Fall                                                                        Samhain Moon

Kate got several bales of hay (6) and pumpkins today at Green Barn, up near Isanti.  She saw Louis, who introduced us to his brother, Javier.  Javier has done a lot of work for us and will do more.  The hay will, next spring, go down as mulch over the landscape cloth around the fruit trees.  The seeds in the bales need to sprout and then die back before we can use it, otherwise we spread unwanted plants.

We’ll lift the landscape cloth when we broadcast fertilizer around the trees and spray them with biotill.  It will go back down to continue its function as a weed barrier.  Once we’ve finished this and I’ve sprayed and mulched the vegetable beds yet bare (with leaves from our trees), the produce gardens will be at rest.  With one exception.  The bed in which I plant next year’s garlic crop.

After that attention will turn to bulb planting in the perennial beds.  When that’s done, we’ll celebrate around a Samhain bonfire, welcoming the fallow time to our land and turn our work inside.  Like cleaning up and decluttering the garage.

That will be a big task because it entails dismantling our five stall dog feeding station, used when we had our maximum number of dogs, 7, 5 Irish Wolfhounds and 2 Whippets.

Fall                                                            Samhain Moon

Gardening has become more straight forward, better results over the last couple of years.  Now, it’s time to turn attention to the orchard.  Here, the trees have just reached their bearing years and began producing multiple fruits.  Up to now, aside from the guild of plants around their base, installed by ecological gardens as a permaculture method for caring for them, I’ve done little except bag the apples.

The permaculture stuff, which has worked well in the vegetable garden, for whatever set of reasons has not worked so well in the orchard.  To get better results I turned this year to International Ag Labs, doing a soil test for the orchard separate from the vegetable garden. I have recommendations.  And today we began the work of implementing.

Only thing is, I had this bright idea last year, lay down landscape cloth, the really good kind, put mulch on top and keep down the grass and weeds that drove Kate nuts over the last couple of years.  Worked great for that purpose.  Turns out though that when I lay down fertilizer and soil drenches for the trees I have to work where their root system extends.  Makes sense, right?

(this graph looks about right to me.  In the orchard I’m at comprehension.)

Tree’s root systems extend out about as far as its canopy is wide.  Javier did not lay landscape cloth on the mounds around each tree, but he did put it down under the canopy proper.  I asked him to do that.  Oops.  Now I have to rake the mulch off, back to the canopy’s edge and figure out a way to suppress weeds and grass while leaving open space for the treatments of the soil that I will do throughout the year.  Sigh.

Still not sure what I’m going to do in that exposed ground, but I have a season to consider it.

Fall                                                             New (Samhain) Moon

Out this morning early, before the rains come, laying down broadcast in the remaining vegetable beds.  Now all but the leeks, raspberries, strawberries and herb spiral have fertilizer already at work, nourishing the soil critters and spreading into the upper soil layers.  Those remaining are still active beds and will remain so until a heavy frost.  Then, I’ll cut the raspberry canes to the ground, pull the leeks for potpies and Kate will finish the herb spiral.  The strawberry plants will die back and I’ll be able to get the fertilizer into the top soil.

Planting garlic will finish the gardening season.  We still have fertilizer to lay down in the orchard, more ambitious undertaking as I said earlier this week, but I’m sure we’ll get it done in the next few days.  After that the bulbs go in the ground and with the exception of closing up the bee hive, we’ll be set for winter.  Bring it on.

Fall                                                                               Harvest Moon

Another half gallon or so of red and golden raspberries, the last carrots, the last greens, most of the last beets.  A few tomatoes, mostly yellow and a pepper.  The raspberries keep going, producing new berries faster than I pick them.  The leeks have thickened up and are ready for making into chicken pot pies when I pull them in October.

The sky has that fresh, rain washed look, bright and filled with sun.  Golden and red flecks have begun to show up.  The birch, the euonymus have begun to turn.  The Norwegian maple across the street lit up a week ago.

Our old harvesting baskets, woven reed from Vietnam, have worn out and gotten lost so we bought some garden hods, a U-shape of thick green 1/2″ mesh with a wooden handle and two wooden ends.  This shape and configuration makes it easy to hose off the vegetable.  That’s handy for root crops like beets, carrots and leeks.   It worked as advertised and will see many more harvest seasons.