Side Lot Shaping Up

Side Lot

The side lot is coming together.  The beds are in place.  The Red Horse apple tree and Whitney Crab I planted are blooming.  It's going to look nice by the end of this year I think.  The big pine tree at the back of the lot looks way healthier than when we moved in.  The wood chip path winds through the space like we envisioned.  Things are heading in the right direction.

Side Lot Potential

I've been building sheet mulched beds in our side lot with all the plant matter and finished compost we have generated over the last year.  It looks rough...just bags of leaves and piled organic matter.  I am really looking forward to 2016 as the year we can get things growing in this lot, put up a nice fence and create a lovely area of shrubs and flowers instead of frankly, a bit of an eyesore.  We recently got a load of topsoil dumped to top off the sheet mulch beds since it is just fill and subsoil beneath them.  I am also going to use some of the topsoil to establish flower beds elsewhere.

Topsoil delivery

We had to take out a paw paw tree that didn't have room to grow at Garden Dreams, so this was the first tree planted.  Paw paws have taproots and don't like to be transplanted, so I give him a 50/50 chance.  That is what I'm excited about - this lot is a place to experiment.  All bets are off.

Sheet mulch berms/beds

I use the phrase "sheet mulch beds"  loosely.  A properly built sheet mulch bed would have nice layers of first cardboard, then maybe compost, then some manure, then perhaps straw, then some soil, then some grass clippings, etc.  These "beds" are more piles of organic matter.  Large piles.  With vines and small branches in them even.  Hugelkulture meets sheet mulch.  These are haphazard, to say the least, but I think they are full of potential, and definitely full of earthworms.  

Some perennials that may make an appearance here in the side lot:

• Witch Hazel
• Serviceberry
• Apple
• Paw Paw
• Ninebark
• Spicebush
• Grey Dogwood
• Nodding Onion
• Showy Tick Trefoil
• Goldenrod
• Sweet Cicily
• Sedges
• Wild Columbine
• Chives

Anything I plant has to be unappealing to ground hogs and deer or protected from them.  I'll likely cage the shrubs until they get established.  The more things I can plant from the allium family, the better, I think.  

Sheet mulch topped off with topsoil

"Uhhhhh, I guess this could look nice some day if you say so."

Early January Pictures

a batch of 8 quarts chicken stock

Warm day - girls are out flying

Seed organization is fun for cold days

Seeds.  Organized.  Check!

What's Happening on the Homestead this Week?

The nights have been cool, with very slim chances of much rain in sight.  It has been a very dry summer.  A crispness of approaching fall is in the air in the evenings.  The bees are making knotweed honey and I can smell it's rich aroma when I pass by the hives.

German Butterball potatoes with carrots and parsnips from our friends' garden

Long Island Cheese pumpkin

Tromboncino squash.  I liked picking these as small squash and using like zucchini

Boston Marrow squash

Hot Peppers: Maule's Red Hot, Burgarian Carrot, Trinadad Spice, Habanero, Criolla Sella, Golden Cayenne

Dried chile powders

Hops harvest (variety unknown)

Hops

Hops on drying screens

What is Happening this Week on the Homestead?

Criolla Sella hot peppers

Bulgarian Carrot, Golden Cayenne, Red Habanero, and Aji Colorado peppers

Sungold and Juliet tomatoes and Cayenne peppers

My beloved Juliet tomato

Juliet!

Chickens weeding

Chicken "Stay Out" fence

Blue Lobelia and Elephant Head amaranth

Chickens with hives, hop vine shade tower and coop in background

Chicken harvesting elderberries

Bees and chickens

Elephant head amaranth

Summer garden

Boneset wildflower

PA Native Plant Bed

The Audubon Society at Beechwood Farm Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel PA has an excellent selection of ethically propagated native plants.  Who could ask for more?  I am tickled pink about some perennial flowers and shrubs I was able to get from Roxanne, the native plant queen.  Every year I add a few new ones to our plantings.  

Going with a purple/blue themed flower planting up against Jason's yellow studio

What did I get? Well...

• Sensitive Fern (so cute...check him out in the little pot in the picture below).
• Leather Flower (a native clematis.  Score!)
• Blazing Star
• Wild Senna
• Blue Lobelia
• Wild Geranium
• Spicebush
• Serviceberry
• Bloodroot
• Tall Tickseed
• Swamp Saxifrage (a kind of ugly little plant perfect for a marshy area...love it!)

Some of the plants are going in our lot next door to our house that we are slowly building soil in (literally, we need more soil here, not JUST soil improvement!) and some are going in my little purple flower themed bed by Jason's yellow studio building.  

A native clematis?  Be still my heart.

Roxanne gave me a gift of a small plant, American Columbo.  It is an endangered plant in Pennsylvania that they are trying to propagate and having trouble keeping alive overwinter.  It takes years to grow big enough to set seed, so my task is to try to get it to stay alive long enough to do so and then share the seed back with them and report what it liked as far as growing conditions.  Sounds like a fun challenge!

What's Happening in the Garden This Week

A heat wave has sent everything into Full Growth Mode.  Temps hovering around 90 degrees for the last several days.

My Ninebark shrubs have buds.  Looking forward to seeing what the flowers look like.

Soon to be squash patch...composted (kind of) chicken bedding where I'll plant the squash and and cover crop of oats and peas for the plants to ramble over.

Garlic

My PA native azalea, Pinxterbloom Azalea 

A Red Buckeye tree I got from Tree Pittsburgh, and my beloved Greek Bay (in the clay pot)

Chicken Milk Moustache....drinking kefir again

Grumpy Broody Hen went through a few days in the dog crate and is now back to herself with the flock again

My sylvetta and chicory mix from Franchi Seeds

Greens: mustards, romaine, pak choi

Green Arrow shelling peas (on left) and Conservor shallots (on right)

This asparagus is 2 years old.  We harvested for 2 weeks and then let it grow.

Experimental winter rye and woodchip bed.  The Juliet tomatoes are thriving...all the other tomato varieties seem pissed off

Ice water helps beat the heat

Hot bees have been bearding out of the hive a little

Spring Pictures

Spring came late in 2015, but when she came, she came full force.  Dandelions opened today, magnolias have been blooming for almost a week, and the knotweed is at my knees.  Everything is popping open and greening up.  

spring chickens

spring mycelium in my sheet mulching

hello little fungi

ripped and flipped cover crop

cohosh

bottle gentian

elderberry

apple trees