Rainy and hot couple of weeks

A review of the past couple weekends in pictures!

I'm sorry - some of these are out of order.

shell beans are pretty when they bloom!

Pumpkin going for a swim.  This rain is insane!

Bok-choi or Chinese Cabbage.  I really put this is way too late.  I am surprised it hasn't bolted yet.  I need to learn more about this veggie I guess.  Bugs are eating it like crazy - see the many holes in the leaves?

There is a sweet potatoes plant in there!

Cabbages?  Broccoli?  Its some kind of brasica!  Some of these are looking bad because they are sitting in water for weeks now!  I hope they don't all rot off.

Sweet-potatoes are hanging in there.    I think there are 4 of the original 10 that I ordered still alive.  I really 

A river runs through it!

My yard that is...

Really need to de-weed the sweet-potatoes, but its a mud pit!

more sweet-potatoes

Water is pooling in the paw-paw patch now.  Pooling means the ground is saturated!

Japanese Beetles on the Cherry Trees!  They are coming out like crazy now!

I bought 2 20lb bags of Milky Spore treatment and did the front lawn (cherry trees) and the grapes and orchard.  It takes time to work though.  

I am surprised to see these cherries.  I thought for sure the birds would have eaten them all by now!

These are the good ones.  There were quite a few that had bird damage.

Just a lawn shot.  Here you see the electric fence surrounding the cherries.

A view of the front patch from near the entrance to the shop.

I also bought 2 Japanese beetle traps and set them up.  This one is downwind of the cherries.

I keep having to put supports on the persimmons!  They are looking good though.

New portion of the front patch.  Weeds have pretty much taken over the potatoes and onions.  

The old portion of the front patch.  The corn is looking good.  Weeds are hitting the strawberries hard.  Garlic is holding its own.

These are the blackberries that I got from mom.  I think that there are still 23 of them alive and growing.

Blueberries - getting riper!

Another shot of the corn.

Look at all of these elderberries!

Green beans - planted from saved seed from 2013 (I think - maybe 2014)

Shell beans - I forget which ones - nearest the paw-paw side

Pumpkins are heading for the beans!  I can't get in there because of the water!  I would sink up to my knees in mud!

Green beans - they are blooming - just starting to bloom really.

Shell beans.  They are also blooming - white blooms don't show easy on the photo

Deer protection

The deer have been a real nuisance this year.  They have eaten and damaged my new elderberry plants and my apple trees.  The solar powered electric fence is partially to blame.  Its battery died and there was no indication.  The deer never learned that the fenced area was "dangerous" and therefore ignore the fence entirely now.  I switched out the fencer unit and re-baited the fence, but there continues to be new damage every week.  This weekend I tried to do the "double-fence " trick that I had read about somewhere.  I also put of cages around the new, more delicate, dwarf apple trees.

They are a dickens to mow around, but it may work.  Fingers crossed!

Grape Rust issues

I am very concerned about the "marquis" grapes, well, all of the grapes actually.  They have "rust".  I haven't been able to determine if its fungal (probably) or mite(less likely).  I have been trying to contain it thinking that it was powdery mildew, but grape rust seems more likely.  I looked it up and found that garden sulfur spray was recommend.  I couldn't find any of that at Zimmerman's, so I got the "copper" based fungicide.  I  applied it as directed and along with some sevin.   Unfortunately, it was only on the grapes for about 10 hours - rain came and probably washed most of it off!   It has been raining so often I don't know what to do.  I can't de-weed in the gardens and I can't spray in the orchards!  Ack!  I did spray, obviously, but I don't know how much good it is doing.  I hope the fungicide works, things are getting dire for the older grape vines!

See how small and damaged they are?  The vines directly blow this row don't seem to be as susceptible to the rust and are huge!  The top 3 rows were all planted at the same time.

The  top row.  It is showing some bad damage from rust as well.

