709-218-7927 The Landfall Garden House 60 Canon Bayley Road Bonavista, Newfoundland CANADA A0C 1B0 |
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Diary
Back to Diary_2024_06
Tuesday July 9, 2024
Finished mowing the front grass, now to restart along the back.
Sunday July 14, 2024
Busy day. Bernard? Kettle at 11:30; Strathies 2-4, …
Wednesday July 17, 2024
Bernard came by with his truck and we collected two loads of hay from David Cox’s lot.
The view that greets me this morning as I head off to read the meter.
The view that greets visitors.
This morning I must empty three more compost bins of the wet soggy compost and spread that on the raised bed. Only then can I cart what will be about thirty barrow-loads of grass to the compost bins.
Sigh! I love this.
Friday July 19, 2024
Yesterday a visitor asked me about fruit trees; I had a couple of lemon trees in the driveway. This morning I found a tub that had sprouted four grapefruit trees, so I brought it inside and gave it a soak before setting it on a tray to grow a bit more. After a month or two, when all the seeds that are going to germinate have appeared, I shall transplant each small tree to a separate pot and grow them over winter.
Hooray!
I can not clear my driveway of the three truck-loads of hat and grass until I empty out more compost bins. This truly is the boom month for grass clippings.
This shows part of my corner bin, a rectangle of panels surrounded on two sides by other bins. It was awkward to fill on account of my having to reach across the diagonal to pack the far corner.
So I removed the panels to form a large enclosed triangular shape.
The compost is wet; not soggy, but clumpy. No matter. It is a rich very dark brown, and represents perhaps 100 bags of clippings rotted down over twelve months.
This soggy stuff I spread on my raised bed; it will have the rest of this year to break down and turn into crumbly rich soil. Next spring I will use the rotary hoe to break it up and mix it in to the bed. That means one quarter of the bed will be ready for proper planting!
The four yellow lines represent future closure of this corner bin using two overlapping panels.
I am partway through the initial filling; the wheel barrow makes the dent in the face side, then two arm scoops transfer hay from the barrow to the pile, then head back for another barrow-load.
I fill the open bin above the top of the panels; the hay had started to settle before we picked it up; it has settled in the driveway these past three days. It will settle more overnight, and will keep on settling until late this year.
I had dropped a few shovels of spare compost on my BC potatoes, and take the opportunity to remind myself that potatoes are VINES!
Tuesday July 23, 2024
Gooseberry cuttings. I have trimmed the original four bushes in an attempt to make taller, waist-high shrubs.
I gather about fifty more sticks, some hardwood some softwood, in a pail of water and leave them to drink for 24 hours.
Here are the cuttings and a pail with drilled drainage holes. I need pebbles in the bottom to help drainage.
But here is a pile of debris, pebbles and dead grass and soil from my propped rack.
I toss in the rough stuff to about one-third the volume.
I add another third from the compost spread on the raised bed.
I top up with soil from a stale part of the raised bed and leave to soak for an hour or two.
The corner bin contains a barrow of cod carcasses, covered with a thick layer of hay.
Onto that hay I toss a half-barrow of soil; rain will wash the soil particles and the nutrients down towards the fish and, I theorize, enhance the decomposition.
Here I use two panels, tied together, to close off this corner bin.
Now I wonder why I have made cubic-metre compartments of the clippings. Why not just maintain a channel, two parallel lines of panels, and fill up daily from the starting end. Emptying the bins next spring will then be only a matter of tunneling in from the start end towards the finish.
Perhaps something like this years set of bins, but with a cross-panel only every three or four bins to provide alignment for the outer line of panels?
In that way I would gain extra length at no cost in panels.
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Late after noon I thinned the Jerusalem Artichokes. How small this plot looks after several years or rampant growth.
Sunlight now reaches the soil around the roots.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Late afternoon I decided to start roto-tilling a 21” wide border around the property fences.
You never know what you’ll find in this house lot; today a barrow of one-inch steel cable. Talk about getting tangled up around hardened steel times …
I got this far and stopped to untangle the web of steel.
But I think the basic idea has merit.
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Apple tree transplants.
It is time for me to make more space by making use of the 5-gallon water jugs I brought with me from Toronto 2,001 nights ago. The cut-down containers were bins of collections of utensils and small goods. They have served me for over five years and are looking a little battered.
I make use of the dross screenings from soil remediation. In this image I have used about half the pile of pebbles, dried weeds, and clay lumps from the steel sheets that trap the dross.
All three bins are half-filled with dross. This material will settle down over the next few weeks and for a drainage bed for the bins.
The centre bin has been topped up with sieved soil, so these three apple tree bins will be re-used soil from the remediation process.
Next I top up the other two bins and give the soil a good top-down watering to begin the process of settlement.
Two house plants are transplanted from a citrus tub, watered, and set atop the tree bins to drain. Every little bit helps.
Why separate the soil into dross and sieved if I am only going to recombine it?
Well, that’s not the only uses. IT happens to be the use TODAY!. I make great use of the sieved soil for other small plantings. Just in this case I am building a larger pot which needs the two sets of material, but note that the sets remain separated.