Successive Plantings

The gardens continue to evolve as we continue to ponder and tinker.   Below you can see that Paul is relocating one of our square-foot gardening boxes to the side of the house where we can grow cukes or beans on the Triple-H arches.  The salad greens should enjoy a cooler summer in the shade of the vines, too.  Never mind that the winter's plantings are already bolting; we'll be sowing a new crop just about as soon as he's done putting it all together, anyway.

It's a lovely spot where I sit and watch him work.  The aspect is lovely, anyway.  :)  I can't help but notice another series of successive plantings: the peaceful parade of purple blossoms, from the chives and sage in the winter garden to the columbine and bicolor irises in the foundation plantings. Next year I'll add some of the larger allium that are blooming in the backyard.

Let's Try This Again

Clouds come and clouds go, but last spring when I created this flower bed, the clouds had come, and they'd come to stay.

Perfect conditions for gardening, I thought.  Not too hot, and not so blinding.  I knew just the place to transplant some of our shade-loving perennials in preparation for the septic installation upheaval.

Then the following week the clouds departed and the strengthening  sun blazed forth, clearly illuminating the boundary between shade and not-shade.  To my horror that area, so deceptively close to our neighbor's tree canopy, in reality bakes in the sun for most of the day.

I did what I could to save the poor, limp transplants by creating a true shade garden directly under the tree canopy, but the old not-shade garden lay mostly barren and cracked all summer long.

But not this year, Lord willing.  My Renaissance man started some flower seeds back in March, and today we planted the SUN-loving flowers in the sunny garden bed.  If they survive, and if they bloom, then we've just achieved another gardening first: starting flowering plants inside during the winter in plenty of time for us to actually get blossoms before fall returns.

So here's what we planted:

- Perennial wall flower, 12 to 18 inches with small orange blossoms
- Perennial Cupid's Dart, light purple, and Coreopsis, golden yellow, both 18 to 24 inches
- Annual Cosmos, pink and white mix, about 24 inches

But then there are also some clumps of something we don't recognize or remember from last summer's crusade against the invasive bittersweet but which overwintered nicely in the compost pile, plus another plant which produces pretty little orange lilies.

So we could potentially end up with a lot of different colors blooming at once.  How is that going to look?  I don't know.  I'm hoping it at least stays green this time.

Oh, and what's protecting the soil?  Why, the leaf mold we started a year and a half ago.  It's not fully matured yet, but it will do nicely.  And I mustn't fail to point out the watering can staged in the photos below.  It was part of my birthday gift last year.

For Their Own Protection

A couple weeks ago we incarcerated the strawberries, so to speak.

Last spring we had moved them from their endangered location in the then-future septic leach field to this location, but lamentably, we weren't able to harvest any fruit last year.

Too much of a disturbance for them during their flowering and fruiting season? you may well wonder.

No, too many birds with unlimited access.  But not this year, though.  Not if we can help it.

The plants themselves, however, are volunteering a little of themselves by growing beyond the confines of the netted hoops.  That's fine.  As long as our labors are rewarded with the fruit contained within, we're happy to be the means by which God provides for His little creatures.

He's making it attractive!

We're making trellises today, although we hadn't planned to.  So like us, really.

And so much better than what used to be there.  I like the casual formality of it all.  Besides, there's a certain grace about the fact that the raw materials were gathered from our spring prunings.

Answered Prayer...in Progress

Remember this post?

God provided the shredder!  Okay, it's not exactly what we had in mind:  it's pretty old; it's only a shredder and not a chipper, so we can only shred branches up to 1/2  inch in diameter; it doesn't work.  Yet.

Here's what we've learned from this: when a person offers to sell you an item whose functionality is unknown for a certain price, offer half that amount until it is known if the item is in working condition.  If it works, pay the full balance.  If it doesn't work, fix it, then negotiate a lower price and pay the balance of that reduced amount.

We thought of this after we discovered that the shredder doesn't work.  Paul's still working to fix it.

