Early Spring in the Garden

 During those unseasonably warm and lovely almost summery days in early April, I got 3 of the 4 raised beds cleaned up.  I removed any remaining plants that I'd left from last summer, weeded them twice.  There was some volunteer garlic growing in one bed, so I dug up a couple of clumps and transplanted it into one of the beds.  I wasn't going to grow garlic this year, but free and unexpected plants!   The bulbs should still have time to develop.   

I took some of the lettuces that had germinated in the winter sowing containers and transplanted them into the garden and covered them with plastic cloches.    I have some woad almost big enough to transplant and some Japanese Indigo which is ready to move into the garden, but it's still too early.

We've had snow and below freezing temperatures for the past couple of days.   The daffodils flowers are bent over from the snow and the cold.  They'll pop back up when the weather warms up, but they look so sad.   I had just started transplanting the winter onions from the main garden to this raised bed.  It snowed the next day, so they didn't even have a chance to settle in.   They're pretty hardy though.  I don't imagine they'll have a problem.   I've more to move over.  I want to till that part of the garden this year, and the over wintering onions will just get in the way.  Plus these ones are almost sweet and a lovely addition to a salad or stir fry.  I don't want to lose them.

I read a couple of books on Straw Bale gardening and decided to experiment with it.  This part of the garden gets dug up by the chooks and because of the proximity of the surrounding pastures, is difficult to keep clear of weeds.

I laid down a lot of cardboard and put the straw bales on top of it.   The bales need to be conditioned so that the insides start to compost before planting them.  Both seeds and starter plants can be used.  Most of the bales won't need to start being conditioned until May 1st.  I conditioned two of them early so that I could plant onion sets, beets and chard, which are all safe to plant in cooler weather. Plus I wanted to start playing in the dirt, so an early start for some of the bales allowed me to do that.

While I could see subtle changes in the straw bales that were getting the water and nitrogen, I wondered if it was really working.  The instructions say that the centre of the bale will warm up.   It was just above freezing and the unconditioned bale inside was the same temperature as the ambient air temperature.  The inside of the conditioned bale was over 10 C degrees warmer.   Once our cold and snowy weather moves on, I'll put a bit of potting soil on the top of the bales to hold the seeds while they root, and plant the onion sets on the outside edges of the bales.  The beets and chard will go in the middle.  I've seen so many photos and read so many reviews of this method that show amazing gardens, that it was worth the bit of start up costs to purchase the bales and nutrients to get started.   The cardboard was free though and I've had great results using cardboard as a mulch.  By the end of the summer, it's starting to break down and it's composted completely by the spring.

Dye Plants-  I have a bunch of mature Madder which needs to be dug and used.   There will be a load of woad seeds later this summer and I have lots of woad seedlings to plant.    I have Japanese Indigo seedlings as well.  I'm thrilled that there is a surviving weld plant.    Last summer I stopped watering the raised beds because we had weeks of hot weather and no rain.   I didn't want to over burden our well with watering both the raised beds and the regular garden, so the raised beds were sacrificed  as they needed watering 2 or 3 times a day.   Having a weld plant which will go to seed this summer means I will have weld to play with next summer.   Plus a friend gave me some of her extra weld seed, and I've got some planted for seedlings.  The rest I'll scatter in the weld bed. My Dyer's Greenweed is totally planted in the wrong place, but it's at least surviving.   I don't really have another place to put it right now, so I'll leave it where it is.  At least the bunnies didn't eat it this year.  Last year they gnawed it practically to the ground and the poor plant had to regrow completely.

Colours of Early Spring

These Scilla flowers are the prettiest blue.  They are naturalizing in areas, carpeting the lawn for the time they are in bloom. 

Glory of the snow?, I thought they had another name too, but whatever they're called, they are beautiful.  I had to wait to the evening to photograph these because the white centres were difficult to photograph, without washing out completely.

Coltsfoot is a lovely splash of yellow.   I found these on the side of one of the local trails.   

