400 posting! Cold Frames Finally Planted

Folks,
Back to gardening finally! We both have been so busy and our bodies are getting older, it takes much more energy than it used to to work in the yard.

I raked the front drive way of leaves yesterday and picked up a recycled gas lawn mower and mowed in the back yard leaves. The battery operated mower I posted about in August of 2009 has died. A new battery would cost about $150 to replace, none of the reviews on replacing batteries were good, so I got a beautiful little recycled gas mower on Craigslist for $65 and it starts on the first pull. Today I went up on the roof and swept of an enormous amount of leaves onto the main deck. So most of the leaves here are under control!

On to the cold frames. I tilled up three spots, two for cold frames the other for onions and garlic. We will be covering the onions and garlic with wire so when we let out our chickens they will not be able to get into that bed. This was my first time using garlic we grew, as we had a great year for garlic in 2012!

 Meg did all the raking of the hills and spread organic fertilizer. She planted 2 kinds of kale, 2 kinds of salad mixed greens, 2 kinds of spinach and carrots. Covered it all with wheat straw to help retain the moisture after planting. We did not make a big deal about fancy seeds this year, especially carrots.

 Here is the new chicken yard. The chickens and small chicken house will be here by the end of this new week. That wood box in there is sand. I read that sand makes a good floor in a chicken house, it is very handy. Meg points out that compost able bedding is great in the garden...

Manny really helped a lot. He just wanted to know why we closed up the cold frames so he could not get inside them?

Here the cold frames are just before dark. It reached the mid 50s here today and most of the wildlife was hunkering down. I did manage to rescue a Red Eft, Notophthalmus viridescens
while rototilling. You know I'm a handyman by trade,  but gas powered devises are not my speciality at all. The tiller would not start, I thought OK bad gas. Turned the tiller upside down over a bucket and no gas came out, then figured out it was out of gas. Just filled it with gas and started it right up...
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Finally filled up the suet feeders, Meg showed me an immature Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (first of the fall) waiting in a tree for them. Feels good to almost be ready for winter now... Now we need to plant the pansies I bought last weekend.

Composting!

Last weekend I built a new compost bin, the two compost bins we currently use were full. Every school day Megs brings home 1-3 five gallon buckets of compost from the school. It takes us about 2-3 weeks to generate five gallons of compost in our house hold.

FYI Meg's school composts everything. The school tried having a big 12 ft long multi stage compost bin, but the rats got in the compost way too often. Guess having 250 or so children who most do not eat all of that apple or orange they bring for lunch can make quite the meal for city rats.

Thought I'd list some advantages of composting.

1 You get great soil enhancement and it also fertilizes your gardens.

2 The worms are very happy to eat everything you bring them and they make the best compost.

3 Kids can learn a lot from composting and grow things in it too.

4 Save landfill space.

5 You garbage does not stink as much. Rotting food really stinks.

6 Our bees visit and produce nectar from the fruit and eventually we get honey. Yellow Jackets can be troublesome in mid summer though.

Here is the new compost bin. Everything except the nails and staples were recycled. The frame and siding covers(in back) were from a shed I replaced, and the 10 year old 5/4 x 6 decking boards were from a deck I took down. I grabbed the chicken wire from the free shed at the land fill. We cover it at night to keep the possums out. To get the finished compost you just take a shovel and lift out the decking boards out in the front.

Thought I'd show you inside cold frame #2. It was 27 degrees this morning I think the coldest here this season. I had just watered everything and took these photos today.

 Here we have mixed lettuce on the left and Lacinato kale on the right. The lettuce we eat it daily, there's lots of it.

Swiss chard, wow!

Here starting from the left arugula, spinach and gourmet lettuce.

Watched the bees at noon, it was barely warm enough for them. I did see one bee returning with large orange pollen packets. And I observed an undertaker bee removing a dead bee and flying 6 foot away with it, the farthest I have seen a bee carry a dead bee.

Coldframe harvesting now!

On Wednesday we started eating greens from our cold frames. BTW Meg's second grade class is building their own cold frames at her school this Wednesday.

Thought I'd give you a tour.

Here is my newer design, I combined two cold frames into one. You can see the frame at ground level is made of 10 year old reclaimed 2 x 6s from a deck I removed this past spring. These cold frames are both 6 ft x 10 ft.  I took the left over scraps and made 2 x3s out of them and attached the 2 x 3s to the 2 x 6s with 2 - 3 inch decking screws.

