Greetings from southern New Hampshire!
Household Six has converted her old shipping area into a jungle, with 20-some Luffa racing each other to the ceiling joists! I half expect to hear jungle bird calls down there.
I will be merging and raising beds in our garden area and installing more cattle panels as trellis, this week.
Still trying to clear one of the two lines in our bog filter. I need to drain and clean the duck pond.
I am reminded of some graffiti on the old “wall” on University Avenue that I read while half asleep riding the city bus to morning classes one May first, I believe in 1967...
“Hurray...Hurray...First of May! Outdoor necking, starts today!”
My point of this post is to alert gardeners to a truly fantastic tool now available. The tool is a cordless cultivator that is cheap, light weight and extremely effective. It is not intended to plough acres but rather to dig up soil in small spaces.
Not to be sexist, but it is “Woman Friendly”. My wife watched me using it and insisted on a lesson. She then proceeded to cultivate a 6” wide row parallel to her garlic the length of the raised bed.
You can see them on Amazon. It seems that everybody is making one this year.
I bought a Sun Jo For $89 but there are lots of others.
Beau has left to move some gravel around with his skid steer for a neighbor. Our Foster Son is here TRYING to paint the house, but we have very gusty southerly winds today and highs up to 84! He’s going to see what he can get done before it gets WORSE, this afternoon. Yeesh! We cannot WIN with this house painting project. Year Three. *Rolleyes*
I am doing some more weeding, but mainly I’m going to re-arrange things in the greenhouse and pot up some seedlings that need it.
I have everything started that I planned on starting - just waiting for the melons and winter squash to pop up.
I haven’t lost a single seedling yet - so there’s that. ;)
My Mom and her gaggle of friends are coming over tomorrow so I guess I’d BETTER make the house look presentable. Everyone loves coming out to the farm, so it’ll be a fun day.
Magnolia has bloomed and is done. Saskatoon Service Berries and Haskaps are blooming. The wild plums this season are amazing and blooming EVERYWHERE - and my domesticated plum is in full bloom, too. (Dwarf Mount Royal)
Next up will be the Crab Apple (Spring Snow) then the rest of the fruit trees and the Lilacs.
Tulips and daffodils are blooming, too. I have cauliflower ready to go in the ground, so if I put some rocks in my pockets to keep from blowing away, I might get them in the ground today, too.
Rain tomorrow - we REALLY need it!
Bees too:
Yellow garden in full bloom:
And year-old "Scentsational" rose:
We got two days of over 90 degree heat, which isn't good for the garden, few plans like it.
Happy Gardening!
Sometimes the hybrids don't do as well as the old-fashioned ones, so this is an experiment.
We are being inundated with deer ticks.
Anyone have any good suggestions?
We’ve been getting them from the grass around the house. I know mowing it short helps, but what can be done insecticide wise.
I don’t like using them but I am NOT going to take a Lyme disease risk.
I keep trying to find ways to simplify making wood-burned plant labels. I finished the batch I was making with hot-stamp tips, but they took a long time and the spacing is messed up on a lot of them. Next attempt I’ll try a metal stencil plate and see how that goes.
Yesterday I got to work on my farm for a while alone. Solitude is such a rare thing these days!!! I had enough stamina to disassemble trellis #2, and even managed to pull up all the rebar. I’m feeling it today, though!
Only one trellis left, and then I can finally till.
My order from St Lawrence came this week. 5 berry bushes and 5 apple trees. They’re heeled-in in the backyard for now. The berry bushes are going in part of my field, so those need to wait until the tilling is done and the section is marked off. I’m thinking the apple trees can go where my failed strawberry patch was. (Yes, it was that big a patch.) I also have a bag of horse chestnut seeds that I’ll plant downhill from there, and a few bushes I want to take cuttings from and livestake all over the hillside.
(Livestaking is basically a super-simplified way of growing from cuttings. No rooting powder, no fancy treatment. You just take a live twig and poke it in the ground. It doesn’t work with everything, but some of the species I have growing are on the list of good livestaking candidates, and I really want a privacy screen. The fact that some of them are food plants is a bonus.)
