At the Farm January 28 - February 6, 2022

 

Our old man Rocky warming himself in the sun.

Arrived during the lunch hour on Friday.  February will be another unusual schedule at work due to Omicron, so we will be here all the next week.

• Saturday.  Funeral in Madisonville, Sallie's husband.
• Before we left for the funeral, I sowed 3 beds of carrot seed.  So, I don't know if they will germinate since it is late January.  I know they are fine growing in cold weather, but germination is another matter.  But the experiment only cost me $5.  The voles got almost all the carrot seedlings that I sowed last fall.  And my grandkids love to pull up the carrots in the spring.  They are fascinated by it.  So I hated to have no carrots.  I turned over the soil and loosened it really well in 3 beds, and I sowed Cosmic Purple, Kyoto Red and St. Valery carrot seed.  My guess is that I will get very limited germination, but I will get a little.  I will find out in 12 to 18 days if my guess was a good one.
• Sunday.  Cold and sunny.
• I worked in the Vegetable Garden for about 3 hours.  I prepared the soil in 3 beds and planted a set of onion starts.  I raked the paths.  I cut back the sugar cane.  Pulled up all the dead pepper plant vegetation and tossed the dried peppers into the beds to seed in the spring. Cut away a bunch of Grandpa Ott dead morning glory dead vegetation.  
• Turned the compost piles.
• I planted 10 or so Heliopsis that I have been growing in pots since late summer / fall.  I planted a couple of them in the front bed, most of them in the Star Garden.
• Weeded in the Star Garden.  There are 2 weeds that appear each winter, still tiny right now, that have taken up residence in the long bed at the front of the Star Garden.  They are winter weeds, and I don't know the name of them.  They both have pretty little flowers, but I don't encourage them -   too much foliage with too small flowers.  I have already covered a big portion of the bed with pine needles or mulch, but in the few places that remain unmulched they are happily driving me crazy.   
• I used a wheelbarrow full of mulch to mulch around the Heliopsis seedlings and to cover the places where I weeded.  
• Spent some time in the Rose Garden doing some raking and spot watering my Daffodil Border.
• This year I raked more leaves than I ever have in the past.  I put a thick layer of leaves in the wild parts of the Star Garden, the Daffodil Border, the Rose Edge Border, the wild area next to the Greenhouse, and along both sides of a lot of the Boardwalk Gardens.  So - suck it sixty years old, I'm still kickin' it like I did in my youth!
•  I mentioned to my husband in passing that I'd like to try burning the morning glory vine off the fence in Mom's Garden.  Unfortunately I failed to mention that I wanted to collect seed off the vines first.  He took the initiative and burned the vine off the fence.  Damn.  I didn't complain though.  I just got frustrated to myself.  
• I picked up all the turnips in the Vegetable Garden, cut them up and put them in the compost pile.  Turnips grow on top of the ground (at least mine always do).  I will eat a turnip in a pot roast or a stew, but other than that I don't care for them.  However the greens are delicious in a Spanish soup that I make.  I grow turnips for the greens.  They are probably the easiest vegetable to grow.  I will sow some more turnip seed at the end of February.  
• Monday.  Worked.  Rainy day.
• Amy Thomsen came over to discuss our wildlife management plan / tax exemption.  I hired her to prepare and submit it.  Now that the Ecolab phase of our tax plan has ended, I have to submit my plan for the future.  We settled on brush piles, yaupon control, fire ant control and bat houses.  We walked the property in the pouring rain looking at a couple of areas where I want to begin the brush piles.  We have brush piles everywhere, but they need to be mapped on the property for tax purposes, they need to be maintained regularly, and the maintenance needs to be documented.
• Tuesday.  Worked.  
• Had 5 yards of mulch delivered.
• Weeded here and there.  
• Wednesday.  Worked.  
• Took a walk around the property during the lunch hour.  I did no gardening.
• Thursday and Friday.  Worked.  Very cold and rainy, the next 2 days will probably be the coldest days of our winter.
• Saturday.  We drove to Houston for the funeral of our elderly neighbor, Mel.  
• Sunday.  27 degrees and sunny.
• I worked on the back bed for about 3 hours mulching around the thryallis shrubs.  I did some weeding and then covered the area with mulch.  I didn't really get a very large area covered considering how much time I spent on it. I got bored of that and moved on to the Circle Beds.
• I don't have a lot going on in the Circle Beds except for gingers and African Hosts, so I am able to to just dump wheelbarrows full of mulch over the whole area.  I also mulched around all my bridal wreath spirea.  I haven't mulched those beds for some years.  So I feel good about it.
• Took my oil can of poison and my new electric saw, and I cut down yaupons along the fence line between us and our neighbor.  I an trying to clean up along that fence line as the neighborly thing to do.  He wants to keep it clear.  I dragged all the yaupon over to the edge of the woods along the road.  I took pictures of the debris for my wildlife management requirement.