We have hit the 80's

Boy, it was warm today! Very humid as well,  but the stiff breeze made it quite pleasant....

At 4:30pm it is in the low 80's and there were thunderstorms to the north of us, racing across the state, but they stayed well away from us and the ones that were in line to get us just faded out well before they got here.  Its a little bit disappointing because i love a good thunderstorm.

I didn't take any pictures today, but the apple trees are just on the verge of blooming.  There are apple trees in the area that are in bloom, but not mine quite yet.

 I'm not sure how i am going to get the measuring done for the garden, i know how...but not quite when.  I have to be somewhat precise with my rows and beds since i am using the hoop and row covers.  I have to have 4 foot beds, and 2 foot walking rows.  If the beds are wider the hoops won't fit, if it is narrower, they won't bend right  and if the walking paths are too narrow i won't be able to move between them. I also want everything to be as straight  as i can get them,  i don't want this to be an eyesore.  With the white covers on everything for the first couple months, the garden is going to be highly visible and explaining it to people who might ask will be much easier if the presentation is....well, presentable. 

But i think i will re-peg all corners and tie nylon string to them,  and use the big 100' tape reel to measure and mark 1' increments with a sharpie. I can use pieces of flagging tape to make the marks visible from the opposite end of the garden. The permanent marks will help in case the tape pieces slide.  Then i can pound in sticks and string a line for each bed across the garden.  I  can use the string to guide as i use the shovel  to move the soil from the paths to the raised beds.  They will probably be about 6" higher than the walking paths.  Since i am only doing 2 foot wide, i should be able to manage, its only going to  be 30' at a time.  If i can get the strings done tomorrow and then 2 rows a day, it would only take 2 days. Then i could get the hoops set up on Thursday and then get some of the hardy seedlings planted out and some of the cool crop seeds sown, put the row covers on by Friday.

I think it is interesting that the Grow Veg program says our last frost date up here is May 1.  Traditionally, we don't plant here until the last full moon in May...  Maybe that is playing it too safe?
I think i need to re-read some things...!  If i don't have to wait almost a whole 'nother month to plant things, i won't!

And i'm really trying to remember how often we got frosts after May 1st It is not proving to be easy. I remember many warm nights (though not as warm as last night). It might be that it referrs to tenders, but we always just did it all at once anyway. Maybe an online weather site has some sort of Almanac that took note of frosts and daily conditions.  maybe i will have to commit more to this Blog and take note of daily highs, lows and presence of frost.  I should get a soil thermometer too, that would be a useful piece of information as well. I despise having such a horrible memory!
But that is what this blog is supposed to help with.


The concept of multiple plantings is sort of new to me, i know it can be done and i think i remember my grandfather doing it when i was little, but it isn't something my parents took the time to do. So i have had to learn to expect to plant more than one thing in one spot in the garden.  But working more than full time since before i got a house, i never had the time to think about it as much as i would have liked to, gardening has only been a weekend dream until now. So this i guess, is the year to unlearn some things now that my garden should be big enough to be a working garden and not just a  hold out for 'someday' ... that day has finally arrived.  The GrowVeg program has a custom guide that shows  when to plant successive crops- if applicable. Its neat how it makes a chart  of all the things placed in the garden plan. It also sends email reminders for planting times,  and i think it  also lets you plan the garden monthly as well as having a crop rotation guide.

My main  issue with crop placement has been to make sure the tall stuff goes to the north side.  When we planted the Jerusalem Artichokes, we were in a hurry, didn't have much time to plan and they had to be out of the way.  The North side of the garden is closest to the house and if it was the only thing there, they would have gotten trampled.
Now as it is, i am going to have a shady spot next to them on the far side.  I know the 3 Sisters style of planting...  i have never tried it since my corn likes to fall over because of the wind alone. I can't imagine what squash vines would do to them... like watching the slow-motion vegetative version of a pack of wolves dragging down a megaloceros .  So...  maybe the JA's could handle the squashes?  I have read about people saving the JA stems to use as stakes for next year's crop propping. Not as strong as bamboo stakes, but good enough to be useful. Maybe sturdy enough during growth to become supports?
So i put the vining things over there to try it out
The  tomatoes and corn are going to be all the way to the Northern side, i am going to put the tomatoes at the front of that row and have the corn to the back i think...  the shed can perhaps shield the corn from the wind and hopefully the fence will add some more protection.

Ok, off to check the preceding years' weather...

Garden is almost ready!

My dad came over this morning and got started on the garden.  I have had it staked out for a while, but we had to cut the plastic  tape, but we left in the pegs...

