Merry Christmas - a year in review

Merry Christmas to whomever may end up reading this.

This is my first post since July.  The family is in a lull from post-present hysteria while the kids are playing with toys and whatnot so I figured I'd try to do a post for a change.

This year was WET.  Just for reference, as of late November Baltimore had received 22" of rain over the yearly average and had broken the previous record for rainfall established in 2003.  We've had more rain and a little snow since then.

We also didn't get a ton of heat.  Our typical summer alternates between very dry and marginally wet, but extremely hot and humid throughout.  Although we had temps over 80 pretty reliably, we generally didn't spend a lot of time in the mid/upper 90's (as is typical) until August.



Garden

Tomatoes
Unfortunately, our tomatoes were very sad this year.  Last year Wifey did a lot of canning of tomatoes; this year was the opposite.  Thankfully, we were able to harvest a few of her grandfather's heirloom tomatoes.  We saved seeds from those.

We learned we didn't like the Black Vernissage tomatoes.  Too hard to figure out whether they were ripe or not.

Beans
The purple pole beans did quite well this year.  We saved seeds from them to reuse for next year.  Thankfully, I planted them relatively early this year allowing them to get reasonably established before the deluge began.  They were a real topic of conversation at the farm market and at the farm stand where we "tithed" veggies.

The green beans really struggled, however.  I planted the entire gallon bag of seeds I'd accumulated from the previous year with most rotting in the ground.  I should have considered mounding the soil up where I would plant them for better drainage.  This practice is recommended in a book I have about gardening in Colonial Williamsburg (VA).  I ended up getting quite a few beans, but they weren't as prolific as if even a majority of the beans had grown.

Cantaloupe
I built a small arbor for them to climb at some point.  They did, but all the rain eventually rotted the roots as well as the single cantaloupe that reached harvesting-size.  Worth trying again.

Tomatillos
The tomatillos were pretty prolific despite all the rain.  We harvested a lot of them and Wifey was able to make a few batches of tomatillo salsa for our tacos al pastor.  Very enjoyable!  Worth growing again.

Pumpkins
The baking pumpkins turned out reasonably well.  They vined out aggressively which eventually became somewhat invasive.  We harvested about 6 pumpkins which made for good pumpkin bread.  Worth growing again in a smaller number particularly if I could figure out a way to trellis them.

Peanuts
The peanuts grew somewhat, but rotted in the ground.  Not really worth growing again.

Cucumbers
The Edmonson cucumbers are really strange-looking.  It wasn't obvious from the catalog pictures.  Although they were a decent size, they didn't have a ton of flavor.  Probably better to try another variety.  We were able to barter some at the farm market, though.


Peppers
Once again, the bell peppers didn't do anything.  For one, they were shaded mightily by the tomatillos.  The rainfall couldn't have helped, either.

Wifey planted two starters of jalopenos in the front bed.  They did quite well.  Don't know why.

Okra
Holy cow did we get a lot of okra.  Wifey fried some and we froze quite a bit to go in soup or jumbalaya.  I also saved a lot of seeds from when I was pulling out the plants.

Strawberries
Our strawberries really didn't do much.  Possibly due to all the rainfall.  We're not sure they're worth the space they're taking up.



Orchard/Yard

Pear
We only ended up with a single pear this year.  We got a lot of rainfall right after the flowers came out.  As a result, most of the flowers came off the tree.  The single pear was a good one, though.

Figs
Once again, no figs we could harvest.  We did end up with some very small ones toward the end of the season.  I'll chalk it up to having to regrow all the above-ground growth due to last year's extremely cold winter.

Apples
We didn't harvest any apples this year.  Similar to the pears, we lost a lot of flowers due to rainfall.  The few apples we did get had a number of rot spots.

Blueberries
We were able to get some blueberries this year.  Not a ton because the bushes are still small, but some.  The deer nibbled on some of the new growth reminding me that I need to cage those plants in.


Peaches
We bought two peach trees for the orchard.  Unfortunately, I didn't put up deer netting in time.  They ate all but three of the peaches on the trees as well as lower vegetation. The peaches that survived rotted on the trees.

Persimmon
We bought and planted a persimmon tree this year.  I put up deer netting as soon as I lost the peaches so the persimmon fruit was saved from the deer.  I lost a few of them due to rot, however, we were able to harvest and eat 3 or so.  Tasty.

