ellineer

Just a little record keeping

Coyote by daylight, looking for his rib bone. I put it there to keep him in front of the camera longer. He eventually found it….see below

Seasonal garden occurrences: Monkshood is ‘leafing out’, as of last week. White Tritellia coming up. Both in the backyard, maybe I should transplant? The Cuseckii (light blue) Camas are coming up in the various places I transplanted , hopefully they’ll recover and bloom once again. I haven’t definitely seen the Howellii Camas which are similar color but different appearance, the other light blue Camas bulb patch I had to transplant due to failure to thrive. All the other blue and the white Camas are thriving, to the point where we considered cultivating it for eating. We have gathered and slow cooked it (see former post) a couple of times, but it is work. I can see how potatoes won out over Camas in the Native communities.

All seeds finally in the ground, although not all landscaping projects are complete. I hand finished some of the front yard where I wanted to plant, and where we had take out lots of Oregon grape, and various other non native plants as well as transplanting the large fern from there to the backyard (it already likes it better). Ten bags of top soil, potting soil, cactus soil sand and gravel filled in the fern divet and covered the areas for seed and plant/transplant. New Lewisia Cotyledons and Tweedyi for the front, a Castilleja Miniata Paintbrush, Penstemon Newbergii with crimson flowers, and the seeds of Irises Chrysophylla (white with purple and yellow stripes), Setosa (dark purple blue), and Siskou (yellow), and seeds of Buckwheats, bear grass, monardella and some other rock garden favorites.

Crittercam delivers

First wild critter to be caught on cam….infrared camera which is motion activated. Would like to get it to trigger a little earlier, so angled it more southfacing slightly. Had to change the camera position several times to a) keep from filming all the squirrels and b) keep from filming all the trucks that drive by. Coyotes here overnight (~4:30 am) for drinks at the pond, maybe a vole or mole? Probably also to stalk outdoor cats, though they’ve been pretty effective at keeping those out….no cat sightings for many moons now, thanks to them. Lots of “cat missing” signs for a while, they’re not missing, we know exactly where they went.

Also, a few bulbs coming up: mostly more Brodiaea, but also the Camas Cuseckii, or light blue Camas. I hope it recovers from whatever was making it fail in its former spot, and blessses us with blooms soon. Also hopefully deer won’t eat it. Few Trillium Chloropetalum coming up, including the deep maroon one (Kirabayashi).

January 2018 New Year’s greetings

Warning! This is a long post!

For our New Years entertainment, a screech owl box, which Dave put up in the pine trees in the back yard. About 12-14 feet up, with a view towards the north/ northwest, it is about 20″ tall and about 8″ deep and 11″ wide with a 3″ hole in the front, thick wood with sloped overhanging roof. It came with a bag of wood shavings. We also got a barred owl box which is really cool, but too big for our yard. Not to mention that would mean that two owls would have to find our boxes and then get along. Barred owls might even eat screech owls, I’ll have to look it up. Western Screech Owl, hopefully eventually I can get my own picture to post someday:

Pic of the Sceech Owl box we mounted in the backyard, on one of the bigger pines:

Continue reading “January 2018 New Year’s greetings”

Coming up Camas

About November 20th I noticed the re-planted my patch of Camassia Cusick popping up in a couple of different places. I replanted it because it was not doing well where it was…….it hadn’t flowered in a few years and this year even the leaves looked weaker and started to turn brown and spotted after coming up. It’s actually right next t some common Camas, which has always done great. I just cut it to the ground and covered it with mulch, in case there was an infection. When I dug the bulbs back up this fall, they looked fine, once I’d washed the slimy bulb cover off, so I planted them around. Fingers crossed. I haven’t seen the Howells camas that I also replanted in the yard. That patch wasn’t diseased looking but the flowers and finally the leaves looked anemic, and it also stopped flowering. Those bulbs looked just fine, if maybe a little smaller than the Camassia Quamash (common camas), but they seemed to have been stopped from growing deeper like they should have….maybe the soil was too firm, or not good? Anyway, those were super easy to take out, as opposed to the other camas that takes quite a dig, and they came right out. They looked like the bulbs were trying to grow sideways, that’s why I think the soil was a problem. Maybe there’s some big ole rock underneath that I haven’t seen yet. I planted bulbs from each site both in the front and the back. I’ve covered the new Cuseckii shoots because we now have…….

