New Life in the Woods

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted. Been busy with a bunch of different stuff. I finally got an extra plug installed upstairs and ran an extension of the phone line so I could move my computer up to the bedroom. That took a bunch of effort, but all the electrical system is fixed now. I still want to add a few plugs and a light fixture here and there but the essential stuff is done. Now there’s a bunch of sheet rock work, sanding, and painting to do to cover up all the places where wires were ripped from the walls or where I had to cut openings to get access to the wires.

After my last post (and before I moved the computer) I was sick for a few days last week, so not a lot got done. I did manage to go water the garden, but that was about all.

Since then I’ve been working on the garden whenever I feel up to it. I had to get a fence up quickly, shortly after my last post here, because something had nipped most of the leaves off of a bunch of the cherry tomato plants, all the leaves from one sweet pepper plant, and from two bunches of corn. I found what looked like hoof marks in the loose soil around the tomatoes so I am pretty sure it was a deer sampling here and there. I still need to anchor the fence posts with some wires to keep them from sagging inward since I was only able to bury the bases about 16 inches.

The fence took me most of a day to get up and it was kind of a rush job at the end. I spent most of the day cutting the fence posts, cutting off all the branches, cutting them to length, digging holes, and straightening out the old wire fence sections I had found half buried out in the woods behind the garden. With about an hour of light left I finally started hanging the fence to the posts and then strung some twine above the shorter sections to make a taller barrier to discourage deer from jumping in. I still haven’t done the fence posts for the section where the corn is. Right now I just have sections of fencing arced over the corn so nothing can nibble on it.

That won’t stop everything though, because I am pretty sure I have insects of some sort nibbling on other plants. Something got most of my first rows of lettuce, a bunch of the carrots and most of the beets. I finally found a spray bottle today and tried to make a soap/pepper spray to discourage the pests, but the spray bottle stopped working so I just mixed the spray solution with water and spread it around with my watering can. That probably won’t work though so I will have to go get some commercial soap spray or something.

I continue to dig up more space for additional rows too but it is slow work and I generally can only do about 2 feet per day because it has been very hot and it is tiring work. I continue to be in increasingly better shape (which I mostly experience as being ache-free) but I still don’t have as much stamina for really hard labor as I did when I was young. Plus, as I think I mentioned before, the soil is mostly clay, very compacted (especially deeper down), and full of tree roots. Turning it over isn’t too hard, but then I have to chop up each lump about 20-30 times with the shovel to break it up into somewhat loose soil and then rake it all smooth when I am done. After a couple hours of that I am pretty much beat. I still have a tray of plants that needs to go into the ground, not to mention the seedlings I started at the cabin, but I am hoping to get those planted tomorrow.

Meanwhile, as the garden grows the rains have stopped and I am worrying again about how I will keep it all watered. I haven’t been able to really soak the soil so I have made do with fairly frequent waterings to keep it moist. The clay soil is good in one respect in that it retains water underneath, but the surface looks like it is baked dry by the end of the next day. Today I found a good spot, about half-way down to the cabin, where there is a deep pile of old, well composted pine needles and leaves. I sifted it through some half inch screen to get out the larger twigs and stuff and somehow managed to push a wheelbarrow full of the stuff up to the garden. Now I have all the new plants mulched much better but I plan to brings lots more of the stuff up to help retain water in the garden. The mulch has a consistency something like earthworm castings so it should also help fertilize the plants, which will be a big help.

The good news is that, once the ground is all prepared and the plants all planted, the garden will take up a lot less of my time, for a while at least. It will mostly just take watering, some weeding, and some replanting here and there. I had to get this done now in order to get crops by the end of the Summer, but I should soon have more time to look for work and get other chores done. The cabin looks like a disaster zone what with all the repairs and piled up clothes, dishes, bottles and cans, unpacked boxes, etc., piled up wherever there is space. Cleaning is definitely another big agenda item for the next couple weeks.