These are the new vines, planted this year.  I have seen a couple of small spots of rust on them, but by and large they are rust free - currently.  I still need to put up the wire for them to sprawl on.

So wet!

This year has been so wet so far!  To think I was worried of a drought earlier this year! Hah!

These cabbages are starting to show signs of water damage - their leafs are rolling up!  Not to mention how small they are. I think next year I will make this portion of the patch more elderberry area!

"Lake Walipini" is usually dry or almost dry this time of year!  Its almost FULL now!

Miscellaneous Garden stuff

The "outside" the fence plants by the big garden are doing ok so far.  I think I saw one cucumber that may have succumbed to a SVB attack, but so far there has been no large scale damage.  SVBs don't like cucumbers, according to the literature.  Also, the castor beans are coming along.  Still kinda small.  I hope they kick into high gear soon.  They can be so pretty when they get big!

cucumbers - they are starting to bloom!  minimal SVB damage - so far

Castor beans!  I can hardly wait for them to get bigger.  I remember them being so pretty when mom and dad grew them.

Random Views from the Back 40!

Here are some current views from the edge of the forested area and back along the nut tree area.

With the mountain to the left, this is the view of the pecan trees.

With the mountain to the right, this is the view of the pecan trees.

With the mountain to my back, this is the view out toward the valley.

The English walnuts are doing great!  They are bout 6 feet tall now!  The butternuts seem healthy; they are in the tubes in back of the two English walnut trees.

I am trying to start a little "pine" forest here.  This is where I transplanted my spruce trees from the front lawn.  I have also been transplanting pine trees here as I find them around the property.

Looking up towards the mountain.  The tubes in the distance are the Pecans, Butternuts and English walnuts

Closer view of the nut trees

Planting peppers - here and there

Peppers

Well the weather has finally convinced me that it was going to stay warm enough to put out the pepper plants!  I put most of them in the city house raised beds.  I left one flat of 9 plants to replace any that don't make it (squirrels) and took the rest up to the farm.  I planted the 'farm' plants in the big garden.  I though that I took pictures of the raised beds, but I can't find them. No big deal though - they are just pepper plants!

Sweet potatoes

My sweet potatoes order from gurneys was in my mailbox when I got back from the farm last weekend.  They were in pretty rough shape.  I immediately put them in water in hopes of saving them.  These are "Beauregard" variety.  I can't remember if I ordered 10 or 12 - but I got 11!

Here they are soaking in water:

I planted these all in the paw-paw patch garden, as planned.  Fingers crossed!  They came with a note saying that they are tough and should survive even if dried or rotten.  We shall see.  I took up an old sweet potato that we have had laying around here for a year or two.  It had some sprouts so we figured we would try to plant.  I took the sprouts (or "slips", as I read they are called) and put them in water for the week.  I will plant them in the big garden next weekend.

Carpenter Bee Trap Status

We got one!  It was funny, when we got there this past Friday afternoon, the trap was empty - but by that evening there was a bee in it!

Blueberries

While it seems pretty dry up there to me, the blueberries are coming in fine I think!

Cherry Tree Damage (and Cherries)

Well, first off lets celebrate that we actually got to eat some of our sour cherries this year!  About 10 were ripe enough to eat.  The rest will probably be eaten by the birds.  Some had already shown bird damage.

These trees are in the front yard and there was no deer protection there, as you can see in the following pictures - we needed some!

Stripped clean of the tender new leaves!

Bugs don't bite off the end of the stems like that!  This is definitely deer damage!

So I finally put up the electric fence around the front cherry trees and connected it up to mom and dad's old 110V fencer.  I also found my deer pops and bait, so if they get their noses in there they will get a rude zap and hopefully learn not to mess with my cherries!

