Robin Nest

I discovered I have a robin nest in the saucer magnolia in front of the house!

I'm of two minds about this.


First, I do like birds in general, and I like to see young birds and nests.  I feed finches and cardinals and hummingbirds.  I was going to cut down a 5'  unwanted cedar sapling once, but stopped because I found a hummingbird nest in it.  That cedar is still unwanted and 15' high today, but if hummers like to nest in cedars, I will leave the cedar alone.

Second, I don't actually like robins.  They eat my worms and I really DO like worms.  They are good for the soil, do my garden nothing but good, and they don't bite.  I actually get annoyed watching a half dozen robins marching across the lawn in a row pulling up worms every few feet.

I LIKE my lawn worms.  I even go out after a rainstorm and pick them up off the driveway to toss back onto the lawn.  I rescue them from puddles.  When I am weeding the garden and they are frightened up to the surface by the disturbance, I toss them into shady spots under flowers so they can go back about their business.

I won't disturb the robin nest myself, but if something natural happened to it, I wouldn't mourn...

Poison Ivy Progress

Time for a progress report on the poison ivy.  I gave it all a good spray on May 28th.

It was thriving then...

It was looking a bit tired a week later...

It is looking REAL unhappy now...

Now I have to go around and find the ones I missed the first time or that need another shot...

Vole Wars

I apologize for providing no pictures.  I just couldn't think of any good ones to take.  Mole tunnels do not show up well and my cats didn't catch any voles today...  So, I'll just move along to narrative.

I'm trying to discourage moles.  Not because they cause me much trouble, but because their tunnels are used by voles.  And VOLES cause me a lot of grief.  Voles eat plant roots and I have a lot of flowers and veggies in my yard.

Just as an example, I planted tulip bulbs 5 years ago in my flowerbed.  And, in an attempt to kill off the winter weeds that plague me in the Spring, I covered the entire flowerbed in black plastic  When I removed the plastic in the Spring, I found the oddest thing.  There were circles of 8" deep holes all around the flowerbed.  I couldn't figure out what caused them.  That is, until I discovered a half-eaten tulip bulb in one of the holes!  They had thrived under the black plastic (safe from predators) all Winter and found nearly every single tulip bulb I planted.

And then I noticed that each spot was near a mole tunnel.  "Often, moles will serve as the "highway crew" and make tunnels in search of grubs and worms. Voles will often follow the mole tunnels and eat the plants which the moles ignore." (citation)


They can also be trapped, but you will never get most of them.  So I decided that I had to discourage the moles to reduce the voles.  First, I applied Milky Spore to reduce the mole's favorite food (chafer grubs) last year.  Today, I applied parasitic nematodes to the entire area where I have seen mole tunnels or vole damage.


The parasitic nematodes seek and feed on grubs.  My best friend and I both have grubs in our lawns.  He doesn't have moles or voles, but when I was helping him plant crocuses in his lawn last Fall, I discovered his lawn was infested with grubs (oddly little evidence in the health of his lawn though).  In my lawn, I surmise their presence by the activity of moles and the evidence of voles following the mole tunnels.


It was quite an interesting experience.  The parasitic nematodes come in a small envelope of dissolvable material.  You put it in a hose end sprayer, watering can, or pump sprayer to disperse them.  It sounds simple, and for most people, it would be. I, however, never have "normal" experiences...  *SIGH*

First, you have to soak the area.  I was clever (fortunate) enough to have a short rainshower this afternoon.  Yay!  So that step was free.  They I had to apply the nematodes.  I had a watercan full of rainwater and at outside temperature, so that was perfect.  I used it to fill the hose end sprayer I had.  The instructions were quite specific that the application device not have any chemicals in it.  Mine was unused (after 15 years, LOL!).  Just never used it before (I have two of them, the other has been used many times).


