The garden continues producing

While at work this morning I received a text from Wifey.  Apparently she and The Boy were curious about the garden.  They found and pulled a half-dozen carrots from the fall planting. 

When I planted the seeds I never expected to get much.  I figured it was a bit late in the season, but knew odds were decent the seeds wouldn't be much good next year so what was there to lose?

Instead we were blessed with carrots between 3.5" and 5" long and blissfully sweet.

A little bit of yardwork

In among all the Thanksgiving-related stuff, I was able to get a little bit done in the yard this weekend.  Yesterday I watered the raspberry canes (both the "new" and the "newer new" ones) and blueberry bushes.  I also got 3 of 6 sets of deer netting hung around the apple trees in the orchard.

Three to go....

Houston: we have a problem

While doing yard cleanup this past weekend, Wifey and I had further realization that we have a tall oak tree that has increasing lean into the yard.  I saw the lean when I was first visiting the house and knew it'd eventually be a problem, but it would appear that "eventually" translates to "soon."

By adding in a web-based protractor into the image, it looks to be around a 17 degree off vertical lean.  I never measured it a year ago, but I don't really feel comfortable letting it persist for too long.

Why am I posting his here?  Because the garden is in danger.  I haven't calculated the height of the tree, but just by calibrated eyeball if it were to fall as it's leaning I'm guessing that around 1/4 to 1/3 of the garden would be hit by the top of the tree.  The crop damage would be left to the strawberries.  The fence posts on the downslope side of the garden would be most likely to be damaged.

We're going to be soliciting quotes to have at least the top 1/2 of the tree dropped professionally.  Considering I like woodworking, I'm salivating at the prospect of getting a chainsaw mill to mill my own lumber.  Given my experience at paying mill fees, milling a good amount of the tree myself would make the chainsaw mill pay for itself right there.

2017 - Looking back, part 1

This will be the first of a multiple-post series looking back at our crop-list for 2017.  I don't know how many posts I'll do in total.

Seed starting
In the townhouse I started most of our veggie, herb, and flower plantings from seeds for each of the last few years we were there.  At the new house, I took the same approach with dismal results.  I don't know that any of our tomato plants survived and none of the tomatillos, flowers, or herbs survived.  Only a few of the peppers made it.

After a bit of thought, I've come to the conclusion that I think they died because of our water.  We have "hard" water at the new house and use a salt system to soften the water.  With that in mind, it would stand to reason that the water I was applying to the plants is a bit salty.  The next question is what that is doing to our bodies, but that's for another forum.

Going forward, I intend to collect and keep the water coming from the basement dehumidifiers to use for watering our started seedlings.

Crop List
Tomatoes
We planted a number of varieties of tomatoes in the garden.  Of those varieties, only the Roma (San Marzano) and Early Girl were ones I would grow again.  Here's the catch: Early Girl is a hybrid and owned by a company under the Monsanto umbrella.  Because the vast majority of my seedlings didn't make it, I purchased seedlings from a store near us and was labeled as non-GMO.

Unfortunately, the "Monsanto" label kills it for me.  Much as I thoroughly enjoyed the plants, I won't grow them again.  And, being a hybrid, I can't start them from seed, anyway.

Peppers
The few pepper starters that survived their salt-water demise didn't produce much.  I keep trying "California Wonder" and never get anything larger than 1.5".  I need to do more reading on why they do what they do.  I did purchase some supplemental peppers that went red and got sweeter with age.  I don't recall the variety, but it doesn't really matter.  They also didn't get all that large, either.

Beans
As with previous years, I grew Kentucky Wonder pole beans and Scarlet Runner beans.  The Wonder did great and we have a number of bags of trimmed/blanched/frozen green beans from them.  The Scarlet Runners didn't do much of anything and didn't produce.  I suspect a large part of that was due to my planting them late due to all the yard rehab we had to do this year.

Potatoes
Wifey and The Boy thoroughly enjoyed harvesting the potatoes (both sweet and regular).  The Yukon Gold Seed Potatoes and Carolina Ruby Sweet Potatoes seem to be winners.  Wifey also planted some variety of purple potatoes, but I can't figure out where she got them.  Not Baker Creek or Southern Exposure according to my records.


Onions and Garlic
The continuation of the Egyptian Walking Onions are doing reasonably well.  I expect there to be even more next year once they're better established.

The garlic did nothing this past year.  I discovered that I had mulched (leaves from the property) too heavily and buried the cloves.  Thankfully, they didn't rot but they also never developed into anything usable for this year.

We planted Yellow Potato Onions in the early fall for next year.  Supposedly these are perennial onions so I look forward to seeing how we can cultivate more for future years.

Asparagus
We planted a number of crowns (3 bags' worth) in raised boxes.  A number of them have come up.  We're following conventional wisdom to leave them alone for a few years to expand to usefulness.

Strawberries
This fall my parents gave us a number of cast-offs from their strawberry patch.  I planted half of them in the downslope side of our garden.  There wasn't room for more without crowding.

The Orchard
Apple Trees
I really goofed up this year by not putting deer netting up around the apple trees until late-spring (or was it early summer?).  As a result, they were decimated by deer.  They all rebounded for the most part, but we didn't harvest any apples; the deer had them all.  I have since removed the deer netting and relocated the supports to provide a larger diameter around the trees.  I will be hanging new netting this weekend.

