Weeding and More

I used a shovel and hoe to cut the weeds around the peonies.  I dug weeds near the peach tree in the north west corner of our yard.   I still had battery left on my cordless weed eater.  I put my boots on to keep weed clipping from getting on my pants and then get into the house.  I cut weeds south of house three and cut some west of house four until the battery wore out.  When the battery is out the trimmer stops dead.  I put it on the charger.  At the end of the day I did a little weed eating in the garden.

I take a picture our two chickens hoping to get a good picture of the hen that Robert gave us.  I is the chicken on the right.

I got a good photo of one of the kittens.  There is four orange ones and one gray one.  The are really wild.  I touched one and it likely pulled my finger off.  It didn't, but I pulled my hand away.  I tried it again with a glove. I growled at me and I pulled my hand away again.

This is another photo of the kittens.  Somewhere in there there are some kittens.

I cut down several small trees that were in the way.  I put some round-up on the fresh cut.  I cut another small tree by the dahlias.  A brushed round up on the cut edge.  There are three Russian sage plants in the same area.  I pruned of all the dead stems.

There were a lot of asparagus stems.  I cut a nice batch of stems.  They are in the fridge in a large mouth pint bottle.

This is a photo of one of the sweet potato slips.

In the house there is two sweet potato slip and one sweet potato plant.  I laid the the potato on its side and buried it leaving the stems sticking up.  I covered it with a wire basket.  

I put a piece of burlap on it and then another basket on top of it to protect from the sun.

The two under the burlap are home grown slips.

I watered them as I planted them.

The sweet corn was really dry.  I run a lot of water own the row.

I watered all of the rows in the west garden.  I will cut the weeds tomorrow when the soil is a little softer.

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More Spraying & More Planting

After breakfast and a little news I checked our asparagus plants.  some were ready to be harvested.

Much warmer weather now.  The asparagus hasn't grown much because how cold it has been.  I picked a nice handful this morning.

I planted bunching onions and Detroit Red beets in 105 trays.  I cleaned out this old wading pool that we had for the ducks.  I filled it with one inch of water.  I then put the trays in the water so they get irrigated from the bottom.  I then put them on the bench on the west of house two.

I used a 1206 tray for a planting of sweet corn called peaches and cream.  there are three seeds in each cell.  I bottom watered these also.

All of the six packs look like this one.

I have a tray of celery which should have been transplanted months ago.  they were so root bound that I could hardly pull them out of the six pack.  I cut with a pair of scissors or tore of the roots with my fingers.

I cut a cross in the bottom of some of them.

I planted the celery next to the bunch onions.

I put the parsley in the raised bed between the strawberries and sweet corn.

A closer look at the Curl Leaf parsley.

There are a lot of grassy weeds by the beets that I planted several weeks ago.  The beets are not very thick.  I covered what few there was with small cups and sprayed the weeds with weed killer.

I sprayed weeds on the west side of our yard and those south of house six with three tanks of weed killer.  I then went home teaching.  When I got back I sprayed out another tank.  I feel like I am getting a little control over the weeds.

Emerson Lyman wanted me to prune his fruit trees.  When I got to his house, he was home.  I walked through his orchard of about eight trees.   They are in bad need of pruning.  I think I will do some thin pruning and then have him get an expert pruner next spring.

I got this picture just as the full moon was creeping up over the hill side east of our yard.


Comments and questions are welcome.

Black Widow Patience

I did the yard watering.  I worked in house one for over an hour dropping the tomato plants.  I have dropped one row.  There are seven more to go.  I removed a couple of plants completely.  The fruit was small and thinly scattered throughout the plant.

I had planted strawberry seeds back in March.  The were transplanted into 3 1/2 inch pots.  They were slow to /grow, but by now the were doing good.  She put five of these strawberry plants in a large #7 .

When finished she had a nice strawberry container that will produce tiny strawberries until it freezes.

When I was watering I found this sphinx moth caught in a black widow spider web.  It was trying to get loose.  The black with came out and saw me and then went back into hiding. It took a lot of patience on the part of the black widow.  Later this evening the moth was dead.

 I planted beets about eight weeks ago and harvested this bundle of five beets.

I had them for lunch.  I had to boil them for about thirty minutes to get a soft bead.  I buttered the up and salt them down.   They tasted really good.

Yesterday, I used twine to stretch a line from each end of house six. This afternoon I wound it around this quart pot.

 It took me most of the afternoon to transplant the rest of the tomato plants.  They were planted at eighteen inch centers.  I used a bamboo stake and a tomato clip to hold them up straight.

The two photos above show the same plants.  One is of the left side and the other the right side.

 I was walking through the orchard checking out the fruit trees.  I had to duck under the dead branches.  I decided then and there that I would cut off  the branches.  There were a lot of them.  The picture above and the two below illustrates the pruning done.

 There are also a lot of peaches.

While I had the chain saw out, I cut off a low branch on this cherry tree.  I had to bend over every time I mowed around it.

I pruned this large seedless honey suckle tree.  One branch was rubbing some on the shingles of our house.  There is another branch rubbing on the roof of the garage.  That one is coming down in the morning.

I drug all the branch out to the trailer.  I may take it to the dump tomorrow if we have time.

The deer or a deer was in our yard again last night.


Comments and questions are welcome.

Planting, Fixing,& Weeding

After breakfast and news I began work in house two before it gets very hot. 

 Robert and Frank planted bunch onions sometime in January or February.  Some got transplanted and are sold.  I transplanted the rest of them this morning.

The next job was transplanting the Detroit Red Beets that have been growing in house three.  Those on the left were transplanted about three weeks ago.  I plant a tray every week with 105 cells.  I will also be transplanting every week.

There is some dill weed growing in the garden,  Carol harvested it.  I watered some that hadn't been watered all year.  It should flourish in a few weeks.

I pruned all of the tomato plants in house six.  I went to house one to prune.  The first tomato plant in row two was on the ground.  Hung it back up and found that all of the tomato plants in row two were on the ground.   Early this spring that wire was broken.  I splice the ends together by wrapping the two ends together.  The weight of the tomatoes pulled splice apart.  I wondered how I would be able to lift all the tomato plants back on top of the poles.  I pulled the wire out from both end.  I then hooked them together again by making one loop and then the second loop by going through the first one.  I the loosened a turnbuckle most of the way.  I hooked the turnbuckle to the eye screw and put the wire through the eye on the other end of the turnbuckle and pulled it tight.  Next I put the wire in the groves at the top of the post.  All I had to do after that is hang the tomato plants to the wire.

For lunch I had a bacon tomato meatloaf sandwich.  

I found some wasp and hornet poison.  It is supposed spray twenty feet.  It didn't spray ten feet.  The comments on the internet mainly said that it wasn't effective.

A couple of years ago I planted carrots in this raised bed.  I was low on soil.  I found soil and used potting soil and hauled it in the wheelbarrow.

Later I turned on the water and soaked it.

Several weeks ago I put tree basket upside down on the tomato plants.  I thought that most of the tomato plants were determinate, but seems that I was wrong.  I drove a seven foot half inch conduit into the ground through the center of the basket.  I made sort of a six inch umbrella on top and a spike that through the umbrella into the conduit.  That should hold the tomato plants upright.

We found squash bugs in our squash plants which we killed.  The was a large pumpkin vine which was killed by squash bugs.  I dug up the plant, stacked it in one place, and covered it with weed barrier.  I secured the edges,  The squash bugs in it cannot escape.  

I weeded in the southwest garden.  There was a Topaz melon a little bigger than a tennis ball.  I run water down the row and from my hands an knees I was able to pull up the weeds.

Comments and questions are welcome.