Quince 
Wifey saw someone online was giving away quince plants.  We took them off his hands.  I'm not sure if one or both survived the transplant.  We'll see in the spring, I suppose.

Kiwi
I built the structure for a kiwi arbor and bought 6 kiwi starters.  Unfortunately, all but one of them died.  I'll retry the experiment in the spring.

Mulberry
I bought two mulberry starters.  Each is quite small, but seem to have made it through the rainy year.

Elderberry
I bought three elderberry starters.  One was assaulted by tent caterpillars (which traveled from nearby black walnut trees), but seems to have survived.

Raspberries
We got a very few raspberries this year.  The canes are all still getting established.  Interestingly enough, the ones I got from a friend at work are sending out volunteers nearby.  Great news!

Inherited Peach Tree
We learned that the dwarf peach tree we inherited when we purchased the house is some sort of Korean variety.  A woman at our old church was very excited when she learned what it was and made some sort of peach "wine" out of it.

Inherited Japanese Dogwood
We have learned that an unknown variety of dogwood in the front is actually a "Japanese Dogwood" or "Kousa Dogwood."  The fruit (which it grows in abundance) are edible, apparently.  Unfortunately we didn't learn this until the tail end of the fruiting season.

Hickory
Technically not a fruit, but regardless I'll write it up here.  No hickory nuts this year.  From some reading I did the other day, I've learned that hickory trees generally don't produce nuts except for every other year.

Black raspberries
There are some residual inherited black raspberry canes by the woods line here and there.  We got no fruit this year.  I'm not sure if it's because of the rain, because we'd never pruned them (until this fall), or something else.  We'll see what next year brings.

It's been a busy Spring and Summer

Been a while since I've done a blog post.  Let's see here.

The weather has been extreme.  We had a ton of rain in late April/early May immediately followed by some really hot and dry weather.  Over the last few weeks we're back to getting a whole lot of rain.  It's been a challenge to grow stuff.  I lost all the corn and many attempts at getting our saved pole beans to grow.  In the end, we have about a dozen green pole bean plants growing (plus a healthy amount of the purple pole beans), but it's been tedious to get them to grow.  The tomatoes are finally ripening, but with all the rain recently they're splitting.  The pumpkin, peanut, and muskmelons are all waterlogged with the plants suffering mightily.

I planted a few more blueberries, the kiwi starters, two peach trees, an Asian persimmon, the elderberry starters, and the mulberry starters in the orchard.  All but one kiwi starter died.  The mulberries are stunted.  I didn't put up the netting fast enough so we lost all of the peaches we had on the new peach trees thanks to the deer.  We also lost almost all our blueberries for the same reason.  We finally have some apples although they're small.

In good news we traded 14 of our cucumbers (Edmonson, a strange looking variety) plus $1 for a dozen eggs, 2 good-sized bell peppers, and 6 peaches a few weeks ago at the local indoor farm market.

We're finally getting more beans and tomatoes.  Also, our first artichoke!

A second peach tree is in the orchard

This afternoon Wifey and I had a thought that we needed to add another peach tree to the orchard.  After a short trip to the plant nursery, we came home with another peach tree, some mulch and some plant compost to add to the hole.  Add in 45 minutes of digging and we have ourselves another tree near to the first peach tree.

More garden work

I had a little bit of time when I got home from work so -- big surprise -- I went out to the garden.  I rototilled parts of the garden that were developing weeds as well as an area that had been stomped down when I was adding Leafgro to a few areas that hadn't received enough compost last year.

Once all that was finished, I weeded around the spinach and lettuce (planted a month ago, but just now coming up) and planted two types of carrots adjacent to some radishes (planted a month ago).

Sorry.  No picture.

Finally some stuff is planted!

We had a pretty steady rain for a good chunk of the day today.  As a result, the soil was relatively moist without being overly muddy.  I took some time when I got home to go out and get some seed planting accomplished. 

Since beans fix nitrogen in the soil (replacing what tomatoes and peppers consume), I planted beans in a decent chunk of space where they tomatoes and peppers had been planted last year.  I need to buy some more of the green 8' garden support posts; I ran out.

