We have had a lot of rain this week, which really freed me up to do other chores around the garden since I didn't have to water it. I gave the chicken coop a good rake and put out a fresh layer of wood shavings. I cleaned out the condo where they sleep at night. I trellised the cucumbers that were toppling over into the paths. We had posts in the ground already, and had started to trellis them with twine. They had become a bit to unruly for the twine, so I did the next level with bamboo poles (cut from my mother-in-law's yard last year) and used duct tape to attach them to the posts. Worked pretty well. I also pulled out all the peas since they had reached the end of their productive lives.
Then I drained the above-ground pool. Our pump broke and brought our crystal clear water to a screeching halt (AKA green!). Very sad. We don't want to buy a new pump because we're hoping to get a larger pool soon. We already have a pump for that pool. We'll be switching to a saltwater system when we get the new pool. We don't want to buy another pump, but it's so sad not to have the pool up and running since we really use it two times a day this time of year.
My next job was to clear away a big pile of bricks from when we knocked out a low brick wall that divided the back yard from the side yard. We used many of the bricks to outline the crop and tree circles in the front yard, but the rest were just sitting in a great big pile. I moved the great big pile to a place behind the shed so we didn't have to look at them and trip over them any more. I also used a sledgehammer to remove the last bit of brick wall that was sitting at ground level and was also a bit of a tripping hazard.
Then my last job was to remove the pinto beans. They're in their drying stage right now, and with all that rain I was afraid they might rot. Of course, now rain is out of the forecast until Sunday. We uprooted all the beans and threw the plants on top of the chicken coop to dry some more. This weekend we hope to shell them, let them dry out some more indoors, then freeze them to make sure nothing grows inside of them! After that, we can store them in jars.
We also pulled an onion tonight only to discover it was remarkably puny. Not sure what that means. We planted them in late September/early October. They really should be nearly ready I would think. It may need more time or we may have flunked Onions 101. 75% of the foliage is supposed to die back when the onions are ready; I'd say it's at 25% right now. Maybe the onions take much longer here. We'll see!
There's never a dull day here!
I learned with my onions that it took about two years before they were perfect size. In that time, I just cooked with the greens and the flower heads and they made up for the lack of onions. Every spring I'd pile on another inch or two of compost and leaf mulch and they'd go nuts. I also tend to let my onions kinda go, and if it weren't for the fact that we moved in October, they would have been in ground for almost 5 full years. The bulbs were huge and totally worth the wait. I can't really eat many onions anyway, so the green tops were just fine ;)
ReplyDeleteGood idea with the beans over the coop to dry. Our run is planned at 12 feet long by about 5-6 feet wide, so the wiring on the top should result in a fantastic space to dry herbs and beans.
I remember seeing the pile of bricks, and then suddenly, gone! We have our own bricktastrophe to put in order...Not sure what we'll do with them yet.