With all the projects going on, it is often difficult to remember to take some time to enjoy what has been done. Check out some of these new growths we’ve been watching and enjoying. See if you can identify everything.
Answers after the break…
I managed to soak the new asparagus for a few hours this morning. Then I got digging again. I’m a little tired of digging. Nah, I love digging!! Planted two varieties of asparagus, one’s purple and the other is green. I could look up the actual variety names, but I’m feeling a little lazy, so let’s just leave it at purple and green.
While I was busy with asparagus, Anne finished planting the grapevines. We came up a little shy of our 100 ordered, but we can probably fill in with cuttings we made as they were planted. I didn’t hear Anne complain she didn’t have another couple vines to plant.
Other plantings that occurred today: Potatoes, Shallots, Leeks, a few Kohlrabi, Day Lilies, a few Peas, and several other items Anne relocated.
I didn’t take any pictures of the planting today, but I did take a picture of what I believe is an owl pellet (the white bits are bones of mice and such). Anne and Jake found it on a little walk in the woods next to our property. We had been hearing all sorts of hoo-hooing earlier this Spring. Never caught sight of the owl though.
We are sore. Wow. Achy. But look at all that was accomplished. It’s outstanding. We are awesome. First I marked off the spacing for the vines, sinking a bamboo stick in every seven feet. Then crossing slits were cut in the landscape fabric and 99 little holes were augered – that was an extreme workout. Some of the holes proved to be a little too damp to use, but they might dry out in time.
Anne was busy following my hole digging with planting. She finished all but three rows today. Each of our rows has nine vines. There is a ton of invasive grass on this hillside — we are hoping the fabric and mulch will take care of that. Anne carefully extracted all the little roots from the holes as she planted.
Next step is to install the grow tubes – they are tubes that help grapes grow 
The grapevines have arrived! Who’s excited?! We would be if it didn’t mean we need to prep more rows and auger 100 little holes and then plant 100 of these twiggy little plants. Ouch, that’s going to be painful. But it’s a good kind of pain — like popping a zit or riding a bike up a mountain. It will be nasty (the zit) and fulfilling (the bike ride). The trick is to keep your mind’s eye on the prize. These little twiggy vines don’t look like much now, but give them time and a little thing called love and we should see at least a couple of leaves.
The variety is a red French-American hybrid, Marechal Foch. They come from Penoach Nursery/Vineyard/Winery in Adel, Iowa.
We live on 14 acres in Tama County, in a hilly area referred to as the Bohemian Alps. It gets windy in spring and today combined with low temps it was hell out there. Things need to be planted, though. I put on these “ear muffs” I use to block out the sound of our wood chipper. I rubberbanded the bottoms of my jeans to keep the wind from blowing up my pant legs. This helped, somewhat. I planted only 20% of the daylilies I had hoped to get in the ground today. Ordered these from Oakes Daylilies and was thoroughly impressed with the huge divisions they sent. They generously threw in the more spendy “bonus” daylily I requested. I’ll be ordering from them again soon.
This is a labor intensive process. Hope we never need to do it again. Not even really sure we need to do it this first time, but we are doing it. The idea is to keep the grapes weed and grass free. Most of the books tell you to prepare rows the year or two before. We like to read the books and then do it any which way we can. Our first step was to hire a tiller to till up 12 rows approximately 80 feet long. Then we decided to cover the rows with landscape fabric and mow around them.
And then the hard part. All that mulch from my previous post is painstakingly loaded and unloaded covering the rows of fabric. I might be putting it on too thick. Or Anne might be going too thin. Or maybe, between the two of us, we are applying it just right.
(The wind is pounding today. This photo is taken from indoors through the spotted window. I was taking a break from the breezes.) As of this moment, we have six more rows to mulch and two more to cover with fabric. *Sigh*
We gots lots of mulch. We were buying mulch by the truck load for about $8.50/yard from Cedar Rapids compost facility. It’s nice stuff. Wood chips. Very dense. Then we decided we would need much more mulch much faster so we bought two truck-loads from Belle Plaine (Pierce Lumber Inc). They were super kind enough to arrange delivery. It’s basswood – a bit stringy, but smells great! We haven’t found anything online that says basswood is bad for grapes, so we hope it will be okay. Jake seems to like it.
It’s kinda big. We figured since Chris Musgrave was coming to till up the grape rows we might as well have him till a new garden bed as well. We might have gone over-board on size. It’s about 100×25. Anne has already moved some perennials in since this picture was taken. The tilling was great. Highly recommend Musgrave Landscaping out of Toledo, IA. The plan now is to plant the big spreading vines in here. Looking forward to melons, gourds, pumpkins, etc… Although we need to check if squash family needs to be separate from melons.
This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that neither squash nor pumpkin will cross-pollinate either watermelon or muskmelon. Growing squash or pumpkins near melons will not affect the quality of the melons, despite the persistent belief that it will make the melons taste like pumpkins. Bad weather, poor soil, or disease may make melons taste bad, but it is not due to crossing of squash or pumpkins with melons.
* source: http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/vegetabletravelers/summersquash.html
Today was an awesomely sunny sort of day. Warm too. The cold frame needed to be opened and thinned out. Need to make room for some more seedlings. I took some lettuce and spindly spinach out to the garden proper. There was a bed already made for them. It will be a miracle if they all live. But I believe in miracles. Now we will just need to keep an eye on the weather. If it freezes again, things will need some covering.
On the drive home today, Michele Norris of NPR – All Things Considered fame, related a story about her garden and the invasive Purple Loosestrife found within. It was a nice little piece, both entertaining and informative – can’t ask for much more than that. Of course, I got to thinking of all the burdock and thistle that awaits us this year. There are some rather large patches to be contained. We will likely resort to chemicals — at least for those that are far far away from the veggies. Another resource listed along with the NPR story was a link to the governments Invasive Species list.
