Spring Bulb Bed

It's been a pretty busy week - things to do and weather-wise. Around here, especially this time of year, they say that if you don't like the weather just wait five minutes and it'll change. Since my last post about the fog, we've had sunshine up in the 70's, rain, horrific winds, and even another snowstorm.

I love this photo, taken through my living room window. The rain and reflections on the deck look like an Impressionist painting, and the late Spring bulbs now blooming in the herb bed are so pretty. Tulips are really hard to grow around here. Not because of the weather, but because of the ground squirrels. They'll dig up and eat every tulip, and I've lost hyacinths to them too. But this bed (knock on wood) has done great for years - long enough that the original single bulbs have all multiplied into beautiful clumps.

I'm not sure why these have survived. The ground squirrels (not pretty, fluffy-tailed tree squirrels - these are burrowing, scruffy-tailed rat-like squirrels) are still out there, scouting around under the bird feeders, dashing for their holes under the wood pile when I let the dog out. I know the squirrels won't touch daffodils, and when I planted these bulbs I mixed all different kinds together, tossed them out onto the ground, and then planted each one where it landed. Maybe having the daffodils scattered throughout, besides giving me an extended and ever-changing show each Spring, also deters the squirrels from the tastier tulip bulbs.

Or maybe it's the perennial herbs that are just now coming up. Oregano and marjoram are a dense green carpet now, thyme, rosemary, and chives in small clumps, and a big clump of tarragon. As summer gets closer, they'll take over, hiding the withering leaves of the bulbs. Right outside my kitchen door, this little garden is a joy throughout the year. A wandering line of round stepping stones, a few rocks, a cement sculpted turtle, and some hollyhocks for vertical interest makes a wonderful view, sitting out on the deck in the morning sun.

Or some days it's better from inside looking out, and a warm fire going in the wood stove. Day before yesterday, the cherry blossoms were capped with snow. Right now, I'm not sure whether I'll be getting any fruit this year, or not. The night temperatures have only dropped right around freezing, not much below, and the snow might even have provided an insulating layer. We're a bit above the valley floor, so the coldest temps slide on down the hill, past us. So, even with these snowy photos, there's still a chance the blooms will set some fruit. One can always hope.

Soaker Hoses Save Water

Risa, blogger at Stony Run Farm, posted her friend's Homage to Lizards poem in comments for the House Lizards post below - I like the imagery of her "lizard paparazzi". Chris left a tip on catching lizards - unfortunately, it involves shading them when they're lying in the sun, which wouldn't work for catching house lizards. Albert, the cat, must have heard my admonishments though, because the very next day he kept a lizard entranced in the bedroom until I could trap it. All the outside doors were closed, so this was one already in the house (hmmm - wonder how that happened). I used the empty bathroom wastebasket and got that one relocated outside too.

Melynda, over at Mom's Sunday Cafe, has noticed the soaker hoses in my yard and garden. She wants to conserve water in her garden, so asked for more information about using them. Since I manage to grow a pretty good garden in an area that averages 7" precipitation annually (and most of that comes as snow in winter), plus have a weak well (needs 35-40 minutes recharge time to fill 50 gallon tank), I probably have some tips and methods for others that need to make every drop count in their own gardens.

Spraying and sprinklers are extremely ineffective watering methods, especially with our hot, dry winds. Half the water ends up blowing away from the area you're trying to water, and a lot of the rest of it evaporates before getting to the roots of the plants. Soaker hoses keep the water where it's needed, at a rate the ground and the plants can absorb. By clustering plants with similar water needs, closely spacing vegetable plants to shade their own roots, and infrequent deep watering we manage to get by.

Using different lengths of soaker hoses gives me flexibility in how and where I put my plants. In my vegetable garden, I use free-form raised waffle beds. I saw no need for the expense of building structures for the beds - I just groom them into shape with a rake each Spring, after digging in the compost and before planting. The beds are in the same place year after year, and I walk only in the pathways, so the soil never gets compacted in the growing area. For ease of cultivating, the beds are a bit more than two rake-widths wide, with a single rake-width for the interior paths. I pull the edges up a bit above the planting area, dishing out the center, to help hold water when getting my seeds to germinate (the only time I use a hand-held nozzle). I then run a single 50' hose down the center of each bed (although this year, I'm experimenting with a double-hose set-up on my early bed to lessen heat stress and perhaps stretch the harvest out a bit longer).

