Month: July 2023

Edible Forest Garden – July Update

surviving this summer

This has not been the greatest summer to start a garden. The almost complete lack of rain through most of the late spring and early summer, record heat, record low dew points, and a severe drought has not made for a nurturing environment; yet all but one of the plants is alive! The one plant that did die had gotten knocked over by something and managed to live on the ground for a few weeks before giving up the ghost, but everything else is alive, and a few of the plants are actually doing pretty well. I don’t know enough to say if any of the plants are thriving but since I have at least four of everything but the plum tree I have some comparisons and some plants are definitely doing better than their friends.

Here is the garden as a whole with my four quadrants labeled.

Quadrants one and two both have a full layer of cardboard within the various layers whereas quadrants three and four have none. Quadrant three, a non-cardboard quadrant is doing the best with the largest, healthiest looking plants. Quadrant one, a full-cardboard quadrant is doing the worst with the one dead plant and everything else being the absolute smallest and least healthy looking. Quadrant three also has some major weed issues whereas quadrant one has almost no weeds.

Here is a close-up of quadrant one, with it’s full cardboard layer, small plants, but almost no weeds:

Here is a closeup of quadrant three, without any cardboard, much bigger plants, but more weeds

If I only had these two examples to go by I would have some serious concerns about the cardboard. Yes, the cardboard clearly seems to be keeping the weeds controlled, which is a good thing, but it also seems to be hindering overall plant health. However, quadrants two and four tell a different story. They seem to be about equally and reasonably healthy with light to moderate weed pressure. Neither of them are as healthy as quadrant three but they are both doing better than quadrant one. The plants in quadrant four (non-cardboard) might be doing a bit better than the plants in quadrant two (full-cardboard) but the quadrant two plants still look relatively healthy and there are less weeds in the cardboard quadrant than the non-cardboard quadrant

Here is a close-up of quadrant two, with it’s full cardboard layer, decent plants, and a few weeds:

Here is a closeup of quadrant four, without any cardboard, decent plants, and some weeds

The growing season isn’t over yet so I am not ready to draw any conclusions, but I am very glad that I unintentionally did this experiment with two quadrants of each option. I did wonder if it had something to do with the order I planted things in but I doubt it. Quadrant four was the first to be planted and quadrant two was the last one planted and they are both my middle of the road beds.

We did finally start to get some rain so it will be interesting to see if that makes any sort of difference, other than helping the weeds in quadrant three. I should probably get on that…

Oh, I almost forgot. We did get our first wild strawberry harvest! Harvest is arguably a strong word for the fifty total strawberries I picked that are tiny. TINY. But they were very tasty.

I didn’t have a banana for scale so I had to use a pen.

Barn Building Update 4

forms cannot contain us

Clearly my goal of getting back on a regular writing schedule didn’t happen. Hopefully this week will go more as planned  and I’ll get another one written and I can get some positive momentum going to keep at it.

Work continues on the barn, the first three posts can be found here – update 1, and here – update 2, and here – update 3.

At the end of Update 3 they had gotten all the posts installed and standing square and level on the cement discs (which probably have a technical name but I don’t know it). Once all the posts were up they started installing the wall girts which are the boards that run horizontally around the building.  

They were also getting ready to pour the concrete around the posts. If you are also wondering how they were going to get those concrete forms around the posts that were already installed in any way that would be useful you are not alone.

Turns out they had a plan, but that plan did not work as expected.

As you can see the concrete chose to ignore their efforts at containment with the form and instead just filled the whole cavity. After the first several they just gave up and poured concrete into the entire hole. Unfortunately that meant they ran out of concrete before they were able to finish, having planned for significantly less. This means the last six posts on the northwest corner don’t have any concrete yet; but they will be getting some when the concrete truck comes to do the posts on the south end. 

After the concrete got poured they finished up with all the wall girts and moved on to the and headers and/or eave struts. I’m not totally up on my pole barn anatomy so I’m not as certain on their name, but the larger beams running horizontally along the top. 

Can you tell which holes are missing their concrete?

Next up – trusses!

 

Barn Building Update 3

Taking Shape

Work continues on the barn, the first two posts can be found here and here.

They used the super big fork-lift thing (I’m sure it has a real name but super big fork-lift thing will have to do) to get the cement discs into each of the holes and then began setting up the posts. 

It was at this stage that I realized the overhead door on the east side of the barn is not where I had wanted it to be in my original plan. After a really good conversation with the crew I realized I couldn’t have it where I wanted and I will just have to sort it out once we get to stage two and putting the stalls in. The frustrating thing is I could have had it where I wanted it and saved money had someone sat down with me sooner and laid out exactly how the building would actually be built and then we would have opted for a smaller door that could have gone exactly where I wanted it to, and been cheaper. But at this stage the plans have been designed and everything purchased and it would cost money to make such a major change. I’m slightly frustrated because I thought I had worked out all these types of details earlier in the process but lesson learned. Not that I will get to apply that lesson since I will not be building another barn, but perhaps some day you, dear reader, can apply that lesson. They may tell you they can build around any size (and they mostly can) but plan everything out in multiplies of eight and plan on eight-foot centers and everything will go smoother.

After the east side was up they moved on to the west side.

The overhead door on the west side also had to get adjusted a bit but that one doesn’t have any ramifications to the stall area.

After both sides were done they put up the north end-wall. They are leaving the south end-wall for very last so they can continue to bring the super big fork-lift, as well as the various other big equipment, in and out while the put everything up.

If you look in the lower right hand corner of the last picture you can see they are still using their Pythagorean triangle to square the building. I still get happy every time I see it. I may no longer have any desire to teach math but I still love math.