Dead Solar Fencer on Apple Orchard

I have been noticing some damage to the apple trees in the orchard and the new elderberry plants in the same fenced area but this isn't possible - that orchard is fenced and freshly baited... Well, I got to thinking that since that's a solar powered fencer (and the oldest of my fencers) that maybe the battery gave out.  I checked the next day and sure enough there wasn't enough zap to even get my attention!  So I took the fencer off of the blueberry patch and moved it to the orchard temporarily.  I plan on connecting the blueberry fence to the 110v fencer that also powers the cherry fence.  I have a new battery (SP3) on order in case I need to put a fencer somewhere else or make a quick change like i did this past weekend.

We saw a REAL BEAR!

Finally!  LOL  We were almost to our farm when a black bear goes running right across the road in front of us!  It wasn't a huge bear - I'm guessing about 1-2 yr old.  It was the first bear I have seen in the wild.  We have found bear tracks and scat on our property before, but I have never actually seen one until now!  Too cool!  It was way too fast and sudden to get a picture.

Corn

The sweet corn in the front patch needed weeding and when I was doing that I realized that quite a bit hadn't come up (or the crows had destroyed it).  In any case, I decided to plant more seeds in the missing areas.  We have had good rain this week, so I am hopeful that it might be up by next weekend.

Wood chipping and more garden planting

Wood chipping begins!

I got my wood-chipper out (woodmaxx WM-8M) and attached it to the tractor and started chipping.  I attacked the apple wood log first.  I milled the apple log that I got from mom's.  I got a few boards out of it, but I had some slabs left over, like always.  I decided that I would try chipping the apple-wood slabs and debris left over from the milling.  I simply attached a bag to the wood-chipper blower head and started chipping.  It worked!  However, the wood chips clogged up the blower head which slowed the flywheel enough that a board got jammed in the blades!  What a pain in the a$$!  I had to take the blade covers off, take the blower-head off, and then manually try to rotate the flywheel with a crow-bar until I worked out the jam and all the debris!  While trying to rotate the flywheel with the crowbar, the crowbar slipped and slammed my finger into the blower fixture!  OUCH - finger swelled and was ugly.  I think it will heal OK now, but I wasn't so sure then!

Moral of the story: NEVER EVER PUT A BAG OVER THE OUTLET OF THE CHIPPER!  

After this, I wanted to make some hickory wood chips for my neighbor but this time i was smart and just put a bucket at the outlet of the blower-head.  No risk of backing chips up into the head!  It worked fine.

The chipper did throw the key out of the feed roller pulley again.  I made some shim from an old canning lid and used some loctite to fix it in place, then let it set overnight.  I ran it some the next day (when I made the hickory chips) and it held, but I noticed that the feed roller pulley was hot.  I noticed the belt was getting shredded too.  I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it was better to let the belt slip then over heat the pulley and gear reducer.  So I loosened the belt tension and it ran the rest of the weekend without throwing a key!  That's saying something too, because i was chipping hickory and that stuff was hard and nasty to work with.  Lots of feed roller "jumping" and the wood is hard too; it vibrates the heck out of everything.  The belt still shredded though, so I ordered a couple replacements from woodmaxx.  I just hope that is the right belt and I hoep it gets here soon enough to take it with me this coming weekend.  I am not sure how much longer the old belt will last!

Here is what the debris pile looks like now - wouldn't a before picture have been great? LOL

See the wood chip pile on the right - behind the firewood logs?

Its mostly hickory chips now.

Another angle.  It never seems as big in the picture as it does in real life!

Planted my squash!

I wasn't doing too good this weekend; was really tired and wasted a lot of time just napping.  I did get out to mow (actually, maybe it was the mowing that did me in?)   Anyway, I snuck out in the evening while it was cooler and got the squash planted in the front garden.  I brought up the sod staples that I had ordered last week and even used some of the old paper sheeting that I had left over from 2013.

I put in 6 summer squash (it was a "medley" so I am not sure of the exact varieties.  I also planted 6 spaghetti squash and then filled the remaining space with buttercup squash.

