Success and failures of an assorted nature...and drama too.

A couple times over the last few days i have tried to put together a video "garden tour" for fun.
I have run into a number of problems.  For one, file size. Blogger only allows 100MB videos. At low resolution and with my camera, this means about 4 minute clips.  Which isn't that bad.... but...it means i have to film in short increments and watch the camera timer.
I also have trouble keeping a steady camera. My camera is a decent one, but it has no in-film zoom, so i have to move the camera in close.  The more the camera is moved, the harder the video is to watch.  My limp does not help things and the harder i try to keep it steady, the jouncier it seems to get.  This would be almost instantaneous motion sickness for easily affected people like myself.  In fact, thinking about it makes me a little nauseous.

Another issue is that (and i never would have imagined this)  even though my garden is tiny, it takes me more than 15 minutes to film it all and point out each variety i have planted- even if i prattle on really fast.  If i have to speak slowly and move the camera slow and steadily, that time will increase further.


Now, for me, this is not actually such a bad thing. I could put up with most of the above myself. But where i have decided to make a public Blog of this garden... i should probably think of the people who are nice enough to stop by and who may want to watch the videos.  I wouldn't mind an array of ten, nine-minute videos of my garden to watch some day in the middle of February, but its unlikely that as nice as my fellow gardeners can be, not everyone will be as fascinated with my garden as i am! :o)


So i'll need a balance.  But i really want to do this, so i plan to keep trying. Its been frustrating, but its fun and i do like a challenge!


On the weather:
Wednesday, we had some big storms roll through.  I think we managed to get about 1.5 inches of rain. We needed it very much. We were lucky to not get much for high winds, but in Southern Maine there were some actual tornadoes that touched down. This is highly unusual.  I have not read or watched the news reports, but hubby has and he said there was a lot of damage.


Cuttings- the ones a dear friend sent me.... well there was a lot of failure on my part.  They didn't take for me. It may have been the soil i used, the surrounding temperature, the moisture level, any trauma they endured travelling through US Mail...lol
But i did have one glimmer of success! One of the hardy kiwi cuttings has taken root and is pushing up some new leaves.  Its pretty thrilling since this turns out to be an "against all odds" result.  The type of hardy kiwi is unknown, the sex is also unknown, but i think some research will help these questions be answered. Whichever it is, i will need to buy it a mate if i expect to get any fruit from it.  Of course that will be at least a few years out ahead and it still has a Winter to survive.

You can see the shiny new leaves:

 And here's the Autumn Olive from seed, while i'm posting pictures.

I have started work on the side flower bed.  This has caused a little bit of friction with our nice neighbors. When we bought the house, there was a short fence along the side in question.  About a year after we moved in, the fence was so rotted we had to take it down.  The fence had been placed so that it was right through the middle of the flower bed, cutting it almost in half lengthwise.   Our neighbors eventually started tending that little strip of escaped plants because it buts right up against their pavement and would have just become an eyesore.

The fence could not have been installed because of the paving, but where we now know the lines and the pavement is breaking up, we will be able to get more precise.
The end to the right is where some goldenrod and the raspberries are taking over.  The goldenrod will be removed and the raspberries will be salvaged.

When we bought the new lot we had our entire property surveyed.  My premise was that i wanted to have every inch of soil that i owned, but i didn't want to take anything that was not mine even by mistake.  The surveyor pins show that the entire flower bed does belong to us (as well as a good bit of their pavement), however, they have been tending it for at least a few years so she is not wanting to let it go.  The neighbor lady is also not happy that we are planning to put a fence back there.  The neighborhood kids (that we refer to as "The Hooligans") use our yard and theirs as a highway and step on anything in their path & steal things along the way, so we want a fence to stop this. 
Its going to be a neighborly fence, maybe 5' high, not so high that an over-the-fence conversation cannot be had...
I tried to explain what i plan to do with the plants that are in there but i'm not sure if we are understanding eachother.    I'm also not sure if she isn't understanding what plants are flowers and which are weeds...
Its a hard conversation to have. I'm trying to not sound like i'm saying
"The whole thing is mine, the plants are mine and i'll do whatever i want with them."
---Though, essentially, i could say exactly that. 
What i did tell her is that i am going to remove all the plants and bulbs, sort them and decide which to give away, put back or place somewhere else.  I told her that she could have all of what she wants-  there is a ton of Iris and yellow lilies in there-  some i am giving to my mother,  but she can pretty much have the rest of them.  
Some of the problem is that i don't quite know if she understands that i am not just getting rid of everything completely.  When we first moved in, i gutted the long-neglected beds and split everything that needed splitting, rearranged things that were in unsuitable places ...  when i was in the middle of that project, she was almost in tears, thinking i was getting rid of all of the former owner's flowers. They had been long time friends and i understood, the lady was part of our extended family too and i respected that, the beds needed work but no i wasn't destroying them. 
My hubby and her hubby have talked and he's ok with whatever we want done... but i think his wife is having some trouble.   I think much of it is due to failing health and without sounding disrespectful, a touch of senility setting in.  She is also the reason that 'beautiful' box elder eyesore is still standing instead of a dwarf, ornamental flowering tree that i offered to put in it's place.
Like the first time i messed with these beds, i'll simply have to do my work despite her fears and when its done i think she'll realize that my plans weren't as frightening as she thought they'd be.
Of course its going to take me 10x the amount of time to complete it compared to when i wasn't disabled.
Its easier on the involved when something seems to happen overnight.  Like last time, it took me two days.  It was started and finished before she could get too much more upset with me, but this time she will have weeks to fret about it.
 I am going to use some highly visible colored rope to string a line along the survey pins, hopefully to assure her that i am intent on playing by the rules.  I really think that she has a lot of trouble dealing with change of any sort.  I fully expect to have similar issues as i grow older. I can see it starting already, so though i am frustrated with her i understand, but i still get to do what i want with my own yard.
There's always something dramatic going on around here! lol

The beans have slowed down in production and the summer squash have picked up. I think i will only plant one of each next year.  Unless i am prepared to can them.  Shredded, they make a great bulk filler for spaghetti sauce.  


I won't be able to get my pressure canner for at least another 2 weeks, so the beans i have will need to be frozen. 
I was worried that i won't be able to use my canner this year since i probably didn't plant enough cukes for pickles and the beans are running low, my swiss chard tasted like mud this year and i won't have any fruit in quantity for preserving....but then i remembered the  15 tomato plants i have growing....  what better garden produce to practice canning with.  Its what everyone seems to start with.
I will also have winter squash and i am pretty sure that can be canned.  Since i am getting a pressure canner, i can preserve most anything in it, including beef and chicken or recipes that include meats.   Wouldn't it be nice to open a jar of pre-cooked chicken or tenderized beef?  Chicken could be chopped and made into chicken salad,  beef would make quick work of a soup or stew..among other things.
The Ball book has a number of recipes for cooking ahead, worth trying at least once....

Hubby went and picked up my landscape edging yesterday. It looks like nice stuff,  but he wants me to hold off until the lawn is prepared and seeded.  I have no idea when that is going to happen, so i'm not too thrilled to wait to get started on that.
I like to get things going shortly after getting the notion in my head. But between having to wait an unspecified length of time before i get started and knowing it will be longer and more painful to do than it should be, i'm getting all anxious over it.
I just want it done! :o)

Other than this, not much else is going on. The garden is still weedier than i like, but nothing has raided it recently, i still need to use BT on the brassicas because i saw some caterpillar poo on one of the cabbages and dime-sized holes are forming on my kale leaves.   Last time i grew tomatoes they were attacked bu hornworms and destroyed my plants in one day.
I'm a little uncomfortable with BT, but not enough to stop me from using it when i think i need it.

So that is all for today.

Chilly days....

Well, nothing much going on really.  We did catch a woodchuck in the Havahart trap.  It is no longer in our neighborhood.

We plan to keep the trap baited and will continue to remove any other woodchucks that we happen to capture.


Thursday was rather cool outside (this entry was begun Thursday evening and its now Friday am). My oldest daughter remarked that it felt like Fall, and it really did!  It got into the high 60's, but i think that may have been as high as it went, that i noticed at any rate.  Its pretty chilly this morning still.