So I mixed some of the nemotode material into the hose end sprayed container and turned it on.  It not only leaked around the coupling, spray hit my face from the leaks.  I had to shut the water off fast and fuss with it a bit.  I finally found  some combination on tightenings and rotations that stopped the leaking.


I set about spraying the waterborne nematodes all around the yard and woods (the moles like the woods best here for some odd reason).


Oops, I should mention that the lawn grass is 6 inches high and was soaking wet from the rain.  That's because my mower is broken and has been at a repair place FOR A WEEK and they haven't even called with an estimate yet...  I never have simple problems.  I have to warn repairmen that whatever the problem is, it won't be what they expect.  Like if I have an electrical problem, it is never just a blown fuse.  Or if the cable signal goes bad, it is never just a cable box problem; the wire was burned by a lightening  strike...


So, back to the nematode spraying.  My hose end sprayer was leaking like a seive and I had to keep fighting with it to prevent the leaks (a mist really) getting all over me.  I sort of assume I didn't want to be inhaling parasitic nematodes.  But I eventually got that to stop.


I had 30 fun-packed minutes of spraying nematode water all over the yard in 90 degree heat and 90% humidity.  I made sure to soak all areas where I had ever seen mole/vole evidence heavily and all other areas lightly.


Then I had to hose down the entire area again with plain water per instructions (I imagine because lots of little nematodes were sprayed onto grass leaves and not the soil itself.  That took another 30 minutes (after fighting with a standard hose nozzle on a "quick-connect" coupling that was working perfectly well previously but now refused to connect THIS time).


Even having a towel with me was not enough to keep the sweat from dripping into my eyes and down my neck.  My shoes and socks were soaked through from the rain and hose water on the lawn grass.


By the time I was done at 6:30, I was soaked in water up to my knees and from sweat down to my waist.  Inside later, I found a tick on my head and one on an arm.  I sweated for 30 minutes (lost 2 pounds, which was nice), and my hand was cramped from holding the hose nozzle for 20 minutes (off and on).


At this time I can say that, happily, the dehydration justified drinking an entire bottle of wine (Old Vine Zinfandel by Twisted Wine Cellars - really good inexpensive wine)


So when I say I don't have "routine problems", this is what I mean.


My next step in the attack is do apply a 2nd round of Milky Spore Disease.  After that, I will spray cartor oil around the yard.  That doesn't kill ANYTHING, but it makes the grubs taste terrible to moles.  


So the moles will find less food and what the find will taste awful and they will leave my yard.  The voles won't have the mole tunnels to use to find plant roots, and they will be easier for cats and owls and raptors to find and eat.  Then, when I place mousetraps under boxes at vole exits, I will catch the last of them.


I don't have to kill all the voles, just keep the population in check.  But if I COULD kill the last one in my yard, I wouldn't mourn their absence.  LOL!


Iza the cat would though.  She likes catching them.  Unfortunately, she isn't very good at actually killing them...  I've watched her.  She leaves them after they stop trying to escape.  I'm more lethal.  When Iza leaves them, I go out and stomp them...

That Compost Tumbler

I thought I should explain about the compost tumbler I mentioned in the previous post.  There are large ones with a crank handle to rotate a large drum on a frame and there are smaller ones you just roll around on the ground to keep the materials mixed.

I have the large one on the stand.  It seems like a great idea.  The kitchen waste is safe from scavengers and the handle makes it easy to thoroughly mix the contents.  The frame holds the drum just above the height of a wheelbarrow, so it ought to be easy to unload the contents when "cooked".  There are vents for letting air circulate for aerobic microbial breakdown.

I don't know about the small portable ones, but the big ones don't work!

1.  The vents are too small for good air ventilation, so the breakdown occurs mostly anaerobically ("without oxygen").  Anaerobic decay is cold and slow, which means weed seeds aren't killed and it takes forever.  It also smells bad (anaerobic microbes produce ammonia).

