Garden work today

This afternoon:

• The Girl wanted to pick some radishes to go with dinner.  After she did that, I weeded a good part of the radish bed and planted more seeds.
• I planted a row of green pole beans from last year's saved seed.
• I removed a San Marzano that had been nibbled on quite a bit by something and planted one of the spares I have kept.
• The Girl planted 3 of the leftover tomato plants and weeded her garden area.
• We collected two long sprigs of mint from the front bed to use in a batch of iced tea. 
• Wifey harvested chives from the front bed to go in a salad.

 

Transplanted Oregano

While I was working on the raspberry lines yesterday afternoon Wifey worked on putting a wood chip border around a few of the apple trees and transplanting the bulk of an overgrown oregano plant from the front bed.  We decided that since deer supposedly don't like strong smells (including oregano) that we'd transplant most of the plant to part of the orchard as a bit of a deterrent.  Perhaps the flowers (once it flowers) might attract pollinators as well?

 

It's hard to tell from the picture, but this plant is about 2' x 2'.

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.

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.

Rain barrel stand is in place

Thanks to the govt furlough, I was home early today.  Before I got tied up with anything else, I leveled out the soil by the closest downspout to the garden then put the rain barrel stand in place.

Once we get the barrels plumbed into place, I'll likely end up installing some sort of retaining barriers to help keep the barrels from falling off.

For now, though, it's a good start.

Rain barrel stand is made

We had some unseasonably warm weather today.  As such the family spent the bulk of the day post-church outside.  Wifey worked on cleaning up/out the garage and I constructed the stand for our rainwater collection barrels.

We had a minor disagreement over how high above the ground the stand top needed to be.  Wiefy wanted it to be pretty short whereas I knew that they had to be up a bit off the ground to allow for gravity to get the water fed to the garden.  Since I was running the power tools, I won the debate and the stand is 40" tall.

I'll post pictures tomorrow.  It was getting dark by the time we finished with other work around the yard.

Making use of melting snow

I went outside this afternoon to do something (can't for the life of me remember what it was, though) and noticed that despite the really cold temperatures outside, we had some melting snow trickling down the roof drains.

Once again, it made me want to set up some rainwater retention barrels.  My current plan is to build a structure about 3' above the ground and set up two separate rainwater collection barrels tied into our downspout by the garage.  That will collect rainwater and snowmelt and allow for gravity-fed watering to the front and at least part of the side garden.

Last year, I bought a few plastic barrels off somebody through craigslist with the idea of putting them to use for rainwater collection.  I got so busy with other projects that I never got around to doing the work, though.

This spring, it shall be done!

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.

Final pear harvest for the year

The pear tree has been a success this year.  Although we only harvested a total of about a dozen pears, I'm happy given it's the first year.  It also beats the apple tree harvest where they suffered greatly from deer and Japanese beetle damage.

Below is a picture of the main harvest (the others came in ones and twos) from earlier today.  I sliced everything up to go in the food dehydrator a little bit ago.

We have pears!

Actually, we've had pears for a while.  Having never grown any fruit of any kind, we weren't sure when we needed to harvest the pears.  So we'd put it off for quite a while.

Well, this morning Wifey grabbed me and said, "Let's go check out one of those pears!"  So we did.

We picked the largest of the pears (it was a big one) and shared it.  It seemed a little underripe (from a hardness standpoint), but still had some nice pear flavor to it.  I've certainly had less flavorful pears from the grocery store.  We enjoyed it.  And so did The Bear whom had a couple of small nibbles.

And it's just occurred to me that this is the first fruit we've had from one of our new fruit trees since the apples didn't make it past the deer this spring.  How cool! 

We have baby figs!

It's been a long time since I've done a front garden post, but this is a good one.  I'm happy to report that we have two baby figs on one of the new fig trees I planted this year.

How cool is that???

Major progress in the front bed

I took the day off of work today.  I made a ton of progress in the front garden bed.  Since we had purchased a lot of herbs this past weekend, I had a lot to plant so plant I did.

Once they were all in the ground, I mulched most of it.  One more cubic yard of mulch will finish it off.  I'll do that once I tackle the other path in the side garden.

Yes, that's my shadow.  I'm awesome like that.

Artichokes are planted

A few days ago I picked up four artichoke plants from Behnke nurseries.  I was able to get them planted in their front bed locations this evening.