First he spread out the compost/topsoil that he brought me yesterday.  Which looked like this on Saturday :

Hubby had taken more of the manure stuff and tossed it on the pile on the left...  but the compost is so nice and dark colored!

Ok, so...spreading it out...

There was a  bit more of it over there, so he took it too.

Ant this is the first actual tilling of the soil to mix it in

It looks so good!  (But, darn i can't wait for that fence to get finished)

All finished!

The yard slopes quite a bit, so my dad suggested that hubby take a few old boards we had lying around and make a retainer out of them for the back part of the garden.  We had plenty of scrap and they did it pretty quickly.

I also had dad do the part in front of where i planted the JA's ,  i am going to put the rhubarb in there and possibly the horseradish,  so i figured i might as well have that bit done. Otherwish hubby would have had to break it in for me with the mantis...  would have taken  him much longer.

It looks funny where it goes around the JA plot,  but i'll try and neaten it up some other time. We were in a rush last fall, so our digging wasn't quite as straight as the garden.

Very good day.

The weather was absolutely beautiful. I didn't check the temperature but i think it hovered around Perfect. It wasn't dry, it wasn't sweltering...it was sunny, little warm breeze... just right.  The Maine State Birds ( black flies )were out, but they weren't biting...too much..


Ok. Random spring pictures:

These are my tulips for the second round of spring bloom. They seem to come anywhere from 1-3 weeks after the Torontos.

This is a pink hyacinth that i do not remember planting. It has never appeared before that i know of and this is the first time i have seen it bloom.  I have no idea how it got there.  I must have put it there of course, but i thought i only put daffodills and crocus there.  Either i simply forgot, or my package of daffs had a hyacinth stowaway. The daffs were planted at least 4 years ago...

Oh, this is the Hoya Shepherdi flower penduncle.... or what i am hoping is.  Blurry, but worth taking note of so i know what to look for in the future:

The JA patch....  i think this was while i was trying to weed it...  The plants are not even big enough to make them out in this pic....

Apple blossom buds, turning pink...  Glad i happened to notice this  Friday evening because i sprayed Saturday and took this picture later that day... they are just about to open now.

The beach plums that made it through the winter.  The others got stepped on by mistake....  but i had to put them in drilled kitty litter buckets to protect them from being stepped on again.  The pink strings were supposed to prevent it, but no such luck.
Not a good picture of them, but i can at least record when they break dormancy in the spring for next year. Though this is an early year for everything.

Veggies revisited.  Again.


Kohlrabi, Burdock and Kale...  doing well.  Some of the other seeds in there are starting to come up, but are still small.

Pak Choi and Collards...  a month after seeding today.

Welsh onions and Shallots  (and a weed)

Lettuces... i need to trim out the twins....and eat them.

Assorteds

The other flat of assorteds... the tomatoes are looking good

Tomatoes and Tomatillo

Asparagus from seed.... so funny looking!

Another assorted flat

The citrus that i potted



























The grape. With the green onions behind that i planted for green onion tops.

Big honking rosemary....
I keep forgetting to buy plastic cups to transplant them all into. 

Goji doing really well...

The double flowered Rose of Sharon bush breaking dormancy. I don't really like the flowers much, some flowers don't double well and this is an example of that. Like hollyhocks, doubling the petals just detracts from the simple shape.  These flowers look like they have been shredded by wind.  I prefer the purple/blue shade of RoS,  this one is a medium pink color.  I might try to give this one away sometime later on. Replace it with something more to my tastes.

And the big Peegee Hydrangea is waking up.  It looks stark dead for most of the spring, its one of the last things to wake up.

Almost 11pm

I'm going to try and measure out the rows tomorrow, then dig the paths and mound up the beds. Thats the plan whether it takes me all week or not, i guess i will find out. Its dependent on weather, nap times and pain levels.

Biodegradable plastics and other things...

I came across this today in another blog i have been following:
http://undercovergardener.blogspot.com/2010/04/sunchips-compostable-bag-day-1.html

I went to reply but after 2 paragraphs i realized i was carrying her entry too far off topic....  but it sparked a memory of a few things that i'd like to hang onto just a bit longer, lol.
She is doing her own test on the Sunchips biodegradable bag in her compost pile. According to Sunchips, the bag should be gone in about 14 months.

This is what i was going to reply with:

interesting. i saw their commercials but never looked into the claim. there was a plastic-like product made of corn starch that i remember being started when i was a kid. i had a writing pen that was made of it. It was green and yell and had a character of a smiling ear of corn on it.  you had to be careful to not chew this pen because it would begin to break down. i think it was the same stuff that Booda Velvet dog chew bones are made of...