 

Wild violets just starting to emerge.   Again, from a local trail and not my garden.  Because they can be invasive, I'm not unhappy about that. 

 

I saw these on one of the trails too.  I think they are bloodroot.   They aren't that common around here, so it was a nice treat to see them.  The roots can be used as a dye plant, but since there are so few of them around here, I haven't experimented with it yet.

 

Carrot Seed Tape

Yesterday I made some carrot seed tape.   Carrot seed is tiny and the seed packets come with planting instructions that say, sprinkle seed, cover with light soil and when it germinates, thin to 2 in or more apart.   It always seems a waste and a lot of work, to plant too closely and pluck out a ton of little seedlings.

I found all sorts of instructions on the web for making seed tape, which is a basically a strip of paper, with seeds glued to it.    I took 2 ply toilet paper, separated the plies so I was working with a single ply and then folded the ply lengthwise and cut it in half, to make 4 seed tape strips.

I made a flour and water paste and made way to much of it.   Next time, I'd use a scant tablespoon of flour with a tablespoon or a bit more,  of water to make a runny slurry, like you'd use when making paper maché as a kid.   I used a cotton swab as a paint brush and dabbed little dots of the flour glue along one 1/3 of the paper strip.   This was so that I could fold over the paper and encase the seeds as a bit of storage protection.

 I tried several methods to put the  seeds on the flour paste dots, but most were messy.  The seed was  too tiny to just use my fingers.   A cotton swab with the tiniest bit of flour paste on it worked well for the first 3 or 4 dots, and then got too sticky.  In the end, a pair of tweezers with a needle nose like tip worked best for me.

I dabbed a bit of the paste on the edge of the paper that didn't have the seeds on it, folded it over and gently pressed it down.   I left it spread out to dry, which took far less time than I thought it would.

 When it was dry, I remembered to label it.  I used a fine point marker.  Then I folded up the strips and stored them in a plastic bag to keep them safe until needed.  

I sized my paper strips to fit the area where I'm planting them.   

You could use paper towel, newsprint, tissue paper etc.   It needs to be something that will fall apart quickly when wet though.

I only used one seed per dot, about 1 1/2 - 2 inches apart.  I didn't measure, just eyeballed it, because the cat kept trying to play with the tape measure while I was using it.  

  I did wonder though if I should have put 2 seeds on each dot.  It would still mean some thinning, but less chance of a bare spot because a seed didn't germinate.

I wouldn't use this for large seeds.  Beans, peas etc are easy to plant but the very fine seed is a bit fussy.  We'll see how this method works.   Fingers crossed.

Back yard syrup

 One batch of maple syrup was too thick.   We do the main boiling of the sap outside and bring the almost finished syrup in the house for me to finish.   I think this particular batch was at or almost at the sugar percentage, or temperature that syrup finishes at.  By the time I brought it back to a boil in the finishing pan, it was too high a temperature.   I filtered it, then reheated to bottle and only half the jars sealed.   The sugar crystals started precipitating out by the next day.   

The thick syrup is absolutely delicious.  It is a wonderful ice cream topping, but it is crystalizing in the jar.   I took the unsealed jars, poured the syrup into a pot, and thinned it with some more of the crystal clear sap that is still running.    While the syrup was absorbing the sap, I washed and sterilized the jars.  When the sap was completely mixed in to the syrup, I reheated it to 219F, and rebottled.  This time, all the jars sealed and hopefully I salvaged the syrup.

On top of this, we started boiling sap on Thursday evening, then Friday evening and both weekend days for another 5 litres syrup.   The sap is running like crazy right now so you have to boil when you can.   With the weirdly warm weather we're having, the sap could stop being viable at any time.

I went outside to the chicken coop last Monday and found this. The tree was part of a larger maple tree with 3 trunks coming up.  Well only two now :). It missed the greenhouse and missed the chair my sweetie was using for last weekends syruping.    It fell right in between the two, only managing to take out the wheelbarrow.   It was the best place for one large maple tree trunk to fall.  I'm a bit sad because I know that shopping for a new wheelbarrow isn't likely on the schedule until after we're vaccinated here as we just aren't going out much at all.   It means a little more effort will be needed  to expend for gardening chores.      The tree trunk is already cut, split and in the drying stacks for future use.

