The Seen And The Unseen

Some times I have so many garden plans and then found that we had lots of unseen things that we had no idea what was going on in the yard and gardens.  Oh I had lost of plans this year, but so did others and it took some time to figure it all out.  I have not written on this blog in quite some time.  I was so disenchanted with my whole yard, on my acre, in the middle of the big woods, on the side of this mountain, that I just could not bring myself to post anything.

The beginning of Spring, I planted lots of things and they were all doing so well. I had 2 Tomato plants and one of them was a patio tomato and wanted to see how it would do in my raised garden. Planted to green peppers and one hot one to make some salsa.  We had some squash that came up on it's own, cucumbers, and cantaloupes, and my favorite Purple Beans and lettuce and spinach.  They were growing so good and I was so happy. I was going to be able to do some canning and freezing for the summer and the winter of this year.  Dreams of a full pantry were on my mind.

DEER

Then we had a kind of beautiful/disastrous problem in just one night.  No kidding it was beauty and nature and I do love that part, but it was also so devastating that happened in one single night. We are graced with many deer on this mountain and they are such beautiful and graceful creatures and I just love to see them,

but.....and a big BUT.....they ate all the gardens that you see above and left me with nothing. I planted things that they are said to not like and they ate all of them too. I almost wanted to cry.....seriously.

Our grocery bill has been higher because of this and it saddens me greatly that I could not go out and pick some beans and lettuce and garden vegetables for a fresh salad.  Oh, I did try and plant more seeds, but for some reason they did not want to come up at all.  Though it was the middle of July, but still nothing.

VOLES

We also had voles and I thought they were moles.  They eat different things and that is the difference that I was told. They eat bulbs, which I had bought and planted in my front garden last fall.  Only 2 of them came up.  Really, I had no idea what killed something like 50 or more bulbs.   We live in the woods and lots of trees and weeds and all kinds of things and flowers that we planted and they really did clean out the yard and gardens.

We were told to get some Vole no kill repellent and that would fix the problem.  HA!  We used 3 bags of that stuff and I still see some new holes. At first the holes that I saw I thought were made by snakes. Notice in front of this Rose Garden how there is no grass or clover or anything growing there.  We had seeded lots of Clover there for the bees to get to, but all the grubs ate that and of course the favorite food for the Voles is....grubs.

These are the main Bearded Irises's that I divided and put many up front along the road. They had eaten every single one of the bulbs in that garden.

We were on the war path during most of the summer, trying to get control of our yard and gardens.  Very sad to say that will take another year, maybe more.

GRUBS, BUGS, FLEAS AND MORE 

Then I remembered that we didn't put Fast Acting Pulverized/Powedered AgriLime down this year!  We had something stored in one of the Metal Trash cans that I use lots but couldn't remember what it was.  Oh and Next time I will put the bag in there to let me know what it is that is being stored in there.  Just before we put that and a heavy coverage of it down we have a major flea problem.  So we are still dealing with that, but not as bad outside now that we put the AGLime down.  It has been a hell of a year around my house and in my house. I mean one has to be creative to get things to grow and keep growing and not eaten or kill anything.  We spread the AGLime to kill the bugs, grubs and to keep the Voles out.

FENCING

The Deer problem is more of a community effort as the neighbor that we have wasn't aware that feeding the many birds around here also feeds the Deer.  There is one Momma deer and she has twins this year.  Oh they still had their spots and that is unusual this late in the summer too.  I am not sure what is going on this year with all this.  I do know that we had a very warm and wet Winter and Spring this year, so far.  I am not sure what this Fall will bring though.  People do not get it when I tell them that every year around here is a new planting schedule and seasons.  No two are alike that I have found out by living and working in the yard and gardens since 2002.

Here is a new project to keep the Deer out of the Vegetable Gardens. It has taken us a while to get it all together because of all the setbacks that we have, but it is 90% finished. Though Lowes had many of the things that we thought that we needed some of the supplies weren't exactly the right sizes,  So we had to use our thinking caps and came up with something that would work. We also had to hire someone to do the work because I had hurt my hand badly and could not hold anything.

