clear plastic for moisture retention till they sprout.
* Kale is planted too.
* $3 ‘starts’ of basil are best from Trader Joes. They’re small bushes.
* The cilantro is nuts, and the seeded ones are starting to bolt. I think it’s time to plant more.

So. June was a real mixed bag. Specifically, really cold and wet for the first half, trending to really damn hot for the last few days. The hot weather stuff planted early wasn’t exactly happy with the conditions, so a lot of it needed to be re-seeded, at least for fill in.

* The peas are just now starting to bear, we’ll have a harvest soon.
* The chard is nuts, starting to bolt in places. The salads, similar. Kale is well bolted by now.
* Potatoes are looking good, March and April are about neck and neck, with May’s significantly behind. The first two month’s worth are flowering now.
* The things that were seeded May 15 are somewhat happy, some of the carrots and parsnips came up, since reseeded to fill in.
* The bush beans came up (planted 5/15), were eaten by slugs, and then hated the cold weather. Beans that were planted 6/1 sortakinda came up when the weather got warmer, and now the ones that I planted as fill are coming up after being in the ground about a week.
* Squashes (summer, winter, pumpkin) mostly came up, needed fill planting on three hills, and are now all growing like mad with the warm weather.
* Corn. Didn’t like the cold. Reseeded, have been expecting it to come up, but it hasn’t been.
* Basil. Transplants didn’t like the cold, I should have covered them. Then the slugs ate them.
* Sunflowers planted 6/1 germinated well and really took off growing when it got warmer.
* Quinoa, germinated reasonably well and quickly in the cold. It coul dprobably do planted a bit earlier.
* Lavender seeds germinated, and growing really slowly. They probably should be done in little pots, then transplanted out when it gets hot.
* Tomato transplants went in 5/25 and stayed under row covers at night and during cold days. They look very happy with that treatment. The covers have been off for a couple of weeks, and they’re solid.
* Brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, parsnips, turnips) have all had spotty germination, probably due to not keeping the seeds moist enough. (actually, that’s probably a pretty common issue). The ones that sprouted seem to be doing well, and the ones that didn’t have been replanted. They have a really wide growing season, so this will just mean that we’ll have a few ready to harvest a few weeks later.
* Onions probably need a lot more water than they’re getting. And they need to be protected from kiddos.
* I’m not sure that the leeks are growing as fast as I think that they should.
* The cilantro sprouted well, the sets we got are already well on the way to bolting. Basil hasn’t sprouted, it’s probably still too cold.
* Parsley has sprouted, and remarkably well, considering that the last time I did it, I got one or two plants total.

* We lost our one cherry. We still have 3 apples on one tree, and a couple on the other. The other three trees didn’t set fruit.
* The raspberries have set a bunch of fruit. The blackberries… a ton. We’re getting a few good salmon berries, and they’re far tastier than at the old place. Though, the kids get most of them.