Category Archives: gardening

2023, animals, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, Weather

Cooler Weather

54 Comments

The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

The header photo are some of the wildflowers on the CRP ground. It’s looking good. 

I’m really liking this week of cooler weather. Especially as I plan to spend the next week installing a ceiling in the shop and working 15 feet in the air of a tin building.

We’re at 1375 growing degree units, about 265 GDU above normal. On Monday night, July 3, we got 3/4 of an inch of rain. It was a nice gentle rain. It soaked in fast and Tuesday afternoon, when Kelly and I took our gator date drive around the fields, the surface was already dry. It hasn’t really improved anything yet; grass is still pretty brown, the corn is uneven, (although the leaves have opened up, simply because it’s not so hot), but the beans haven’t filled in yet nor grown much. And we’re gonna need more rain than that to keep it going. But it sure was helpful and by Friday there was some more seeds almost sprouting.

The dang deer eating what is there doesn’t help . 

Cutting some grass Wednesday night, it sure did stir up a lot of dust.

Work on the machine shed continues. Every week another trip to Menards where I save big money while spending more. More screws, caulk, foam sealant, metal cutting blades, more screws, on and on it goes.  I rented a 20-foot scissor lift and picked that up on Friday. I’ve got it until next Friday. I’ve got two of the three windows installed.

 I’ve begun removing some of the old Electrical stuff. Keeping a few outlets but taking down a lot of them and will be replacing a lot of lights.

An order of lumber and pole barn steel was delivered, steel for the ceiling, but not the walls yet, and some steel to close off one of the rafters to keep the birds out of the newly remodeled shop end. The lumber is to frame the ceiling and line the walls after insulation. 

I moved our five guineas to a bigger pen. One of them is certainly going to be a troublemaker. At least once a day, if not twice a day, he flies up over their 5-foot fence. They’re a month old, I didn’t expect them to be flying quite so well, yet. The other day he went over two 5-foot fences and was perched on top of a 7-foot screen door on the baby chicken side. If he decides to hop down and venture out into the real world, I can’t protect him anymore. He’s only pigeon sized. Not big enough to defend himself yet. 

I finally took down the 5’ fence. Four of the five guineas were on the other side anyway. You may as well take the whole side, why don’t you. Pretty soon I may as well let the little chickens and little guineas run together. 

I spent a few hours on Monday hiding in the AC of the tractor and using the grapple to pick up the tree trimmings and some other stuff. It was pretty fun.

My tractor snack lately has been life savers. Individually wrapped, so at least they don’t all melt and stick together in one big glob.

WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES? WHO DO YOU KNOW WITH ‘BEDROOM EYES’?

2023, Food, gardening, Nature, pets

Tomato Time!

45 Comments

My bales are doing quite well this summer.  I’m managing to keep them watered and the added calcium seems to be helping the romas keep their beautiful shape.  We planted watermelon plants on one bale and as expected they are going crazy.  Guinevere is enjoying hiding beneath all the tendrils that have exploded all over the place.

As well as they are doing I didn’t expect to be eating my first cherry tomato on July 3.  I knew that there were a couple starting to turn but was surprised to find THREE ready for picking yesterday afternoon.  The photo above is not the tomatoes I picked.  After a quick squirsch of the hose, they went straight into my mouth, one after the other.  All three were wonderfully sweet and juicy – no way was I waiting to go inside and get the camera. 

I know this is early for tomatoes but whatever goddess of the garden is looking out for me right now, I’m thankful!  Better start pulling out my favorite tomato recipes.

Tell me about your favorite summer produce!

2023, gardening, home, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Scientific Method II: Weeds And Pests

34 Comments

Our gardening goal this past week was to weed the veggie gardens and flower beds. After today’s carpal tunnel surgery, Husband will be somewhat out of commission for outdoor work.

Many people we know use the good old hoe to weed. That system has never really worked for us, as the weeds grow back so fast, so we are down on the ground puller-uppers and digger-outers. It is more labor intensive, but works much better. We also put down wet newspapers between the veggie rows and cover them with top soil. That method keeps weeds down all summer, and the newspaper disintegrates and can be tilled into the soil and improves the soil texture. It is a lot of work, though.

We don’t use herbicides at all, and only spray a fungicide called Daconil on tomatoes, roses, peas, peonies, and monarda to prevent powdery mildew and black spot. We use bacillus thuringiensis, an organic pesticide for cabbage worms. When the flea beetles attack the brassica veggies I will use Sevin, but most other insects are free to live in the garden unharmed. Bunnies just are kept out with fences. Our next door neighbor has threatened to get his shotgun and dispatch the rabbits in his yard. I would never go that far. We have never had problems with moles or voles.

Flea beetles are horrible, with hundreds of the tiny creatures showing up overnight devouring every thing in the cabbage family they can find. The flea beetles are often used as an organic solution to an invasive plant around here called leafy spurge. It is poisonous to cattle. People somehow catch a bunch of flea beetles and take them out to patches of spurge, and the flea beetles, who have a great love of spurge, eat it up. I think that is really cool! I just wish they would stay in the pastures and not come to town.