Since I ran out of support posts, I planted some lettuce along with the heat-tolerant greenery.  There was a small swath of space between the sections of greenery so I added some radishes.

Peach is in

We bought a Loring peach tree this past weekend to add to the orchard.  Unfortunately, it's a dwarf variety but at least it's something we can depend on.  We have a sneaking suspicion that the dwarf variety we have in the front yard is some oddball type that won't ever actually produce normal peaches.  We'll most likely get another peach tree to plant nearby later on.

Garden progress

I took yesterday afternoon and all day today off of work to get some work accomplished around the property.  Yesterday I deturfed one of the garden paths.  It had been an issue last year with the grass and weeds encroaching into the garden areas adjacent to the path so this year it was time to address that problem.

Today I made many trips with the mower and wagon and delivered all the turf pile (left side of the picture by the fence) to the woods then pitched everything in there.

Once all the turf delivery was done, I rototilled the garden to get prepped for planting.

Chickens are gone

I'm sorry to report that our nearly 2 month-old chickens are all gone.

It's been a few weeks since I've reported on them at all, but they were unmanageable at this time and not due to anything they did wrong.  Unfortunately, the coop needed a lot more work than we realized when we first got it.  Because they weather hasn't been cooperating, we haven't really been able to dig into doing repairs.  It wasn't until a few days ago that Wifey was able to have a warm enough, dry enough stretch of weather that she could apply the mold killer needed to head off respiratory issues for the birds.  As she was doing final prep work, she realized exactly how bad a shape the floor was in, that there was mold on the side panels, and discovered that the wall framework needed to be completely replaced.

In other words, we needed to completely rebuild the coop.  Because the birds were almost 2 months old, they were creating a ton of bird dust (grit + atomized dried poo) which was causing health issues for the family.  Ordinarily, they would have been out in the garage (or coop) a week or two ago, but with it being as cold/wet as it was, we were worried about the birds' health.

This morning, we decided that there was just too much to do to get the coop rebuilt (a new one built from scratch) in a very short timeline that we were getting stressed out about the whole thing.  As a result, we decided to "punt" on doing chickens for now and just focus on the yard.  We'll likely give them a try at a later date (maybe this time next year), but certainly not right away.  We want to do things the right way.

We were able to find a family through our church who was willing to take them (they're big into livestock, anyway) so at least they have a good home until they stop laying.

Kiwi support posts are in

Today I sunk the two 6"x6"x10' kiwi support posts into the ground.  They're "planted" 20' apart out in the orchard, each 3' into the ground and each with three bags of quick-set concrete holding them in place.

Ideally, they would have been considerably closer to the woodline, but they're intolerant of juglone (from black walnut trees).  So, despite Wifey's violent protests, they're where they are.  In a few years once the apple trees grow up and leaf out the posts won't be nearly so noticeable.  For now....

Elderberries are in

I got some time today to work in the yard.  It was a nice day outside.  I'd purchased some elderberry bushes during my lunch break and managed to have the time to get them in the ground.

Thankfully, they supposedly grow successfully adjacent to black walnut (juglone) so I planted them by ours.

Side garden update

It's been a bit since I've posted here, but that's kind out of necessity.  There really hasn't been much going on until this weekend.

• We've transplanted the tomatoes twice now.  Not because they're doing fantastically, but because they're having many of the same issues as last year despite not using much of our well water.  Wifey and I think that it may have something to do with the potting soil so as much as we hate to not use organic, we're trying a type of Miracle-Gro brand soil.  We'd rather sort out what's going on with the plants and have them not die before going into the ground than stick to our principles and have a lot of dead plants.
• A week or so ago we had our biggest snowfall of the winter.  As a result of a lot of heavy snow coming down, a small tree adjacent to the garden fell down into the garden.  That has since been removed, although, I need to repair the deer netting still.

More coop progress - roof studs gone and floor work

Today we finished pulling apart the roof of the coop.  In this case, we removed the studs supporting the roof top and worked on the floor.  Disassembling the roof took some doing because whoever built it initially used two kinds of nails and two kinds of wood screws to hold the roof studs together.