I will be hanging something light on the top of the fence to scare the deer and other animals away and make it pretty. During Christmas I will hang Christmas balls and during Easter I will hang some of those colorful plastic eggs on it.  They will match the colors of the raised garden inside the fence.

I do hope that my plans work out for next year because I am a whole lot more knowledgeable.  

THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN

It was a really quick SEEN and the UNSEEN adventure this past year.  When putting some of that repellent in one of the holes one of the voles ran out. My cat, Frederick, caught it and then let it go. They have huge claws.  I think it got him and he had to let it go.  That thing was the size of a fat hamster.  It dug back down into the ground in less than 20 seconds!  My husband and I looked at the surprise on Frederick's face.  Frederick looked at us too.  We were all very surprised at how fast that creature went underground.  

What else will be SEEN AND UNSEEN in my yard and gardens the rest of the year and how well this fence does?

Such Is Nature Around My Gardens

I have not written in a while here on any of my blogs.  I have been busy with many other things and switching computers because somebody decided to jump on my keyboard for my desktop and broke it Sidney is a big cat.

I can't share much with you about my gardens because it has been terribly dry this whole Summer and everything up and died.  That and the tamed deer that I named Maverick came around and ate anything that he could find.  Most deer will not touch anything that is even the slightest bit prickly, like squash vine.  That didn't both him though and he ate all the leave off my plants.  I had a good number of them growing because we get those vine borers and thought the more the better.  Not when Maverick came around.  I got one squash from all 9 plants.  He even liked my roses.

I didn't get any cucumbers and the beans didn't do all that well this year either.  I did get a gallon sized bag of them to freeze, but that didn't last long.  I love beans and put them in lots of dishes or we eat them as a side dish.  I like to eat them cooked up in butter...all by themselves and as a meal instead of a side dish.  How about you?

 

Our lettuce and spinach didn't last all that long either because it got hot too fast and rained so much early summer. The rain drowned a good many of our seeds that we planted.  It was just a not a good year to grow anything.  

Even the farmers that grow corn every year had a late start planting their crops.  First it was cool and too wet at planting time and then it all of a sudden got hot and dry and has stayed that way for the whole Summer and is still that way here in mid-September.  All I can do is dream for next year and hope that it will be better for planting vegetables and maybe some fruit next year.  

Here on the west side of our mountain you cannot ever predict what the weather will be from one year to the next.  It is not like in the valley where you get abundant sunshine and rain and pretty much the same every year.  I also live in a forest and try as I might it is hard to plant the right vegetables at the right time and then if I do get that then we have the onslaught of insects and now the deer.  My deer chasers don't work on Maverick.  He puts his nose right in them and gives them a good smell.  Wild deer won't come near them.

Well that is all I can say about our gardens for this year.  Hoping next year is better.

It's Weed Season On Misty Acre

Many folks have three or four seasons in the year.  Some like Florida have only two.  I have five, if you want to call them that.

We have Summer, Fall, Winter, Early Spring, Weed Season and Summer.  Weed season lasts about a month.  One year we filled three large contractor's trash bags full of weeds.  That was just from the gardens and not the lawn.  It was crazy, hard and tiring.  It is all uphill and you use the muscles in the back of your legs.  It makes you wonder how your leg muscles can hurt so much after doing that.  Just sit down for an hour and then get up and try doing that gain.  I have heard that even the fittest people have problems with this.  Though they might not for as long as those of us that have a more sedentery style of life.  

Some weeds are pretty while some take over anything they can grow on.  I have many different types of those and then this year we have yet another kind of weed.  Though it is pretty and has very petite flowers on it, it has take over most of the yard and down into the woods.  I have never seen this weed before.  I surmise that some bird brought it into the yard as it spreads seeds from far and wide around these parts.  I am not sure I want to get rid of it, and I don't use chemicals anymore.  It is pretty.  I don't know how long it will be here before dying down.



