My Garden Has Gone Nuts

[RedLetterRev]

Well, after a record-temperature and droughty start to June that nearly killed everything, the temps broke and the rains returned. The change in the opposite direction is just as surprising. I went out last night and took some pictures and uploaded them to my personal server where I also keep my journal. Here's the latest entry about the jungle my veggie garden has suddenly become.

Yesterday, I ordered a pile of heirloom seeds since (a) I've got some available pocket change NOW and (b) I'll be expanding my garden area in just a few weeks when hot weather breaks and it's time to turn in. The seeds I've ordered are actually for spring, but I know if I don't plan now, things won't get done then. I know how I am and I know how my luck runs :)

The fall chores are already lined up and summer really hasn't gotten in full swing yet. I have to re-work the blackberry arbor to accommodate about five times as many plants (which it can economically and ecologically do in a sound manner) and I have heirloom cherry and plum trees arriving from hand-me-down sources. I have two young black walnut trees to move after they've gone dormant, in between some elder "cousins" down at the south end of the yard. That will entail felling some invasive trash blackgum trees.

It's a shame blackgum wood isn't terribly useful because the grain grows everywhichaways; not even as fenceposts. It warps something awful. Does anyone have any suggestions as what to do with those things? They're listed as invasive (they are! they're overtaking everything else in the woods), they're resource pigs, the wood is useless as lumber, it doesn't rot (only hardens to iron) then warps. Once it dries, it doesn't burn, so it's not useful as firewood, nor for pelletizing. Mechanical chippers are hugely expensive, else I'd happily grind them for mulch (aside from the guilt for using fuel to do the grinding) and I have hundreds of these evil beasts over 7 acres of woods. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Ennyhoo, enjoy the pics.

[MuseRider]

1. Niiiice!

Beautiful garden. How on earth did you get your fall chores lined up already? I am way far behind on the spring ones still!

No help for your blackgum problem. Sorry. I am over run with piss elm, black locust and hedge. Hedge is very useful, dunno about the others.

[RedLetterRev]

3. Already?

I'm actually a year behind, just sneakin' up on it this year LOL. I missed last year entirely because when I got the property, the yard was 3' high in weeds. I've been saving a box of heirloom seeds as a hope chest for the last five years in hopes of finding the right place. Mother Gaia smiled and an incredible piece of luck came my way. It just needed lots and lots and lots of work.

I got started way late with this year's garden. The wedding business started off really slow because of the economy (a lotta folks are opting to put off weddings and keep on living together for awhile longer) so I didn't get a tiller until about a month after I had planned to. Talk about pushing things to the last second. Then we had record high temps and the rain stopped, so that weirded everything out. Everyone's corn topped and tassled at 3' in mid-June. The ground was so hard from 20 years of neglect after generations of being a tobacco/cotton field I quit tilling when it got ridiculously hot. So what I got was what I got for spring.

On the bright side, it won't be so hard to do for fall. There isn't that much left to open up and I've been throwing organic matter in the furrows of the tilled part all along (sort-of "compost as you go" or modified lasagna garden) so till-in won't be so bad because the ground has been kept pretty soft.

I think the only help for the blackgums is to keep chopping. I hate to waste ANYthing, but there's just no use for the remains I can imagine. It's extremely expensive to have logs ground. As much as I hate to landfill anything, that may be their fate. OTOH, between my partner and myself, we produce a total of 8 to 12 pounds of landfill trash per week. The rest is either composted on site or recycled in town. I make one big recycle run when I go to my day job on Fridays. The garden profits from the compost -- no chemical fertilizers... you see the results. I carry the coffee grounds and tea bags home from the office (they're happy to "donate") and everyone's happy as a clam.

'S'kinda cool.

As dead-set as I am against using any kind of chemistry (I have well water and live above a small river, plus have an artesian spring at the bottom of the property), the only way to keep those evil blackgums from suckering is to use All-Season Brush-No-More from Tractor Supply. I use that extremely sparingly, directly on the stump immediately when I take one down and spot treat any suckers immediately when they pop up. They're as bad as poison ivy -- you have to keep after them.

Just FWIW and while I'm thinking about it, Brush-No-More is very potent stuff and will kill all the way to the root, so if you do use it for extremely resistant things like poison ivy, be very, very careful with it. It will last an entire season and it will kill all the way to the root. But in about 5 years, I'll have 5 healthy black walnuts, counting the three volunteers, unmolested by trash trees. But if someone comes up with something better, I am totally for it.

[MuseRider]

4. We have a lot in common then.

We just moved here to my farm last fall and my garden was late and haphazard but the big garden is getting planned and I am in the process of tractoring loads of well composted manure from the horse barn (some of it is just nice black dirt now, from the bottom about 10 years old).