Anyhow, i wonder if the bags could be used as one-year containers for planting in. I know some people have done whole (though small)gardens using store bought soil. They simply laid the bag along the ground, leaving the soil in the bag and planting seeds in a couple holes punctured in the bag. At the end of the season the bags are split open and the soil is left in place to be tilled under- since the soil bag effectively mulched over the garden plot they were placed upon. I once bought some doggy cleanup baggies at a pet store where i worked that claimed to be biodegradable.  After testing them with household kitchen waste, i decided that they weren't very biodegradable. I did some research online and discovered they were only made up of 10% biodegradable.  I'm not an Earth worshipper or even a believer in the global warming hoax, but i was wanting to be a little more responsible in Stewardship.  That company really made me mad because frankly it was more than a little misleading.   But through researching that, i did find a company that does make doggy cleanup baggies that are plastic-like and compostable and at a decent price.  But since i decided to keep a Vermicomposting bin in my kitchen, i didn't need any small, biodegradable, plasticlike baggies for my kitchen waste  any longer since i don't have to take that winter trip to the compost heap anymore.  But i do need to find those bags again because we are adopting the neighbor's Basset hound (a sad casualty of an unexpected divorce and subsequent relocation of the  family into  'no pets allowed' apartments) tonight or tomorrow, so i will need something to pick up the poo and i plan to install one of those pet poo digester compost pits.

 So, yeah...i was going way off topic for a one-sided discussion and didn't want to gum up her nice Blog with my ramblings. That is what my Blog is for. LOL


So....  windy again today... not as terrible as yesterday.  How on earth my greenhouses stayed upright is beyond me.  I have the bigger one tethered to the basketball hoop with coated airline cable and i have the smallet one tethered to that....  it must be the weight of the plant trays and the stability of being strapped together.

One bit of bad news tho...  my big laptop is now toast.   I caught the little one banging on it heartily with a toy and the screen went dead. I went to take a dirty diaper to the trash and that was all it took.  I think the banging dislodged some condensation and it permafried it.  I am just going to put it in a closet for a week or so and see if it ever comes back to life, but i am not expecting anything.
At least i have this mini laptop for now. Its an Acer Aspire, and it is very small but fully functional...  it does let me play with the garden program and some Facebook games- though they are quite small.  But at least i get online.

I almost got my Delicious account setup...  i was planning to do it a few minutes before the power went out and in the mild drama of that, it didn't get done.. then shortly after that, my laptop croaked.  So, my bookmarks are probably gone...again... *sigh*

Oh, another thing that shows how weird things have been for this house in the last couple days.   One of the fan blades snapped off one of our ceiling fans...  while it was on. It simply snapped off and hit the wall...  Hubby saw it fly off, i didn't see it myself but i watched him go pick it up. I had heard the bump noise it made and asked him what that was when he went to get it.  We were lucky that it missed my salt water tanks. It Probably missed the top tank by only about 6 inches.  I'm really glad it missed because we very well could have had 30 gallons of seawater on our floor last night.
So that fan will be removed soon. We think we will replace it with a basic fixture, 12 feet away is another fan and they really aren't needed anyway. In fact i don't like either one at all, but the intact fan is useful.

I have been trying to get my livingroom reordered.  Its small and the furniture is ugly, missmatched, awkward and big and there is too much of it,  but still too little space for more than a couple people to sit comfortably.
Since i have been playing with graph paper so much, i decided to measure out my livingroom and put it on a graph.  I measured all the furniture  and cut out paper pieces to represent them. I put the grid with my livingroom drawn on it into a plastic 3 ring binder sleeve and put scotch tape on the pieces representing the furniture.  So i can stick and unstick the furniture in different configurations and try to come up with a better layout.  I used the scanner to copy a couple of the possible layouts because i will forget from one try to the next.  So i will try and get hubby to look at it with me.  I am so frustrated with this room and the way the space is laid out. Every wall has something against it and it feels cramped and cluttered. Most of our furniture was given to us, and we are grateful for that, but in the 'Beggars can't be choosers'  reality, we weren't able to pick our own pieces with the idea of economizing space. Also, nothing really matches and it is embarrassing on a daily basis, no matter how much i clean the livingroom, it always looks and feels dingy.

Ok, so frustration has been let out and i have had my chance to just babble.