We have another one that we have that is a very persistent weed.  It has taken years of pulling to gain some kind of control of it.  It gets really tiny white flowers on it and the root system is almost non existent.  I asked around and someone finally told me that this plant is a Galium aparine. The many names for this plant are: cleavers, clivers, goosegrass, catchweed, stickyweed, robin-run-the-hedge, sticky willy, sticky willow, sticky geordies, velcro weed, and grip grass. It is a herbaceous annual plant of the family Rubiaceae.  There are many herbal uses for this plant but I still call it a weed.  It sticks to everything.  Native people and those who use natural forms of medicines use this to treat burns and insect bit and also uuse it as a strainer for milk.  

Then we have this plant that seems to grow in the dark like under the crawlspace and in the wooded areas and right out in the sun.  I have no idea what it is.  I thought it to be some kind of mushroom thing, but when I touched it the plant was more woody that mushroomy.  If you know what it is please tell me.

We also have, I think it is, Monkshead.  I am not totally sure if that is what it is called but it also likes to grow everywhere and it is very pretty.

Meanwhile We have already gotten our raised gardens prepped and planted and covered and trellised.  This year I have planted Lettuce (Bibb and Buttercrunch), Spinach, Three colors of Bush Beans (Purple, Yellow and Green), Summer Squash, Broccoli and Cauliflower, Patio Corn and Cucumbers.  A few beans have come up, some Cucumbers and the Lettuce and Spinach.  We are still waiting for the rest.  It is still early though and we have had some cool, wet days.  I am not sure about the corn though becasue it doesn't like the cooler temps but I had tried them in pots on the patio last year and they didn't do so well.  I planted them straight in the ground this year.

These are my gardens and how they are progressing.  

How does your garden grow?

May 24 2015 My Garden Journal-Where It All Began

Welcome to Our Humble Garden

Here I Am

Have you ever wondered who I am and what I look like?  I bet some of you have and yesterday I finally got my husband to get a picture of me working in my gardens for you.  So Here I Am!

Just about every weekend and sometimes during the week I am weeding or planting something or other.  I am always in my gardens.  This was the last of the big gardens that we weeded and raked yesterday.  More pictures to come!

Finally we got someone out here to cut the grass.  Now you can see all of my gardens without having to see the sea of grass in front of you.  It did look nice though.  I love to have the grass mowed and the beauty of the raised gardens visible.  It is so nice to be able to sit on the front porch and see all the things that we have made with our own hands.  It has taken many years and a whole lot of work to get it to the point that it is now.  

Here is what we started out within 2001

We took out the steps and put a ramp there instead.  Then we moved the ramp to the outside of the deck so that burglars could not just walk up the the house and come into our window.

Most of the vegetation in the front was thorny type bushes and we tool them out along with much poison ivy that I am really allergic to.  

In about 2005, after most of the inside of the house was remodeled, we were able to start working on the outside.  We, at one time, thought that it would be a good idea to move the parking where we have out raised gardens now.  Boy was the a silly idea!  At the time we only had a gravel driveway.  When it snowed or froze and we were left with an icy driveway, you can imagine the difficulty walking down it with a load of groceries.  So we moved it back to the way it was.

Here is the first attempt at raised gardens.  We had no idea that the roots of the trees would grow up through the dirt and take all the nutrients from anything that we planted.  My goodness it was like something out of the Twilight Zone when we took the planters apart to build them better and seeing all those roots sticking straight up out of the forest floor and into the garden beds.

So we got some brains and when we put them together again we lined the beds with black plastic and they started to grow better.  We got lots of vegetables the first year that we had done this back in 2006.  The next few years the weather was not so cooperating and we didn't get any good crops for our efforts for about 4 years later.  We tried everything and I vowed that I would not plant anymore.....but farming (a small farm that is) is somehow in my blood.  So I planted every year.  Things and bugs and animals would eat my hard work and so I learned what to do...or at least I thought that I learned.  I began to see different insects that were not supposed to be in this area.  The deer were relentless and ate everything.  I mean everything, even the plants that they are not supposed to like. 