Could you stack the blackgum in different places for wildlife? When something falls here I leave it (my husband hates that, he would like the farm to look like a park lol) and when we cut stuff out I leave what I can't use or is not useful to others for the wildlife to house in. It has been a great way to get lots of critters on my place where they are safe instead of at the neighbors who clubs them to death :(.

I will be back later to post more.

[RedLetterRev]

5. Well, that was one thought

and a good one; but I do have a lot of downed trees already. The idiots that had this property before clear-cut and dozed it, left a bunch laying around, then let trash trees take up. Ugh. The woods are terribly unhealthy and if I live to be 1000 that's what it'll take to make them healthy again. As droughty as it's been in the south, I'm spit-scared of fire, so I kinda have to take that under advisement.

The property is a total of 8.78 acres, about 6 of which is currently woods. I'm pushing that back by about another acre and a half for fruit and olive trees. There are species of olives that will grow here and I have a feeling that olives and oil will be very dear. Of course it will, now that I've gotten used to having it! Some of the woods are being turned to giant Moso bamboo; renewable, soaks up loads of CO2, will withstand warming, doesn't mind the played-out soil, in demand and there is local processing for it. It harvests easily, rebounds readily and will be income when I will dreadfully need it.

As for critters, we've got 'em. Deer, turkeys, owls, skunks, possums, raccoons, bats. There's only one piece of property between me and a game preserve, so I'm pretty much left alone. So long as most of them stay in the woods, I let them do their thing and I do mine and we co-exist in perfect peace. The only thing I worry about is copperheads and skunks. While skunks are mostly odoriferous towards dogs (that will wash), copperheads will cost a dog her life. My partner depends upon his assistance dog, a civilized city-girl. She's got the good sense to leave a snake along. My Chessie/Collie X has stood a copperhead off well outside of striking range. The puppy, a Collie/Kuvasz X has no sense whatsoever. She's extremely bright but thinks she's a badass. She doesn't realize she has blunt Collie teeth. While I'm very against killing snakes in general, I will off a copperhead with cold efficiency, only for the three reasons just enumerated. Leaving logs around would be a temptation for copperheads to move in :(

Always somth'n', idnit.

I did gently chastise my (one) neighbor for killing my beautiful black snake. That was my hedge against voles and moles in my blackberries. Since I don't use poisons (don't really care to eat 'em, after all), my little "pet" was what was keeping gnawing critters at bay. Rrrrr. Black snakes are also pretty territorial, keeping copperheads out. Not like I can run out and hire another one.

Projects? Got 'em up the wazoo. My "farm" is tiny, but I'm making it as productive and as green as possible. Green really is the least work and the most productive, given just a tiny bit of planning and a tiny bit more discipline. What comes from the ground goes back into the ground, one way 'r another'n. I've got just under 20 years before I'm eligible to retire. If I do this right, find things that will grow without too much effort, no chemicals, aren't available locally, I'll be able to eat and keep the lights on in my dotage.

Ten year old horse manure? What a gold mine!! What I'd give!

[bvar22]

6. We have a lot in common too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x5729

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x7979

8 acres, clear cut 15 years ago.
6 acres in unhealthy brush interpersed with savable hardwoods if we can clear out the vines,
thin the multiple regrowths from the old trunks, and give them a little breathing room.
...a spring fed well (cold & clear), pond, and wet weather creek.

Our goal is to be a green and sustainable as possible.
:hi:

[RedLetterRev]

8. Oo, I saw that first post before

and loved the contained bed. I wish I were that organized. Or handy. You've got a gorgeous garden. I'll be taking some tips and building some trellises that I can move easily. The soil here has been so abused for so many generations, I'm going to have to rotate for a while to get it all nourished and established again. I don't mind; a new design every season will give the eye something to enjoy. A garden is as much art as anything else. Your garden, indeed, is a work of art and must bring you as much joy to admire as it does to work.

Y'know? I've planted the same five cucumber seeds (compact variety) for years and always got these nice, polite vines that produced just enough fruit for me to share and for me to put up enough kosher-style pickles to last me until almost spring. If they stretched, oh, seven feet that was something (the label said "compact", right?). This year, I planted five seeds, dreaming of tasty pickles with lots of pepper, garlic and bay leaf. The drought and heat killed one. Slugs got another. The remaining three didn't look so hot, and threatened suicide in the heat.