2.  It is awkward and messy trying to get the material out when you want it.  The drum is too high to shovel the stuff out, and turning the opening to the bottom to let it fall into the wheelbarrow doesn't work well.  It doesn't want to fall out on its own, and rotating the drum back and forth over the wheelbarrow spills half of the "compost" on the ground.

3.  You would think a metal drum in the sun would heat up on its own.  Nope!  The vents are large enough to prevent that.  The door does get hot enough in Summer though to approach "painful to remove".

4.  The thing is a haven for insects.  Clouds of fruit flies come out each time I open it.  And there is some sort of black fly that loves the rotting (yes rotting, not composting) material as breeding grounds.  I've had to take the vents apart several times to empty out all the dead bodies because that's where they try to escape through.

Do yourself a favor if you are considering one of these things.  Build a normal compost bin instead!

Avoiding Last Year's Mistakes

I made 2 really silly mistakes last year and I am pleased to say that I remembered them well enough to avoid them this year.

The first mistake was my compost.   I have a tumbler compost bin.  I add all my kitchen scraps and shredded paper to it.  It doesn't work like they advertise.  It never heats up, but it breaks down eventually.  Most important to me, the fresh high-quality kitchen scraps are not available to scavengers like raccoons.  I use the tumbler only for that reason.  As soon as the stuff is beyond scavenging, I move it to my real (normal") compost bins which work very well.

Well, last Spring my real compost bins were all full of cornstalks, flower canes and other stuff which was slow to break down.  So I used the material directly from the compost tumbler and dug it into the soil in my long trellis bed.  I know about sheet-composting, where you just bury all the fresh scraps straight into the soil.  So, no problem, right?

The second mistake was my fertilizer.  I have 2 kinds of organic fertilizers.  One is "W.O.W." (8-2-4) which is a corn gluten product.  It is great for lawns because on the nitrogen and because the corn gluten inhibits seeds from growing the initial root.  That really cuts down on the dandelions and other weeds if you time the application properly.  The corn gluten doesn't harm established plants at all and it is a fine source of nitrogen.  The other is "N Lite" (2-5-6).  I like having the 2 of them because I can use either separately or blended (10-7-10), according to what the plants want.

OK, so here's what happened last year.  First, I got a 1,000 melon and cuke seedlings sprouting from the lousy compost tumbler material!  I couldn't distinguish MY melon and cuke seedlings from the ocean of hybrid melon and cuke seedlings.  I tried to guess which ones were mine for a month, but finally pulled them all out.  I replanted.

That's where the second mistake came into play.  After scuffle-hoeing the whole area several times to make sure all the scrap melon seeds were spent, I carefully added a blend of the fertilizers to the soil and planted all my regular small crops.  Most of my good crops are seedlings grown indoors and transplanted out.  But I also have all those radishes, carrots, beets etc that are direct-seeded.

The fertilizer included the corn gluten.  That stuff that inhibits seeds from sprouting...  It was a month before I realized why nothing was growing!  ARGGHH!

Things are growing better this year...

Asparagus

ASPARAGUS!  I have an 8' by 3' asparagus bed.  I'm proud of it.  I harvested over 60 spears this year before letting the plants grow to replenish for next year.  It was great!  Last year I barely got a dozen (and they were late to emerge) and I thought they were dying.  I LOVE asparagus!  Fresh asparagus tastes better than grocery store ones!  And they are tenderer while still crisp when steamed...

I started with 10 crowns 15 years ago, but am down to 7.  I should replace the lost ones.  Or maybe I should just replace them all this Fall.  I haven't decided.  2 years ago, I covered the entire bed with black plastic to kill all the weeds.  That didn't work.  The weeds survived and the voles went crazy under the safety and warmth of the black plastic.  They killed several crowns entirely and damaged others.

But because I wasn't sure where the new spears were emerging (so I didn't want to chop them with the shovel) and didn't want to dig weeds out around the bed, the weeds are taking over.

Anyone want to come over and weed my asparagus bed?