I also was presented with a surprise -- as I removed one of the long studs, I heard this fast vibrating sound.  I couldn't figure where it was coming from until I realized it was the board that was doing the vibrating.  I realized there must be bees inside the board and threw it as far as I could from where we were working and headed for the hornet killer spray.  Sure enough, I returned just in time to see two HUGE wood boring wasps (or hornets?) emerge from inside the 2x4.  Each one was about 1.5" long and I wanted no part of them.  Thankfully, they won't bother us any more.

In addition to the fun and games with the roof studs, we also removed the laminate sheeting the previous owner had applied to the floor.  In the process, we discovered that the pressboard floor is rotten in parts.  We will be applying an anti-fungal solution to the floor to kill off any mold that may be in there then overlaying that pressboard with pressure treated 1x4's to create a new floor.  That is for another day, however.

Making a brooder box

So, apparently, baby chickens (Chicks, man.) need to be indoors in a very temperature-controlled brooder.  They need a heat lamp, but shouldn't have a regular incandescent light bulb.  They need a red light bulb for reasons I'm still not clear on. 

The brooder.  Some people build one out of a large rectangular plastic container.  Some build them.  We elected to go with a large cardboard box.  In the chance we don't like this whole chicken thing, we didn't want to have invested even more into infrastructure.  We also figured that if we do like the whole chicken thing, we'd make our mistakes with cheap stuff (cardboard) so we can learn from mistakes and do it right next time we get chicks.  Man.

The light.  We bought a clamp light fixture from Tractor Supply, but it's garbage.  The clamp really doesn't do its job.  You think that with a name like "clamp light fixture" it would clamp, but it doesn't.  So it's going back.  We also got a 250W heat lamp bulb for it, but despite moving it farther and farther and farther away from where the chicks would be, it was still 120 degrees F from the central point of the light.  If we're going to cook chicken, we're not doing it when their weight is best listed in grams.

Wifey and I picked up a new light fixture and a 75 W heat lamp bulb intended for lizards from a pet store this evening.  If that doesn't get the box warm enough, for chicks (man), we'll try a higher wattage bulb.

Maybe I should come up with a new blog name, but Will Seed For Food For Our Chicks (Man) to Eat just seems cumbersome.


PS
This is what the "Chicks, Man" thing is all about.  I'm sure I could curtail my comments, but it's just who I am.  Besides, I liked the show a lot before the writers decided profanity = humor.

Robbins Ave Update - 15 Sprouts!

So I just checked the sprouts under our grow lights.  What I found led me to muse, "Alright, God.  Now I have to think you're just showing off.  And I'm really impressed."

As of this morning, we are up to 15 Robbins Ave tomato sprouts.  We got one more overnight.

Simply amazing.

Coop roof is off

We were so excited to have the coop arrive that we put in a fair amount of effort and removed the roof, some of the roof supports, and the cage material used to keep predators from getting in.

It's not finished, but it's a nice start.

Our coop has arrived!

After telling our neighbor that we are, in fact, interested in his old chicken coop he offered to deliver it with his small tractor.  Yes, please!

It's now on the driveway pad where we'll be rebuilding parts of it (the roof, for one), doing some waterproofing, and painting it.

All of this stuff is completely foreign to my mom.  She knows nothing about our interest in chickens let alone that we have a coop.  Her head is going to positively explode when she finds out.  It'll be fun to see her reaction.

Considering Chickens

Wifey and I have been flirting with the idea of getting chickens for a few years.  Over the last month our interest has grown as we've had some issues with finding high quality organic eggs nearby.  Something about our trip last weekend sparked us to start actively working toward that goal.

On our way back Wifey was doing some research as I drove.  For type-A planner types like us, there's a lot to consider.  Breed, coop vs chicken tractor, where to put a coop if we use one, and how to take care of them when we're out of town are just a few things to evaluate.  After researching costs to buy coops (and evaluating quality of construction and materials), he put up a post on our development's Facebook page inquiring whether anyone knew of someone looking to unload a coop.

One of our friendly neighbors said he had an old coop that his flock had outgrown and he was willing to give it to us if we're interested.  We checked it out today.

In some ways, it's in good shape, but some parts need some work.  Apparently, he used it for a few years with no predators having had success getting to the flock.  Also, unlike a lot of the ones we found for sale online, it's made with actual lumber.

