Recovering Old Beds.

Three years ago I had my beds laid out on 4' centers.  The idea was that I'd have 2 1/2' beds and 1 1/2' paths.  That mostly worked.  I'd like to go back to that area and plant it again.  It's basically been three years since I paid it any attention though.  There was a row of trellises where I had tomatoes, and some beds of garlic that never got harvested.  I thought I'd lost the garlic to the weeds, but it turns out I haven't.  Once I raked off the dead grasses, I see clumps of garlic growing in the pattern I planted it in.  A couple weeks ago they looked like this:

I was able to tease most of these apart, and if I really wanted to plant more, I could from this stock.  But it will be easier to do that in the fall when it can be harvested and split into cloves without worrying about small roots.

So today I got to work laying out the beds again, and the garlic acted as a landmark.  The first and third beds on the right as you enter the garden both have some of this legacy garlic in them.  I cut myself some wooden stakes from some pallet boards I had laying around, lined up one on each end of the first bed with the edge of the garlic planting, and used that as the baseline to measure from.  They aren't all dug, but I marked out 12 beds in sections 13 and 14 of the old garden map.

The first three beds look like this, looking south from the middle east-west garden path:

The brighter green visible in the first bed on the right is garlic.  There's more in the third bed, between the white string and the black hose on the left.  So the second bed is empty and needs the grass dealt with.  

Rhizome grass is my worst weed.  There was one year I tried carefully pulling out every bit, and it took me forever.  One year I went out early and was turning over a few clumps of weeds with a shovel and I pulled something and tore the erector spinae muscle from the iliac crest on one side of my lower back.  This year I've been doing my recreational ditch digging where I want the foundation of my cottage to be.  I think it's toned up my back muscles nicely.  And based on past experience, I'm not going overboard.  I'm turning the soil once, and then I'll go through it a couple times with the three toothed cultivator, pulling what I can, and then I'll rake it and plant stuff.  That's basically what I did under that low tunnel a week ago.

Bed 2 there is basically 100 square feet.  It's 40' x 2 1/2'.  It took me almost exactly a half hour to turn it with a shovel.  

I'm thinking it looks like a good spot for a few rows of beets.  I've got about two or three weeks until normal last frost.  In that time I'd like to get all twelve of these marked beds ready to plant.

Grafting Apples.

Almost a month ago, I went to the MOFGA Seed Swap and Scion Exchange, at the fairgrounds in Unity.  That was a fine day.  I hadn't been to the event before, and it was kind of mind blowing.  I'm told that it used to be about 20 seed savers sitting around and staring at each other.  Now it's a melee.  (I didn't mean to swat that guy over the head with an apple switch.  I apologized afterward!)  Tables are set out with scion wood from the Maine Heritage Apple Orchard and other sources.  There were probably 100 varieties.  Plus there was pear wood, hardy kiwi, a few basket willows, grape cuttings, kefir grains, and seeds! Among other things, I got seed for honeylocust, maackia, and rose acacia.  These are all leguminous trees.  And I got some ginko seed, and best of all, some chestnut seed from blight resistant breeding programs.  I hope I can get all that to sprout.  I built a quick and dirty rodent resistant box to sprout them in.

A couple of days ago I sorted out my 16 favorite apple scions and got to work grafting them out.  I can't say that they're really my favorites, but I went through the list and tried to find interesting, multi-use apples with good storage qualities.  In the end I had 16 of them out of 46 on the list, so that's what I headed out into the yard with.

I've got a small volunteer apple that blooms well but I haven't seen any fruit from.  It's a dwarf.  It was growing in my garden fence, and I decided it would make a good nurse for some of my scions.  I cut the fence clear, did a little first aid pruning, and grafted a bunch of my selections to it.  I marked each one with some flagging tape with the variety name written on it.