Once the 2 x 3s were attached I attached the 3/4 inch conduit straps on the inside of the cold frame and placed a drywall screw to stop the 1/2 inch PVC pipe from falling down. By attaching these straps up higher like this we get more head room inside the cold frame to climb in and harvest. The 1/2 inch PVC are 10 foot lengths and span 6 foot across as you see. 

 

 Inside of the most recently(three weeks ago) planted cold frame. On the left that is Arugula, behind it spinach, more lettuce mix and at the left back more Rainbow Carrots. On the right side we have Lacinato Kale, Mesclun Lettuce mix, more carrots and Swiss Chard. This is the first time we have had two patches of Swiss Chard which we both enjoy greatly.

 Here is what we have started eating. This is the Gourmet Lettuce Mix planted in the first cold frame, behind it is kale. Bad news about this frame Meg planted Larkspur in this spot earlier this year, it is all those weeds you see.

 Here is our Rainbow Carrots they are doing pretty good, each cold frame has carrots in it. Freshly harvested carrots are one of my favorite things in the garden.

Salad mix with lots of Mizuna in it, we are eating this. I love mizuna. This is Meg's planting in the second cold frame. Note she casts seeds everywhere and we harvest like crazy, forget those stupid rows in your cold frame, this is how to do it believe me.

Other news about the garden. 

Yesterday I set out the bird seed and 3 suet cakes for the birds. No bird visitors seen yet. 

The bees I fed them 4 pounds of sugar yesterday, guess there are still a lot of them. As the sugar syrup was gone in less than 24 hours. Some bees got in, my mistake, downed maybe 10 bees rescued perhaps 20. Today it reached into the 70s for a brief period, I did see bees carrying pollen, just a handful.

Hellebore blooms and salad greens

Yesterday it reached 57 degrees and in the morning I noticed the Helleborus niger blooms were open, Oh and thanks Daisy you should know where the paths are when you go to the bathroom in the yard. It is muddy enough out there without Daisy's surprises everywhere.

Today I got off work early so with the balmy 50 degree temps I walked around the garden. I watched the ground a little more closely as I walked about.

Here is the Helleborus Niger blooms that have been covered five times in snow thus far. The stems are short but appear to be growing.

 I think this is some of the Snowdrops planted in the garden last fall. I found only 3 sprouts like this. This morning I looked for dwarf irises, did seen a thing, this afternoon I see 5 sprouts of dwarf irises!

Pansies sure look better than a week ago when covered in snow and ice.

 Here is a peek inside the hoop cold-frame, kale on the left and in the back, lettuce in the middle and on the right and featured below a lettuce mix that Meg planted seeds in November. Note that there is no path inside, we planted this not planning on building a cold-frame over it. Once these greens are done I plan on adding compost and making two rows with a path in the center. Can you see the peas?

 The other little cold frame. On the left my favorite mustard greens, then rape in the middle and in the back more lettuce that we have just started picking.

 Here is a batch of mustard greens picked today.

Same tub with kale on top of the mustard greens. Last night I picked about 2/3 the amount show here and we steamed it, oh my....... Looks like I might have to give my current customer some of this kale as it won't be long before we have more than we can eat.

In case your wondering the table is the bistro table I made with concrete and sea glass, it was a mock up of our kitchen counter tops.

Birds, more birds. The Brown Creeper I have seen it twice at the peanut suet feeder today in the past hour. I did get a photo, they do not like flash. The toenails are super long guess that is how they walk up trees so easily. Next post stay tuned.

Birds in the garden

Hope all of you with snow and ice are safe! We got lucky Monday night as we only got maybe an inch of snow. It misted all day yesterday you could not see any rain but you could feel it when walking around outside. The mist and my camera did not seem like a great idea, so I set up a chair under the porch and waited for the birds to come back to the feeders.

We had our second visit from a single Bluejay, I do not have any photos of this beautiful bird. The Bluejay was out there before I went out to photograph and never returned. Bluejays like neighborhoods not forest like where we live, in fact I lived here 3 years before I ever saw one here.

 Song Sparrow on top of the hoop house cold frame covered in snow. We have mainly 3 different sparrows in the winter here, White-throated Sparrow(the most common), Chipping Sparrow and Song Sparrow as seen here they are our only year round resident sparrow. A fourth sparrow the Fox Sparrow has been seen in years past but has not made an appearance in years here.

 Pondering Song Sparrow.

 Female Northern Cardinal ready to fly.

 

Here is an image I adjusted in Photoshop by using poster edges, a very simple trick, pretty neat?

 Telephoto shot of the top of the new bottle tree. I added a clear bottle to the top. The second bottle down is an 8 ounce caster oil bottle I found. You also can see 1.5 liter, .75 liter and 6 ounce Riesling bottles.

