Farming and Orchard – Page 8

Early planting, many hopes!

Sometimes you just can’t pick when your trees arrive. You know that in spite of your zone planting before Memorial day is plant suicide. Unfortunately your zone tells everyone else that you can plant early April. I hope for late shippings but we got a box already. Six trees have arrived. These are replacements for trees that died last year. I am fairly certain they suffered root death during transport as they were poorly wrapped and bone dry when I got to them. They nicely replaced the trees and so, after two days in a bucket debating, we planted.

Now I’m debating if it’s even worth it to go mulch them. It’s still horribly windy. Mulch sure does love to blow. I’ll debate it some more as I watch the weather and hope, oh hope!

Some of my hopes have been answered though. Every time I go out to survey the orchard I find things I thought were dead quite alive. Many bushes coming up from the root. Some trees doing so as well. I’ll re-graft them.

I have many seedlings growing away indoors waiting for Memorial day. That magic time when suddenly it’s not quite so risky to venture out of doors. I suspect we will get a few more good snows. Hopefully no freezes though.

I have a special lot of trees shipping. Trees I will plant close and baby. Trees I’m really excited to get fruit from. I sure do hope they will do their best to ship late, as I requested. Please, please ship late!

Now I know this should have been an egg cooking post but I think trees are far more exciting than chocolate souffle. Even though my souffle is amazing!

Springtime in Wyoming

Spring is in the air. A constant state of confusion lays heavy over the land. Will it be warm? Will it be freezing? It could be both, all in the same day. Summer clothes have already been donned this year. Now we’re back to snow suits and gloves. Back to animals too smart to leave the protection of the barn and me hauling water to them all.

Thankfully the barn is large and I’m healthy enough to be carting the necessary liquids. Solids too, since the pigs kept breaking into the food bins and I had to move them to the garage. Since we are currently in possession of an attack turkey the kids prefer to occupy themselves out of the barn while I’m feeding.

I’m particularly glad that weather has never stopped the kids from venturing outside. We are a tough lot, the kind willing to live in howling winds and unpredictable weather. A versatile lot as well. The wagon has been retired for now, in order to accommodate the snow. Strolls around the property have to be maintained, after all. Pictures must be taken! Trees checked.

Proof that Permaculture WORKS!

As if you needed proof, I know. Still, I am excited today.

A review of the orchard shows more trees that survived the winter than I had anticipated. The mini kraters and swales have done amazing things. We are set to have a bumper crop of plums this year, so long as we don’t get a late freeze, fierce wind, or some other completely likely weather event.

Why would I say this small 5 acre orchard is proof that permaculture works? It is dry here. Very dry. Made worse by the incredible wind we suffer from. We are high up, cold, besotted with pests. There is no genetic material available from our state to base our plantings on. We have everything going against us, including public opinion.

“You can’t grow _____ in Wyoming!” I hear it every single time I talk to a local about the orchard. When we are open to the public minds are going to be blown!

If I can grow trees here with little to no watering (certainly no irrigation), than permaculture planting techniques are a blazing success.

This winter we harvested so much snow we even created an ideal place for pests to hide.

I do hate those ground animals.

I’ve also been successful at growing garlic and onions for the first time. Ruth Stoute and mulching, a real winner!

I’d highly recommend permaculture planting techniques to everyone and you should too.

A cheap way to acquire garden seeds

There are lots of ways to get things growing cheaply. You can save seeds. You can grow produce from scraps. You can join a seed or plant exchange, etc. I wanted to grow pinto beans this year. Perhaps a few other shelled bean varieties as well. The seeds seemed rather expensive though. $6 for an oz of seeds, yikes. So, like other growth endeavors I looked to the supermarket. I’ve previously grown quinoa and lentils from supermarket bulk bins. I’ve grown sunflowers from bird seed. Could beans be grown easily as well?

I bought pinto and black beans and the kids helped start the germination test. Simple paper towel and ziploc bag taped to the window. We started our watermelon seeds like this as well.

Germination has been a success. 100% germination for the pinto beans and 80% for the black. I’ll be buying a bag of pinto beans (10lbs for $14.99) and spreading it about in various places to find the easiest way to grow it. We eat a lot of Mexican food here so I’ll be excited not to have to buy canned pinto beans again!

Dealing with rabbit problems in the orchard

We have a lot of obstacles to growing here in Wyoming. We’re high. We’re dry. We have insane winds. We have extreme fluctuating temperatures. We’ve got a short growing season.

Hmm. Why do we live here again? I’ll get back to you on that.

A lot of these things we just have to deal with. Rabbits, however, can be….dealt with. Ok, mostly I just complain about them, loud and often. I’m not a particularly good shot. Mostly I just don’t care to learn. Husband is a great shot though. Encouraging him to get out there and do some mafioso style hits is the problem. The rabbits don’t bother him like they do me. Probably because the growing stuff thing is all me.

We had a dog who was great at hunting rabbits once. Now he’s dead and our other dogs couldn’t catch a rabbit if we held it in front of their faces.

They're so cute though! — They’re so cute though!

I know how a lot of permies deal with the rabbit scourge. I tried Sepp Holzer’s bone sauce last year. The rabbits appear to like it quite a bit. Utter failure. I do put tree guards on all of my trees that are large enough to support them, and some that probably aren’t. The rabbits appear to like their food wrapped. Leaving low hanging branches for them to nibble is a great idea. My trees aren’t exactly large enough to do that. Every branch is a low hanging branch at the moment. I encourage predators. Unfortunately the dogs don’t. In fact they do a great job of repelling predators. It’s like a bunny sanctuary at our house.

I suppose beyond wholesale slaughter of Satan’s furred minions I have no idea what to do about this rabbit problem. I guess I’ll try to look at the bright side and think fertilizer. Bunny poop fertilizer. That’s something I’m not lacking.

The above pictures are all of the same tree. Please explain to me how the rabbits did that.

Just a fun pic. It’s SOOOO hard to get good pics of things when the instant I focus in on something my “help” jumps in the way.

Sainfoin- An experiment still in progress

If you had asked me last year what I thought of our sainfoin experiment I would have told you it was a failure. A walk along the property today has proven otherwise. The sainfoin, It’s ALIVE! Right now it is the same size as last years seedlings. It has a million more leaves though.

I could be wrong, maybe it’s the size of them making me think this, but I swear there are more plants as well.

well it’s hard to see each plant but there are 6 plants in this frame. Last year I would have expected to see 2.

Our ground is awful, as you can see. I’m excited to see what difference the sainfoin makes of this mess. It’s coming up in all the cracks from what I see. Sainfoin does love dry. Dry is what we have.

I was assisted in todays sainfoin adventure by my plant scout and all around bossy photographer.

I was hindered by the girl who refuses to walk this much. So much. Wagon AND stroller much. Sigh