Most of my grafts are whip and tongue.  I did some cleft grafts when the branches seemed to resist the bending needed for whip and tongue.  Properly put together, whip and tongue looks like this:

The cambium layer (which is the green growing layer just under the bark) of each side of the graft should line up, for as much distance as can be accomplished.  Once I have the graft in place, I wrap it tightly with vinyl electric tape.  I use a simple utility knife with a replaceable blade to make the cuts.  I know special wax and special knives are traditional, but this seems to work.  The tape should cover up and down the graft to make it water tight.  If the graft takes, about when the branch needs to swell from growth, the tape will fail from UV exposure.  It can be gently removed or will fall off around then.

There are several other places I grafted scions.  I've got a few trees here and there that seem like good candidates for places to park the genetics.

On a related note, I also went in lines on the north and south sides of the garden and planted rotten apples.  Maybe fermented is a better word.  These are apples I picked last fall, intended to process for sauce, and ended up stashed in the apartment where they froze.  So the seed is stratified (winter cold treated) and should sprout.  About every six feet, I put in the shovel, opened a slit, pulled the shovel out, and stomped an apple in, getting it just below the surface.  Time will tell if they're going to sprout.  If they do, I'll be grafting to them.

Daydreaming About the Future.

So the plan is to move out to the garage apartment in about a month.  To this end I got nothing done on the garage today.

My plan is to also build a small cottage:  A 16' x 16' saltbox, plus sunporch, on a basement short enough to be considered a crawlspace by many.  I'm going to build it on the other side of the grove of trees across the street from the house, garage, and barn.  It will be off-grid from the start, with as much self sufficiency as I can build into it.  This will make it possible to get away from summer renters a bit further, and rent out the apartment for additional income.  I've been eyeing the spot for over a year in an abstract way, but with the recent changes, I've decided to move ahead with it.

I've been told that I could rent a small excavator for $300/day, but that goes against the grain somehow.  Instead, I'm digging my foundation hole by hand.  I need a 17' square, dug 5' down at the high side of the slope, down to the water table.  I started by marking out my space with boards on the ground, and stripping off the sod a little each day.  Then I looked at where there was a puddle down the slope, and dug level with that back toward my square.  The drain will come straight out the south side, then turn toward the puddle.  I also dug a ditch to help the water further down the slope.  Each day I dig some in the square.  I've found a very large rock that I'm going to have to deal with, but no deal breakers yet.

My site is just out of sight from the house, mostly.  All anyone will see is a little bit of roof, and with the right color shingles they probably won't notice.  It will face straight south, away from the road, looking at the field and woods.  This is old hayfield, but I don't see any reason for it to stay hayfield.  I want something more like a permaculture orchard of low trees, possibly with a levy and canal that extends to the old well near the road.

This will mean that I walk past the garden each time I come and go.  This is what I'm calling "recreational ditch digging".

Today I got my antique transit out, made up a makeshift surveying pole and taped it to a step-in fence post.  I measured that I have 5' 3" from the northeast (up slope) foundation corner to the water in the ditch at puddle level.  This will be sufficient.  I have about 4' down from the puddle/ditch water to the wettest spot in that drainage, where I might want a shallow pond/swale/terrace.  From that point, the old well is uphill by nearly 3', over 100 yards away.  If I wanted to play the rice paddy games that Ben Falk is playing in Vermont, I could use the well and slope drainage to irrigate across the field.  I might even be able to catch the runoff from the culvert that comes under the road from the nasty little pond that I think my septic system drains into.

My thought is to have pigs level a space on that contour line, pushing up a slight levy/dike, and eating the grass, roots and all.  I have five pigs coming in about five weeks.  I wonder if they like cattails?

In other news, I got out a 72 cell styrofoam plant starting tray, filled it with soil, put it in a pan so it can soak up water, and plan to plant my tomatoes in it promptly.

Where To Begin Again...

