They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
The quest for the perfect variety of pickling cucumber for our microclimate continues. This one (Wisconsin SMR 58, from St. Clare Seeds) doesn't seem to enjoy the heat very much. It has started to become quite wilted. Still producing a few small cucumbers though, but nothing like the volume we had hoped for. By contrast,… Continue reading Cucumber, Hubbard and Crabapple
With the summer drought well under way, the grass has pretty much gone dormant for the season. But you know what hasn't? The weeds! (Although borage is a bit too useful and pretty of a plant to be called a weed in an unqualified sense). A quick trip into the food forest area to pull… Continue reading Thank God for Weeds?
We are actually a couple of weeks behind on these. Comes of being too busy. Photography brought to you by Ellie-Belle! We tried something new this time. Instead of planting the seeds in dry potting soil and then watering them in, we started by soaking the potting soil in water, before putting it in the… Continue reading More Brassica Starts
The pasture looked like it was pretty much done for the summer. Then, out of nowhere, we got a rain storm on the 16th, and got a couple of tenths of an inch of rain. This may have given the pasture a new lease on life. We'll see if this bulks up the north pasture… Continue reading Separating the Young Stock
Not everything can be woodworking around here. There are too many other things that need to be done. For instance the raspberries are coming on fast, And when we checked on the blackberries, some of them were ripening. They always ripen from the end of the branch first. In every cluster the most distal berry… Continue reading Garden and Orchard Update.
Which means we will be drowning in blackberries for the next month or so. The first pick is always the best quality. The thornless blackberries in the old orchard are quite large, especially compared to the himalayan blackberries that grow wild, though to my mind the flavor is not quite so fine and they definitely… Continue reading Blackberries are on
Now that the spring weeding is complete, we can finally get started with the summer weeding. I have switched out my workout schedule so I am only training Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. On Wednesdays and Fridays I am running wood chips or pulling weeds. This section along the fence between the garden and the… Continue reading More Weeding, More Garlic.
Coming back from Captain's Career Course was disheartening, because I had been absent from the garden for more than two weeks. I wasn't able to get immediately back to it either, because of work, and more National Guarding. However, in the last week, with help from the two older girls, we have been making some… Continue reading Weeding and Garlic Harvest
This really should have been done a month ago, back when the squashes and maters went in the ground. But it didn't. Some years are like that. It took until June Something-or-other even to get Bed 2 weeded this year. Once the weeds were pulled out then we had to mound it up, throwing the… Continue reading Trellising.
This is the "sacrificial paddock" from last winter. I think we can safely say that experiment was a failure. The areas that were re-seeded and buried under hay are dry and dusty, with exposed dirt rather than green grass. This is going to require some serious rehab. The reason I was down here in the… Continue reading Miscellaneous.
Little Farm in the Big City 