Deer! The little shits are actually coming around during the day. I found two together in our yard last week – a big stag and a doe, around 11 am. They ran into the next doors yard, and let me watch them from the street for a while. Then they wandered back into my yard, as if I didn’t see them. I went back and watched them for a while, got bored with them and then charged them to make them run (fast- into the north neighbors yard) which was fun to see. I don’t get to see stags take off like lightning. They don’t eat many of our plants, although they do nibble on new camas leaves in the spring, so I covered some of the newest shoots with a glass cloche, just in case. And they eat the flower buds of Brodiea and one of the Heucheras. They also trample a lot in certain places, especially part of our backyard sunny meadow. I arranged 8 tomato cage ‘towers’ stuck in a circle around the area to keep them out and force them to find a new path, so some of the seeds can establish and the herbaceous plants won’t be trashed when they try to come up. They don’t seem to like using stone steps or gravel paths – they trod on the soft wet mud instead.

Well, I did get something to try and discourage them, but not sure it will work. They sell coyote pee and wolf pee, in crystals and liquid. We got the wolf pee crystals, but not sure the animals even know what a wolf is or what it smells like – we don’t have wolves! It got better “ratings.”in general than the coyote pee on their website, but then, those were probably folks who lived near wolves. Arguably, it should have crossed our minds that there are no wolves within hundreds of miles of here. And that’s how powerful marketing is.

Planting season

Is a little interrupted, due to the landscaping project going on. We finally hired the original company to come out and do various stuff, much of which was heavy pruning and landscape barriers. There will be some lifting up of several steps and some patio stones, due to setting in of the soil over the years, and another replacement of the rotting log barriers from 18 years ago with some of the leftover stones from the front yard. There is new territory in both sun and shade to plant seeds.

As usual, many seeds collected to sow. BUT, this year I am not going to plant seeds in pots, only a couple different types . The rest will go directly into the ground around the yard, which is why I am anxious to have the areas finished with their landscaping.

Seeds I have this year:

Harvest (blue) brodiaea, all the fawn lillies – pink, yellow, Oregon off white, Shooting stars, Gaillardia yellow daisy, Arrowleaf yellow daisy, Bear Grass, the Irises Setosa, Chrysophylla and Missourienes, the Buckwheats Parsnip flowered, sulphur flowered and Rock Buckwheat. Yellow Desert parsley, Sea thrift, and Monardella odorissima, Woodland Penstemon (notochelone). I did put several types of seeds in an unused planter as a ‘nursery’ planter, the dirt raised up to get more light. The Gaillardia did well in pots, so I may do that one. Already planted some seed ‘mixes’ around the yard. Also planted Trillium Chloropetalum Kurabayashi, the dark maroon colored flower, which we bought at the seed sale. Last fall, planted regular Chloropetalum several places, it should start coming up next spring.

New Plants from plant sale

Penstemon Newberry (2) for front yard, and a new glaucous Penstemon also for the front….the old one died off in Mole Hill in the back, so I won’t be putting any new plants there for a while.

Moles and Vols: Mole Hill, by the way, is the epicenter of what became of an early backyard project, the “ecolawn”. Don’t do it, don’t let anyone talk you into that nonsense. It’s a weed trap, and you end up wanting to get rid of it which is then challenging. Ours spanned the short axis of the backyard, and was a crescent shaped space. We killed it by covering the whole thing with black plastic weighted down with logs and rocks all summer. It killed everything and all the roots, “D-E-D dead”. And then we planted some perennials and ground covers, shrubs and bulbs. The moles were quite happy with the lack of plant roots to restrict them, and they were kind of relentless, constantly upheaving throughout recent plantings. To the point that I moved a bunch of them out from the worst area and just stuck rocks in an arc to define Mole Hill. I even wanted to get a plant sign that said”Mole Hill”. Gradually, seeds and adjacent encroachment covered it without more mole trauma. They’re less of a nuisance now, except that their tunnels provide habitat for voles, which now ravage the plants there. But the voles do some digging themselves. Almost all of the Harvest Brodiaea bulb “clumps” have been eaten. I’ve found holes in the ground where a couple of established plants were supposed to be, a big Fawn lily and an anemone plant, and they’ve now eaten DOZENS of Brodiaea plants. So I’m avoiding any new or valuable plants there for a while, too. Thus the front yard garden establishment and rock garden.

Not my photo, but the NW native is newberri, the California native is Sonomensis, which has red flowers instead of pink:

Two Castilleja Miniata, or red Indian paintbrush, for the front yard/ rock garden, those would be our first if they survived…prior seedlings from Shi-Shi beach seeds made it (3) but didn’t survive their outplanting. Also not my photo, since we don’t have one:.

