The trellis is finished

Ta-Da!

Our baby kiwis came with with two shoots, rather than one main trunk, so Mark made a "V" wire system enabling the shoots to climb up both sides of the trellis.

Then once they reach the top, there are four galvanized cables running the length of the trellis ready to support them while they grow and, in their fifth year, bear delicious fruit. By the way, the fruit of hardy kiwi is different than what we see in the grocery store; smooth, not fuzzy, and smaller. Reportedly tastier than the fuzzy kiwi, but not grown commercially because of a short shelf-life.

 

When's the mojito party?

Well, not until later this summer, but I'm working on it. Today I planted mint in two beds, peppermint in a sheet-compost bed (cardboard, very rotten hay, dirt, compost) by the barn and spearmint (in a hugelkultur bed prepared last fall) next to the parking lot.

 

 

Memorial Day Weekend, Sunday

This may not look like an entire day's work for four people, but you'd be surprised at the engineering complexities and exacting workmanship required.

 

Memorial Day Weekend, Saturday

Some work...mowing, weed-eating, pea trellis modification. And bamboo planting - we got them all planted, but the site we selected for the $300 bamboo forest is "outside." Supposedly, bamboo is deer-resistant - any thoughts on that? Should Mark expand the electric fence? Should Ruby be put on 24-hour security duty?

 

Some play...

 

Some relaxing...

Bamboo, plant breeding and trellis construction

Behold our timber bamboo babies, which arrived today via UPS from Bamboo Garden in North Plains, Oregon. We chose four species of the genus Phyllostachys: P. nigra Henon, P. vivax Hvangwenzhu, P. rubromarginata and P. atrovaginata. Ten plants altogether. Does this look like $300 to you? Of course it does - did I mention that these are timber bamboo? There's a business plan in our future, we just haven't figured out what it is yet.

I signed up for a two-day course called Fundamentals of On-Farm Breeding. That's plant breeding, of course. I didn't notice the title and thought it was a class about saving seeds, not about how to develop my own varieties. But I have always wanted to understand this stuff, so now's my chance. I'm going to need to do some studying before I get there so I don't embarrass myself. Dennis Pruitt was a good teacher but high school botany was a very long time ago. Check out seedalliance.org if you want to join me.

Meanwhile, the kiwi trellis is in progress. It will have six 4x4 posts, held up by some expensive metal bases (CB44s) set in concrete. Mark dug the first two holes today and filled them with EIGHT 60 pound bags of concrete mixed in the wheelbarrow. Guess we'll be running down to Home Depot later since we have only two bags left for the remaining four posts. Any guesses on which lasts longer, the trellis or this house?

 

Trellis construction begins

 

Toads

Toads eat slugs. Toads eat other insects that bug us. Toads are good.

Here's Teddy Toad:

We put a few special toad houses in our garden (we'll see if they move in or prefer finding their own accommodations):

 

The weather turned cold-ish today

The high (if you can call it that) temperature of the day was barely 50 and the sun was hiding, so I did some laundry, knitting, cooking and napping, but still managed to move four or five plants from the nursery into the hedge row and an oregano into my herb bed. And I mowed again to beat the rain, predicted to start Sunday and continue into the forseeable future.

Here's Mark's temporary bamboo fence, necessary only because Ruby does not understand why her dirt pile is suddenly off limits.

The winner of the first-to-germinate contest is kale in the cold frame:

Take a look below at the three hardy kiwi, eagerly waiting for their trellis - Oregon State University's website says "canes grow 6 to 12 feet per year, and occasionally 20 feet."

 

Our new mailbox

Yes, that's right, a new mailbox - the excitement never ends around here. This mailbox sits on a post that has been cleverly designed to swing away when the county snowplow hits it.

 

A few of today's activities

Mark had to go to Bainbridge Island to check on the house, get the van tires rotated and visit the eye doctor. When he returned, the van was bulging with greenery.

He dug up some baby hellebore from the backyard, which we potted up into 14 starts for our nursery. If you live in Eastern Washington or Arizona, you might not be familiar with this shade-loving plant, but they have been very happy in our Bainbridge backyard, which barely sees the sun. At Hardrock, maybe they will do okay on the edge of our yard where it drops down to the creek.

Mark also thinned our bamboo stand on Bainbridge and brought the excess. Here, he is trimming them up. We have used the canes for trellises, plant stakes and temporary fencing - and there are hundreds of other possible uses. As a plant, bamboo's multiple purposes include acting as a visual block (we needed that on Bainbridge, not here), beauty (we particularly like this variety and are hoping we can find more) and bird habitat. Supposedly, the new shoots are delicious, we haven't tried bamboo as a food source.

Then Mark stopped by to see our friend Andrzej, who gave us 26+ raspberry starts, which we potted up and added to our exploding nursery.

 

More digging and planting

We've planted five trees down in our hugelkultur-sun trap area: two European plums, two pawpaw and one fig. The plums (prune type) and fig because they're our favorites and the pawpaws because the label said they were both yummy and extremely hardy. I guess the fruit tastes something like a banana? You don't see it in stores, so it must not transport well. Pawpaw is native to the Eastern U.S.

There's room for more - we may add a couple apple trees later and Cousin Jim is going to advise us on the best pear varieties.

We also planted three hardy kiwi in front of the house. Two female and one male. These are climbers and a heavy-duty trellis will need to be built soon. Ideas and/or trellis-raising assistance are welcome.

