More garlic is in, preparing the space for another garden box

Our temperatures in Maryland continue to stay Fall-ish with highs remaining largely in the 50's. I also had a little bit of time (and daylight) yesterday to get some work done outdoors.  

With that being the case and weather reports indicating actual rain coming, I purchased some more garlic and filled in the empty space from before.

Since that went faster than I anticipated, I roto-tilled the space for a third garden box.  Unfortunately, I haven't made that third box, yet, so I couldn't get one in the ground.  At least the soil has been loosened considerably.  Hopefully, I can get that box made tonight.

Mulched the boxes

With Wifey being otherwise occupied, I had to hang out for a contractor doing work in the house.  While he wrapped up his work, I sucked up and mulched leaves from the yard.  

Not only have I finished cleaning up the pile in the driveway, but I've also gotten a bunch of leaves away from the front of the house thanks to the front that blew in on Saturday.

And the onion and garlic boxes have nice layers of mulched leaves on top of the dirt to boot!

Waiting on the wood chips

Still haven't received the wood chips from Asplundh.  After making a phone call, I've learned that none of their crews have been working even remotely in my area.  Until then, I have to wait.

Nuts.

Added another "Helpful Site" to the sidebar

A few weeks ago, I was cross-referencing some plants on the internet and came across Edible Wild Food.  Sure, the website is mostly about flowers (EWF calls them "weeds"), but they're helpful for attracting pollinators.  Thanks to their website, a lot quite a few of what they have on there are a list that will eventually be in our garden.  I'd never realized how many of the herbs I see as teas or seasonings in the grocery store actually come from a very attractive plant.

Aaand we have food in the ground!

Today, I had some free time so I got some work done outside. 

As far as the garden was concerned, I got two more posts in the ground and planted a bunch of walking onions and garlic.  In the picture below, you can see two bulbs on the right and a shoot coming up on the left. 

As with the garden plot, I used what I call the "finger-poke method" to get them in the ground.  Thankfully, since the soil was already rather loose, it went very well.

Unfortunately, I both ran out of the garlic and onions and a cold front blew in or I'd have covered the garden boxes with leaves.  Maybe tomorrow if it's not too cold.

First two garden boxes are in

Although we've been very busy addressing general house neglect from the previous owners, I've been working to try to make as much progress on the garden as possible.  I want to be able to hit the ground running in the spring and don't want to be hamstrung by a lack of progress this fall.

With The Bear being under the weather, I took the afternoon off of work to help out.  Upon my arrival home, I found that things were much better than either Wifey or I had anticipated.  With that in mind, she turned me loose on the yard.

I mowed the lawn (minus the field/orchard) and tried to orient the mulched leaves into areas that would be easy to collect for use in the garden.

Once that was complete, I roto-tilled the area where the first two garden boxes will go.  They are located outside of what will be fenced, but since my fence posts are 8' apart, it wouldn't be a big deal to extend the fence area if needed.  I don't expect the onions and garlic to be appealing to deer since they are frequently used as an organic critter-repellant, anyway.

After the area was tilled, I excavated some of the soil to be able to sink the boxes into ground a few inches.  That being completed, I mixed roughly equal parts of the native soil, bagged top soil, and LeafGro then watered each box to get the soil to compact somewhat.

Next up is to collect the leaf piles from the lawn and be prepared to put on top of the soil after planting my Egyptian Walking Onions and Garlic.  


Notable:

The Walking Onion bulbs that I'll be planting came from my parents' garden.  Their bulbs came from our garden plot.  Our original bulbs came from an organic farm in southwest Virginia.  I love being able to save money through seed-saving as well as having knowledge of the genealogy of the "seeds" since ~2012.

Filling in the "dinosaur pit"

I forgot to take a picture right when it happened, but I had the day off of work on Friday to memorialize Veteran's Day.  I spent a good chunk of the day outside doing some hole digging to prep for sinking the fence posts.