But we don't regret the $20 we spent on it.  With the trimming we'll continue to do on the fruit trees, we'll have plenty of opportunity to use it.  And wood chips are far more useful to us than a column of smoke and a pile of ashes. 

Yeah, it's pretty old.  Pray with us that replacing the coil will be easy and cheap.  =)

Floating Row Covers

They might not be pretty, but Paul made them from the materials we had on hand, and they will provide the greens that extra layer of protection that they'll need when it gets very cold.

And just what are the floating row covers protecting?

Lettuce (without that little weed in the foreground; I plucked it after I saw it in the photo):

Spinach, with onions in the background:

The successive plantings of radishes:

And the mâche:

We've read that it's important to keep the plastic from touching the leaves so that the condensation won't freeze the leaves to the plastic.  Our row covers float over the large raised bed about 15 inches from the box and about 12 inches over the narrow bed.  Hopefully this will be enough to keep everything protected from both the harsh winter and the moist plastic.

Raspberries!

I never knew that raspberries would flourish so well in the waning days of summer.  This second flush of berries impressed us far more than the first: they're bigger and they're more plentiful.

All told, we've picked almost 10 pounds of raspberries.  I realize that berries are most often sold by volume, and not by weight, so it's hard to compare the value of what we find in a supermarket.  Of course, we all know that there is no comparison between homegrown berries and supermarket berries.  =)

However, if you sadly do not know this for yourself, drop by our place sometime next September, and we'll share the pleasure of allowing you to experience it for yourself.  MmmmmMMM!  Words cannot describe it.

The hard frost is coming soon, and our harvesting days are drawing to a close.  We praise God for the blessing of the bounty.

Leaf Mold: A Real Windfall

"Mom, please don't take a picture of me.  I haven't had my shower yet."

And since it was her birthday, I said, "I'll just take a picture of what you're doing."

So here she is, helping us create gardening gold with a resource so cheap that it falls when the wind blows.  It's a real windfall!

Mowing the leaf pile chops the leaves into small pieces for a quicker decomposition.

She collects them onto the tarp and carries them... to the compost?  No, we don't want them to compost with our other plant material.  Since leaves break down through fungal action instead of the bacterial action like the compost pile does, we put them into a pile of their own, where they break down into a beautiful soil amendment that can improve the moisture-retentive quality of soil by as much as 50%. 

We had exactly enough fencing leftover from our compost bins this spring to make this cage for the leaf mold.  Perfect!

Aelsa dampened the leaves to get the process started, and now all we have to do is wait for more of this windfall to come our way.  I have a feeling that it will:

From the maple tree in the front corner,

from the fruit trees in the back,

and from the burr oak tree in the back corner.

Join us for raking, anyone?

Mulch to Think About

Some weeks ago, a friend of ours sent us this link to a film featuring the woodchip-mulching technique that a man uses to sustain his garden in the rain shadow of a mountain--without ever watering it.

Ever since, we've been praying for a wood chipper to borrow.  After all, God seems to have provided us with plenty of raw material to work with:

The tree we cut down to allow more light to shine on the patch where we'll transplant our strawberries:

The part of a clump of trees that fell down when the boys were climbing on it (no worries; no one was hurt):

And the vines that grow so obnoxiously on, over, and around the southeast fence:

A man in town told Paul he thought he might have a chipper we could borrow, but we're still trying to get connected on that.  So we're still praying.

Pray with us?

Radish Tops

The radishes looked like this before we left at midday on Wednesday. Can't wait to see what awaits us in the 3-H when we get there!

The Last Pear

They look like a cross between apples and pears, and Asian pears taste and crunch that way, too. So sweet. Mmmm....

Paul found this pear on the other side of our back fence after we thought we'd seen the last pear on the tree. It's a perfect specimen, completely unmarred by epicurean insects. What a fitting way to signify the close of a fruitful season.

All Digits on Deck

Yes, the cats helped measure the plastic for the 3-H.  I'm sure they did.