We live in a world of economic decline.  For me, that means that my enjoyable but erratic part time job paid me less last year than usual, and I supplemented that income by picking up work with friends doing carpentry.  Last June I did a lot of that.  I also did an emergency engine swap on my truck.  Last June did not see me in the garden as much as I should have been.

The year before that, I started a garage renovation project that continues to the present.  It started as simple cleaning, removing stored items still there from when my first marriage ended, and cleaning out the bat-shit and nasty sagging homasote wallboard.  And then I had to acknowledge that the roof was shot and I had metal to put on it, but before putting metal roofing on, you have to make sure the foundation isn't moving, and that meant pouring new footings, one side at a time, while that side of the building hung in the air, having been lifted by 40 ton jacks.  And if I'm going to do all this work then the thing better pay for itself, so why not an Airbnb rental apartment?  And that meant a better floor up there, starting with new I-joists hung at a lower level to allow a 9' ceiling.  The project isn't done and the yard is a mess because of it.

All this is to say, the garden has been neglected.  Not that I regret those moves.  The chances of me starving were low, and the financial and social needs of the other projects were real.  With my change of marital status, I plan on moving into that apartment, hopefully in about a month, and renting out the house.  At some point I should discuss further housing plans beyond the apartment, since it's garden related.

But today, let me record what's going on in the garden.

The greenhouse withstood the winter.  That's saying something, as I know of several professionally built greenhouses that didn't.  We had over 100" of snow this year, including some storms that came twice a week for a month, and some that dropped over a foot at a shot.  It will need some major overhaul this year though.  The 4-year plastic is 11 years old.  The wooden greenhouse frame, built in 2008, has one rotted board that needs replacement.  The white cedar foundation posts seem okay, but did get heaved by frost a bit, and digging under the posts at the west end might help level it back out a bit.  The ledger board which the plastic attaches to, below the south sill, is completely rotted away and needs to be replaced.  That means the plastic is loose on the bottom on the south side.  I added some battens on the frames to hold the plastic over the winter, but it wasn't as warm in there with the air leaking along the sill.  I want to board up the north wall/roof before putting new plastic on too, and hang a collection of large mirrors to increase light on the grow beds in winter.

Last year, spring got off to a slow start in the greenhouse because it was full of chickens, who much appreciated the shelter.  Eventually a raccoon started picking them off and I lost nearly the entire flock (of geriatric low value birds) before building the new coop on the back of the barn.  I lost the last two of the old flock to a fox attack in the fall, but I was given seven newer birds that survived the attack, and which are laying now.

As usual, last fall I left the dead tomatoes in there too long, and those were planted in the middle and on the south wall.  No more of that!  I'm going to make a point of planting them on the north side, and planting earlier, shorter crops on the south.  I have a collection of simple improvised cold frames in there now.  I should work on making better lids for them, and possibly an automatic opener for an assemblage of them.

I've been planting in there, and sometimes I've been dismayed by the morning temperature, but just now, on April 19, I have a single cucumber sprout, a single costada romanesca summer squash sprout, some bunching onions, leeks, nasturtiums, broccoli, endive, carrots, garlic (lots of garlic) cabbage, beets, radish, fennel, and maybe a lettuce or two.  These are 3-4' rows, packed close in the frames, but it's a start.  I haven't seen the kale or the chard sprout yet.

Moving on to the garden:  A year ago, She told me that she wanted the garden looking neat, and that this would encourage her to join me there, and likely increase productivity.  Thus I have four raised beds in what I believe I was calling plot 4.  This is the area that's enclosed in a stock fence, just downhill from the rhubarb, high bush blueberries, and failed asparagus.

We did a lot to fill these beds with sifted "compost" from the pile I bought in for the pea shoot enterprise ten years ago.  Last fall, I was lucky enough to have 25 yards of wood chips delivered, thanks to my "Wood Chips Wanted" sign by the road.  I covered the beds with wood chips about 2" deep or more.  And now I'm looking at those beds and wood chips and thinking "Do I need to move those?  Should I plant into them?  Nitrogen Thief?"  Raking them back off would be work.  I'm going to leave the chips in place, and plant things in hills of compost in them once things warm up.  I want to do more Three Sisters stuff, and that will be a good place for it.  I'll work the plots opposite, sometimes known as 13 and 14, for more stuff.