A principle of permaculture is that each part of your garden should have more than one function. Our hedgerow, for example, has many functions: barrier to deer, habitat for wildlife, mulch to improve the soil, food for humans, windbreak and shade for plants inside the hedgerow. Each plant in the hedgerow likely contributes two or more of those functions.

As another example, today I planted some Maximilian Sunflower seeds down along the edge of the orchard area. This is a plant highly recommended in Gaia's Garden for all of the following reasons: 1) they are perennial, 2) they bloom in the fall after most everything else is done, 3) deer don't eat them, 4) they grow thickly and can actually form a deer barrier, 5) they produce copious amounts of compost, 6) the shoots are edible, 7) the birds like the seeds and 8) it's drought tolerant. How's that for a multipurpose plant?

We've planted lots of stuff. Now it's mostly about tinkering, watering, fertilizing, hoping for continuing sunshine and no more frosts, and praying. With Ruby around, we're not too worried about deer. She runs around baying at the top of her lungs, we have no idea what or why, but it's truly a frightening sound. And when I say run, I mean run. We're feeding her four times a day and her ribs are showing.

 

All before morning coffee break

Having a nursery is essential when you have more than a small urban lot, unless you have an unlimited budget. I moved some echinacea plants (a medicinal herb, but we grow it just to enjoy the flowers) from where they seemed surprisingly happy growing in gravel into cedar planters next to the front walk, where I hope they will be even happier. I was shocked to have this many (16 starts) left over. May they happily root in our nursery.

Mark does not always take the easier jobs. Here he dug some holes to plant some rescued bamboo, and is screening the dirt. Lots o rocks, big, little and medium - he figures the soil is about 20% rock near the house. Most of the topsoil was excavated away when they built the house, or has since washed away. Until now, there has been almost no vegetation around the house, and the difference in soil between here and back in the trees/brush is incredibly instructive.

 

Busy as bees

A lot's been going on at Hardrock Ranch. Today, we direct sowed two kinds of chard, three kinds of carrots, mesclun, oakleaf lettuce, wild arugula, turnip, mizuna, purple mizuna, spinach and fava beans. Over in the herb bed, we sowed chamomile and parsley.

Have I mentioned that Mark is the creative and talented one? Here are some examples of his row markers:

And here's a bamboo trellis he's building for nasturtiums:

I

The nursery continues to expand - we recently brought a few herb cuttings from Bainbridge Island. Also, we're trying to propagate some native filbert from cuttings (I actually bought some rooting hormone this time).

That's not all, either. Acres of mowing, miscellaneous tree and bamboo planting, construction of a recycle organizing shelving system, snowplow-proof mailbox post design and fabrication, and lots and lots of throwing the ball for the dog. Finally, it's quittin time.

 

Mid-May Planting

Well, we noticed the pages of the calendar are flipping over at a pretty good clip and figured that if we want to eat any veggies from our garden this year, we better get them going. We're not at all sure that "all danger of frost has past" since it did dip below freezing just a couple days ago. So we covered some of the newly-planted seeds with a hoop house, and started some other things in a cold frame.

Cold frame starts include several types of summer squash, cauliflower, summer savory, tarragon, endive, baby leeks, and kale.

Direct sown under the hoop house: arugula, beets, daikon, mizuna, radish, and broccoli-raab.

Near the trellises at the far end (in a former iteration, these were Halloween decorations), we planted snap peas and snow peas.

The pot in the foreground contains an edible flower blend.

Ruby's been working hard, too.

More hedgerow

I singlehandedly planted twenty or thirty plants in a new hedgerow area, this one on the north side of the house. This area was not sheet-composted or amended so I was digging in Hardrock soil. If you can call it soil.

Where was husband? Still tinkering with that electric fence.

 

White Dutch Clover

So remember all that research we did about cover cropping? After much study, we chose White Dutch Clover for the hedgerow areas. It is a low-growing (6 inches) perennial and we were just going to leave it in place as a ground cover in those areas. I also over-seeded the lawn with it. Used over 7 pounds of seed.

Here's what it looks like, and I am having a VERY difficult time believing this is clover. What say you, dear readers?

 

 

Whew - this is a lot like work

In addition to the potatoes, I single-handedly planted 2 rosemary plants, 3 St. John's Wort, 2 salad burnett, 1 rhubarb, 6 chives, 6 blueberry bushes, and a hops vine. These all went into the new bed that curves around the south side of the house. Many of these plants came out of the nursery we set up last fall - looks like many of our starts made it and almost everything over-wintered well.

 

Where was Husband? Tinkering with the electric fence, which so far seems to be keeping the deer at bay.

 

I say potato...

We decided to use Ruth Stout's method: toss the seed potatoes on the ground and cover with a foot or so of hay. Easy, with the added advantage of being able to just lift up the plant, take few small potatoes and put it back down in the hay to keep growing. No digging now and no digging later.

Does it work? We have no idea, we've never tried it this way. We can't hold Ruth accountable, either, I'm sure she's passed away by now.

We put in two varieties: Yukon Gold and Yellow Finn. The hay was from last fall, and it's good and rotten.

 

Spring

Spring comes late to Hardrock Ranch, but it does come. That's not to say you can leave your warm jacket and mud boots behind.

 

A red flowering currant:

 

Lots-o-daffodils:



The pond is full: