Tag: Gardening

Blueberry Mud Pies

The down side to ordering plants online is that you don’t have much control over when they arrive. I probably wouldn’t purchase a lot of shrubs a few days before a week of rain (I might because it saves watering new plantings … but that’d be some light rain, not a few days where we’ll be getting an inch or so per day). But we found ourselves with the blueberry bushes on Friday and twelve of the next thirteen days in the forecast calling for rain. With Sunday and Monday looking rather torrential.

Anya and I staked out where we were going to put plants. We locked a tape measure along the line we wanted for the row and she popped in a stake every 6 feet. And then again every 5.5 feet. The tape measure line let us get straight rows without a bunch of fiddling around.

Sometimes Anya was a blueberry plant … so I could see how they’d look once they grew?

The first challenge was figuring out some way to dig twenty holes in the ground — we had planned on renting a tiller from Home Depot (well, we wanted to buy one of those big 70’s beasts, but didn’t find a good price anywhere locally and figured the best prices on tillers are probably later in the year); but, without a truck, that also meant either losing the one sunny day until someone with a truck could help out or renting the truck too. I wondered if an earth auger could be used — seemed like basically the same function, but in a format that fits in the boot of our car. So we hired a one-person gas-powered auger from Home Depot.

I don’t have any experience in tool design, but industrial design projects in which I’ve participated have all involved both people sitting around and thinking about how the thing should work and prototyping to allow the intended users to test how it works “in the real world”. This auger seems to have skipped one of these steps. The throttle spins anticlockwise to “go”. Unfortunately, the direction of the machine’s spin when the auger bit gets stuck (i.e. the motor cannot turn the bit so the motor component starts spinning instead) means you increase the throttle as the machine rips at your arms. Obviously the idea is to release the thing, and I could see where “let’s increase the throttle when it’s stuck to help it power through that obstacle” might seem like a decent idea in a design meeting. But the real world result, for someone without the upper body strength to just hold the thing in place, is that your arms get whipped around along with the machine, your forearms smash into each other, and the whole thing just hurts. I operated the thing braced against my left hip to prevent its spin and still managed to get banged up.

My approach avoided the other design flaw — the exhaust blew directly into Scott’s face when he held it as it was intended to be held. That’s not a great experience when digging holes for a few hours. Design flaws aside, we were able to mangle up the ground for a third hop bed and mix in a bunch of compost pretty well. The auger bit had trouble when the tip is clogged with grass, but Scott was able to lean into it. Once it got into clay, it ripped right through it. Then we started on the blueberry field. We had initially planned on drilling nine holes in a grid for each plant. It took hours. On a overcast-but-still-sunny, 80 degree, humid day. Scott brought a bucket of water and a towel — we took turns boring holes so each of us got some rest/re-hydrate/cool off time, but it was going to take days to do 9 x 20 holes.

The biggest time suck was getting sod off of the auger bit so you could drill quickly. I wondered if we could dig the center hole and then angle the tool over to widen the hole. That worked wonderfully. We ended up with deeper holes than originally planned — the hole got deeper as the tool ran to widen out the hole — but loosening up more soil isn’t a bad thing. And we could drill around eight holes in the amount of time it took to do a set of nine for one plant. And, bonus, rotating the tool around in the clay cleared off the sod from the initial bore. We finished up just as the rain started and returned the tool. Took a break for a bit, got some dinner, and then hauled some compost over to mix with the clay from the hole. That was a terrible job. The clay was wet and difficult to mix in. We got two holes finished up before dark. And then it rained. And rained. And rained some more. There are standing pools of water in the yard, and each hole turned into a little pond. This, we thought, was going to be a challenge. We’ve got plants that need to get in the ground, so we cannot just wait for the rain to stop, wait another day, and give it a go.

It was actually easier than the just-wet-clay mixing we did on Sunday. Yesterday, we spent hours (6p-10p … so four hours) making the biggest mud pies ever. Used a shovel to clear out the mud that slid into the hole, then took a cart full of compost and threw a few scoops into the pond. Mixed it around, shoved in some clay from around the hole, mixed some more. It was soupy. Added a few shoves of compost and more clay, mixed … repeated a few times, the muddy clay/compost mixture started to thicken up. Water got pushed out of the hole and drained across the yard and over the ridge. And it was an Anya task — she helped me fill the cart with compost and worked on a mud pie of her own.

Once all of the clay was mixed with compost, we had nice mounds. The grass was easily scraped clean with a shovel (and rain will certainly get any little bits remaining). Then we topped the mound with a sprinkle of compost. I found a down side to working in water-proof Muck boots — rain that falls into the boot? Doesn’t go anywhere. I spent hours slogging around with a few cups of water inside my shoes! Also found that there are removable insoles, so our insoles are laying out and the boots are upside down in the garage to dry out.

Scott wanted to plant the bushes last night, but I wanted to give it all some time to dry out. By Tuesday morning, the mounds have drained out a little bit and we’ve got nineteen holes ready for blueberries! (we encountered and old root in one hole, so we’ve still got to chop that thing out.

Indoor hops?

Not really — but we’ve had a random week of nightly freezes since the hop plants arrived. Instead of planting them outside and keeping them covered, I’ve got them in the pots I use for seed starting and we’ll get them planted in the middle of this coming week. It was also a bit of an experiment — can you keep hop plants in little pots for a week?

Hops + 2 days

Hops + 5 days

They’re not growing anything like the hops out in the ground that we’re covering at night … but they appear to be doing well. And they should be happy enough until Wednesday when it looks like the cold snap ends.

Garden Expansion

We built a pair of raised beds near our back woods — it was a nicely sheltered location, but too shady to grow much. The space is limited, too; and we wanted to have more garden space. The first step was going to be tilling, but we encountered an old tree stump under the grass. A good bit of excavation later, it was a pine tree with a very twisted root system. And several >3″ diameter roots running both horizontally into the garden area and down farther into the ground. Soooo … that’s a no on tilling a big patch to make a garden.

We have the blocks from the existing raised beds, so we’re creating four one-brick-high raised beds in the front yard. We’re going to compost grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps, etc between the beds and create hills for additional garden space next year. We’ll move the soil from the two raised beds into these new ones, and we’ve got some additional compost from the past year.

The first step is deconstructing the existing raised beds

And we’re constructing four new, lower, beds with the blocks

We’ve got two beds completed, and hauled about a third of the blocks for the remaining two

We’ve got to level off the geothermal hill — it’s been settling for a few years, and we can add compost on top if the area happens to fall farther. Unfortunately, a big storm blew in this evening … so we gathered up our stuff and ran for the house!

Blueberries!

I’ve wanted to include a lot of permaculture in our home food production. Permaculture is basically creating a continuously agriculturally productive design. Trees, bushes, perennial plants are used to create a garden that is planted once and harvested for decades. I have some hazelnuts planted, and an apple tree from the locus year planting debacle. My idea is to add something every year instead of buying and planting everything in one season.

This year, I’m adding blueberries. In researching the purchase, we wanted to produce fruit this year (or, worst case, next). This meant buying 3 year-old plants. The local nurseries want 35$ per plant for 1-2 year old plants. Which … yeah, we’re not getting a lot of blueberries that way! I found a few places, though, that sell 3 year-old plants for about 14$ a plant (including shipping). I’ve got ten Hardyblue and ten Blueray plants ordered. We’ll have a lot of blueberries (although I’m sure we’ll lose some plants and won’t actually have 20).

In the future, I want to add pawpaw, raspberries, rhubarb, more apple trees, peach trees, and more hazelnuts.

Hops!

I ordered some hop plants from Great Lakes Hops — these are awesome. They ship actual plants, which are much more robust looking than the rhizomes I ordered years ago when we started growing hops. They came packed in what looks like wheat chaff – I assume it was moistened when they shipped the plants, but it was quite dry by the time I opened the box. The plants were a little wilted, but they perked right up when I got them into temporary pots with some more dirt and watered them. I love that the packing material can all be composted!

The best part? A free plant 🙂

We’ve added Triumph, a multiheaded Neomexicana that I knew as Medusa from a beer kit, and our freebie Sterling.

Butterfly Garden

We have a small pond in the back yard and a bricked in courtyard in front of the house. I am building butterfly gardens with native plants in both areas. Hopefully we’ll be able to sit in the dining room and watch butterflies hatch.

Here are the plant that I’ve ordered

Common Name Botanical Name Type
Partridge Pea Chamaecrista fasciculata Host and Nectar Plant
Showy Milkweed Asclepias Speciosa Host and Nectar Plant
Western Sand Milkweed Asclepias arenaria Host and Nectar Plant
Wild Petunia Ruellia humilis Host and Nectar Plant
Butterfly Weed Asclepias tuberosa Host Plant
Common Milkweed Asclepias syriaca Host Plant
Whorled Milkweed Asclepias verticillata Host Plant
Blue Sage Salvia Salvia azurea Nectar Plant
Cardinal Flower Lobelia cardinalis Nectar Plant
Iron Weed Vernonia altissima Nectar Plant
Orange Coneflower, Orange Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia fulgida Nectar Plant
Purple Prairie Clover Dalea purpurea Nectar Plant
Royal Catchfly Silene regia Nectar Plant
Sweet Joe Pye Weed Eupatorium purpureum Nectar Plant
Wild Bergamot, Wild Bee Balm Monarda fistulosa Nectar Plant
Golden Alexanders Zizia aurea Host Plant
Michigan Lily Lilium michiganense Nectar Plant
Rose Milkweed Asclepias incarnata Host and Nectar Plant
Purple Coneflower Echinacea purpurea Nectar Plant
Wild Lupine Lupinus perennis Host Plant
Wild Senna Senna hebecarpa Nectar Plant

Bulbs For Next Year

The fall planted bulbs are in bloom, and we know what grew well here (and what didn’t — wild tulips survive well here, but the big, beautiful Dutch tulips become a rodent buffet. I’ve tried mixing them with other bulbs to no avail. As much as I love the Dutch tulips, I’m not buying more this year.). It’s time to put in an order for this Autumn. I order bulbs from both ColorBlends and Old House Gardens. This year we’ll be planting daffodils:

  

And some more crocus bulbs to scatter throughout the lawn:

DIY Hop Arbor

Our hops are finally strung! I ordered coir rope that is used by most hop growers – hopefully this doesn’t snap like the twine we used last year. Last year, all of the ropes slid together at the top. Which stretched the ropes (and probably didn’t do anything to keep the twine in one piece). This year, used 3/4″ PVC piping (yet another Home Depot purchase not being used as intended) and drilled holes through which the ropes are strung.

 

It was a lot easier to get the strings up this year – we ran each individual rope through its hole and tied the stakes to each end. Then pulled the wire that runs between the two trees up and secured it onto the tree branches.

Some of our vines were long enough to wrap onto the coir rope — so we’ve got hops climbing their ropes:

Permaculture

I’m intrigued by the idea of permaculture gardening — creating landscape installations that are planted once and are then self-sufficient. For growing food, it is a slow process — the tomatoes we plant this year will produce this year. The fruit, nut, asparagus, etc that we plant this year … we’ll get some in two or three years at the earliest (some nut trees take a decade to produce!). But they’ll keep producing year after year. In some cases, they’ll even spread.

We planted some apple and peach trees from Trees of Antiquity last year – and then found out it was a cicada year (i.e. a really bad year to have new trees). Well, most of our new trees made it. This year, I want to start some asparagus and nut trees.

I selected hazelnuts to start — first, we all love hazelnuts. And it really doesn’t make much sense to put effort into growing something you won’t enjoy. But they also produce nuts in 2-5 years. I ordered them from Willis Orchard — I’ve read good and bad reviews of the place, but the shipped prices were great and I read a lot of bad reviews about pretty much any nursery or orchard. Hazard of shipping live products.

The trees were small, but I knew that when I purchased them. I love how these bare root trees where shipped. There’s some gooey gel stuff around the bare roots that keeps the trees hydrated (esp good when you are SUPER slow about planting your bare root trees!).

We’re starting asparagus from seed — it takes longer, but I was able to get unique strains unavailable as crowns. I picked up some berry seeds too – no idea if they’ll actually grow (this is more of an experiment than an attempt to cover the yard with cane fruits and cranberries). And strawberries — Home Depot had a whole bunch of strawberry plants well before it was reasonable to plant them … but they were beautiful plants on clearance. They’re still potted and located close to the house to keep warm.

I also want to replace our ornamental grasses with something useful (and hopefully something that doesn’t spread into the lawn and create an unmowable fibrous mass). Maybe a patch of oats that can reseed themselves.