I’m late getting seed trays planted. Hopefully that won’t set things back too far, I still want seeds from some of them.
Bought a portable 8x4 greenhouse cover for a box garden and and put in our cucumbers and tomatoes (started from seeds with a grow-light). This gives us a three-week head start on the growing season.
Turned and cleared three other box gardens - it'll be a few more weeks before the squash and peppers go in.
Garlic is looking strong - once they get pulled we'll put in bush beans - they grow fast.
Winter is fading in the rear-view mirror.
I’ve got a stupid question.
I say turnip greens grow out of a turnip. My sis says they are two separate plants.
We have planted some turnip seeds and want to know what to expect.
thx
Spent a good bit of time working on the driveway. I've put down ~50 ton of crushed limestone so far this spring, and probably will need at least that much again to get it back in tip-top shape. It was a rough winter.
Bird feeder gangsta #6 was apprehended this week. Freezers are full so this one went into the crock pot yesterday.
It was good timing for dry weather. The weeds were getting bad and my tomato plants were getting to the size they needed to be in the ground. It's a little bit early to put them out, but next weekend is going to be busy so #1 Marine daughter, and new college graduate, Leah came over yesterday morning and helped me knock it out. I tilled the whole thing while Leah finished cleaning up the cages, then we planted and caged 24, and planted 2 more in the perimeter fence. I still have two Sweet 100 cherries to plant, but I can't decide where to put them.
The green salad that I planted earlier is just about big enough to start picking. Sowed 15' row of spinach and 3x15' row of beet seeds after we finished with the tomato plants yesterday. I've got more stuff that could go in now, but my back said wait til another day.
The weather was perfect for transplanting, warm but not hot, and cloudy. The rain came a couple hours after we finished, warm, slow and gentle, and stuck around into the night. If we don't have a late frost I should be set up for BLTs on the 4th of July.
Thought I’d throw this out there as we have quite a few rural folk on here who would be on well water, and quite a few “handy” types too.
So... I’m out of state last night, driving home to beat severe weather expected; wifey calls and says (shallow) well pump is dead. I try to diagnose remotely (wifey has some capacity to help if directed carefully, is familiar with the pressure switch, etc.) Long story short is that it does NOT appear the problem is the pressure switch contacts.
I arrive home ~ 1-1/2 hours later: pump is very warm & making slight “humming” type sound. Then as I am feeling the other side to see how hot it is, the pump makes a faint click and goes quiet. No smoke, burning smell, etc. The entire pump housing is hot but not skin damage in a second hot. I unplug it, thinking “starter capacitor”, and “the thermal overload cutout may have saved the motor”, leaving the pump disconnected overnight, as sometimes capacitors can “heal” temporarily. This mid-morning I open the bathtub “cold water” valve and plug the pump back in: The pressure switch clicks on, the pump hesitates a second (?), making that slight hum again, and then comes fully on and begins pumping just great. I fill the bathtub and every container in sight with very slightly brownish water. (Typical color after heavy rains, which we got.) I did not hear any mechanical issue such as a jammed impeller breaking free, tho’ I suppose I can’t rule out some sort of excess friction causing the motor to start weakly. However, such frictional issues are usually greater when a motor mechanism is cold.)
I’ve been inside a submersible sump pump but never inside a shallow well pump. Research online indicates such well pumps may have both a start cap and a run cap. I’m thinking access may be a little easier with a shallow well pump, since the whole thing doesn’t have to be sealed for submersion.
Note that this is a two pipe design & info. I found seems (iffy) to indicate this pump may have a little more lift height capacity than pumps designed for wells under 25’ deep. (I think this well may be right at 25 ft. deep.)
Am I on the right track, here, and has anyone on FR ever repaired a problem like this? I do know start capacitors are a VERY common cause of (often disastrous!!) sump pump failures. (I know all too well!) (Pun not intended!!)
P.S. I’m not finding much info. on “Water Ace” pumps online — it looks like it may be a discontinued brand of a company named “Pentair”.