Now I just need to learn how to keep them from dying off during the winter.

Progress with the permaculture

One of the attractions we had for our home was the existence of some fruit trees already on the property.  Unfortunately, what we saw was potential, not demonstrated success.  Because we were in a drought, the peaches never actually developed into much more than a pit.

It'll be interesting to see what happens this year, but for now we have new baby peaches on the tree.

Also, there was a fig tree already in residence, however, we'd been told that it had never fruited.  Well, we have some on the tree now!

To supplement what was already there, we planted blueberries, apples, more figs and pears.  In the late fall, I found that deer had broken limbs on a few of the apple trees.  I got to one that still looked fresh and grafted it back together.  I'm thrilled to say that it worked.

I don't know how things will develop with the apple trees, but four of the six trees have blossoms on them.  The two that don't are the ones that fruit late in the season.  I can't say I'm surprised there are no flowers just yet.

The blueberries we planted in the fall all have flowers on them.

Also, the new pear tree in the front bed appears to be doing well.  The baby pears that were on the tree are slowly growing, too.

Clearing out the front garden, part 5 - The stump is gone

Continuing the series from Part 4 that began here.

With much thanks to our neighbor with the tractor, the pine tree stump is gone.  It fought a valiant defense, but it was no match for a Ford tractor operated by someone who knows what they're doing.

It's "game on!" for putting the second fig tree in its permanent home.

Clearing out the front garden, part 4 - the tree is down!

Continuing the series from Part 3 that began here.

We got the tree down from the front garden this evening.  I also was reminded that some of our neighbors called that ugly pine tree "Oscar the Grouch."  Well, Oscar was introduced to the Maryland Chainsaw Massacre today.

Tomorrow, if Wifey is correct, our neighbor across the street will be coming over to pull the stump out of the ground using his tractor.

And we have added a pear tree to the mix!

Yesterday when we bought the blueberry bushes, we bought a dwarf pear tree as well.  We don't foresee our family as being huge pear eaters, but we still enjoy the occasional pear.  The addition of a pear tree will also help to tie the front bed together and since it's a dwarf variety, it'll only grow to 8'-10' tall and wide.

We had a big of a hard time finding a variety that is self-pollinating, but the Kieffer Pear works for us.

Applied organic grub killer to the lawn and garden

As we've planted the apple trees and blueberry bushes, tilled the garden area and removed bushes from around the house, we've come across grubs everywhere we've dug.

After doing a bit of  research, we came across (providence?) an organic grub killer sold in some local hardware stores.  I'm very surprised to find an organic grub killer in such small (read: not Home Depot) hardware stores since event the big box stores don't have many organic options among their considerable selection. 

Anyway, I spread that over the lawn over the last two days and applied that to the front bed and side garden area using a hand spreader.  Since my research on the stuff indicated that the milky spore is safe for garden application where people and animals will be, I felt comfortable applying it to the garden areas and not just the lawn areas.

This was a great time to do it, too, since we're forecasted to get about an inch of rain today.  That'll be great for watering the granules into the soil.

A productive day off

With Wifey volunteering at The Boy's school today, I'm off of work to keep and eye on The Bear.  After dropping The Girl off at preschool, The Bear and I made a trip to the local hardware store for some stuff.  While there, I picked up some seeds (amazingly, non-GMO and organic) to supplement what we already have.

After we got home, I planted two pots of radish seeds (Cherry Belle) and Basil.

I also transplanted some mint that is already growing back by the pool.  Since it's rather invasive, putting it in a pot will contain it.  After I did that, I sunk it in the front bed to help provide some moisture and cooling to the roots.  I was careful to leave the top of the pot above the ground to allow for inevitable mulching.

Figs are in the ground.....sorta

My parents came over to celebrate Wifey's birthday with us.  While mom was cooking dinner, I had some time to get the figs in the ground.  As the picture below will indicate, one fig tree is in the ground permanently (left side) and the other is temporary.  I had to temporarily plant the one fig tree because I haven't cut down and removed the pine tree from the area by the driveway.  Unfortunately, the chainsaw is in the shop getting serviced and I haven't checked if my dad's is in operation.

Thus: temporary planting of the second fig plant.  I just stuck the second tree -- pot and all -- in the ground to help retain moisture and keep the roots cool.