Gardenwise, the Jerusalem Artichokes are really coming along now. They are still very short, but they are appearing  all over.
I have some eggplant seeds sprouting now and more of the seedlings are really looking good.
I hope my dad is willing to do some compost delivering and some tilling this weekend.  There are things i could actually have planted by now if this wasn't my first year getting this plot ready.  If i were more capable i would try the mantis on the garden right now, but i won't make my hubby do it. So i will have to wait for my dad to come with his tractor.
I really hope their back yard, where the compost is, has dried up enough for access.  It needs to be spread out so it can all warm up.

The waiting is truly the hardest part!

Zapper

Got the electric fence today. I like it, looks very complete and i hope it will work to keep out the woodchucks!
I can't wait to watch it get to work...!

I keep checking the Jerusalem Artichoke patch and have been wondering if they are going to show up.  The rhubarb looks so happy that i imagine the soil has warmed enough for the JA's to appear.

But i think i see them now.  These are in the area i marked with the Red Rover tag, from Oikos:

There are two patches...

They seem to have been there for some time, but the days have been cool, so i am almost unsure if they are the JA's. I really hope the rest didn't get eaten. The seed tubers were not cheap.  I am almost considering beginning a small cottage industry selling them on eBay if i get inundated.  According to what i read about their productivity levels, the amount i planted should feed my family and the neighborhood for a year...  but if something ate most of them then i might get enough for a few meals every now and then through early winter.

Its supposed to be cold tomorrow, maybe even some wet snow...uggh.  But temps are not expected to get to the freezing mark, but prolonged cold with no sun to warm my greenhouses might not be good. But the  Wintersowing method seems to imply that bringing in the flats shouldn't be necessary.  I'm not so sure about that. I might bring them in anyway, at least some of them. Or just supply them with hot water bottles. I have squash and cucumbers sprouting and watermelon, those have me worried.  They aren't as rugged as the broccoli or even the tomatoes.
The weather may change and it may be warmer than they expect, if it stays in the 40's inside the greenhouses, all should be fine.

I hope. lol

Teething and boring weather

The youngest is teething. Four are coming in at once.  She already had two, soon the grand total will be 6. Its pretty rough on her...and me.  But infant tylenol and oragel will help.

poor critter.

The weather, frankly,  has been lame.   Its making me lame, and i am tired of gray skies.  It was chilly  yesterday and i'm seriously expecting a long, snowy and cold winter.  We did get a bit of snow, mixed wet with rain late last night, but nothing that stuck.


The winter rye that hubby sowed in the yard has not sprouted, i think its too cold even for that.
I neatened up the string around the JA plot, cause thats about the only thing i can do.

Here it is in all its anticlimactic glory:

looking West

&

looking East:

 

I have been looking up info on what to do about the apple trees, pruning suggestions and the like.  I haven't come to a decision on if i will try it at this time of year or not.  I did learn something new though. If you prune apple trees too heavily in the spring it can make them flower early and that can be bad if you get another frost.  So i think spring is out.  I do have to find out if it is wise to remove all the beginning apples next spring so the trees can concentrate on strengthening roots and trunk.  i noticed the trunk on the bigger tree is actually narrower toward the ground than it is about 4 feet up. It just does not look right.
They had been planted in a bad spot that may have been good at one time until the trees behind the yard that belong to the other neighbors grew too high and shaded them out. (Box Elders, rant to follow)

This is the bigger apple tree. It has a "knee"...  we had to prop it up with a portion of tree trunk we cut to move the neighbors fence OFF our yard.  I used the cotton strap the hospital sent me home with after my car accident that left me with a fairly messed-up leg. The belt was so hubby could wrap it around me to pick me up if i fell over.  Luckily it never had to be used! Now it has a great purpose!

Then, the littler one.  They look like they have not had enough light for a number of years,  i can only guess that the big one must be 6 years old at least, the little one at least 3. But with inadequate sunlight, they could be much older.

 

 The big one is very fruitful, but after doing a bit of research, i found out what is bugging the fruit. Apple Maggot is one thing i positively ID'd.

It has a LOT of shape issues. The only reason it is still standing is because it was hooked over the pickets of the fence the neighbors put up. That fence was placed about 3 feet into what is now our yard.  The trees are now about 5 feet away from the fence as it is properly placed about 4 inches inside our property line.

Now, for the Box Elder rant.  They are part of the reason why it took so much of the summer to get work done around the new yard.  They were everywhere, fallen over, broken, growing up through what used to be the basement of the burned-down house.  At best,hey are basically overgrown weeds. 