The one spot within plot 4 that I have worked up, just yesterday, was a 6' x 12' low tunnel frame.  I had mulched this with cardboard, seaweed, and lawn clippings, and it was still full of rhizome grass.  I rolled the frame off it, dug it once with that shovel, raked through it twice with the 3-tooth cultivator, and rolled the frame back on.  I covered the frame with a scrap of old plastic that would have fit better in the other orientation, but I realized that after I had it stapled on.  (I bought a 1/4" crown x 1 1/2" battery driven stapler for another project.  This could be handy.)  I planted more beets, carrots, kale, radishes, cabbage, and fennel in there.  The ends are open and I should slide some chunks of cardboard in to reduce air flow.  It's not going to be perfectly tight, but it'll be warmer than the rest of the outdoors.

So that's where I am just now.  I'm finishing my brunch as I type this.  It's sunny out and I should be back out there, so that I can be as sore tonight as I was last night.  Despite the soreness, physically, I feel as good as I have in years.

Things I want to talk about:  Feral garlic.  Apple pruning.  Apple grafting.  The things from the MOFGA Seed Swap and Scion Exchange.  Miserable old garden buildings. Recreational ditch digging.  Future housing plans.  An end to old hayfields.  I'll get to that soon.

Three Years Later...

One of the hardest things about gardening is gardening alone.  At least that's true for me.

Right now, I've looked at this blog for the first time in three years.  I see pictures of daffodils and green grass.  Right now, in 2015, at the same time of year as those posts showing new growth, I've got maybe half the ground still covered in snow.

It's a rough time right now for other reasons.  My wife, who's been with me for eight years, has decided that we're too different of people, with too different of goals in life, and she's moved out.  I think of all the times I stood in the garden and wished I had her company there.  Sometimes she'd come out for an afternoon, once or twice a year.  Sometimes she'd critique my gardening, saying I'd be more productive if I had a system, or if things were more organized.  That's why I have raised beds in one section now.

But I'm alone.  I suspect I will be for some time.  I can't argue that we're not two very different people, but dammit, I tried.  I was supportive and helpful.  I got us to go to counseling for years, where we both learned things about dealing with each other honestly.  And in the end, she honestly didn't care to stay with me.  It's hard to convince her to stay when that happens, and it's hard to want her to stay.

So now I'm heating the house as though it was normal spring weather, which it isn't, but I just don't care to keep tending the furnace.  Last fall I bought a pellet stove and installed it in the kitchen, and it's been nice.  It's cheaper than oil, even though oil is back down for the moment.  It's not cheaper than the firewood blocks from Peavey, but still not bad.  But I still don't heat much.  The house stays around 50°, and I've got an electric blanket and a featherbed on top of me at night.

I can't stay in this house.  It's too damn big for me.  It was too big for the two of us, and now it's worse.  Three bedrooms, a living room I hardly use, a dinning room that seems like a hallway with a big table to collect junk...

For the past two years I've been working on the garage.  It started as an attempt to clean out some stuff and make it better for storage, but it needed enough work that I figured I should try to make the top into a rental apartment, so that it would pay it's way.  Now I'm thinking I should rent out the house and move into the apartment.  I've got a month and a half until June, when the rental season should begin.  Can I get my ducks in a row?

Actually, I don't have ducks.  I have a cat and seven chickens.  I have a one legged rooster at the moment, but I don't know if I'm keeping him.  Chances are poor.  I should be getting five piglets in a few weeks too.  I'd better arrange housing for them.

Nobody is going to be joining me.  I'd better get to work.  There's no use wishing she'd come home and join me.