I also went back to the big patch and put down some black plastic on the unplanted part to keep the weeds under control.  I might plant some watermelon or something over there, just to have something growing.  

The one variety of  kale was up, but the other variety wasn't.  According to my planting plan, the Ripbor kale didn't seem to germinate.  Seems odd, but I have never grown that variety before.  The dinosaur kale is doing OK, but need some attention to weeds!  The peas are doing well, but they also need de-weeding!

Front is full!

A distant view of the front patch.  The summer, spaghetti, and winter squash are all planted and plastic/paper covered!

Locust tree status

I got some survey markers and placed them next to each of the locust trees that I had planted. Fortunately, the survey markers come in packs of 100 so it matched the trees almost exactly.  I did note that about 6 trees didn't make it - dead.  I also noticed LOTS of deer tracks in the locust area. Big tracks!  Indeed, I noticed some of the locust had been nibbled and at least one was trampled. While mowing around the place I noticed that I have a few volunteer locust trees coming up - I think I will transplant them to replace the missing dead trees.   

Deer Damage?

While surveying the trees i noticed that several of the new dwarf cherry trees seem to have less foliage on them then they did last week.  I also noticed this phenomena on some of the dwarf apple trees I planted this year.  The cherry trees weren't too bad, yet, but the apple trees look a bit rough.  Not to mention that the apple trees are behind electric fence!  This worries me because if that damage was done after the fence was put up, then either the deer aren't afraid of the fence anymore, or the fence isnt working.  I felt a charge on the fence, but I am thinking that if the battery is bad on that unit then the fence will run out of juice by morning - just when the deer like to browse!  I will have to get up early one morning and go out to check the charge on the unit.

weekend activities.

Elderberries are looking good!

Paw-paw patch progress!

Most of the sweet potatoes are still alive - for the time being.  I predict that most will eventually die

Beans are doing well!  I never did thin them though.  The seeder/planter that I use plants them too close, which made me use up the seed to fast so that I have half empty rows alongside of rows that are planted too densely.

The pumpkins are getting a good start!

Taking care of the old taters

Trying out the french fry cutter - it works great!

Fired up the fryer

MMMM - they taste great and they are crispy!

Bagging them up for the freezer.  I will use them later by thawing an baking them.  I put up 5 quart freezer bags.  Many more to go.  Will have to can some I think.

Strawberries!

Some of the strawberries are ripe!  I got a few, although most ha been eaten by the birds.

Bird damage!  The birds took about 2/3 of the crop!

Total haul.  Sigh.

Blueberry fencer connected, finally

The new berries are looking good!  They need protection from the deer though

I buried the fencer feed under this part of the yard.

Connected up, nice and clean

The old berries aren't as productive - but they are hanging in there

Deer Problems

Just before I left the farm this past weekend I did a ride around the property (I usually do).  This time as I turned the corner toward from the driveway towards the big garden I saw a deer inside the electric fence perimeter eating my new elderberry plants!  I gunned the UTV and chased him out.  He hopped over the fence with ease - without a second thought!  Obviously, I knew that the deer could get over the fence - hell, a human could jump over the electric fence - that's not how it deters interlopers.  The idea of the baited electric fence is to entice the deer to touch its nose to the fence and get a shock - thereby becoming afraid of the fence and giving it a wide berth.   Well, that fence was the one that had the defective fencer that I replaced last weekend.  Evidently the deer never learned to avoid that fenced area!  I added more bait/scent to that fence (and inadvertently checked that the fence was energized!) and hope that the deer will learn that the fenced area is to be avoided.  I don't know what to do otherwise.   Its a relatively young deer that i caught in there - maybe its only him that's doing the damage.  I may try using repellent inside the elderberry area.   I really don't want to shoot the deer.  I just don't like killing animals.  I even leave the snakes alone (unless they are a threat like the rattlesnakes a couple of years ago!)  But, if it comes down to my elderberries or that deeer, i am afraid the deer will have to go... :(