On our way back to the car, we were admiring his flock and newer coop.  Our neighbor pointed out a few of the niceties of the new coop and finally offered up the eggs that had been laid that afternoon.  You certainly don't get much fresher than that.

Signs of Spring

We got home Monday from a long weekend away and wanted to see if there were any new signs of spring.  Although the property is still quite sleepy, there are some signs of awakening.

Our chives, pear tree, and peach tree all have new growth.

Our goji berry transplant from last year is budding out!  I was concerned that it wouldn't have made it through the winter.  I'm glad I was wrong.

We also have some signs of new budding on the raspberries and blueberries, but I couldn't get clear pictures of them.

Weeding the strawberries

Wifey had some time to herself while The Bear took his nap yesterday.  Because it was really warm and she wanted some sun, she weeded the strawberry bed at the bottom of the side garden.  I'm incredibly thankful because I had been dreading that job.  It looks fantastic now.

Where previously it was a vast canvas of green, we can now see the strawberry plants!

We have Robbins Ave Tomato sprouts!

A week ago I did a post about trying to save the Robbins Avenue Tomato.


I'm happy to report that we've discovered we are up to a total of four sprouts!

After we finished dancing around rejoicing at the slowly-growing count, I was corrected by Wifey.  The seeds we're trying to resurrect were ones she had saved from the year after we gave up on our old garden plot.  That year we tried to do something, anything while adjusting to new-parenthood on a smaller scale using square-foot gardening methods in our townhouse backyard.  That means the seeds were from 2011, not 2012 or 2013 as I'd guessed in the prior blog post.  That any of them have germinated truly is miraculous.


I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable with more to be completely honest.  Ordinarily I plant 36 seeds each year when the seed is just from the previous year expecting to lose some from seed pods not releasing from the seed leaves, damage during transplant, damage in the garden, or in the case of last year death from bad water.

This is a fantastic step in the right direction, but we're hardly "out of the woods."

Sunday/Monday projects

After trimming the first juniper bush, The Boy and The Girl spent some time beginning to dig it out Sunday and Monday. 

I scraped flaking paint and dried-out window glazing for the greenhouse.  I got another 4 or 5 windows finished.  Six to go.  Once the window scraping was done, I helped work on the juniper removal.  There's still a good bit to go before we can do any real prying on it.

Working on the greenhouse

As I mentioned a little while ago, Wifey and I are going to build a greenhouse to go next to our driveway.  That job benefits us by getting rid of the overgrown juniper (which we don't care for) and gets us the greenhouse.

Today, The Boy and I cut back the first juniper we'll be removing.  Once that was done we recruited The Girl to help us haul everything to the gorge in the woods behind the house to toss everything in there where it'll break down.  I've seen what our local landfill does with yard waste and we're doing better by the earth the way we do it.

I also scraped flaking paint and dried out caulk from two more of the wood windows.  No pictures of that.

Another bluebird house added

We got another bluebird house recently.  I hung it nearby to the other one with the big kids this morning before the weather got nasty.  I had The Boy run in the screws with the cordless drill.  The Girl helped carry stuff to and back from the tree.  I find they are more interested in nature if I teach them about it and include them in the activities (as they're capable).

Can we save the Robbins Ave tomato?

My wife's paternal grandfather was a very interesting man.  He had a number of interests, but one that he was known for in the family was his love of vegetable gardening.

Until he died a few years ago, he maintained a large garden in his back yard which he spent a considerable amount of time and energy.  Well-landscaped with hedges and trees towering above, the path to the garden opened up on a large clearing that contained a large asparagus patch, some pole beans, beets for canning, peppers, a couple of raised beds for greens, and his pride and joy -- the Robbins Ave tomatoes.  Legend has it that until the early 90's, he used to do gardening on a large plot on a friend's farm.

As I've been told, Wifey's grandfather always wanted the biggest and best tomatoes.  No one knows what varieties he used originally, but I've been told that he started off with a few varieties of beefsteak-style tomatoes, cross-pollinated the varieties by hand and saved the seeds from only the largest and best-looking tomatoes.  The next year, he would start new plants from those seeds.  For 20 years (give or take), he followed this process until the time came that he just couldn't work in the garden any longer.