Another try at Purple Coneflower / Rudbeckia Occidentalis, maybe I can find a better spot, it doesn’t seem to do well with moles:

Ones we already have:

Two new Lewisia Tweedii and one new Lewisia Cotyledon for the front rock garden. One new Boykinia for some partial shade area in the front, after our hired landscaping projects are done, we have two in the back.

I planted one new Cornus Canadensis/Trailiing Dogwood, or whatever it’s called now, in the front yard shady area, next to a Maidenhair fan, Pig-a-back plant and trillium Chloropetalum seeds- a little shade plant medley. There are already some fawn lillies, shooting stars, brodiaea, and some background Penstemon there, so that should help round it out, and of course the Starflower, which is now throughout the front yard, more limited in the sunny back. It seems to avoid direct sun, which keeps it from being just everywhere!

One new 1 1/2 foot Vaccinium Membranosum or Black Huckleberry for the back yard deck/patio area (we want to eventually have healthy huckleberries there of several types), maybe where the Garrya bush was taken out last year. That evergreen bush got so big and bushy that it shaded out most everything around it, and they’re now starting to recover. I just cleaned out all the non native sedum and baby’s tears from that area and along the adjacent lower 4-5 steps as well, mulched it and will replant other stuff soon, when the pending landscaping stuff is done. New plating opportunities! Will be vigilant for non native plant regrowth, whereas when the whole yard was the project, I really couldn’t keep track of it, and the big Garrya plant distracted.

Garden’s end- October 15

Last of Green Pole beans picked over the last week, and made a sechzuan stir fry with them. Haven’t taken the vines down, but I doubt any of the recent flowers will give us beans with the temps in the lower 50’s and 40’s. We had beans for about 2 1/2 months, from beginning of August to mid October.

Pulled down the tomatoes, about 25 small Casady ones and the four larger Oregon Spring ones inside on platters, we’ll see….I’m sure the Casady ones will be OK to eat, not sure of the others.

Put the large cloches over he broccoli sprouts. The larger ones are about 8-9″ tall, the other batch are about 5-6 inches. There are a bunch of green onions and a few carrots also inside the cloche perimeter, and a few others outside. I guess we don’t really need the “deer fence” around the garden anymore!

September end news

Vegetable garden: About 12 broccoli plants growing. These were sown around the middle/end of August, after other seed sowing attempt failed, I think due to heat. Also a bunch of onions, and a handful of carrots. The carrots won’t get very far this time of year anyway, but if I encourage the brocoli to grow (and with cloches) we might get some late fall and even into winter, and onions usually have no trouble overwintering – the native ones do well. I have the kind of brocoli that can over winter or grow early in spring, a common type (walsham 29 I believe).

Green pole beans still doing great. We have enough for a large stir fry of Szechuan style beans every few days. It apparently likes fish fertilizer, and seems to flower a lot when it is fed, which is every 3 weeks or so. It also likes being picked, and makes more beans when you keep any seed-producing beans off the vine. So as soon as they look like ‘peas’ are forming they should be picked. They are supposed to be good through September, but they are still going strong and even putting out new foliage as well as flowers. Maybe climate change has alllowed this, it has been a warm summer. Sudden drop in temps from 80’s to the low 60’s recently, but now it’s back into the 70’s and sunny for a while, maybe we’ll have an “Indian” summer.

Tomatoes at their end. I didn’t like most of the Oregon Spring, won’t get that one again. The tomatoes were mostly mealy in texture, and they split very easily which caused more texture problems. Not particularly great taste, though a few were good. The Sweet Casady was good, but it eventually got attakced by what I think are winged aphids, losing many, actually most small branches. There are only a few bugs on the plant at a time but they sure do kill the leaves, and when they attack the stems of flower or fruit those die, too. There was already a lot of fruit on the vine when this happened, as well as new leaves and flowers – the plant had been doing well. The fruit itself was great, but the loss was from suddenly losing the leaves which are the source of their sugar, or the fruit dropping because it’s stem was killed. Such a violent yard I have. I may have caused the problem though, in that I overwatered the plants thinking they were still too dry (after I accidentally cut off the water for a couple of days), and ended up creating a wetland habitat for those mite-like bugs in the planter itself. I could see them jumping out of the planter when I watered, and it wasn’t till later that I saw them attacking. Lesson learned, hopefully. I still like the idea of the cherry, plum or other small tomatoes, they are less likely to fail in general.

