De-weeding continues. Japanese beetles and varmint onslaught!

EEk! Bugs!  and weeds, and varmints..

As I suspected would happen when I was leaving last weekend, bugs have gone crazy this week! Japanese beetles all over the place!  Eating elderberries, grapes, and cherry trees quite voraciously.  I went to the hardware store to get some stuff to get the outdoor spigot to work (Sugar got car sick again on the way up) and I picked up some more Sevin and some new corn seeds (the old seeds just are not germinating or just plane were attacked by crows an other varmints).   Some of the corn that was up was partially eaten and some even pulled out!  I suspect crows as this is their MO.  Many of the elderberry plants looked like they were eaten off by deer but maybe that was partially due to Japanese Beetles as well.  Lots of damage to the sweet potato plants as well, although I am fairly certain that potato damage was from varmint, not the beatles.

Beetles are even eating the wild roses bushes! (yay!)

Still lots of de-weeding to do - but the strawberries at least are intact

No new weeds in the berry patch this week.  The wood mulch seems to do the trick

We need to get those onions clear of weeds too!

The shell beans grew nicely this week,  

I am hoping that they outpace the weed germination so far that I wont have to cultivate them!

Dog-fence gate

I needed to put a gate into the dog area so that I could mow.  I just used the auger to drill a post hole and stuck a new post in.  Then I just cut a piece of fencing to fit the gap and "twist tied" it in place.  I don't have an actual gate, just a fencing panel really.  If it looks like it is having issues I will make a "real" gate for it later.  For this weekend it worked great - the dogs didn't stress it at all.

"gate" between the two posts so i can get the  mower in

I cleaned up the wooded area next to the dog pen.

Spigot repair and hose hook up

As I mentioned, Sugar got car sick again on the trip up.  I decided to save Katherine some hassle and repair the outdoor hose spigot (some crazy person on a riding mower destroyed the handle on the spigot last).  At first I was sure I was going to have to replace the outdoor spigot entirely - ugh!  But when I looked closer I saw that I just needed to replace the faucet handle!    So I popped into the hardware store and got a universal handle replacement kit (yes - there is such a thing!) as well as a spray nozzle for the hose.

New handle in place!  Much nicer than the old one!

Further progress on removing the plastic tree-tubes

I used the wire fence left over from the dog-fence to make tree cages for the black walnut, butternut and paw-paws.  I got all of the black walnut and butternut trees "caged" but still need more fencing for the paw-paws.  

Black walnuts all caged now!  I hope they "crinkle"

Butternuts all caged now too!  They look fairly healthy

Looks like I have about 11 more cages to go for paw-paws.  I figure I need about 44 more feet of fencing to complete the caging.

Grape vine care

I spent a considerable portion of a day (3-4 hours) trimming the weeds away from the grape vines and tieing up the new runners.  Good news is that the older vines seem to be growing nicely an I see little to no rust on the leaves!  Not only that, but the concors have quite a few little grapes on them!  After I trimmed the grass an tied up the runners (and trimmed a few wayward runners) I sprayed the with sevin and general purpose fruit tree disease spray.  I wanted to hit them with some sulfur but the weather reports called for rain on Monday which would wash off the sulfur too soon.  I will try to get them next time.  Some of the wine grapes are getting rust pretty bad.  

Seeing some rust on the new vines!  Need to treat with sulfur soon

As you can see, the new vines aren't seeing much growth as the old vines.  Should I side dress with blood meal again?

All trimmed and tied!

You can really see how much better the concords are doing compared to the other varieties!

Sevin

I also sprayed the hazelnut trees and the cherry trees with sevin to try to save them from the Japanese beetles.  I put up a couple beetle traps too.

Hazelnuts sprayed

Two new beetle traps

Trimming

I continue to try to stay ahead of the weeds!  This weekend I trimmed around the pines and the elderberries next to the big patch.

I need to put wood mulch on these elderberries yet.

Replanted corn - yet again!

AS mentioned earlier, I found that much of my corn was either not germinating or pulled/bitten off. So I bought some short season corn and planted them in between the few stalks that came up from the previous plantings.   I also covered the unplanted areas with black plastic to knock the weeds down in prep for planting winter squash in the upcoming weeks.  When I planted this time, I put in blood meal and planted about 3-5 seeds per hole!

Cleaned up sweet potatoes and put own more plastic

The sweet potatoes were showing signs of damage from varmints - maybe rabbits?  Nonetheless, most were still doing well but getting a bit crowded by the weeds.  I de-weeded the sweet potatoes and put down black plastic over the unplanted area of the garden to keep the weed tops from going to seed.

I de-weeded the sweet potatoes.  Some of these are starting to vine!

The tomatoes are mostly doing ok.  They are near the bottom for the picture.

Elderberries are looking good!

While many of the berries are still blooming, quite a few have little berries on them! 

Box turtle

We found this little guy trying to crawl through the dog-fence compound.  He seemed determined. Katherine finally moved him to the other side of the compound, assuming that's where he was headed.

Summer is here!

First off:  More kale chips!

I made some more Kale chips using the kale from our raised beds.  Actually, I tried something a little different this time.  I made two batches.  One batch I made with collard greens and the other with kale.