I seem to have a lot of tree saplings and grass...  Yes, they grew THAT high just in this year!

Well, when I dig all the saplings and grass clumps up, I will do what I USED to do that helped.  Place folded up sheets of newspaper between the asparagus stalks.  It works great.  I just kind of overlooked it the past two years...

Memorial Day

Garden Started Outside 2

I thought I would provide more information about the trellis area of the garden.  While I enjoy growing my tomatoes the most, the trellis is the place I enjoy most.  First, let me describe it.

It is 30' long by 2' wide by 12" tall.  It is that long because that's the total length of the individual adjacent beds when I first constructed the garden.  It is 2' wide because I grow the trellised crops on the front foot and plants that can use some shade on the back foot.  Plus, I built it after the rest of the beds as an afterthought and if it was any wider, my push mower wouldn't fit between it and the fence.

There are 4x4" 8' posts at each end and one in the middle.  The trellis itself is concrete remesh wire with 6"x6" openings.  The remesh is 6" off the ground and 5' high.  Attaching the remesh was quite a project in itself about 15-20 years ago.  My best friend and I decided that remesh was the best tomato cage material (and I still agree, but if I could get vinyl-coated remesh, I would buy it).  We researched sources and costs and the price was dramatically better past a certain length.

Well, that was more than we needed, but I had been thinking of a sturdy trellis.  Serendipitously, that length got us close to the "good price" and we ordered that.  There was 20' extra, but I found a good use for that 2 years ago (more on that in the future).

So, we made our tomato cages and I used most of the rest for the trellis.  It was difficult to attach to the posts.  Well, we were inexperienced at such things.  The vertical wires didn't line up with the posts, so we had to bend the remesh around the outer corners to fit (just try that sometime; the wire is really strong).  And we couldn't get it to pull tight along the length and from top to bottom  (like a bedsheet with wrinkles).

I figured out a way later, but it was too late and that's beside the point.  But I'm keeping it in mind because after all these years, it needs to be replaced soon.  The remesh is still sturdy, but the posts are rotting.

Anyway, I told you all this to talk about what I grow there...

I garden by the Square Foot Method (Mel Bartholomew) as best I can.  I do it for small crops.  I don't agree with it for large crops (can't help it, I just like large cages for big heirloom tomatoes).  But the trellis area is seriously "Square Foot". 

I planted garlic in the front foot last Fall 15' long (2 garlics per square foot).  On the back side, I have alternated individual square feet for carrots, scallions, beets, radish, shallots, spinach, celery,  chinese cabbage, leeks (and I am probably forgetting a couple) in succession planting.  When the first are harvested, I will replant with the same crops but in different squares (Square Foot gardening makes for automatic crop rotation).  I am adding parsnips this weekend.

I harvested my first radishes of the year yesterday.  SPICY!  Not like that bland stuff you get in grocery stores.  And I should start harvesting the garlic next month or early July.

Here's the only picture I have at the moment.

You can see the garlic, the beets and the radishes.  The other stuff is still way too small to see.  Well, the celery is large enough, but its not in that picture.  You can see the remesh wire if you look carefully.

Poison Ivy Woes

I have constant problems with poison ivy.  It's partly because this neighborhood was developed from mature woods in the 80s/90s and partly because I left most of the backyard wooded.  It took a decade just to get the scrub trees (like thorny locust) cleared out.  I like the semi-natural look I have.

But it is partly because 2 adjacent neighbors totally ignore their yards next to mine.  One has a drainage easement through their back yard (10' from my fence) and they basically ignore everything on the side near me.  The other has 10' of brambles near my fence and just never bothers with that area.  A 3rd neighbor is basically absent for some reason (I think the property is involved in a divorce dispute), and while he mows the yard every couple of weeks, he pays no attention to the edges.

So I am constantly fighting off poison ivy coming in through the fence.