His enthusiasm begat success in the garden.  For years, family gatherings had pickled beets, garlic, or green beans, fresh tomatoes, asparagus, or the occasional bell pepper used in a dish.  For all he did, his Robbins Ave tomatoes are the main topic among the family (particularly our generation) when the garden is mentioned.

Those tomatoes were revered so much that a year before his death, a professional photographer was commissioned to take a picture of him holding two of his Robbins Ave tomatoes.  Wifey has such fond memories of her grandfather and the magic held in his garden that we have a framed copy of that picture in our kitchen.

 

When we realized that some of the Robbins Ave tomato seeds still exist, it was instinct to us to plant them to try to keep that strain alive.

The odds are slim that they will germinate -- best guess, they're 5 or 6 years old.  I did some research and found that according to the Virginia Cooperative Extension, the average viability of tomato seed is only 4 years.  Also, we only have 19 seeds and they weren't stored in seed bank-like conditions.

Regardless, I'm going to give it a shot.

Foraging for worms

We had a considerable amount of rain this morning.  Based on the amount of water in our wheelbarrow, it looks like we received over 3" of rain overnight into mid-morning.  In a break in the rain, Wifey and I went out to check on the house perimeter (to see if here was anything alarming) and noticed the worms were out on the street escaping the water.  Keen to teach a life lesson and get the big kids outside, we offered to pay them to collect worms for the garden.

Worms are great for composting.  Worm "casings" (a nicer term than "poo") are fantastic for compost.  I've read some articles that say that one of the best ways to compost food scraps is to feed it to rabbits then take the rabbit droppings and feed it to the worms to turbocharge the composting process.

Anyway, the big kids enjoyed hunting for the worms almost as much as I enjoyed watching them do it.

They did quite a great job collecting the worms.  You can't really tell in the picture below, but that mass of worms was roughly 1/2" deep.  They are now broadcast into the side garden to spread their wormy goodness to the soil.

Some small progress on the greenhouse

It's been a few weeks since we decided we're building a greenhouse then promptly bought some windows and a door for it. 

Yesterday afternoon, we finally got the time, energy, and freedom to do some scraping on them.  I don't know that it's really worth a picture, but we scraped on three of the fourteen windows.  Flaking paint and dried out caulk have now been removed from each of those three.  Baby steps...

Hoop House is in place

The weather this week has been pretty miserable.  As such, it's taken me a bit of time to get the hoop house in place.  I finally accomplished it this morning, though.

It's protecting some spinach that somehow managed to make it through the winter.  It's small, though, so I figured it would be a good target for rescue.

More seeds are started

No point in taking any pictures, but within the last few days I've started the seeds for the following plants:

• Napoleon Sweet Bell Peppers
• Tomate Verde Tomatillos
• Old Virginia Tomatoes (slicing)
• San Marzano Tomatoes (roma)
• Black Vernissage Tomatoes (cherry)

How to build a (hula)hoop house for the garden

As I mentioned in a previous post, I want to build a hoop house for the garden using hula hoops for the rounded supports.  I finally started work on it last night.

First, I cut the hula hoop in half with a hacksaw.  I identified where the join was located (where the single tube was joined to make a circle) and dropped a line from that location and made a mark on the hula hoop where the line intersected the circle.  I did this to be sure I'd segment the hoop into two equal halves.  Then I cut the hoop at the join mark and the line intersection mark with a hacksaw to make two equal arcs.

Once that was done, I measure the distance between the two ends of each arc and found that mine was approximately 36" from end to end.  To make a square box (which is what I'm doing), I'm going to have the hoop arcs span from one corner to the opposing corner.  The hoop arc represents the hypotenuse (the long diagonal piece for the non-engineers) of a right triangle (meaning there's a 90 degree angle opposite the hypotenuse and separating two equal length sides).  To calculate the distance the sides need to be requires the use of some trigonometry.

In a right triangle, sides X and Y in the picture the same are the same length.  So once you calculate the length of X, you automatically know what Y is.  We know that the hypotenuse is 36" as represented by the measurement of the hula hoop arc from above.  To calculate X we use the formula below.

sin (angle) = Opposite side / Hypotenuse

Plugging in what we know, we have the following:

sin (45 degrees) = X / 36"

36" x sin (45 degrees) = X

36" x .707 = X

25.45" = X

To track down the sin of 45 degrees, you can either use a scientific handheld calculator, the scientific function of the calculator built into your computer operating system, or if you happen to know the square root of two, divide that by two.  I used my computer calculator because I've long since forgotten my sin angle stuff from schooling.

