In weather terms

Being outside in this unusual weather makes every day special.  There is never a dull day in paradise. Activities vary with the weather. When it is sunny and hot, there is haying, swimming and lots of weeding to do. When it is cold and rainy, there is mulching, green house work, planting and less watering of the garden. Either way, the weather and the time of year determines the types of projects around the garden. For the past two weeks a lot of things have been happening around the garden. The rows among the beds have almost all being redone. I decided to dig out the paths and put that soil with the old wood chips onto the beds and then spread the new wood chips.  This way, I saved myself from some extra weeding.

Mother's day projects and bee hive

These are the last few days before The Shires Marathon in Bennington, VT.  I feel ready and I am excited that I finally trained for it. I hope to finish it between 4 and 5 hours. In the past weeks, I have seen a bat during one of my runs and a broad-wing hawk carrying some prey (I think it was a frog) in the wetland near the road we live on the other day. 

This past weekend was really exciting, since Saturday was Green Up Day and Sunday was Mother's Day. Also, Saturday was the first outdoor farmers market of the season and we missed it because I decided to volunteer us for Green Up in Springfield. A small student group showed up to clean around the school.  We picked bicycle tires, diapers, bottles, cigarette butts, candy and food wrappers and even shows and clothes.  Later in the morning, we had a picnic.  I brought almond butter and apple cider jelly for sandwiches.  Some kids tried it and liked the combination. A student brought a huge fruit salad! Overall, it was nice to share time with the students outside of the classroom setting.

On Sunday, Lindo's parents came up to visit and help us around our house. The various projects included gardening and woodshed work. The boys took care of the woodshed by cleaning all the old bark and mulch that was and has been at the bottom of the wood pile for years.  They also organized and split more wood for kindling and stacked wood and logs from the yard.  It was a huge project and now the space looks neat and free of wood.

The girls set out to work on transplanting pansies from various locations around the garden to a permanent bed by the front of the house.  They are blooming and some even started out from seed, which is really exciting because I hope to always have pansies in spring.  Also, the strawberry bed by the rock wall got was weeded! The plants are growing very nicely and hope to see flowers on them soon.  The wild strawberry crop promises to be huge this year.  The plants are growing everywhere and when they are done producing I will just tilled them over in the beds and grow other crops there.

While in the yard, I noticed that phoebes are nesting underneath the alcove in our cabin. We hope this time they don't have any trouble raising their young.  Last year they attempted to nest 3 times in different places around our cabin with no luck. 

Lindo has started to build a Top Bar Hive design used in Kenya. The design is simple and the bees do all the work. 

Crazy for berries

What a summer? Last week was mild heat almost like fall and this week is so hot, humid and hazy. But the tomatoes, basil and peppers like it !

Berries !

We have blueberries, strawberries and red raspberries.

All of them require different treatments to yield a descent amount of fruit.

For example,

Strawberries need to be rotated in the garden, they need to be thinned out and every 3 years, you should get a new set of strawberries. Oh, and most importantly if you live in the woods like us, it pays off to protect them from chipmunks and squirrels. They would eat even the unripe ones with a tiny speck of red in them...

Also, keep in mind that all the berries prefer an acidic soil, so mulch heavy with pine needles in the spring or when you have access to pine needles.

Air circulation is another factor to keep plants happy. If the plants are too close together, then they are more susceptible to disease. Our strawberries got these black and red blotches on the leaves and I figured it was because they were too close together. Another reason to leave them plenty of space, is size of fruit ! The more space per plant, the more energy goes into the fruit for that particular plant.

Blueberries are easy to grow and maintain. There are two types low bush and high bush. We have high bush and they are about 5 + years old. You have to prune them in the spring. Leaving only the highest branches at a time. Mulch with pine needles and compost, they have very superficial roots, so keep the area around the plant weed free. Birds love the berries, but so far, we have a good harvest this year.

Raspberries are tricky. Depends on the variety, and if they are summer or fall bearing raspberries, then you trim them differently. We have both varieties and in October of last year, we were still eating raspberries. Trimming can happen in the fall or spring. In the spring, you will notice the canes, called primocanes, that grew last year and those are the ones that will give you fruit from summer bearing raspberries. Also, the fall bearing canes, will give you fruit in primocanes and floricanes (last years canes, that now bear flowers). For both, cut any dead canes and you can tell by the color of the canes and any suckers (which are small useless canes that sprout near the main canes). You want to use garden shears and cut as low to the ground as possible, so that the plant grows new canes that are stronger and bigger for next year's harvest for summer bearing plants or for this year's harvest in fall bearing plants. You want to keep the plants lined up in a row and trellis them too, otherwise, they will conquer your free garden space!

I trellis ours by putting a strong bar/stick on either end of the row of plants and run wire from either side of the row connecting it to the end sticks. One wire goes about 2 ft of ground and next wire goes 5 ft from ground, both are running parallel to the ground and then, attach the canes to the wires with twist off pieces of wire. These set up will help you support the plants when they are heavy with fruit.

They need air circulation to prevent leaves from dying and disease.

Freezing berries will be my recommendation to make smoothies in winter, pancake sauces or fruit leathers!