The soil here is called DG - decomposed granite. What that really means is coarse sand with very little plant nutrient value. My garden beds get at least an inch of compost dug into them each Spring, providing nutrients plus helping to retain water. Light, frequent watering makes plants form shallow, spread-out root systems. I want my plants to make deep roots so they're better able to withstand the heat during July and August. So after the vegetable plants are up and growing, they only get watered every third or fourth day, for 8-10 hours at a time. The top inch of the soil may look dry, but checking a bit deeper shows plenty of moisture. I don't water straight from the house faucet - I can't take the chance of running the well dry and burning out the pump (it's 212' feet down - a bit hard to repair). Instead, I use a gravity-fed system run from a couple of tanks that are filled from the house faucet using a very low-flow restrictor (more on that in another post).

My system can easily handle 100' feet of soaker hose at a time. I don't like the restrictors included in new soaker hoses - I pull them out and use new rubber washers instead. Besides, using a gravity-fed system means my water pressure is quite low to begin with. If I were using water straight out of a city-house faucet, opening the faucet only 1/8 turn would provide sufficient pressure for a system like mine. The seeping moisture of soakers attracts birds and other wild creatures, so I water the vegetables, two beds at a time, all night long, and then switch over to hoses in the landscaping during the day (no use inviting trouble). Using a series of y-valves and a few 4-way manifolds, it's easy to change where the water goes.

By taking up my hoses in late fall and storing them out of the weather, they last for years. In the Spring, it's easier to get them placed where I want them if I first stretch them out in the sun to soften up a bit (a smaller 25' hose coils round and round in the square strawberry bed above). Just about all the gardens and landscaping (except the fruit trees) are on soakers. I'll write about watering the orchard in a later post.

New Things for the Garden

I sat down with my box of garden seeds this morning, checking to see what I'm lacking, and then put in an internet order for the seeds I know I can't find locally. One hybrid I just had to have was Joi Choi, the only bok choi I've found that doesn't bolt to seed once our summer heat gets here. I also wanted Kuroda carrots, an Asian type that handles our summer heat nicely, yet keeps well in storage until the following summer. And I'm trying Delfino Cilantro in my on-going search to find the slowest one to bolt.

I also ordered seeds for a few more heirloom vegetables. I'm trying to move more and more to heirlooms, so I can save even more of my own seeds. This year, I'm trying Lutz Green Leaf for my beet crop, and Danish Ballhead for storage cabbages. I found the things I wanted in the Jung Seeds catalog.

I like additions to my perennial plant selection even better. I ordered a Wolfberry herb plant, also called a Goji berry. It's supposed to be a hardy, drought-tolerant, vining perennial shrub, and the berries, high in anti-oxidants, are commonly dried like rose hips. Sounds like it will fit right in around here. I wanted a couple more blueberry plants. I already have a dwarf Northland that is doing ok in a little bed where I've added sulfur, plus mulched with pine needles and coffee grounds, to make the soil more acid. Blueberries are supposed to do better with three varieties cross-pollinating each other, so I'm trying a dwarf Northblue and a Rubel to complete that planting group - I need to find varieties that can both take the heat of our summers and survive our freezing winter weather without snow cover.

Then, I'm trying something new for my sweet husband. He likes to make beer, getting the ingredients from a brewers supply place in Reno, but has always wanted to play with home-grown hops. So I ordered both Nugget and Willamette plants. Before they get here I'll have to decide if I want to just grow them as summer privacy screening on the fence and treat the hops flowers as a bonus, or set up a trellis system designed for efficient harvesting of the flowers. I've thought about growing them up a string outside the south side of the chicken pen to a pole just inside to give the chickens some more summer shade, or maybe I'll design a hops arbor. Aries is pretty good at figuring out how to make my design sketches a reality, and we've got quite a bit of salvaged wood for building projects.

The Second Day of Spring

Oh, brrrrr! Four inches of snow this morning, cold wind all day, and temperatures forecasted to be way below freezing tonight. At least the days are getting longer!

This is our normal Spring weather. Just as something else comes into bloom, it snows on it. Oh well, we really do need the moisture. This is high desert - we only get an average of seven inches of precipitation annually; all of it as snow November through April. Those black hoses you see in all my garden photos are soaker hoses. Just about everything I grow here has to be artificially irrigated, all summer long. So whether it's recharging our ground water or filling up our reservoirs, we'll take all the "weather" we can get.

Hello Spring!

The first daffodils are blooming, and buds are swelling on the lilacs and plum trees. The first apricot blooms opened today, just in time to get snowed on tonight.

Nights have still been chilly, but the days the past week have been sunny and warm. I've been able to get out in the yard, cleaning up some of the landscaping and moving a few perennials around while they're still dormant. To me, gardening is the slowest art form, so if something isn't quite working where it is I'll move it. I also use a part of the garden edging as a tree nursery, moving little self-seeded trees around the property to where they'll get plenty of water and protection from the wildlife for a year or two, and then transplant them back out once they're bigger.