Blueberries
In addition to the 4 blueberry bushes we had last year, we planted two more in the spring.  I'm tempted to plant two more in 2018.  Yes, they'll get large enough in time to provide for the family, but I just like the idea of having plenty.  Besides: why not?

Raspberries
Raspberry plants were a new addition to the burgeoning homestead this year.  I planted 4 "Royalty" purple raspberry starters in September followed by 6 transplanted red raspberry canes transplanted from my friend's property.  I don't know much about the red raspberry canes other than that she said they produce twice a year.

From the University of Maryland webpage about raspberries and blackberries.

Red raspberries produce new canes as suckers from the root system, so they are usually grown in a hedgerow. They are the most winter-hardy type of raspberry and may be either of two types:

• Summer-bearing types have the typical biennial life cycle of a bramble. They fruit from late June through July of their second growing season.
• Primocane-bearing types, also known as everbearing raspberries, are an exception to the bramble life cycle. Primocane-bearing types have the ability to fruit in the early fall of their first year on their primocanes. They then fruit a second time, in June, on buds below those which fruited the previous fall. The fall crop, however, is more abundant. Therefore gardeners treat the canes as annuals, rather than biennials, by mowing the canes to the ground in winter after the fall harvest. This keeps the plants more manageable.

With that in mind, I think I have primocane-bearing raspberries.

Harvesting and storing the sweet potatoes

On Friday, Wifey and The Boy harvested most of the sweet potatoes from the garden.  My earlier assertion that sweet potato plants need a frost to sweeten up appears to have been grossly misguided after Wifey did some more reading on the subject.

What to do next is up for debate, though.  Some websites insist that you put them in a warm, dry room and leave them for a while.  Others say you put them in a cool, dry room and leave them for a while.

Since we'd have a harder time providing them with a warm, dry room that is also okay with getting dirty, we went the other route.  I separated them somewhat in some collapsible baskets in the garage, trying to minimize contact between them.

Once that was accomplished, I stacked each basket and then put the residual on a spare ironing board frame that was the victim of a Wifey project back in the spring.

We'll see how they do after a bit.  Some of them are so huge, we have a hard time believing they are edible.

Mulching, mulching, and more mulching

In addition to the work with getting the donated raspberry plants in the ground, we also did a lot of mulching.  With the exception of the purple raspberry bushes we planted in September, I added a bag of mulch for each of the apple trees and the blueberry bushes in the orchard as well as the pear tree, fig trees, and artichokes in the front bed.  The whole idea is to help each of the plants survive the winter, particularly since none of them are what I would call "well established."

I also spread about 6 bags along the pool fence where Wifey wants to plant Four O'Clock seeds.

I would have purchased the mulch in bulk, but it didn't occur to me for some reason.

Raspberries are finally in the ground

The Boy and I planted our red raspberry plants today.  It's nice to finally see them get moving away from the house.

As with all the other permaculture additions, we used a three-part mix of native soil, Leafgro, and shredded mulch.  After a few hours of work, our raspberries are all in a line.  Once that was completed, we watered all the raspberries (roots, not vegetation) and blueberry bushes.

I can't help but feel a level of pessimism, though.  With freezes coming and our just planting the raspberries, there will be next to no depth to the roots to help keep the plants alive this winter.  I did what I could by adding a fair amount of mulch around each plant.

If we make it through the winter with even one of those plants, I'll consider it a "win."

Gratification

This isn't the first garden we've had right at the house.  Back at the townhouse, when we gave up on our first garden plot (the year The Boy was born), we still planted some vegetable plants in the back yard at the townhouse.

That being said, I shouldn't be surprised by what I'm about to say.

I think it's really cool to be able to go out to my garden, harvest some things and immediately eat them.  I'm surprised that I still think it's very novel.

Just a little bit ago, I went out to the garden to harvest a few leaves of the lettuce we're growing.  I brought it in, washed it, then paired it with one of the last Roma tomatoes from the garden to go on a chicken salad sandwich.

I enjoyed every bite.  The fact that some of the ingredients came from my own garden made it even better.

Orchard work

So, the raspberry bushes from my friend are still alive.  Not planted, but still alive.  I dug holes for each of the six plants and have the Leafgro and mulch needed to plant them.  I would have planted them in the orchard today, but they are expecting sub-freezing tonight and tomorrow night.  I want to give the new plants as much of a chance as I can despite their being planted a bit late in the season.

Those six holes are waiting for their new occupants to come in on Sunday.

The Boy and I also removed the deer netting from around the apple trees.  I decided that the barrier is a bit small for each of the trees and need to redo the whole thing.  I'll try to do that tomorrow.  Yes, the deer might have quite a meal overnight, but I don't think I'll get that done this afternoon. 

I also weeded the area around the base of each tree (I left the clover) to make way for mulching.  Again, I want to try to trap moisture and heat for each root ball. Yes, they're a year old, but I wouldn't call them "established" just yet.

Back in the saddle again

I've finally gotten the "green light" to do some lifting again.  With that in mind, The Boy and I removed the rest of the tomato, pepper plants, as well as the basil, petunias, and marigolds this past week.

Yesterday I took a half day off from work and roto-tilled the garden.  This morning I broad-cast some winter wheat seeds over the tilled area to function as a cover crop.

Not much else is left in the garden.  Of course, we're leaving the asparagus and strawberry plants in place.  The sweet potato and peanut (below) are waiting on frost.  Snow peas, lettuce, kale, and spinach are all still all being eaten.

I'm happy to say that we have a few more small broccoli heads coming up in our plants.