I've moved the winter sowing containers from the deck to the edge of the garden, where it gets a lot more sun. They're on a bench in hopes of protecting the containers from chooks and curious other creatures, including a rather oblivious guy on a lawn mower, just in case we get to that before planting.

   Right now there are 2 containers of woad, 1 of chives, 1 of dyers coreopsis, 1 lettuce blend,  and 1 with just a couple of tomato seeds.  I still have a few more seeds to start outside and the rest of my tomatoes will be started indoors. 

 I like the winter sowing experiments though, because I get to plant things earlier than I can start things indoors.   My experience is that indoor started plants tend to get very leggy and weak stemmed if started too early, without enough additional lighting.  This year, I definitely don't have enough additional light.

Time consuming projects

These are the new tea towels on the loom.  They are a huck variation pattern.  Not only are they fairly quick to weave off, but they look much more complicated than they are.   The bonus is that the weft colour has a significant influence on how the towels look when done.  Each towel will look quite different depending on the weft colour chosen.

I'm betting lots of people have done these towels.  The pattern was in an issue of Handwoven Magazine a number of years ago, and here is a similar, if not the same project free to download.   I'm sure everyone and their sister has made these towels.  I even was inspired colour wise by a guild project a couple of years ago.  The grey and navy works with so many colours and the light and dark stripes add a lot of interest.     One towel down, and only 4 more to go.

 

A while ago I made this hat.  It's knitted and then felted.   I made some proddy flowers for a demo I'm doing and they were perfect to display on the hat.  It makes the hat really fun.  Right now the flowers are just  pinned on the hat with straight pins.  The hat is thick enough that the tips bury in completely.   Once I feel comfortable going out to get crafts supplies, I will get some pin backs and finish the flowers off properly.  Alternatively, I could just stitch the flowers down permanently.   

I wore the hat on my walk the other day and it was super warm, despite not covering my ears.  Like really, winter appropriately warm.    Yay for that!

 

We did our first sap boil this weekend.  We had about 120 litres of sap, which boiled down to almost 3 1/2 litres of maple syrup.  It should have been a full 3 1/2, but I misread the thermometer and I finished it at a degree higher than it should have been.   Sadly, only 3 of the 500 ml jars sealed, so tomorrow or Tuesday, I will empty them into a pot, re-heat them and then reseal them in clean jars.   

It's really good this year and my temperatures mistake means it's super thick.   I admit that I licked the spatula when I was done scraping the last of the filtered syrup into the pot for reheating, before canning.   YUM!

It feels like I should have gotten more done this week, but all of these projects took way more time than anticipated.  Well, the syrup boiling always takes a long time, but the flowers were part of a demo which will be done with a power point. It always takes me more time than expected to put one together.  Dressing the loom is always a bit of a slow project.   Too many distractions :)

The sap isn't running!

 We've been having connectivity issues on and off for a while.  Last week it suddenly got worse and then poof, we had no connection whatsoever.   After rebooting modems, unplugging and re-plugging, turning off and turning on, we had to call for assistance.   We got the normal please turn off and then turn on.   Then the next step was unplug and re-plug, but using a lot more words.   By now, my sweetie was getting frustrated, because we'd done all that multiple times.  He went outside to check the dish and it was unplugged.   He plugged it back in, but the connection was obviously loose . Our connection lasted 3 minutes and was so slow.   Once he relayed this info, we had a repair guy here at 8 am the next day.  It turns out that because our dish was installed on a tree and not a post, the tree grows and loosens or pushes out the bolts.  In our case, it snapped 3 of the bolts, which put the dish out of position.  As well, the cable connector hadn't fared well either, and needed a replacement.  In all, the poor repair guy, didn't just do a simple repair, but pretty much had to reinstall the whole kit and caboodle.   It took him  a bit of time because it was a miserably blustery, cold day with snow squalls, but by mid morning, he was on his way and I got to check my email!   Yay!