I went to Home Depot to get chicken wire and the inside of the store was hotter than the outside.

Last night the overnight lows went down to about 48. It seems strange, but weather is like that sometimes, but i do wish it would warm back up within reason. My corn looks like it just might reach the "knee high by the Fourth of July" standard.


I did another order of seeds through Pinetree.  Remember i said i'm considering specializing in Kale?
Yeah, so i got a couple ornamental types and some bred for eating.  The ornamental is said to be fairly good for eating and if i grow it in the flower beds or garden at least it will look pretty.  Not relying on it being tasty, but i think a nice row of edible kale flanked by pretty kale might be a cheerful sight one frosty morning.


I got some Purple Sprouting Broccoli too.
And they had a close-out on their Hopi Blue Dent corn that i have wanted to try for a number of years.  I decided that if this year my sweet corn does not make it through the season i would start growing either ornamental or 'meal' corns.
I also got a packet of Podcorn, which is an ornamental type in a sort of breeding throwback, it has husks on each kernel, more like its earlier ancestry.
They are also having a closeout on their Banana Legs tomato. Its supposed to be a pretty good paste type and we prefer paste tomatoes here.  I keep growing salad tomatoes because i can't resist all the different types, but when it comes down to it, our salads and sandwiches taste best with sliced paste tomatoes. Types like Pear Tomatoes get eaten like grapes.
I found they had seeds for  San Marzano Tomatoes,  they are supposed to be the very best paste tomato- ever.  But not very disease resistant.  But i decided to try them.


I got some red cabbage and some green cabbage and some Saltwort to try and i got seeds for Leeks and Rue.
 I also grabbed some Beit Alpha, Spacemaster and Boston Pickling cukes. I was going to be out of my cucumber seed stash for next year and according to some sources it is not too late to plant cukes up here. I may try it.

I also saw they had a really good price on a book called "The 64 Dollar Tomato"  which sounds amusing and fascinating and maybe a little more familiar than i'd like to admit .....  so, looking forward to reading that!


I got some Kossack Kholrabi.  I wasn't very impressed with the Early Purple Vienna i had.  They need to be harvested small... and the ones i had to rescue from the woodchucks were only a little bit smaller than ideal...  but considering it takes the same effort and spacing to plant Kossack....  why harvest something quarter sized when i can get baseball sized veggies.   The EPV were very pretty and i might plant them just for color, but its like chopping down a redwood for a toothpick.


Oh, i didn't do very well by those cuttings i got a couple weeks ago.  They looked like they were doing fine, nice and green. But literally overnight, some went brown and crisp.  The mulberries look like they might yet hang on and one hardy kiwi cutting is still going. A couple each of the cherries and cranberries look ok-ish still.  But the Raspberries were looking fine and then poof.  But that's the way it can go with cuttings, sometimes they do awesome and sometimes they just sit there and give up.  I once tried rooting some Kaffir Lime cuttings i took in attempt to save the plant i had and they lingered for 6 months and suddenly gave up.  No roots at all.
But i have some berry seeds and i looked up what to do with them, i just need to find the time to do it. :o)


So as far as the actual garden goes, there isn't much going on. Things are simply growing,  and growing well.
I keep pulling out a few weeds here and there, i plan to plant some more beans somewhere in there, maybe try again with some herbs.
Hopefully the woodchucks will go into the Havahart instead of my garden.


Oh, yeah. The chicken wire i bought.
I think i will use the buried fence idea.
I got 2' x 50' fencing.  So i can bury the bottom half in a way that flares it out away from the garden. About 2-3 inches from the top of the fence, i can run one strand of electrified wire to repel climb-overs.
I plan to use the Mantis Tiller to loosen up the soil so i can bury the fence. I should be able to till, then simply scoop the dirt off to the side, set the fence in then cover it.  I bought more PVC to use as non-conductive posts so i don't have to play with insulators.  The PVC will be sturdy enough to stand a number of years.  I will drill small holes into the PVC and use cotter pins to attach the chicken wire and the hot wire.  The height should not be too tall for me to step over comfortably, though it might be pushing it.  I may have to lay the fence out far enough away so i have a whole width of space in the front just for walking to and from each row.  I can't straddle the 4' growing rows.  I'll work out the details as i'm doing the project. I can't add too much space since i only have 150' of chicken wire and my garden is about130' around.  Not a lot of room for error.


