Mid-Season Heartbreak

The weather these days is really messing with my garden.  Years with nonstop rain, years with little to no rain, years with extreme heat, years with surprise late season frosts...I can't seem to win.  

This year is one lacking water.  Being on a private well that supports two households and (per the well drilling company consultation) has more than likely run its course, in times like these rationing water becomes very important.  I'm still not set up to use the IBC tote, and the pump we used to access the cistern water in the well has been nothing but a frustration, so I'm relegated to using a hose run from the mule barn across the driveway to the hillside garden.  At first I was only watering vegetables, perennials in raised beds, and newly transplanted plants in addition to regular household use.  Then I backed it down to vegetables and newly transplanted, and lately I've been only watering vegetables.  I'm beginning to pick and choose which vegetables really need water now.  I've pulled some of the garlic and the bulbs are about half the size they really should be.  My onions are giving up the ghost, and they're more like cocktail onion sized.  

The potatoes are looking awful.  I lifted the flap on one bag and dug around to see if I could find anything, and all I pulled out was a shriveled seed potato.  I didn't dig too deeply, so maybe that's just a one off.  

 

The shallots, on the other hand, are doing phenomenally well.  I have one the size of a baseball, which isn't normal.  I honestly believe it's the hugelkultur environment they're growing in; it's said that after a time these beds become almost self watering due to the slowly decomposing materials at the bottom being more water retentive than plain old soil.  This is year 4 since the creation of this container bed, and it must be making some amazing soil at this point.  The hugelkultur container up near the house (where the onions are growing this year) is only 2 years old, and needs consistent watering.

In the polytunnel, the tomatoes were doing fantastically well.  That is, until the record breaking heat wave hit and I didn't water them enough.  I was plagued with blossom end rot, the result of inconsistent watering and lack of calcium.  I picked off all the affected fruit and gave the plants a good feed, and have been watering them regularly.  The result was an infestation of tomato hornworms, which have nearly denuded three plants and eaten much of what decent fruit remained.  

The corn has been loving the heat, but I'm not sure it was planted in time to actually generate a harvest.  I noticed today that some of the cornstalks are forming tassels, which is most likely due to stress.  I have been banking on the extended growing season we seem to experience nowadays; warmer weather lasts into the autumn and frosts seem to come later each year.  I'm sure this assumption will come to bite me in the ass at some point.

 I've moved most of the perennial plants out of the holding beds, so next year I should be able to use them for vegetables.  All of the beds need a good dose of compost and fresh soil this autumn.  Once I've pulled the corn, I may try growing field peas in the cinder block bed.  Peas are a nitrogen fixer, and will add back nutrients that this years plants used up.  

The cottage garden beds in front of the hillside garden are beginning to take hold.  I need to steel myself against adding any more plants at this point, so it doesn't get too crowded.  I need to fix the leaning fence, and I'm planning to add a good layer of 50/50 soil/compost and a thick layer of bark mulch this fall to protect the new plants over winter.  Right now the entire spot encompassing the hillside and cottage gardens is more like orchestrated chaos.  

In the backyard, once again I've discovered too late a sawfly infestation on my yellow twig dogwood shrub.  Like my tomato plants, it's been stripped of leaves.

 

 

The even worse news is that they have somehow found their way to the Midwinter Fire Dogwood shrubs around the front of the house.  I'll try some neem oil spray and see if that can knock them down before they strip more leaves.

But it's not all doom and gloom.  The wildflower meadow continues to throw out some decent color, even if you have to look for it.  A gorgeous buck has presented himself a few nights now, and is a marvel to behold.  The crows have begun to bring their fledgling brood to the cat food feast, and are now a healthy murder of six.  The old turkey hen has three little chicks.  And since it's taken me a few days to put this post together, the weather has taken a turn for the merciful and we're actually getting a slow, soft rain over the next few days.  Just enough to ease water woes and give everything a nice boost.  Life goes on.

 

First snow...time to wrap it up.

 Yup, we had our first snow November 19th.  Nothing major, just a few squalls on and off throughout the day.  It didn't even stick.

Still, it was a reminder that winter will be here sooner rather than later.  It spurred me to take care of the tender bulbs I had pulled and was drying in the garage.  They're all clean and trimmed and nestled in fresh shavings for the winter now.

Thanks to daylight saving time, I don't have a couple hours after work to putter around the yard, so I'm cramming everything into my weekends.  I grabbed a load of 50/50 mix to finish up the giant planter.  I can't lie, having a truck is so handy!  

Today I scoured the edges of the woods for some greenery to give it a holiday feel.  A giant planter of dirt isn't really attractive, and I didn't want the soil splashing up against the house if it rained.  Greens (and browns...I'm going for a more natural look) will help keep the soil in place a little better until it freezes.

