the incredible hulk

happy halloween.

(thanks to Becky for sending me this image - probably from 1979)

final backyard design

Over the weekend, with Joel's and Mike's help, I tilled most of the back garden, removed a whole lot of rocks, laid out the first beds and started spreading the composted horse manure.

So I'm now committed to the following layout, which you can see schematically represented below. Three sets of 3 pairs of beds. Each bed is 30" by 15', with a 12" path between them. Between each pair and each set is a 36" path. The idea is that 30" is small enough to straddle, and 36" is wide enough for a wheelbarrow. Each bed has a path next to it that is wide enough for a wheelbarrow or wagon and will thus be easily accessible for planting and harvesting.

Total square footage of vegetable planting beds will be a bit over 700, not including the front garden.

fruit salad trees

I bought and planted four trees at the nursery on Friday.  One peach, one apple, and two fruit salad.  Oh, but what is a fruit salad tree?

On the left in the first pic, is a peach tree.  But look closely at the leaves and you'll see three different types.  It is a peach tree trunk, with two different types of peaches and one type of apricot grafted on.  It also has a nectarine branch and a plum branch, but they look pretty much dead so I'm not expecting anything from them.  So one tree, three different types of fruit.

The fruit salad tree in the second image is the one on the right.  Cherries.  Three different types that will have consecutive harvests.  

Now we just wait two years and we'll be swimming in fruit.  In all likelihood, we'll be moving in 2-1/2 years and we won't see these grow to full maturity.  Planting these is really for experience and for fun, so when we move into something a bit more permanent I'll have the experience to plant a real orchard.

i can

Major effort on the canning front this weekend.  Mostly late at night.  Got the recipe from my mom: 1/4 cup sugar, fill with pears, then with water, and put in huge canning pot for 35 minutes.  Total haul was 12 quarts, plus a whole bunch of dehydrated pears.  Pretty good for the first attempt.  (Thanks to Camie for the pic, and big thanks to both Mike and Camie for helping with the work.)

compost pile(s): the new addition

If you look closely in this photo, you will see three different piles.  Closest to the camera is the aged horse manure, purchased a couple weeks ago and wheelbarrowed to its current location.  Next is THE compost pile.  We've been following this one closely.  It's still hot - I haven't measured the exact temp recently, but I have felt it with my hand, and it is uncomfortable to touch.  The newest one is the farthest away, against the back retaining wall.

This new one was built this past weekend as I leveled the back garden area.  I created it out of extra cinder blocks of varying sizes that I found around our lot and in our basement over the past several months.  This is going to be a long-term compost pile, probably maturing in a year or more, consisting of yard and garden debris and kitchen scraps.  We have only just started implementing a system for getting kitchen scraps out to the compost pile, and that will provide a large part of the fodder for this pile.  Yard and garden debris will also be added, but we won't have too much of these until next year.

Please note the rock pile in the corner.  It will continue to grow as I double-dig the vegetable beds (more on this later).  Also, take a look at the pear tree - the prolific and productive pear tree, now with no pears.  Thanks to Mike for harvesting.  I'm guessing we have about 50 pounds worth, ready to be canned or dehydrated this week as they ripen.  I guess it's time to learn about canning.

clearing the back garden

This past weekend was my birthday, and my son's.  I took two days off of work, and spent the first of those two days finishing the driveway digout.  The rest of the weekend was spent playing in the mountains and on the golf course, and working the garden soil.  The following two photos were take from roughly the same spot - standing against the back fence and shooting towards the house.  This first one was taken after I tore down the shed - a few weeks ago:

And here it is on Sunday night:
I started laying out the vegetable beds - a very exciting time.  You can see them in the picture above, bordered by some tree branches.  Actually, I'm not totally set on my layout, so it will probably change.  After fueling up at The Village Inn as a final activity with our family this weekend, I used the cultivator to till the soil.  It was all lumpy-bumpy and uneven, so I smoothed it out, making it as level as I could before my arms and daylight wore out.

driveway digout

You may recall from this post that we had plans for a tractor to come last weekend to dig out the driveway.  It snowed, and the tractor man did not want to come.  So I bought a sledgehammer.  This is a picture from about a week ago.

I used that sledgehammer until I couldn't stand straight and my shoulder was in constant pain.  Then, with Terry (the homeless man who walked by as I was working and offered his services) I loaded the broken asphalt into my neighbors trailer and hauled it off to the dump.  Terry even scored a couple of beat up, broken bikes at the dump for free, and left them on our front porch until they disappeared at some point on Monday.  Getting rid of the driveway in this way was definitely cheaper than hiring someone on a tractor to take care of it, but my body has had to pay the price.  Here is the "after" shot:

And one more, a close-up of the driveway.  The plan is to work this soil a bit, then plant grass over the majority of it.