wind – Peacock Orchard

Window Greenhouse- structurally complete

To view my previous greenhouse post look here.

I finally installed all of the windows and was ready to start sheet metaling the rest of the structure. It was slow going as I could not work in the wind and yet again, I was pregnant.

On a nice day I recruited my child slave labor to clean the windows. It was a messy job, cleaning the kids up afterward was just as much work.

Still. my children did a good job cleaning all the years of grime off of those windows and the greenhouse looks very nice clean.

Now is the tricky part, sheet metal. Wyoming is WINDY. I was only able to do this in bits and pieces as I waited for periods without wind. I felt like it took forever, but in reality it was probably just a few weeks.

Fully enclosed in metal I only had the finish work to do. I debated the molding portion of this project for awhile before deciding I would use fence pickets. They were the perfect size, required no cutting width wise, just length.

I should probably stain/paint or somehow otherwise seal the wood pickets to prevent damage. I may get around to that eventually, or I may not and regret it years later. Who knows.

Removing Canadian Thistle the fun way

I’ve been slack with several parts of the property lately and you can tell. The flowers beside the house have been completely taken over by canadian thistle. Oh my. A thorny, pain filled mess of a fast spreading nightmare. What was a girl to do?

The thistle had set seed and the seed heads were beginning to open. So the obvious solution, to me, was to collect the seed heads and burn them. That’s what I did!

So we started burning the seed heads on our S’mores making plate. The wind was a a bit too severe to keep flaming pieces of plant material there though, so we moved them to a bucket and had some fun!

While we didn’t use the seeds for a s’mores roast I thought I’d include pics of how we make s’mores in Wyoming Winds. Yum!

Gardening in winter- Outdoors

It may seem like there is not much to do in winter. That you can sit back and relax until it is time to get busy planting in spring. The opposite is actually true. I feel like winter is the busiest time for me, but perhaps that is because it is unpleasant work most of the time. When you do not have a high cold tolerance going out in freezing weather just sucks. You might be wondering what I could possibly have to do. Other than the animals, which require more intensive and hands on care when it is cold, plants need winter love too.

This winter has been rather stressful for me actually. This is the first winter with the orchard trees and a bad one as far as temp, wind and lack of moisture go. Our windbreak/tree line is in bad shape. I’ve been watching conifers die all over the place but I was hoping mine were established enough to persevere. They aren’t.

Dying pine

The tree line did help keep snow. That makes me happy!

We went out on March 1 to see how things were surviving. I think it is safe to say none of the black walnuts have made it. Between my lack of attention and rabbits, they all died. The fruit trees are looking very good though. The swales have done a very good job of collecting what snow we get. I bent a branch back on every tree just as a bit of a test and all but 1 appear to be healthy. The bubblegum plum that struggled last year does not appear to have made it through the winter. I suppose I won’t know for sure until spring.

The grapes, who knows. I made a lot of mistakes with the grapes. I planted them wrong, they caught every disease they could and then I pruned them badly and transplanted them worse. I have more grapes coming this year and I am going to do a lot better by them, I hope.

Helpers

Bend test

This tree….the wind just keep blowing it over.

The blackberries I’m unsure on. They did really great last year but they are looking a bit rough now. I’ve fenced them but the wind and rabbits keep getting through anyway. I can tell they’ve been really chewed up. I’m interested to see how they spring back.

I enjoyed seeing snow collecting not on our entire driveway but just in the swales we put in last year. Very refreshing! My little helpers enjoyed this trek outdoors as well.