Gardening

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My left hand has swollen up so bad I have no knuckles.   

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I'd like to say I could make a comedy routine out of this but I was having trouble getting up the nerve.  Marsha identified them as yellow jackets with an in ground nest.  Research says they are very aggressive, especially this time of year and can sting you as many times as they want plus they chase you down.  Today is the first time I can painfully make a fist with my left hand. 

So I waited until real dark and temps below 50 and went out there with the wasp killer.  Found the opening to the nest with a flash light.  There was one wasp standing guard.  I sprayed the nest with a poisonous foam they have to fly through.  I'll check tomorrow to see if they are flying around.  Hope I don't have to do this again.  I may have developed a permanent fear of things buzzing around me.  Stung 5 times in two weeks, I earned this phobia.

[cineater]

I looked a couple of hours after I used the foam.  There was a couple on the ground outside the hole moving slowly.  I figured they were dying.  This morning there is a large hole about 6 inches deep, like the whole colony busted out of there at one time.  I hope they are gone.  I wonder where they went and I wouldn't blame them if they attacked me the next time they saw me.  I should probably spray the hole again.  I'll watch today and see if anything is going on.  The whole bed looks like some animal had a party in it.  It's scary.   

[cineater]

Okay, now I'm just terrified.    I let Lily out the back door and she immediately goes to a dying wasp.  While I'm taking a picture of it, one flies out of the hole.  Lily goes back in the house with me.  And she won't go back out there!  She just sits at the door and looks out with her tail whipping about.  Yes, I'm laughing at the whole situation but I think it might be hysterics.   

[cineater]

I think they are gone.  I'm watering now, with the sprinkler and I don't see any. 

Yesterday 3 car loads of bee keepers showed up to work on the bee hives at the gardens.  The hives have been invaded by ants.  They started putting on their bee suits and everybody on that side of the garden abandon ship.  And when the bee keepers left they speed out of the driveway.     Yeah you pissed off three hives.  Beka said later in the day she was trying to water over there and they were landing on her, no stings.

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The wasps moved over to the front of Mike's house.  We snuck in there at midnight and put out killing stuff.  I hope they don't move back to my place.

Taking down the elephant ear and canna bed.  It's a little early but we need that spot to start putting the perennials in pots we over winter and try to have up in time for the plant sale.  I hate taking anything down before the first killing frost but I need to get this year wrapped up.  Next week I'll clean up all my beds.  Some where in there we are getting temps below freezing so I'm not too far ahead of the freeze.  Good night little plants, see you next year.

[cineater]

Planted some cup plants out in the drain basin.  Was out yesterday collecting native flower seeds.  I think this time instead of spreading the plants out so they would throw off seeds, I'm going to seed the same area with just one seed type.  It looks too wild having one here and there.  Again, the only real thing blooming out there is the plants I put in this spring.

The grasses have taken and they look good in their fall colors but it still looks like a weed patch.  The new neighbor said that too.  Still toying with if we should mow it down this year or wait the 3 years some places recommend for the flowers to grow up.  There is one tree in the middle but I could cut that down this year before it gets too big.  I was covered in hitch hikers just getting to where I wanted to put the cup plants.  Hate those and I always miss a few.  They don't even wash off.

[cineater]

We have three nights of freeze warnings.  Planted up a new bed at my side project today.  Get those roots in ground.  Looked good today but the tops are going to be dead by Wednesday.  She was waiting for construction to wrap up before we plant.  We took her master plan shopping Saturday.  Yeah bought more plants that weren't on the plan then were.     She says to me the master plan was probably a waste of money.  She has dogs.  I believe I pointed that out when she did that.  Along with the service paths and maintenance areas.  Nice to know somebody listens to me even if it's after the fact.   

We warm back up after this spell.  I still have some perennials to transplant but we haven't and aren't getting any rain.  I feel like I need to dynamite to make a hole.

[cineater]

More than likely I'm going to get stuck managing our 12 vegetable beds next year.  A job I'm totally unqualified for as far as actually growing vegetables.    Don't worry I have a plan and a backup plan.  

Wild idea.  What if I farm out one or two of the beds to my native plant team and have them grow native edibles?  A cool demonstration people would come to see.  Lots of ways to educate people including taste testing.  Hell, even my interest is peeked.  Not sure if they would take it at the food pantry and the plants/seeds are going to be expensive.  Oh, and our soil is too rich.  Natives like shit, not real shit, for soil.  I'm liking this and I know somebody who knows how to grow mushrooms.  We're doing that.

[cineater]

I had to use a pick ax to make a hole in ground that hasn't been rained on in 6 weeks.  I planted 12 of these along the upper path on the basin.  The Blue Mistflower.  Kind of a formal planting for the area.

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We seeded in the drain basin with all kinds of wild flower seeds I had collected.  This time, they are in groupings.  Probably should have made the seed mud balls but I just did it the way mother nature does.  Worked our propagation beds today and got 5 Shinning Blue Stars, one of my favorites, to plant out there.