The new chicks are now almost seven weeks old. They've been spending their days out in the dog run, running and flapping about; and then back inside every night. I was talking to my neighbor over the back fence today, and he told me a couple of days ago he'd found a nest with a dozen eggs in it, hidden by one of our guinea hens. He cleaned it out and threw the eggs away. I wouldn't mind not having any keets this year, but I figure they'll probably both bring in a clutch sooner or later this summer - they're pretty good at sneaking and hiding, and the reproduction urge is quite compelling.

The clouds moved in today, the temperatures dropped, and it started to rain at nightfall. It's expected to turn to snow tonight, and be cold for the next few days. As soon as the nice days come back, I think it will be time for the chicks to go outside full-time, time to plant some peas and lettuces out in the garden. In the meantime, it's about time for me to start my tomato, peppers and eggplants inside. C'mon Springtime!

Not For Amateurs

Aries grew up in a home heated with wood, up at Lake Tahoe. When he was eight, he was considered old enough to go out with his dad and grandfather cutting wood. When he was twelve, he was big enough to hold a chainsaw to cut downed trees into sections, his grandfather helping pick the saw up each time afterwards. By sixteen, they let him start felling trees. He knows what he's doing, and he likes it when he gets the chance to play with a chainsaw.

Last month, he had the chance to help out a couple friends of mine. We live just above the valley floor. Our native vegetation is desert chaparral - sagebrush and other shrubby plants. But the hills rise steeply just west of us, and the change in altitude is just enough that tall conifers thrive. My friends live just a couple of miles away, up a canyon, but it's enough to be a completely different environment.

One friend had some pines infected with some kind of root fungus. In order to save the surrounding trees, the infected ones were marked to be cut down. She doesn't burn wood, but her next door neighbor, another friend, has a wood stove and she needs the wood. So we headed up to do a bit of woodcutting (well, ok, Aries does the cutting - I'm there in case of emergency and as laborer after the tree is down).

He cut two then, and left one dead, broken, leaning one as too unsafe to cut - that one will have to be chained up and pulled with a tractor enough to drop. When we went back later to cut the last two, I remembered to bring my camera. For the first tree that day, the only place to drop it was right down the driveway towards the house. In the top photo (click on any photo to see better), I've got my back to the house, standing right about where the top of the tree should land. Next photo, you can see the tree bounced a bit left when it hit, but overall it pretty much went where it should. Of course, we then had to get it out of her driveway - Aries cutting, I dragging limbs away to slash piles, rolling cut sections over to another pile.

Then on to the last tree - probably the tallest one Aries had ever cut (Aries is 6'4" for scale). For this photo, I'm standing between the house and garage, a low wall in front of me - the tree would more than reach to where I'm standing. Aries wants the tree to fall to the left, and is just starting the throat cut on that side. There's no wind, the tree is growing straight on level ground, it's symmetrically shaped - it should be no problem, and then we're done for the day. Wrong!

The throat cut lined up perfectly, Aries moves over to the other side. I usually watch for the top of the tree start to sway. But this time I'm zoomed in, watching him through the camera lens, thinking I'll snap an action photo when it starts to fall. Suddenly, he raises his right arm out straight, pointing the opposite direction, signalling to me this tree is breaking backwards. I lower the camera, watching him back away with the saw, still pointing, and start backing up. Open-mouthed, I watch as the tree spins more than 180º on its stump, and then falls away to the right. Amazingly, it landed completely in the clear - just not at all where it was supposed to.

Aires said he felt the saw suddenly go dull in the last couple seconds of cutting. Upon examination, he found wire inside the tree on the side where it spun instead of breaking. It turns out the previous owner, decades ago, had run an electric fence by just nailing the insulators to the trees. This tree, growing quickly next to the leach field, had engulfed the wire so he'd just cut the wire, leaving nail, insulator, and wire hidden inside. We were so lucky the tree didn't fall towards the house, didn't hang up in any of the surrounding trees, and Aries wasn't hurt.

First Crocus Blooms

Look what was outside my window, after last night's snow had melted away - Spring's first crocus, cheerily opening up protected from marauding chickens by the wire laid down over the herb bed. After things had dried out a bit more this afternoon, the dog and I got out for a walk in the sun.

Thursday, February 19, was also my scheduled day to write for the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog, so I spent the morning getting that together and online. I say it "was" my day, because the blog was originally set up in Australia and this morning was already tomorrow there. I found it frustrating at first, trying to time my postings correctly, until I found this colorful little real-time website. The Sun Clock option is pretty cool too. Anyway, after thinking about the recent wildfires in Australia I thought I'd write about preparing to evacuate in an emergency wildfire situation. We've gotten that dreaded knock on our door twice, had to leave once, and watched a few more times as flames covered our hillsides. So I do know a bit about the numb brainlock that can strike at such a time, and why it's best to have things written out and prepared ahead of time.