Then came the rains and normal temperatures. Then those three "compact" plants rubbed their little tendrils together, conspired amongst themselves and suddenly the entire upper end of my veggie patch is awash in cucumber vines. They're even climbing up the cornstalks. I'm finding monsterfruit just everywhere. I'll be spending this entire weekend canning, but somehow I'm really, really good with that because I ran out of pickles last year along about October. (Yeah, I really like my pickles as you can tell LOL)

Now none of this produce was expected. This soil was just about totally played out. It had been left fallow and weed-covered for two and a half years after being a crabgrass yard for ten. It was certainly never fertilized or treated for anything in that time. From what I can tell, little to know chemistry was used on the tobacco crops and the only fertilizer anyone around remembers being used there was green cow manure. (That's always a hit with neighbors :puke:). But that has a very short half-life and this is red-clay and flint-rock soil. Not exactly the most fertile stuff. So when I opened it up, I kept fluffing in grass clippings, rotten alfalfa hay, coffee grounds, anything I could think of to try and get it jump-started. When the seedlings emerged, I inoculated the ground around the roots with mycorhizae (a natural symbiotic flora) to help them break down the stuff I'd tilled in, just in hopes that it might help speed the process along. YNK (Ya Never Know)

The only "cheat" I used this year was Ironite. That's wonderful stuff and beat hell out of using old nails for adding iron to the soil. (Actually, if you're growing grapes or muscadines, recycle your old nails at their roots. They LOVE the iron. Just make sure that kids or pets can't step on them.) Tomatoes and beans profit from iron and this soil has just about none in it.

Somewhere during this winter, I'll have my little tonka-tractor paid off and the next big buy is a composter for the things I can't put directly into the garden. Things like watermelon rinds or fruit rinds that are sweet will draw the raccoons and possums who'll help themselves to everything else while they're at it. So far, we've kept those critters at bay by emptying the vacuum canisters with doggie hair between the garden and the woods and encouraging the dogs to do their tinkles at the edge of the woods. They're inclined to do that last thing anyway, so far, so good. We'll see if I actually get to taste a cantaloupe before a deer stomps it or not :P

One thing I haven't mentioned. Beside the garden (the entire north end, running east to west) is a 6'x60' row where I've planted 6 plugs of raspberries. There are 4 Carolines (sweet, everbearing) and 2 Indian Summer (sweet, late-bearing). I've laid a thick layer of alfalfa hay over that whole swath to kill the grass back and to give the rasperry roots a chance to take over. If the lore is true, they're making a thick mat of roots under there while the hay is rotting down, slowly releasing nitrogen for them. This, with a little luck will be a win/win and there will be berries to have and berries to take to the farmers market woohoo! We shall see come spring. I'm hoping in a couple of years they'll take over an there'll be one nice thick hedge.

[MuseRider]

7. Oh boy do I understand the fear of fire!

We always have a long dry spell when it gets really hot. Even though the last few years have been wet it still gets scary. My horses, goats and dogs and cats I have no idea how I would evacuate all of them. I think I would just have to let them run and hope they did not get on the highway and that is assuming I had time to get to them first. They blaze through here so fast. So, the gums do not burn well after they dry. Maybe a good way to at least slow down a fire would be to make a kind of fence with them by stacking them around the perimeter? Like an old stone fence, lay them on top of each other until they were wide enough or tall enough to slow down the progress of a fire. Just a thought.

I am trying to stay as organic and chemical free as well. If you were anywhere near me I would gladly share my huge manure pile. It is pretty rich soil under it and the middle is pretty nice for compost. Getting and staying green just requires more patience. Things do not get better (depending, of course on what you consider better) as quickly as just spraying the heck out of things.

I am sorry about your black snake. I love them. I had one go across the road just a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty big. Copperheads, we have them here but they are not usually found anywhere but around the water. I have 5 ponds and have never seen one so I am lucky. I too would have no problem dispatching one if it was threatening my pets but that would be the only time I would ever hurt one.

Last summer I was resting against my truck talking on the phone to a friend just at dusk when I felt a rub on my leg. I reached down to scratch one of my cats and it was a skunk. It rubbed me like a cat then trotted off to do whatever skunks do at night. Freaked me out. Then a few weeks later I was out after dark checking the horses, the neighbors were setting off some pretty serious fireworks and I felt this bang against my knee. I looked down into the face of a coyote who was most likely running around the corner of my barn freaked out by the loud bangs. I love living in the country.

I am trying to stay as native as possible but I have to admit your olive trees and bamboo sound intriguing. We have planted a native Buffalo grass around the house with the area farther out in native tall grass prairie like most of the grass around the house area. Next spring I am going to sew all the native wildflower seeds that I will collect this year. I have a lot of wooded area and it will be a long time before I ever really get to cleaning them up. I have tons of trees to take out of the pastures but it really hurts to cut down good trees.

It does not matter how big or small it is it is always a lot of work but I can't think of any work I would rather be doing. :hi:

[bvar22]

2. Very Nice.

We had the same thing happen in Central Arkansas.....heat wave/drought late May into June.
Everything stopped blooming/growing.
The rains came late June, and now everything is exploding.

Enjoyed your pix.
Thanks.