I might begin today or next week sometime. I have a lot of house stuff to do.  Laundry sorting.  Whatever no longer fits or no longer gets worn needs to go to GoodWill or Salvation Army.  But it needs to be washed and dried first, ideally it should get folded too.  But its really booooring  to do.

Woodchucks, presents and weather...

Woodchucks like swiss chard and a little kholrabi.

Good thing is that i planted enough of each and the plants are large enough to take some damage until i can figure out what will work.
The low wire kept getting grounded out so i tightened it up when i put the second strand on it. Grounding out may have been what allowed one in to sample my veggies.
I delayed putting extra strands of wire on the electric fence too long and when i pulled the row cover off the tomato and corn row it changed something. I think the row cover was scaring them away for a while.  When the wind blows the whole length of the cover moves and billows, so i'm sure it was a little of that.

Its a combination of things that were working. Since the woodchucks got in almost immediately after i took off the covers, they were a big part of it. But i read that row cover won't keep woodchucks away for long because they will dig through it.  So i figured where its so hard to see through them i didn't want a woodchuck to spend a whole day under my hoops eating away before i noticed.  I knew one strand of wire wasn't going to work on them especially when it kept grounding out and i was too slow to fix it.  I kept having to do something with the wire, i finally got the grass dead enough to easily uproot and underneath the wire is finally all clear.  But i think i got it all together right. The second wire isn't as high as i want it to be, so i plan to do a third course today. The first wire i think was too high in some spots and too low in others.  I think a good span of heights will be the bottom wire at 3", middle at 6" and the top at 9".  The pre-drilled holes in the stakes that came with the kit are 3" apart.  If i find that this spacing isn't a narrow enough mesh to keep them out (which unless woodchucks are immune to electricity) i can't imagine why not, i can make my own PVC stakes with 2" spacing. 
The thing about woodchucks is that they seem to manage to get through anything.  The only sure thing i could do to them is to shoot them, which i can't do because of  town ordinance.

But the fence does work on cats and skunks and the neighbor's dogs.  So if i can get the wire strands at the right height the drama of the weekend will be over.

Saturday was a good day though.
Starting in the morning at about 5am, we got ready for our oldest daughter's league's Softball tournament that was being held a few towns over.  We had to be there by 7:30 that morning.  My daughter's team lost the first game, but then they won the next game, their third game they only lost by one.  I think in all we placed 4th.  It was HOT.  It was in the 80's that morning and i'm sure it got at least to 89 if not low 90's at some point. It was 87 when we got home after 2pm.  Good thing is that we got nice breezes all day, we had brought plenty of  ice water, the little one had her big stroller, we had a picnic table umbrella and our canvas chairs.
It was a lot of fun and the girls all did play quite well in the heat.

When we got home, i found a present in the mailbox. A whole bunch of cuttings from a friend!
Cherries, berries, and fruit.  It was quite  a package! :o)
It was expected to arrive on Friday, but i think someone at the Post office was being a dweeb cause it arrived on Saturday .  The hottest day we have had so far.  But luckily my mail box is in the shade of the house, so the cuttings seem to have taken it pretty well.  Some of the leaf tips darkened, but everything was packed to stay moist and i think that helped a lot.
I got everything unpacked, potted, labeled and covered.... they are inside on my light shelf, hopefully gearing up to root.  I also was sent some berries and fruit with seeds, i haven't gotten to those much yet but i think they will each need to be processed differently. Some will need to be fermented and stratified, some may just need to be planted. I think some of them will do best in a wintersow method.

One of those eBay Autumn Olive seeds is starting to chit. I'll have to get that potted up soon as well.

Lots to try and do today, research and stringing a third line. Its supposed to be very hot again today, it was scorching and humid yesterday.  I guess its not a bad day to spend inside researching. Of course i expect to see a woodchuck in the garden every time i look out the window.