Would you consider yourself a scientific gardener? What are your preferred methods for weed and pest control? What are the worst insects, pests, and weeds you have encountered?

2023, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Microclimate

24 Comments

It has been a long struggle adjusting to gardening in the cold and dry climates in Winnipeg and western North Dakota. We managed to find the plants that worked the best for the soil and the weather, and just persevered. The discovery of Morden roses, really cold hardy and beautiful roses from the Morden, Manitoba Agricultural Experiment Station has allowed us to have a beautiful yard of very low maintenance roses.

I am inordinately proud of our backyard for defying the odds and allowing us to grow things like hazelnut bushes, rhododendrons, ligularia, bleeding hearts, and ostrich ferns. There are very few trees on the western Plains. I believe that North Dakota has the fewest trees of any US state. It is windy. Our climate is semi-arid. The people who owned our house before us did extensive landscaping that made for an unexpected microclimate in the backyard.

We have a cool, moist, and shady backyard because of one Amur maple tree, a large and unruly lilac bush that goes along the entire back yard on the west, and the wooden privacy fences on the north and west sides of the property. That fence, with the lilacs, keeps much of the wind out. Here is our fern bed under the maple tree.

Plants like ferns, ligularia, rhododendrons, and bleeding hearts take a lot of babying and water, but if you are persistent, they will establish themselves. We also planted grapes to grow on the deck to keep the deck and the west side of the house shady. You can see in the lower right hand corner of the photo a small Red Hazel, which we planted not knowing it only can winter over in Zone 5. We are Zone 4 on a good, day, and usually Zone 3. The hazel is small, but we have had it for 30 years.

It is amazing what luck, water, and perseverance can accomplish. Our yard is relatively small, but it is a joy to nurture.

What microclimates are you familiar with? What joys do you derive from gardening?

2023, books, Business, Fantasy, gardening

Re-Retirement

24 Comments

Yesterday was my last “real” day of work.  I probably have a handful of hours to put in on final accounting but from my perspective, I am no RE-retired.

I had only agreed to come out of retirement because the programs were our local warehouse programs – a little like the old supermarket sweep programs.  You get a big cart on wheels and a minute to run through our warehouse, all the while flinging stuff into the cart.   These are great programs as they usually target folks who might not otherwise have the opportunity to qualify for an incentive program.  The winners are all (well, just about all) extremely grateful to win these trips, even though it usually only involves one night at a Minneapolis hotel and you can’t bring your spouse/SO.  We even take them straight from the warehouse to the airport!  But they still seem to love it. 

The photo above is the decorations for the festivities.  Lots of beverages and snacks including a dilly bar car and a catered box lunch.  In addition to the fun of the run, we also had a 360° photo experience in which you stand on a platform (hopefully with a tiara and bubble machine or some such accoutrements) and the camera circles around you.  Then you can get the video emailed to you (or airdropped).  A hoot.

I have a few things on my to-do list for the few days, but mostly I think I’m going to laze around and read and work in my garden.

If you won a prize like this, what would you prefer — a warehouse, a supermarket, a bookstore?

2023, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

The Air Turned Blue

54 Comments

Saturday was supposed to be a day of house cleaning and weeding, a less vigorous Saturday than the previous weekend when we exhausted ourselves with garden work.

The day started off calmly enough. We went to church to check on the garden and plant a couple of bedding plants a parishioner had left for us. We drove back home, and I noticed that there was water gushing out of the hose in the front yard. I knew that neither of us had turned on the faucet that morning, and Husband said he must have forgot to turn off the water the night before when he washed his hands. The end of the hose was right by the egress window in the smallest basement bedroom. The water had been running for 12 hours.

We have struggled with water filling up the egress window well during heavy rains, especially when the down spouts are plugged. We have replaced drywall below the window in that bedroom twice, and removed some of the carpet right below the window after it flooded. We solved the problem with the down spouts by building up dirt around the window well so water from the down spouts flowed away from the window. Husband ran downstairs and came right back up and said there was water everywhere.

There was about an inch of water on the bedroom floor, and it had spread under the walls into the furnace room and the larger adjacent bedroom. The carpet in the hallway was also soaked. We got the wet vac and started moving things out of the bedroom. We pulled up the remaining carpet in the small bedroom and removed the pad. After 90 minutes of using the wet vac the pad was still sopping wet. It is now in pieces in the garage. We were too exhausted to pull up the wet carpet in the other bedroom and hallway. We are waiting for a water damage company to send a crew out later today and they can remove that carpet and pad. Husband feels awful about this.

Our plan for next winter was to paint the basement and put in new carpet. The basement looks dreadful now. I haven’t cussed like I did Saturday for a really long time. My mother would have said that the air turned blue had she heard me. I don’t know the origin of that phrase, but it was pretty blue around here.

What are some of your favorite phrases and euphemisms? Have you ever had water damage?

I

2023, Family, Fantasy, gardening, home, The Future, Uncategorized

Best Buyers

27 Comments

I was walking in our back yard the other day and I started thinking about all the things I want to tell the next people who buy our home about our plants and shrubs.