The next year we had lots of this growing around and on everything.  I think it is a variation on the Crown vetch weed.  We pulled and we pulled and we pulled some more and it was just like a fire as it spread and grew over and on and up everything that it could get too.  The first year we just pulled and threw the weeds down into the ravine.  Bad move on our part because the next year it had taken over the whole yard, and started growing up the walls of our house.  That was when we got the bright idea to pull it and put it in black trash bags and let the trash man take it from here.  It took a total of 3 years for us weeding that and other stuff before we actually got a handle on in. 

So we have learned much on growing our own food here in these woods and on what my parent's called this place when my first daughter was born, Misty Acre.  My daughter's name is Missy, but for some reason my parent's named it Misty instead.  I like to think of it as Misty Acre too because when we have fog or a haze it sure does look magical and misty for sure. We have one acre.  Each lot in this development is approximately one acre.  We can only want to use the top part of our acre because it is the only part that get enough sun to plant anything.  We did try to plant some lilies but the deer grazed them down before they even got a chance to grow.

Here are some of the things that we have grown over the last few years.

Now we have solved the problem with the deer and this is the simple and inexpensive solution to that problem.  The deer do not like the light that it gives off.  They do not like the motion that it does in the breeze and this is night or day.  They also do not like the sound that it gives and so this is a very easy solution to keeping the deer away from plants like vegetables, Hostas or anything they like, Including marigolds which they are said not to like.  I know this because I planted a whole bunch of marigolds one year to keep the deer away...and they ate those too!

Here is another one of my children's windmills that are protecting my lettuce and spinach.  I have one of these windmills in ever raised garden and in the main Iris garden and in the lower garden in front of the White Pine Trees.

This is what we have been doing year after year after year on our yard.  It has taken a long time but the effort has brought much fruit.  Both my husband and I have toiled in the soil for years and finally are able to take pride in our accomplishment and hard work.  We can now enjoy our labors.  The hardest part is behind us and we can now manage to keep up with the weeding, the seeding, the heaving of what it takes to take something and make it into something of a thing of beauty.  

My Husband Raking Grass and Duke Supervising him. May 23, 2015

This is Me doing what I do most of the time in my garden...Weeding!

The farthest garden with Astilbes, Hostas and various other plants.
A Holly bush is growing in there too. When we cleaned it out
we found that the deer has snacked on the Hostas there.
We don't have any deer chasers, but we are going to be getting some! 

The largest of the gardens and it took us 4 hours to clean it up yesterday
There is a large Holly Bush and I am planting different colors of
Bearded Irises and some other specimen plants there..
May 23, 2015

One of the Climbing Roses that we have.
This one is the earliest and fullest one.

Cucumbers!

Grass cut and these are the three gardens you can see them all at once in the back-side yard.
All the way in the back are some Wine Berry (natural and invasive) and I found some
Forsythia and am trying to get them started back there as well.
May 23, 2015

This is a new garden that we just made in April 2015.
There will be new plants coming in August to plant there for next year.

Tomatoes, Yellow, Roma and Beef Steak

Peppers; Yellow, Green and Hot

Purple Bush Beans!  They only took about 5 days to sprout up!
Behind those are my Knock Out Roses and they are
growing super and about to flower in about a week.

Lettuce and Spinach

Zucchini!  I planted this because a neighbor who does not have the sun that I have wanted it.
I also like this in sups and stews in the winter.  It is great added to Beef Stew.

Yellow Straight neck Squash.  I got something that you mix with water and water
the plants that kill the Squash Bug.  I read on the bottle and you can use it for just about anything.
I did and everything is growing lots better.

This is the combination that I used and my gardens are doing so well.  I am amazed!
They are both natural pesticides.
The bag is Diamataceous Earth, that is food grade.
The other is Thuricide and it is natural too.

I hope that you have enjoyed the tour of my gardens and do hope that you get a chance to read all my other garden post and all my other blogs as well.