One special bird returned yesterday while I had the camera out, a Brown Creeper made its 6th appearance this winter on the white oak by our deck. I took photos but they were too poor to post here.

So one might ask what is blooming in out garden. Here is our Helleborus niger covered ice ice and snow. This was the 5th time these blooms have been buried in snow or ice, tough plant don't you think?

One of the front garden pansies covered up in snow and ice. The pansies and violas under the over hang of our porch not covered in snow look pretty bad because they do not have the protection the snow gives them during temps down in the 20s.

Be sure to check out the dog treat or dog cookie  recipe on my last posting.

200th Post!

Last night it was supposed to snow an inch or more, it missed us. We were bummed because the wood stove was to be delivered and installed today and figured the roof would not be safe to walk on. Well the weather man got it wrong again and by 10 am the roof was safe to walk on. The crew arrived about 10 and started on installing the chimney and wood stove. Shortly after they got here it started snowing, then it quit and the sun came out.

The addition was finished over two years ago and the wood stove was supposed to be done then, but the construction budget was maxed out and the stove was omitted. Meg has always been wanting a wood stove so when the power goes out we'd have heat. Hurricanes can hit the area here and power could be out for weeks, usually in late summer or fall. Then there are ice storms that can kill the power for a few days or so.

Here is the living room as the chimney was being installed.

The wood stove just after installing it. This stove is highly efficient it will burn for 8 hours without any help they say. It is made by Hampton. Notice the cooking surface on the top of the stove!

Meg did the honors of lighting the first fire in the stove.

 

Kale, mustard greens and rape from our cold frames today.

Fourth Snow Event!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was real good, I believe everyone got what they wanted and we had prime rib, pork shoulder and lobster with dinner at the retirement home where Meg's parents live. Could not believe it was such a great dinner!

Late on Christmas it started snowing, by 11 pm when I went to bed we had 3/4 inches of snow. Right now my estimate would be 4 inches and it is still snowing!

The feeders were refilled about an hour ago and to be honest there are more birds at the feeders than ever before. Several of the feeders  have 10 birds on them at a time. Perhaps later I get a few photos of the birds.

Meg gave me Photoshop CS5 for Christmas and these are the first edited photos processed in the new software. Granted snow photos don't do justice to what Photoshop can do with normal photos with vivid colors.

 Our cold frames, don't they look pretty darn cold?

 The screened in porch, very cool all the snow on the screening!

 One of our favorite chairs.

 Pretty snowy.

 The pond is frozen and I expect it to turn white. Going down to 16 degrees Tuesday morning...

 The road we have to drive up to get out of here, no trucks have even tried it yet. I think Meg's Toyota Truck will make it. The power is out at Meg's sisters house, she has been rescued already.

 Snowy tools left outside.. my bad.

 Some of our blue wine bottles and a mini cold frame we added. Nothing but left over plastic and PVC piping stuck into the ground. I think there is rape and mustard greens under there. I picked some mustard greens and kale from the other cold frames Christmas Eve for our salad.

Snowy willows over the pond.

Christmas blooms report: Several pansies were actually blooming and one hellebore niger has 2 inch tall white blooms hidden mostly near the ground. 

Snowy Weekend in Durham!

Yesterday the weather man said we might get snow, but it would not cover the ground. The snow was supposed to be from 3pm until 6pm. It started at 1pm and was still going a little at 11pm when I went to bed. In total I think we almost got 2 inches of snow!

As some of you might know we are collecting wine bottles for building a bottle wall along the pond. So far I have 25 blue wine bottles like these covered in snow. Anyone with a good source for blue bottles please let me know, I'd love to have a few hundred blue bottles for my project.

Eastern Redbud covered in snow, see all the dark seed pods on it!

Camellia 'Pink Butterfly' this bloom did OK with the snow and 28 degrees this morning. More blooms were under the snow.

This is a vitex tree with loads of seeds in our garden.

Another camellia 'Kanjiro' was covered in snow lots of flowers on it right now.

Our pond with it's first full blanketing of ice this winter. Temps are going to be colder than usual and I expect it to be frozen over for weeks. It did melt back today, most of it anyway. That smashed plant in the center was our swamp sunflower.

Our re purposed deck in the woods as it was snowing Saturday afternoon. I have $200 in replaced wood and bolts in this. It was the old deck on the back of the house before we added on. This is a great summer breakfast spot!

The cold frames as it was snowing Saturday. The ice remained on the glass door one in the front. I picked kale, mustard greens and rape for dinner tonight from the big cold frame