I wet finished the blue striped tea towels. Everything that could go wrong with these, did so.  I ended up with only 4 towels instead of 5.  Not a huge deal because I'd planned for 4 but had enough loom wasted for a 5th because I'd tied on to a previous warp.   They are the same pattern was the pink and green, but using a series of different shades of blue.   I think  I like this better because the colours are less affected by the warp colour.  Also because they are blue.  :) or at least they don't have green in them.   

I over dyed the red and whitish yarn that I didn't like.  The white went a dirty colour with just a hint of peach.  I thought it was ugly.  I left it lying around the living room so I could get used to it and it still didn't appeal to me.   So I soaked it in some vinegar and water, and put some spots of dye on it.   I was going to do sprinkles of dry dye but realized that I didn't want to waste one of my good masks doing this.  If I'm going to sprinkle dry dye, I want good lung protection.   Instead, I found 3 packets of Kool-aid that I'd picked up on a whim when they were at the check out at the outlet store, ages ago.   I had pink lemonade, mango and blue raspberry.   The pink was pale and insipid, but combined with the other two colours, it made  a lovely combination.   I love the yarn now.   I want to use it as weft for a scarf, using a navy warp.

I spun some 100% merino and plied it.   This is 338 yards, wet finished and ready to go.  If I have enough after doing the numbers for the above mentioned scarf, I will dye it dark blue and use it as the weft for the scarf project.   I'll do it on a table loom though, so there is less loom waste.  I still have more merino roving so I can always spin up more if necessary.      

We checked the long term weather forecasts a number of times.  They kept saying we'd have lovely above temperature days and cooler nights, so we figured it was time to put the spiles in the maple trees.  As soon as we did so, we had a weather forecast change and now we have put our sap buckets out with a week plus of cold weather.  It's below freezing during the day, so no sap will drip.  :(  We should have waited a week.    We did have one day when the sap ran, but it's been so windy, we left the sap to freeze in the buckets to hold them on the trees.   There wasn't enough to do a boil anyway.

quick update

 I've crafty things saved for the next post.  I'm still trying to decide if they were successful or failures.  The ramie I spun was thicker than I wanted, the cake dyed wool is bland, but is growing on me and it seems I may have tied on a warp to the last project and failed miserably in one little section.

  On the weekend though we went for short hikes on both Saturday and Sunday.   Even though our walks are usually less than 3 km, they are a highlight of each week.   It's amazing how being out trudging through the bush on frosty days, can lift one's spirits.   

  I almost wish I had a mask with me though, not because it was cold, but there were way more people out there than we had expected.    It would have been fine on Saturday, but we took the path to the right and everyone else took the one to the left, so we passed everyone on the trail.  On Sunday's hike, it was busy, but we took the correct path, so it wasn't so bad.    Both main parts of the trail were fairly well packed down, which made it easier to trudge through.  The one side spur we took was not so much and we slipped and dragged through that part.

We've had snow regularly over the past few weeks.   I've not had access to my car because it's better in the snow than the truck, so those heading off to work end up using it. It's not that I have any place I need to go, especially since we've just come out of another Covid lockdown.   It's sometimes nice just knowing you can go out if you need to.

 The Ontario Hooking Craft Guild is having their annual convention on-line this year.   Our local guild is doing a virtual rug display.    I was taking a photo of my entry, or trying to.   Phil had been zooming around the house like a crazy cat.    I barely had this rug set down to photograph and he came out of nowhere to plop himself down on the wool rug, as if I'd laid it down specifically for him to check out.    He does look quite at home there.

He had been racing around the house for about 10 minutes or maybe 15 and then popped himself down on the rug.  After I shooed him off, he settled himself on his favourite sofa blanket and slept for hours.   He is a real sweetie though.

Spring is coming.   We have temperatures forecast for above freezing.   This means the sap will be running and hopefully we'll be syrupping for the next couple of weekends.