Well two weekends ago I finally planted all the vegetables and herbs in the garden, I’m only at least a month behind schedule. And it is showing in the size of the plants. Continue reading
Category: gardening
Weeding the garden – Week 2 June 2009 – Johnny Storm style
As you can tell from the date, this is a better late then never kind of post. But I’m sick and tired of hand weeding, so its time to bring out the heavy guns…….the propane flame thrower. Continue reading
Cinder block smoker or compost bin?
So I’ve got a dilemma.
When I bought my house a number of years back, for some reason the previous owner had left a pile of cinder blocks on the side of the house (as well as a bunch of past due water bills.) For the last couple of years they have just been stacked on the north side of the house, since I thought that it would be a waste to throw out perfectly good cinder blocks when I might need them some day. Say for instance stealing someones rims, this way I’m already prepared to put the car on blocks, but I digress. Continue reading
Centennial cones are growing – Mid June 2009
Oh baby, do we have some cone production happening on the centennial hops. I had very low expectations for hop cones this year. But man is the centennial cranking out the cones. To the top 2′ of the centennial vines, there is copious amounts of cone production. As you get closer to the ground you start to get less and less cones. I am definitely going to have enough centennial hops this year for at least a couple of 5 gallon batches of beer. YES!!! Continue reading
Chopped out half the rhubarb – First half of June 2009
Time to tame the beast, and I’m not talking about either Supa or Old Milwaukee. The main rhubarb plant in the backyard has reached the point of being unruly, so its time for a haircut. More or less before I headed out of town this past weekend. I pulled out all the monster rhubarb stalks and left the babies to fend for themselves. After chopping off all the leaves and tossing them on the compost pile, I had a plastic grocery bag full of trimmed stalks. And a rhubarb plant that is now about half the size of its former self. Continue reading
Heavy Hops = String breaking
Now that the centennial hops are really starting to fill in. I thought that it might be a good idea to replace the two year old twisted poly-string holding up the hops with a 3/8” braided rope. Well I came up with this idea just a tad bit late.
After I lowered the hops to the ground, the plan was to use the old string to pull the new rope up and through the top shackle. Well about half way up the trellis the old string broke in mid-air. So now I have to put on my thinking cap to come up with a solution.
The trellis is about ~18’ tall and I can’t lean my 20’ ladder against it, since it won’t hold that kind of weight. And when I stand on top of the multi-ladder that I own, I’m short at least 4’ from the apex. So with those two options gone. I had to run a couple of scenarios in my head about how to get that rope threaded through the shackle at the top of the trellis. And the only one that made sense was to take off the top part of the pyramid. After about 10-15 minutes of muscling off the top part of the pyramid (the easy part), then putting it back on (the hard part), I got the new rope threaded. Now that the new rope is run for the hops, let hope that it holds up.
Hops – start of June 2009
By popular demand, some more pics of the hops. You can really see the difference now between the leaves of the centennial and the golding leaves. The centennial even seems to be getting ready for some cone production. Bring on the hops bitches! Continue reading
Rhubarb – Start of June 2009
Well cutting off the flowers was a good thing, because the rhubarb monster is back in full force. As you can tell in a couple of the pics, some of the leaves are the size of elephant ears, and not the deep fried kind.
Out of the transplants I originally thought that “in the end, there can be only one”. But it appears that out of the six cutting two are going to survive the move, one in the hop garden and the other with the green monster. Since only those two each have a new stem emerging out of the ground. Thank you heavy rains……you may have killed most of my seedlings, but the rhubarb is loving it.
Digging up the garden – End of May 2009
This year I’m going to double the size of the garden, so it will be going from 8′ x 16′ to 16′ x16′. The rhubarb is going to take up a lot of space this year. About a 4′ x 8′ section of the garden is already being used up by the rhubarb.
I finished about half of the digging last weekend, and about another quarter this weekend. I ended up using a mattock it dig up all the grass. If I owned or had rented a roto-tiller, this would have been done in a couple of hours. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.
Moving the rhubarb – pre-memorial day 2009
So I finally moved the patch of rhubarb from the front yard to the back yard. But I did end up leaving a little chunk in the front yard, just for fun. If it survives, great…..if not, no big lose.
I even planted a couple of chunks in the hop garden, since I had a bare spot from where the Willamette died. I was going to cut off a centennial runner and move it to the bare spot, but I think that I’ll give it to a friend here is town. Since he has been wanting a chunk of the rhizome for a while. So it should all work out perfectly.