So now we know the length of the sides.  As such, I cut two sides of my lumber to 25.5" long (because it's close enough).  For the other two sides, I made them 3" longer.  The reason for that is that you need the inside of your box to have the dimensions as we calculated.  2x4s, 2x6s, 2x8's (and so on) are the dimensions of the lumber before they have been planed, the actual thickness is 1.5".  We are having two sides to you need the wood to be 3" longer.  Now we have all four sides cut.

Now, put the long sides oppose to one another and the short sides opposite to one another to make a square.  Then drill pilot holes (so your wood doesn't split) a little smaller in diameter than your wood screw.  Once that's done, install your wood screws.  I recommend either 2.5" or 3" long wood screws to give plenty of thread engagement with the wood you're screwing into.  You will now have a square frame.

Now that that is done, you can install some conduit brackets to clamp the hoop pieces in place.  The size brackets depends on the diameter of your hoop arcs.  Mine is 3/4" across, but since it's a half-circle piece, the conduit brackets need to be for 1/2" conduit.  I test fit everything and it looks like it'll work nicely.

Once you install the conduit brackets, you're all set to install it in the garden.

Over top you cover it with either a greenhouse fabric or you can use plastic (ideally, UV light resistant to keep it from breaking down).  Just bear in mind that the thicker the plastic, the less light is let in to help the plants grow.  The benefit to thicker plastic is that it helps retain more heat if you're concerned about really cold winters.

I just covered mine with the greenhouse fabric since I think the bulk of the really nasty weather is over for Maryland.

More started seeds

Last night I got some more seeds started.  Bell peppers and tomatillos are now in the ground.  Since the tomatillo seeds are from last year, I'm a little apprehensive that they will actually sprout.  I've been told that seeds up to a few years old will still sprout, but I can't remember if I've ever tried it before.

I followed the same method as always. 

• First I put the peat plugs in the mini-greenhouse and pour a lot of really warm water on them to make them grow.  
• Then I use a chopstick to poke holes to the required depth of the seed (which varies).
• Set the seeds in place.
• With the chopstick, gently push the seeds into the holes to the required depth.
• Loosely cover each seed with some of the peat.
• Label the cells so you know what's growing in what spot.  This is particularly important if you're growing multiple varieties of the same type of plant.

We are on the board!

It's the end of January.  I had planned to have a lot of my seeds started by now and as of early last night haven't planted any.

That came to an end, though.  I now have Lacinato Kale and Green Globe Artichokes started.  I have a lot more I need to start, but this at least is a start on spring veggies (the kale) and something that'll take a while to grow (artichokes).

Impromptu garlic planting

Wifey is cooking Mongolian Beef for dinner.  While husking some garlic for her for the meal, we came across a fair amount of sprouted garlic.  Not one to waste time when gardening could be done, I quickly took a half dozen of the cloves out to the garlic boxes.

It didn't take more than a few minutes to plant them.  I just poked my index finger in the soil up to my second knuckle, swirled it around to widen the hole somewhat, then dropped each clove in their own hole so the top (pointy end up) was just under the soil surface and gently covered up the top with soil.

Easy peasy.

Useful Book: What's Wrong With My Fruit Garden?

A week or so ago, Wifey checked out a book from the library called, "What's Wrong With My Fruit Garden?; 100% Organic Solutions for Berries, Trees, Nuts, Vines, and Tropicals" by David Deardorff and Katheryn Wadsworth.

I don't know that I'd really say that we have anything wrong with our orchard (aka fruit garden), but I'm sure there are things we could be doing better.

As Wifey has been leafing (no pun intended) through the book, she came across a section about planting polycultures.  In that concept, you're doing interplanting of a number of varieties of different species of plants that can all benefit one another.  For example, under a fruiting tree, you can plant other plants that could attract pollinators, deter pests or critters, or provide other benefits.  Unlike what many people (me included) think of with an orchard, with a polyculture planting approach, you're more emulating a fruit forest and implementing more of a permaculture approach to gardening.

Basically, this is a larger scale approach to the companion planting I've been doing in my garden for years now.