Oh, Is It Autumn?

I prefer to think of it as late summer.  And under the double protection offered by our 3-H once it's completed, it will still feel like late summer.

Paul installed part of the plastic on the 3-H today.  We needed to get all the spinach and lettuce seeds in the soil today.

We also planted the first of our radishes and onions.  Only two more weekends are available for successive  plantings.  In the meantime we're waiting for seeds to plant our mâche, which is known as corn salad in the United States or lamb's lettuce in England.

If all goes as hoped, our winter garden will mature enough in the autumn for us to harvest in winter, when our boxes will be further protected with floating row covers.

Can you imagine dining on fresh homegrown salads in the winter?  We can.

As we bask in the glow of hope, it's time to call it a day.

Introducing the 3-H

Remember this?  This past spring it became this:

and this:

Then this:

and this:

What a great spot this is for growing things, and what a great blessing it is to have fresh, homegrown greens!  We've enjoyed it so much, in fact, that we decided to enlarge on it.  Now it's become this:

and this:

It's what I call "The 3-H", or sometimes "The Triple H".  I confess I can get a little funny with household acronyms, but you can imagine how cumbersome it would become to keep calling it what it is:  a half of a high hoop.  Not a greenhouse, exactly, because there won't be any artificial heat or forced ventilation; just wind protection and solar heat retention.  Then, coupled with some floating row covers or some full-fledged cold frames, we hope to someday plant some cool season crops for a winter harvest.  Paul holds out hope that we aren't too late to try it this year, but I'm not so sure.

Work is still unfolding, so I'll continue to post pictures so you can see how it all comes together.

And now that the temperatures are cooler, we have a lot of work projects going on.  I should have plenty to write about!

Satisfying Scraps

I did not make this up; I have to credit Martha Stewart's Living magazine for showing us how to turn discarded tomato skins into a fabulous seasoning: dehydrate, then grind. So simple (and beautiful and delicious)!

I need to mention, however, that these skins did not come from our garden tomatoes.  No, the Hawbakers have been saving them for us as they peel the tomatoes they've been canning.  Such great friends!

We are growing our own tomatoes, though, and some of our surplus tomatoes are going into the freezer while we dehydrate the rest.  Putting up produce for the winter is new for us, and we're having a great time with it.  We feel so blessed by the Lord!  As Psalm 103 says, He satisfies our mouths with good things.

I can't fail to mention that all this dehydrating is thanks to the largess of another friend who is loaning us her Excalibur 3000 series dehydrator.  What a great machine!  Lori, you are a blessing to us.  Thanks so much!

Through the Rusty Gate

Something we never noticed this winter when we would wend our way around mounds of windblown snow, hiding our faces from the cold:

The gate posts are embossed with crosses.

Home is where...

February 21

...the living room furniture is. Thanks for leaving your couch and chairs for us, Randy and Tamara!

the weekend of February 21

...the birthday party is accompanied by music and lots of friends. Thanks for celebrating Paul's 40th with us, everyone!

March 14

...the water gets hot. Thank you, James and Mr. Bausch! And Mike and Elizabeth!

March 18

...hands are washed, teeth are brushed, and basic needs are met. Thanks, Love, for being so happy with the yellow floor! Working together is a delight.

March 25

...the past is exchanged for the future. So many thanks to those who helped pack, lift, and provide food for moving day!

March 25

...a hot shower awaits. Thanks again, Dad and Paul.

March 26 and following

...finishing touches can wait a little longer. Thanks to anyone who puts up with the rough edges!

April 11

...the garden grows. Thanks, Patsy and kids, for helping us uproot the old plants to make room for the new!

April 11

...we air our clean laundry. Thanks, Becki, for letting me teach music in exchange for clean clothes!

Yes, this is home. By the grace of God, through the labor of our hands, and encouraged by the kindness of those who love us, we are carving out a place for ourselves, bit by bit. We thank God for the riches He bestows on us.