Cardinal Climber

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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

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.

Zinnia