They are prolific, fast growing, weak, spindly, ugly looking things. The female trees attract tons of Box Elder Bugs, which are mainly annoying but they freak out my hubby who insisted that they were ticks when we first moved in.  The trees also drop their leaves slowly all summer and make a huge number of seeds that are similar to maple helicopters.  These leaves and seeds make a mess on any paved areas, stick to windshields, get into car vents and roof gutters, coat the lawn and the seeds start sprouting in flower beds and veggie gardens and of course attract the bugs which drink the sap from the seed pods.

The trees grow at least a foot in all directions each spring,  they sucker and water sprout all over if you lop off branches. The trees are so useless, you can't even use them to burn as firewood since they gum up the chimney and can create conditions that can cause chimney fires. They are also very brittle and can come down on houses and buildings, they crack under snow and ice and end up hollow or half deadwood. Very dangerous trees!

There is one on the other side of our house that belong to the neighbors that i will call "the nice ones" .  This tree is the only issue we have with them.  The tree leaned over our roof on the shady side of the house and it rubbed our ridge, dropped leaves on the roof and basically took a few years off the life of our shingles. We offered to have the tree cut down entirely (we are lucky enough to know a professional tree-chopper-downer so the cost would be minimal) and i even suggested that i'd replace it with something ornamental for them, but for some reason the Mrs is attached to the tree.
The best we could do was convince them to a friendly agreement that we would have the big branch that was dangling over our roof (and causing the trunk to list to our side) removed as well as the branches that were shading out  what little yard we have on that side of the house.  At least now the tree does not look as though it will come through my living room if we get an ice storm or a hurricane.  That's a relief!
This is what is left after we removed the parts that were causing damage and after the neighbor hubby did some trimming of his own:

As gorgeous as this tree is now, i still think they should have taken me up on that ornamental offer.  LOL

At least today is sunny, according to the weather forecasters we should be having "seasonable" weather for the next week or so. This means not so many threats of snow and temps more around the 50-60 degree mark-  this is great, maybe the ground will warm up just enough for things to move a bit before the snow really falls.

First planting in new ground and preliminary babble

There is a plant thats called a Jerusalem Artichoke. And if you look them up online one of the first things you will learn is that they are not artichokes and they are not from Jerusalem. They are in fact a plant that is native to America. They are also called Sunchokes and even Passamaquoddy Potatoes, although my Passamaquoddy husband and his mother have both never heard of them. But we won't hold that against anyone, because out of the three names, that is probably the most logical one.

But i think i'll just call them JA's cause that is the shortest route.

They are actually a type of sunflower.


Anyway, i planted about 15# of them today.

Edit to add:
i planted 4 varieties

From an eBay seller, i got "Stampede" and "Red Fuseau".

From Oikos Tree Crops i got "Red Rover" and "White Fuseau" incidentally that is where i got my beach plum seedlings as well. They have great prices on some rugged plants.

Well, my mom and husband did much of the real labor. They dug, spaded and used the Mantis Tiller (i love that thing) to prepare the new ground, i just dropped the tubers into the trenches and tied the fluorescent string to the sticks so i wouldn't forget where they were.

I planted that many because i always expect about half of everything i plant to be eaten by something furry.
I also took out a sort of insurance policy by sending my mom a few pounds to put in her garden as well. If something eats all mine i could recover some from hers.... thats if nothing eats hers.

We live pretty rural out here in Maine. The banes of my existence are woodchucks and voles and don't forget snails and slugs. My parents have to contend with deer, wild turkeys and even the occasional moose. They have some red tailed hawks that hang out on their property that keep the squirrels and chipmunks in check

I don't have any red tailed hawks, so i have to just hope the woodchucks spontaneously combust. Unfortunately woodchucks don't do this. So the next idea is to use Havahart traps.
Anyway, talk of woodchucks leaves me in a bad mood, so i'll get back to what i like yammering about.

Garden.

So, mom and i were outside doing the planting and hubby was getting the snowblower ready, i almost joked that he was going to cause it to snow.... and i come in and see exactly that in our forecast. But it looks to be a rain snow mix with temps in the 40's. But its still early to see even faux sneaux.

So it looks like we got the roots in just in time.

Hubby had sown some winter rye out in the yard to try and prevent any more washouts, but unless it warms up for a few days in a few days we won't get any benefit out of that effort.

So that sums up today's garden adventure.



Apples

After helping me by digging up my protogarden, my mom has taken my oldest daughter out apple picking today. I was considering trying to go (take lots of tylenol and try to suck it up), but after slipping on a wet spot in the yard and landing on my bad knee/leg, it was out of the question, tylenol won't even touch that kinda ouch.
But i should be getting a large paper shopping bag full of apples, so i can make a few pies and such.



i guess that will be it for now...