One picture (and caption) that resonated with me mentioned an underplanting of rosemary that "helps protect an apple tree from deer as would other highly aromatic plants like lavender, thyme, and sage.  Herbs such as fennel and dil attract beneficial insects to help control insect pests.  Flowers like yarrow, cosmos, and rudbeckia also attract beneficial insects."  They also reinforce my approach to using French Marigolds to deter pests.

The authors also recommend attracting beneficial insects and critters to your garden.  This is a concept I've been gradually working on since the final years of the garden plot.  The authors mention:

• Pansies, violas, and other flowers with streaks or dark lines (aka guidelines) on their petals help attract bees
• Queen Anne's lace attracts parasitic wasps to kill caterpillars.  It also attracts lacewings, syrphid and tachinid flies, assassin bugs, and honeybees.  Dill, coriander (cilantro), parsley, cumin, and fennel do much of the same.  Fennel also is good to lure ladybugs (which are predatory insects) to the garden.
• Members of the daisy family (Asteraceae) attract a variety of bees and butterflies, and tiphiid wasps which help kill beetle grubs as larvae and pollinate flowers as adults.  Daisy family plants also lure other parasitic wasps, ladybugs, lacewings, syrphid flies, and soldier beetles.  Other daisy family plants include: tarragon, chamomile, cosmos, sunflowers, anthemis, echinacea, gaillardia, bachelor's butons, and yarrow.
• The mint family (Lamiaceae) attracts ladybugs and lacewings.  Other mints are: agastche, catnip, catmint, thyme, rosemary, hyssop, lemon balm, horehound, sage, and pycnanthemum.

They also identify a number of ways to get rid of a variety of insects such as the Japanese beetles that kept munching on the apple tree foliage this past year.

The takeaway

There's a lot of good info in that book.  This only represents the tip of the iceberg.  It also has application to the garden and property as a whole.  I think I may end up buying the book to have as a reference.

So, I guess we're building a greenhouse - part 1

Today we made the odd decision that we wanted to build a greenhouse.  Wifey must have been thinking about it for a while because I received a book about how to build one for Christmas.  Although I have been interested in having one at some point, I didn't think it'd be coming any time soon.

Apparently today was the day.  I think the catalysts were an article in the Mother Earth News magazine where a reader shared how she built a small greenhouse within a small budget and another article in the same magazine about creating thermal mass for an off-grid greenhoue.

After The Bear went down for his nap, we went out to try to sort out a prospective location and an appropriate size.  After a bit of discussion, we decided that since we want to remove the juniper next to the driveway pad that's where we're going to put the greenhouse there.  For now, anyway, it's going to be a 6'x8' greenhouse.  The plan is to have two pairs of windows on each of the long walls, a window next to a windowed door, and another pair of windows on the back wall.  The idea is to have corrugated clear plastic for the roof.

Later on, Wifey did some searching online and found someone in Virginia selling some used wooden windows.  After all was said and done, we got fourteen 27"x32" windows and a glassed-in door for $100.  Considering they originally wanted $10 for each window and $20 for the door, we think that was a good deal.

Most of the windows will need to be scraped, sanded, putty, and paint.  The door needs paint at the least.  The juniper needs to come out.  Everything needs to be assembled, obviously.

It'll be a fun project.  Can't wait!

Bluebird house is finally up

A year or so ago, we somehow came to own a bluebird house.  I never mounted it to any trees.

I did research and posted about the right way to hang it up once or twice right around Christmas, but mounting it never came to mind when I was outside for any period of time.  It finally occurred to me to mount the bluebird house after I finished spreading the mulched leaves in the garden today.

Per my research, I mounted it a little over 6' off the ground on the east side of a tree in a relatively open part of the property.  I simply used the two wood screws included the house it and ran them in with our cordless screwdriver; no pilot holes.  Although, I read you can mount them as high up as 15', I wanted to be able to clean it out every year without needing a ladder.  It is also near to some shrubbery for baby birds to hide in when they finally leave the nest as well as low branches and/or fencing to stand on.  It's mounted it to a tree about 12' behind the pool fence.  I also intend to buy and mount a few more elsewhere on the property at a later date.

 

I hope we're successful in attracting bluebirds to the property.