I weeded my gardens today. It’s so much easier to do when the dirt has never been stepped on.

While weeding I found this egg. It was inside the fence and near the edge.

I have taken to a strange practice with my rain barrel. I grow catnip in it. Maybe none of the reasons I do it are any good but here they are anyway. First, because I can. Catnip grows very easily and quickly puts out roots in water. Secondly, I have found the water, if left to it’s self, will start to smell bad. With a plant growing in it that usually goes away. I suspect that the catnip feeds off bird droppings and other dead plant life such as algae that sometimes grows.. Thirdly, I found that catnip is a pretty good deterrent to ants. If I can water with a natural ant deterrent then I will. I’ll never forget the nightmare of stepping onto the walkway of my garden to find that it woke up the colony. I’ve since planted some catnip in that spot and I haven’t had trouble since, but spreading the love around is OK with me.

Maybe I’m just crazy but I feel like this helps.

In Garden #2 I planted lettuce, celery, sugar snaps, watermelon, Old German tomato and bell pepper. I was careful to not plant the tomato and pepper too close to where I had the tomatoes last year. The watermelon seeds are left over from the watermelon that grew last year.

I forgot to update on the rain barrel. It works quite well for me. The gutter system captures less than a quarter of my roof area but even an inch of rain fills the barrel. I think I have space to add an additional barrel if I could find one on the cheap.

A quick note about the mulch. There is a yard wast dump in my town that anyone can go to and take a load if they want. Mostly it’s shredded leafs but today I noticed a pile of finely chopped wood chips. The mound was about 7 feet high and not too tightly compacted. As I got into the pile I found that it had started composting and was quite hot and steamy inside. When I got it back I made sure to add a couple buckets full into my compost pile to see if that would get things moving.

Here are the before pictures:

And after:

The mint I planted survived the freezing winter. The larger one required a lot of pruning but it’s coming back nicely. As expected the garlic survived and has sprouted again.

In Garden #2 I decided to open up more room to planting.

As is usually the case, I haven’t even started to seed yet. Hopefully in the next week or two I’ll have it done. I expect the risk of freeze is over.

The apple tree I started survived the winter and whatever it is that likes to nibble on it. I pruned it and it might be time to look for a place to put it permanently.

The compost pile turned to soil better than I was expecting. However, our kitchen scraps don’t seem to be doing enough to produce the amount I’m looking for. I’ll leave it this year and find an extra source to fuel it.

baby watermelon

I’ve been steadily watering my garden, except during out latest rainy spell. Anytime you want to feel good about gardening toss some beans in the ground. They do well almost anywhere.

I have a dozen or so tomatoes that are still green, I’m sure they’ll come along eventually. I picked a cayenne pepper, it’s doing ok despite being shaded out by two tomato plants. I have a tiny watermelon growing! I’m excited to get at it eventually. The pumpkins seem to be getting reato make a fruit here or there.

The corn didn’t turn out too well. Not very many kernals were fertilized. I don’t really have the space to do it, and I might not next year, unless I do a whole bunch in a larger area.

Everything is looking pretty good, except the Sugar Snaps which have dried out.

I purchased four more landscape timbers to increase the depth that I’m capable of in Garden #2. To keep rabbits out I used 48″ rebar rods to anchor each corner, sinking each 12″ into the ground. Attached to the rods I have surrounded the plot with the same metal fencing I used to build the compost bin.

Boxed wines have been around for a while and have a stigma of being ‘cheap’.  For good reason, if a wine maker wants to keep the price down on his wine a good way to do it is to sell it in a box which weighs less and ships easier.

I had an opportunity to acquire a few bags from Corbett Canyon brand boxed wine. The bags are 3L, which is roughly (depending on how we fill) 4 regular sized bottles of wine.

The plastic tap are easily removed to allow access to the interior. I cleaned two bags with a sanitizer solution and left them to dry. When bottling last night we filled two bags and replaced the taps, attempting to remove all of the air, and put the bags back into the boxes they came from.

Apparently the taps do not hermetically seal. This could be an issue for long term storage. I’ll again update once we’ve tried some of the wine from the bags.

The tree in my front yard has a robins nest. The mommy robin didn’t much care for me taking this picture.

This is much preferable to the birds that are trying to make a nest in my dryer vent.

Yes, that is tinsel.