The First Leaves Change

As I was coming up our street towards the house yesterday, I noticed that the leaves on one of the Honey Locust trees have started to turn to gold. Our nights are still in the 40's, with days in the high 80's (fifty degree temperature swings are normal, all year 'round in the high desert), but there's a forecast for a low of 39 later this week. It won't be long now before all the leaves start to show their autumn colors. It will be prettiest if we get cold without wet. Some years, below freezing temperatures start with a snowstorm, but some years we get the cold nights along with bright blue-sky days: Indian Summer.

My little shady nook is under a fruitless mulberry tree. Soon, that tree will turn yellow, but the leaves won't drop one-by-one. They'll hang on until one night the temperature will drop just enough, and then all the leaves let loose at once. If that night happens to be still, like last year, the carpet it lays down is a two-dimensional representation of the branches above. Then it's time to clean out beneath the chicken coop and start building the compost pile.

A Green "Room" for the Picnic Table

Nice, quiet day today. I got out for a walk with Boris, our pound hound, this morning. We checked out the new strip mall under construction below us, and where they've torn up our street for the gas lines being replaced. A few days ago, when they were working closer to our house, and it was so cold, they came to the door to tell me that they were going to turn off our gas but attach a little pony bottle to the meter that would be just enough to keep our pilot lights lit, but not enough for the furnace. I told him even that wouldn't be necessary, because the only pilot light is the one for the on-demand water heater and I can turn that on and off manually. The gas guy couldn't believe that we didn't have a furnace in the house, and had never seen a water heater that didn't have a tank. He couldn't believe our bill is only $25 a month either :-)

The rest of the afternoon, I just puttered around in the yard. I pruned a Virginia Creeper vine that drapes over our fence. I moved a lilac and trimmed out a couple of dead branches on another. I'm making a lilac hedge around three sides of an old picnic table. That table has an interesting story. We got it when a neighbor moved to Oregon. He'd lived and had a business here in Carson City since the 1930's, and also had some property up on the east shore of Lake Tahoe. A long time ago, a couple of days after a big rain storm with lots of wind, he found the table washed up on his beach. The thing is huge - the legs are 6" X 6" posts, the tabletop and attached benches are 4" X 12" planks. It looks like something from a Forest Service campground, but there aren't any on that side of the lake. He figured some campers across the lake moved the table down near the water, and then it washed away during the storm and took a couple of days to float the 12 miles across the lake.

The fence for the vegetable garden is on the fourth side of the table. I seeded some sunflowers and morning glories along that stretch, protected that area from the birds with some wire, and then laid a soaker hose down all the way around. Of course, the chickens were right there underfoot the whole time, clucking and murmuring about, just in case I turned up something interesting. Under the lilacs is one of their favorite places to hang out.

Spring Inspection Time

It's downright hot today. I had Aries put the shade up outside the big east-facing window this morning, so the living room is now a comfortably cool refuge. Then, he took off on a motorcycle ride with a buddy, so I did a little Spring inspection walk around the yard. The daffodils in the herb garden are fading (and will need to be deadheaded), but the first of the tulips and narcissus just opened up. The oregon grape is in bloom - a bright, cheery yellow.

The cellar is up to 50º, so later after it cools down outside, I'll have to get down there and start assessing what can still stay, what needs to be brought up to the refrigerator, what needs to be processed (frozen, dried, maybe canned), what needs to be on the menu this week, and what goes to the chickens. The two fig trees down there are starting to break dormancy. They'll need to be repotted and brought out to the sunshine, and then kept on the wagon to be moved in and out of the garage as the weather warrants. I know I need to get the Roots garden bed prepped, so I can get the seed potatoes stored from last year planted soon.

I've got a dead branch on the Italian prune tree, and it looks like another one on the seedling peach (a mature tree of unknown variety, so named because it just sprouted one year from under a woodpile - the seed probably buried there by a squirrel). The stresses from a drought winter last year and peach tree borer damages are showing up now, so I'll need to do some pruning. I've got one dead branch on a lilac, and I want to move a piece of another one over to fill in a hedge I'm making around a little picnic table. I think of my yard as the slowest form of artwork.

A little hawthorn tree doesn't look like it made it, but there's another sprout down by the vegetable garden that can be moved to take its place. The first strawberry blooms just opened, as did the pears. No asparagus yet - the chickens or rabbits have knocked down the fencing, so that needs to be redone - I hope they haven't destroyed the plants. The two artichoke plants survived the winter, but there's no sign of the rhubarb yet. It's Spring, today anyway, and there's work to be done.