One thing that The Boy and The Girl worked on was to fill in a large hole that they called "the dinosaur pit."  Kids being kids, they had had a grand time using their imaginations playing in and around the large hole that was left after digging the largest juniper out of the central bed in the side garden.  Unfortunately, the time had come to fill it in as part of the prep to turn that space into our vegetable garden.

A good hour of work moving dirt and the "the dinosaur pit" is just a memory.

More garden posts are in, mulching leaves

I got another 4 posts in around the perimeter of what will become our side garden.  The tar really didn't want to go on well considering the temps were flirting with 50 degrees (and dropping) by the time I had the time to tackle this task.

 

Meanwhile, Wifey and The Boy worked on sucking up some of the big leaf pile on the driveway pad.  The leaf blower she bought for the maple leaves at our old townhouse has a bag and chopper option; it mulches leaves quite well.  They mulched about half of that pile and then dumped it on the planter area in the middle of the side garden area.  There's still half of that pile as well as another pile in the front of the house to go.

Getting some wood chips!

A few weeks ago, I saw an Asplundh tree company work truck hauling a chipping machine while I was driving down the road on my way home from work.  On the side was a small sign (like a bumper sticker) that said "Free chips" on it.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  After all, I just recently bought a number of bags of wood mulch for transplanting the apple trees and blueberry bushes and then to mulch on top.

Could it really be true that they're giving away free wood chips?!?

After checking out the FAQ on their website, I found that indeed, they do!

I just put in a call to the local Asplundh office and found out that they do deliver to my area.  After a few minute conversation with the pleasant receptionist, I have a delivery of a truckload (they don't do less than 1 truckload) of chips scheduled.  The job foreman will give me a call before the drop it off.

I don't know how large a truckload is, but I'm guessing its a few cubic yards. With all the chips we'll need to put down for garden paths and around the new orchard plantings, I think I'll be able to use that without any problems.

First fence posts are in!

A week ago I posted that The Boy and I bought the first fence posts for the garden.  Since then, a variety of things conspired to keep me from actually sinking any.

Thanks to my parents watching The Boy and The Girl so Wifey and I could sleep train The Bear, we had some free time (aka The Bear's occasional naps) to get some work done during the day.

While taking a break from tarring our portico roof, I was able get four fence posts sunk around the partial perimeter of what will become our vegetable garden.  

 

The plan is to have all the fence posts approx 8' apart.  Maybe I'm overthinking things a bit, but I deliberately spaced them rather far apart to create the envelope.  I deliberately spaced three of the posts 24' from one another with a fourth being 16' from its neighbor.  Later on, I'll just sink the follow-on posts at the interior distances (8' from the exterior posts.  What is shown only represents roughly 1/2 the total envelope of what will become our garden.

While I'm planning out when I can sink more fence posts, I also need to negotiate with Wifey regarding what color to stain the fence.  I also need to draft some proposals for how I can make the fence functional while adhering to the nebulous directions provided through Wifey's chant, "It must be pretty!  It must be pretty!  It must be pretty!"

I already suspect that her reaction will be less than uplifting given her crushing response (and that of my mom) when I proudly showed her my groundbreaking (literally) achievement.  

"Those are tall.  Are they supposed to be so tall?  I don't know how you can make them pretty."

Such is my accepted lot in life.  I knew life would be interesting when we paired an engineer with an artsy type.  

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Milky Spore: another way to kill grubs

Wifey is amazing.  There are many reasons she's stupendously fantastic, but one of her qualities is that she does a great job researching things.

At some point in her meanderings around the internet, she learned about milky spore.  Milky spore is the common name for a naturally-occurring disease for japanese beetle larvae (aka grubs).  Since we have a healthy population of grubs in our property, it's another way to, hopefully, deal with them.

This morning, we finished applying the spores.  It's a really tedious activity over a 1/4 to 1/2 acre piece of property when you need to do it 1 teaspoon at a time. 

Once applied, it needs to be watered in.  "The watering in" part of the task is also tedious when the far side of the property is a few hundred feet away from our nearest water spigot.  Watering cans.....oy.


Eventually, we finished the job.  Die grubs, die!