 

My mother is a pro at floral displays.  Unfortunately I'm not.  But I have seed heads of asters, goldenrod, and staghorn sumac in there for the birds to nibble on, so it's at least serving a purpose.  I also put some solar lamps among the branches and string lights along the stair rails...for ambiance, I guess.

Quick edit - mom stopped on a roadside and clipped a bunch of Winterberries, enough to share.  Definitely an improvement!

 

I was given a load of sawdust earlier this summer and hadn't used it all, so I scraped up what I could and laid it over the landscape fabric on the tiered garden.  I'm hoping it serves two purposes - one, to weigh down the fabric so it stops sagging and stays in place this winter, and two, provide a base for the mulch layer I'll add in the spring.  

I did some organizing in the garage again, and can now fit the truck, tractor, snowblower, and generator in there.  I have a few furniture refinishing projects to work on this winter and once those are done, it will open up some more space.  And after I go through all the boxes of crap I still have, I can purge again and downsize my hoard.  

I was going to leave Reputa in the she-shed for the winter, but when I took out my snowblower to make sure it would run, I discovered that mice had packed nesting material inside it.  I had to remove a bunch of covers and clean it out so I could start it.  I don't want to take a chance of having mice move into Reputa's engine!  I was hoping I could fit her in the garage with the plow on, but there just isn't enough room for that.  Maybe next winter.  

Now I just have to make sense of my tools, and I'll feel better about the state of things.  

What a mess!!!  At least I can't say that I have nothing to do, right?

Fall Chores

 It's the big push to get everything ready before winter sets in.  My garage is still not ready for a truck to be parked in it, but I'm trying.  I've moved most of my tools in from the she-shed, but have yet to organize them.  I've mowed the pasture one last time, pulled all the vegetables from the garden, and tried to do a reasonable cleanup outside.  

I brought in my herbs for over-wintering, and set them up in a vintage crib I purchased at a yard sale a few years ago.  I removed one side so they'd get as much light as they need, but they're protected from a certain plant-eating cat.

I had to lop off 90% of my sage plant because it was so large, so I tried my hand at making smudge sticks.  I think they're supposed to be thicker, so next time I'll keep that in mind.

I've been working on the tiered garden again.  I was desperate to get my plants out of their pots - the ones that came with me from my old house were potted up in late summer, 2018!  Some of the plants became root bound and many of them died in the pots, but I still have quite a few left.  I decided to forget about building walls of cinder block, and instead went with more wooden raised beds.  I gave up on trying to level the tiers, too.  Just get them in, once the plants are growing you'll never even notice the downhill slant of the beds!

I had 3 yards of 50/50 (compost/soil) delivered, and after I had lined each bed with yet another layer of mule compost, I filled each bed with the soil.  

We hired Corey to come back with his tractor to do some of the heavy lifting for us.  I had him dig out the bottom block tier with his backhoe, then put the remaining 50/50 in that bed.  I also had him move the pallet of blocks to the other side of the yard, and I did some clean up around the beds. 

I've left enough room between each raised bed and along the front of the tiers to lay my large patio blocks to create walkways around the garden.  I'm not sure if that will get done before snow flies; it may be a spring project.  I also plan to put bark mulch over the landscape fabric.  It's getting there!

The blocks that weren't used to build the gardens I used to build a manure station for the winter.  It's not pretty, but it's functional.  I've found that just piling the manure up leads to lots of weeds growing in it, so this way I can have it contained and easier to manage...hopefully.

Another garden chore was to move my Craigslist planter to the front of the house.  This was the fiberglass transformer cover that I picked up for a song a few years ago.  Of course I did the hugelkultur treatment...I had some large poplar branches that needed to be cleaned up in the pasture, so I started by cutting those up and tossing them in the bottom of the planter.  Areas of the pasture were overgrown and after mowing there were thick layers of cut grass that needed to be raked up, so that went in over the wood.  Top dressing was of course more mule compost.  I'm going to try to get another load of 50/50 mix to complete the recipe, then it will be ready for planting in the spring.  I'll probably give it a more complementary paint job next year, too; maybe dark grey or black.  The green just doesn't look right.  In case you're wondering, the bottom is mostly open, so plenty of drainage.

grass clippings and leaves over poplar branches

mule compost top dressing

If time and weather allow, I still have 8 posts to get into the ground for my mule track, and the fence needs to go up at some point.  I have to take down the preliminary chute, as I've moved that to the back of the paddock, and I need to run my giant weed trimmer around to tidy up the pasture.  It's going to be winter proper before we know it!