I used the Mother Earth recipe as a basis.  I will note here though that once all the green are "vita-mixed" down to a slurry it should be about 3-3.5 Cups of greens.  I used 1 Cup of almonds (unseasoned this time) and a teaspoon of thai-seasoning, a 1/4 Cup of nutritional yeast, and a half teaspoon of salt.  Be careful with the salt - if you taste the mix before you dry it it will seem like you want more salt - but remember - you are baking and then essentially drying these crackers so the reduced amount of water really concentrates the salt!  I have trouble getting a uniform thickness on these crackers so some of the collard crackers got browner than I would have liked.  I lowered the temp on the kale ones and they turned out a little better.  Taste wise, they are hard to differentiate. However, I will note that I had a little more Kale in the kale crackers.   Also, I am suspicious of these plants.  I used saved seed and while the "collard greens" are bigger plants than the kale, they look very much alike otherwise.   Of course, come to think of it - collards and kale do taste a lot alike anyway!  Only difference that I remember from last year was that collards are a bit tougher.

They look and taste alike!

The shell beans are up!

They are all up and looking good!  I hope that they get moving before something discovers that there is no fence and that young bean plants are delicious!  Also, if they get big before the weeds get started they will block out the light for the weeds!

You can see the two different types of beans - "accelerate" on the right and "velour" on the left

New fence and puppy problems

Well, the puppies didnt have problems with the fence, it held them in nicely!  I did have to place some chicken wire where there is a ditch though.  I did that right away when we got there Saturday morning.  I wasn't feeling well Friday (or Saturday morning either for that matter) so we delayed a bit.  Got to the farm around 1pm - ugh!  There was terrible traffic on 70W on the way up - the GPS navigation directed us up 40 for a good stretch.   Took an extra half-hour, at least.  Poor Sugar must not have been feeling well either as she got car sick.

Here you can kind of see the chicken wire at the base of the fence between the house and the wood post.

Poor Sugar got car sick on the way up!  That's her cage after being washed.

Elderberries are looking good!

Many are still blooming but a good deal have little green berries forming too!  The first planting in the "swamp" area are the best - of course, but even the ones in rows out by the "big patch" are looking amazing!

"swamp" elderberries are really loaded!

These are the ones next to the patch - some of these are HUGE!  at least one of these put up a 6 foot tall stem just this year!

And lots of blooms and berries here too!  Unfortunately, lots of deer damage as well! GRRR

Close-up of some elderberries that are in the forsythia row!  I had removed a elderberry there this spring and transplanted it into the row next to the patch.  I guess i missed some of the roots!

I weed whacked the far "sheep pen" elderberry patch - all new this year.  Then I added some mulch and some flags to help them out.  Damn deer really hit some of these hard.

Most of these plants look pretty good though, considering this soil is very clay laden

More deer damage to the trees

I don't know why the deer are hitting my trees and bushes so hard this year!  There is plenty of vegetation out in the woods and fields! They don't need to eat my stuff to survive!

Besides the elderberry damage that I mentioned above, my newly planted birch trees also took considerable damage.  So this weekend I spent a good amount of time putting up cages around some of my trees. 

They took almost all the leaves off of this poor thing!

You can't really see it in this picture, but there is significant damage to the bark of this tree as well.  I hope they survive!

More tree cages

Even though the grass wasn't near as tall as it was last time, I did run the mower over most of the farm.  While mowing I noticed that the black walnut, butternut, and even some of the pecan trees seem to have very dense growth inside the tree-tubes.   I looked into the tubes with the black walnut trees and decided I had better take those tubes off - but I don't dare not have some kind of protection from the deer, so I put up tree cages around most of the black walnuts.  One of the trees was a bit stunted - it look like it took some cold damage, so I left a tube on that one.  I may change the tube out for a cage later.

Caged all but one of the black walnut trees

I am really starting to think that maybe those tree tubes are only useful on a small variety of trees.  I suspect that they caused fungus growth and blocked light on  my fruit and nut trees.  

These walnut trees were really bound in there tight!  I hope they spread their limbs out as the summer progresses.

I really wanted to do the same cage exchange for the pecans and butternuts, but I was short on time.

Strawberry de-weeding

The strawberry plants were really being overwhelmed by the weeds in the front patch.  After loosing all my plants last year I really wanted to save these this year!  So Katherine and I went out Saturday evening and spent a lot of effort de-weeding them.  Then I used wood chip mulch to try to slow down the weeds!

The strawberry plants are now visible and actually doing ok!  We only lost a couple plants to the weeds.  I am hopeful that the mulch will keep the weeds at bay for most of the summer.

We also took out a great deal of weeds from the onions.  I put some mulch on them as well as a weed suppressant.  I will have to do more later.  Again, ran out of time this weekend.

The potatoes are blooming their little hearts out!  I saw some potato bugs on these plants though..

Cleaned up the new locust trees

They were getting a bit overwhelmed by weeds as well, so I cleaned up the new locust tree planting. Most of these trees look ok.  In fact most of the locust trees look OK, not just the new ones, despite the fact that i haven't been able to give the old trees much help so far this year.

All mowed and trimmed.  These trees are on a fairly steep section of hill there, although you really cant tell from this picture.  Last years trees are along the top and to the left.

Arbor Day survivors

While many of last year's "Arbor Day Foundation's" tree shipment died (they shipped them in the winter, literally just days away from the ground being too frozen to plant!), I do have a few survivors. 

Some kind of oak...

Another kind of oak? LOL