Still have a bunch of asparagus starts that have lived under the planter all summer, getting watered and a little sun, not planted out! We have no place to put them, unless we make some compromises somewhere. Asparagus needs a minimum 20″ x 20″ planter, or in the ground.

Deer in the hood….in the front yard this time. They don’t appear to have eaten anything there, but did leave hoof prints around. They also sometimes trample stuff. I’m a little worried that they will get more tolerant of some of the native plants as the winter sets in. They have already eaten OLD trillium leaves, now they are nibbling on the False Azalea and Geum leaves, all of these normally die back over winter but we’re still quite green. In spring, they eat the flower buds of one of the heurcheras and the Brodiaea, and nibble some of the Bluebell leaves. The key is going to have to be volume – overwhelm them and the fucking voles so there’s sustainable carnage.

BTW, I spotted a vole coming out of a tunnel he’d created near the new bog, the little shit. I’ve only actually seen the bastards a few times, once as an owl pellet. He came out, stopped and turned tail back in. Later I noticed that a new type of bog lily we bought for our yard last year was dead – the bulb eaten, at the end of one of his tunnels. Luckily it had already sprouted another offspring overwinter, so there’s still one there, unlsss the little shit comes back and gets it.

Deer tracks:

August 27 vegetable garden update

The latest lettuce crapped out after getting to the several leaf stage, not sure if it is because of the intermittent hot weather. I think they were meant for spring here .

Finally pulled the second planting of “failing lettuce” and planted new carrot and onion seeds in their place, which are just coming up this last week. So now I have three different ages of onions and carrots, established pole green beans that keep trying to grow above the six foot or so trellis getup, and ripening tomatoes. We have had a few of the Oregon Spring ones already, but the Sweet Casady are just starting to get red. New seeds planted today for recently removed carrots, too – I targeted the ones on the south because they are blocking sun from seedlings. The carrots get huge, by the way…almost all of them are quite fat, some are double, and I think they can’t get more than about 10″ long because of the depth of the planter box. They are more tender and tasty than the store bought, as are the onions and green beans. The broccoli is still in seedling phase. The cucumbers were a bust, next time plant only vine cukes and only on western side.

I am fertilizing them about every three or so weeks with fish fertilizer, and we have them on automatics drip watering. I’ve given the tomatoes a little extra water at the bases because I’d accidentally turned off the drip system and they had a little dry trauma, but they since recovered. In fact the Casady is putting out hundreds of flowers!

Lessons learned ?:

1. Plant the carrots, and probably all of the vegetables, in square configurations rather than rows. That may minimize the sun blockage from carrot leaves on the other, shorter plants.

2. No radishes. Not worth it, and they have huge leaves that grow fast and early to block out the other seedlings.

3. Pay attention to the seedling packets you buy. I spent a lot of time going through the way too many varieties they had at Sky (have a gift certificate), then ended up buying the way wrong type of cucumbers- a “bush” type, not a vine, but either way they didn’t do well.

4. If I plant cukes again, it will be on the western part of the planter, since they are so heat and sun needy. The two plants on either east/west side had very different growth rates, and it’s only a 4 foot box! It had to do with the other plants blocking, I’m guessing,

5. Nasturtiums are great for color and vitamin C, and for putting flowers on your salad (I’ve read a LOT about edible flowers and they are extremely nutritious). But, I only need one or two plants, not six. And they can be continually pruned back away from the plants as they like to spill out over the sides.

August 19 vegetable garden news

Lot of warm weather this summer, so the second batch of lettuce failed to grow much. They all sprouted but then stalled out when the temps went into the 80’s. I left about five plants in a row to see if they’ll take off. The others were replaced last week by broccoli, carrot and onion seeds. A bunch of the broccoli sprouts are already coming up, so I thinned them out to one about every four inches (a little on the tight side, but I don’t think they’ll get large). They should be ready to harvest by fall, but I think they can overwinter, too. And the one plant I had from earlier planting is still growing, now about ten inches with purplish flowers on several branches. I hope this is what they’re supposed to do.

Had lots of tomatoes yesterday from the Oregon Spring plant…about five ripened at the same time. Also, I watered the front with a sprinkler and when the sun came out some of these ripening tomatoes split, so I had to pick them. We served them with salad to guests, and they were delicious! Still accumulating Sweet Casado small tomatoes, but no red ones yet.