We have lived here since 1988 and have landscaped and put in all sorts of plants and shrubs that we care deeply about. I want whoever buys our home to know how to care for the plants in ways that work. I am imagining, of course, that they will keep all the plants we have and just add more.

Husband and I like to imagine that the ideal people to buy our home will be a retired couple, preferably a farm couple who like to garden and can, and who want enough bedrooms for family to visit. Nothing too fancy, but with a nice garden and not too much lawn to mow. We won’t be putting our house on the market for a couple of years yet, and we have lots to do yet to refurbish the interior. I hope whoever moves in after us will be as happy as we have been here.

What sort of people would you want to live in your home after you? What would they need to know about your house to be successful there.

2023, animals, gardening, home, Mysteries, Nature

Floral Vandalism

41 Comments

Went out on Saturday morning and discovered that two of my iris’ are gone!   Not eaten by some little critter, but gone – as in pulled up and removed.  I water these things every day so I know it happened between 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon and 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.

One was a brand new Red Raptor (the deepest reddish purple you can get without it actually being black) and a lovely shade of orange call Savanna Sunset, which I planted last year.  Both of these are colors that are outside the iris norm and that I really loved. 

It was quite disheartening and I feel like I’ve joined the ranks for crime victims in the Twin Cities.  Obviously this isn’t on the level of car theft or having your house broken into, but it still makes me a little sad. At least both of them were just past their bloom glory for the season.

Give me some songs or book titles to cheer me up!

2023, gardening, Uncategorized

Trust

19 Comments

Wednesday I was at work sitting at my computer on a Teams meeting (it is like Zoom) when a call came up on my work phone. I could see from the caller ID it was from a 60+ year old friend of ours who lives with her very elderly mother. Her mother has declined in health significantly but expects our friend to maintain a huge yard and vegetable garden without the benefit of ever teaching her how to garden. She has never phoned me at work before, and I was worried something calamitous had happened to her mother.

It was very hot here Wednesday. Our friend had a simple question. Could she water the vegetable garden with the oscillating sprinkler? We had steered her away from sprinklers and encouraged her to get soaker hoses to avoid the fungus and waste of water that comes from aerial sprinklers. This she has done, but her garden is so large she was afraid parts would suffer with the slow pace of soaker hoses. I told her of course, use the sprinkler, but not on the tomatoes or the peas, as they are so prone to fungus and mildew. I get calls from her like this all the time.

Our friend trusts us implicitly regarding her garden, even when our advice is contrary to the somewhat goofy ways her mother has gardened in the past. I guess what we advise makes sense, because the questions keep coming. Sometimes I am amazed how absurd my life is.

What can people trust you to do or help them with? Who do you trust implicitly?

2023, animals, Family, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized

On and On It Goes

58 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Another week of life being relentless… I’m tired and I can’t keep two coherent thoughts together so this week’s blog will be basic highlights and a bunch of photos.

*I did finish planting corn. Except for about 2 acres that are wet. But I’ll get to them soon.

*Working on planting soybeans. Hoping to finish on Saturday.

*The college show opened on Wednesday and the paint was dry and it’s a good show. The set isn’t my best, but it works.

*We’ve had 4 sandhill cranes hanging around.

*The lilacs are looking – and smelling – so good!

*Every morning, I let Humphry out, and Bailey comes in to get a morning greeting and some attention for a minute. Then she’s happy to go back out.

*For the first time ever, I kinda got tired of music in the tractors. I listened to podcasts: Moth Radio hour, The New Yorker Radio Hour, Radiolab, and my frequent standby: Light Talk. (Imagine the Car Talk guys, doing a show about lighting).

*Kelly and I picked up some very large limestone rocks using an old thing called a ‘Slip Scraper’ or ‘Buck Scraper’. Clyde, you ever use one of these? This has been behind the shed for years. It’s missing some handles, but we made it work carrying rocks.

*The coop applied fertilizer for soybeans.

*Next week is all about lighting the next show in my schedule.

*My last day at the college for this academic year is May 31. I probably won’t have all my work done; I may have to stop in the next week just to finish what I don’t get done this week.

But then, THEN, the pace will slow down and I can start working on my new shed space.

Have a safe and peaceful Memorial Day weekend!

Here are photos:

Planting Corn
Tracks in the Dirt
Tractor Buddy
View
View
View
Minnesota Rock
Kelly with Rocks
Buck Scraper
Loaded Buck Scraper
Goofball
Coop Spreader
Loading Seed
Another Tractor Buddy
Seed Camera View

Planting corn, the tracks in the dirt, my tractor buddies one day, my view from the tractor front and back, a rock shaped like Minnesota (that was really heavy!), Kelly and her second load of rocks, the “buck scraper”, A goofball, the coop’s fertilizer spreader, loading soybean seed from the trailer, Another tractor buddy, and the camera’s showing the seed in the drill.

Where and what was the best burger you ever had?

(The first time I had a ‘blue Burger’ ((blue cheese on a burger)) was at a bowling alley and it was FANTASTIC and none have compared to that one.)