Until next time!!!

Garden Journal Entry May 15 2015

It has been a while since I have posted about my gardening around here.  It is because I was anticipating on re-purposing a large 33 gallon trashcan that we re-purposed for a rain barrel and it got a split in it and could no longer hold the water that came from the roof.  I am a recycler of things around my house, if I can do it I will, other than that I will add it to my recycled items for my husband to take to the recycling center in town.

Before I tell you how I re-purposed and how I made it I want to show you all my gardens.  There are lots of new developments and plants and ideas that I got, implemented and observed concerning the things that I have done so far.

The first thing that I was wanting to do for a while was make a new name sign for my small address garden.  It has been a few years that I have really need to get sown and find another board, trace a heart on it and cut it out.  The old sign feel apart in my hands when I picked it up.  I did have it hanging on some hooks under the bar, but every time the wind would pick up the sign would fall off.  I finally just laid it on the ground until I could find the time and the wood to make a new one.  It was toast as we say around her for things that un-usable anymore.  No re-purposing for that one.  Here is a picture of the new sign and one of the old one.  I screwed the new one on the bar this time and it surprised me that it looks better than hanging.

BEFORE

AFTER

I went to my local farm supply store, Boltz Hardware, Garden Center and General Store and asked them about how every year that I have tried to grow squash I get a flower on it and then the next day the plant is dead.  I have asked the same question of the Extension Office when they were at the last 4-H club County Fair and they did not even know.  Isn't that strange?  I thought that it was.  Anyway he told me that it was a Squash Bug that will come out of the ground...any soil.  The larvae will burrough it's way up the stem and eat it as it goes along.  That is why it is so sudden.  He gave me something that will kill that bug and a lot more bugs along with it.  I also got me a bag of Diatomaceous Earth to sprinkle on my roses and any other vegetables and flowers that all the new caterpillars will devour in a single night.

HERE IS THE STUFF THAT I USED TO POUR AROUND THE PLANT

 AND ALSO THE BAG OF DE.  

It is hard for me to pronounce the full name correctly so I just say DE.

I used the liquid on all of my plants, not just the squash.  I almost used the whole bottle.  I don't think that store person understood that I have a large assortment of gardens.  Wow is all I can say after I used this stuff on my plants.





I have a holly bush, really small and had not grown at all in the last four years that we planted it in one of our gardens.  After I put this stuff on it and around it, It actually has new growth on it.  That was about in a week's time and not months or years!  I am very happy about that as I think the Holly is too.

We have a creep crawly that loves to eat roots and I dropped a drop of this stuff on it and it killed it instantly.  Since we live in the woods we have all kinds of things that live under the ground that will eat and steal roots, bulbs and the like.  It sure did the trick with this plant!

We have these gardens growing like weeds!  Hahaha!  That is what I called the new one that we put in next to the driveway.  I had to divide and move some Daffodils to a new place and then I had orders many Fall blooming bulbs from Brecks Bulbs another favorite place of mine and spending lots of money there.

HERE IS THAT GARDEN

VEGETABLES

I purchased more tomatoes, Peppers and Squash and Zuccini and they are doing really good after I also put that liquid bug, creep crawly stuff on them after planting them.  I am excited that I have flower buds on some of my Yellow Tomatoes today.  I am on my way to really having a garden that will produce for me.  It is good to know that I fixed the bug problem that I never realized that I had.  Thank Goodness for that!

DEER CHASERS

This is one of the many Deer Deterrent that I use.  It is very inexpensive and has worked for 2 years now and my Hostas are really growing now.  You can purchase these at any store that has children's toys and it will be in the toy section.  I have a variety of colors of them and have them in various gardens.  They are the pinwheels and I get the plastic one show here.  The wind catches them and spins it around, night and day and the metallic of the plastic shines bright all over the place.  The deer and other critters do not like the noise, the sound and the sparkles.  Good for me and bad for those who like to dine on my flowers.  Win-Win all around!