I used to have little reaction to it, but several years ago, I got a full body rash from it.  It was a miserable 2 full weeks.  Some of the poison ivy in the neighbor yards is mature enough to produce berries and the birds evidently drop the seeds all around the yard.  New plants spring up out of nowhere even near the house.

I saw the first new poison ivy plants leafing out 2 weeks ago.  They are now fully leafy.   I am an organic gardener.  But that garden/flowerbeds/lawn.  For poison ivy (and also rampant honeysuckle, wild grape, and some vine I haven't identified), I turn to Brush-B-Gon!

So today was "Spray Day".  I filled up my large pressure sprayer (portable, but just barely) and made the rounds.  I was shocked at how much poison ivy was around the yard and how mature some of the plants were!  That's partly because I have been clearing problem spots and revealing places I haven't looked into for years.  For example, I discovered (to my horror) that there is a huge poison ivy vine coming up over the fence and growing 20' up a tree in MY own yard! 

I can pretty much kill off most of the plants in my yard, but I can't get rid of the sources.  I spray carefully (short controlled spray individual plant by plant) through the fence as far as I can (the neighbors have no landscaping near the fence), but there is always more growing back the next year.

So I have a dilemma.  If I ask the neighbors to control/spray the poison ivy in their yards, they will spray wildly right through the fence on a windy day and kill all my plants and flowers.  If I don't mention the problem, I will have poison ivy forever.

Maybe I should ask them if I can spray in their yards and do it carefully...

Anyway, I went around the yard spraying poison ivy plants with great pleasure.  I can't wait to see them turn brown and die!  It was a sunny and nearly windless day, so it was safe.  And only an hour later, all the leaves were dry, so I know they soaked in the spray.

I'll try to remember to post pictures of the dead poison ivy next week...

Perennial Day 2, Part 2

Well, I went to plant the new hostas I received a few days ago and got a real surprise!

The existing hostas are all fully grown.  So I just assumed that where there weren't any, they had died, and I had ordered replacements.  At every spot but one today, I found vole holes around the roots, but each one was still surviving and just now sending up new shoots!

Now I have 9 hostas to find new places for.  I have 2 hosta beds.  The backyard one has hostas placed far enough apart so that they are individual specimens.  I don't want to add more there.  The front yard bed has them crowded and overlapping (poor planning on my part, but the effect IS lush), so I CAN'T add more there.

Guess I'll have to make a 3rd hosta bed.  I certainly have enough shade...

Garden Layout

This is a reasonably good view showing the garden layout.  It is mostly six 8' by 3' by 12" high framed beds, plus a 30' long by 2' wide trellis bed and two 3' by 3' beds.  The trellis gets the cukes, italian flat pole beans, snow peas, and sometimes I try growing cantaloupe up it (without much success).

The 2 red beds have 4 tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, and a bush watermelon each.  I'll be adding basil and marigolds soon.  The red is a plastic that is supposed to reflect the light frequencies tomatoes use most efficiently.  When you don't get full sun in your garden, you try anything.  LOL!

The bed between them has broccoli, cabbage, and radichhio (a red chicory).  It is half-full of beebalm (Monarda) that I moved there "temporarily" 3 years ago.  I've left them there because it seemed a good idea to have a great bee attractant in the middle of the garden.

The nearest bed is the one I moved from a shady spot to this sunnier one last month.  In most of the garden, I have black plastic covered with old carpet to suppress weeds between the beds.  So, the lawn growing between the rest of the beds and the new one is temporary.  As soon as I get ahold of some more old carpet, I'll eliminate that.  Meanwhile, it is spaced just far enough to allow my lawn mower to fit.

The 3' by 3' beds are for herbs. 

I have thyme, tarragon, oregano, chives, cilantro, sage, and parsley. And there is a rose draping over to liven up the colors.   The 2nd 3x3 bed has the rose in it right now.  I really need to move that rose.  I just don't know exactly where to put it.  And since it is the last remnant of my 1st landscaping project here (24 years ago), I don't want to just toss it.