I got stuck with our pantry gardens until a new lead steps up.  As overall lead it falls back on me.  I don't know shit about growing vegetables but I got a couple of other leads to join me in running it next year.  My plan is to just rotate the beds.  What grew in bed 1, now grows in bed 2.  Rotate and repeat.  We have a deadline to get our greenhouse order in and and to develop next year's budget.  After Christmas we'll figure out how we are going to manage the labor it's going to take to pull this off.

Workaholic that I am, I come up with the idea of a monthly Pantry Class to trainee the people working out there, including myself.  Besides the obvious, review what happen, what's going to be happening, I'm going to add taste testing of what we grow.  No you don't have to taste the hot peppers but you do have to try eggplant and sweet potato leaves.  Throw the idea out to a few people and they love it.  It's a go if the other two folks on my management team agree.

Okay, I have a new garden that cranks out 3000 pounds of produce a year and organizing a monthly class.  I find all that exciting and just not that hard.  "Oh how wrong you can be."    Maybe it's better to go into something thinking you can do it rather then go in freaking out about reality.

[cineater]

Kevin to the rescue!  We had been working hauling rock to fill in the back of the retaining wall Earl was building.  Time for the soil before the rain comes in and soaks it.  Two of our team has cut out and it's me and Earl left, we're beat but we're going to keep going for a while.  Earl and I are both doing part of wheelbarrows.  Kevin shows up and I ask if he can help us out and do just two loads.  He's game.  Kevin is about Duff's size minus a few inches.

I look over and Kevin has one of our big wheelbarrows.  It's full and mounded in the middle.  No way I would be able to move that.  He hefts it up and runs it the long length of the parking lot.  Earl and I look at each other and just start laughing.  He does one more of those and we're done.  And he does.  Earl and I were coming back tomorrow to finish it off but suddenly a project we have been working on for weeks is done.     Oh thank god and Kevin.

[cineater]

Winter starts here Friday.  Spent the day bringing in my pots, organizing the garage.  Even got the Christmas lights up on the roof line.  I'll get the lowers Wednesday night.  I'm ready.

The Demo Gardens wrap up Wednesday.  We're finishing digging and dividing.  I take their tools from them Wednesday at noon.  They have to be cleaned, sharpened and oiled.  Everybody got their beds down.  I think we still need to wrap the figs trees.  Greenhouse still needs some attention and our new fans installed but that's not my problem.     The new greenhouses did not hold up very well with the gusts of winds we had the other day.  Not even my group's problem as they belong to another group.     They're cheap and I'm betting they don't make it through the winter out there.

Put mom's garden to bed Thursday.  That's a wrap on this growing season.  Not leaving, there's always something to do in the garden.  I'm sending my crew off with a pancake breakfast at our last meeting in December.

[cineater]

That was fun.  The seeds of the milkweed are connected to a feather.  You just break open the pod, spread them out in your hand and hold it up so the breeze sends them flying out into the world.

[cineater]

Okay, now the growing season is over.  Wasn't ready for that.  Don't think I ever get enough time to just enjoy it without having a list of still needs to get done.

Time of year when I balance the budget for the gardens and see how much we have left and if I can't get some extras.  What we don't spend by December 15th goes back to general revenue.  I always like to give some back but not too much as it reflects poorly on our budgeting skills.  And well, we can always spend money on the gardens.    Bookkeeping nightmare as I move money from one garden to the next to keep everybody in the black.

[cineater]

Got that so I could put my plants in the sink and water them.   

[cineater]

Final meeting with the leads team.  I'd like to say gardening season is over but we start the onion seeds next week and the native seeds on Saturday.  Starting again.  And my ornamental kale came in.  105 days from seed to planting.  I'll be seeding them up by new years.  Good year.  Had lots of fun. 

[cineater]

Cassian Schmidt Style Gravel Gardens: A New Effort in Sustainable Gardening
https://iastate.zoom.us/webinar/register/tJwudu2vrj4rHtyN_8ml8mPDQDd75YmLijE1/success?user_id=SnkgJKjRRUeg94dgKDuCbw&timezone_id=America%2FChicago

A free class by Iowa Extension.

Back story, we have a big pile of gravel at the gardens.  Something is planned using this that I'm pretty sure is not going to be completed or won't last long so what am I going to do with a patch of rock?     The leads are going to laugh their asses off when they see this class because they are going to know exactly why this interests me and should interest them.  Not that I want it to fail and it won't if my group was in charge of it.

[cineater]

Freaked Terrapin out.     Filled up the spray bottles to mist my seeds.  One in each hand and the cat is out of here!

[cineater]

Really liking the domed covers for the pansies.  Pansies have to be in the dark until they germinate.  While all my other low covers have to be cracked to keep the moisture from building up and causing damping off, the domes have no moisture on them.  Don't normally use the dome covers because you can't get the lights low enough on them. 

Pansies though, need indirect light once a few of them germinate until everybody is up and then they get full powered light.  Not exactly sure how I'm going to achieve that.  The one set I can pull the lights up high and leave the black cloth over the top.  The other set, the lights don't go up that high and I'm out of black cloth.  Little worried about fire with any kind of covering over those flats.  Might be able to get them by a window that gets indirect light.