Looking Ahead Week: The Garden

When I moved into my house in August, the garden was lush with vegetation.  The problem, though, was that this vegetation was growing out of control.  The near end of the garden, especially, was a thick growth dominated by thorny raspberry plants.  Before I could plant anything in the garden this year, I had to clear out the raspberries, the weeds, and their roots and underground runners.  Although the thickest growth was at the near end of the garden, the far end had plenty of vegetation to clear as well:

After a few hours of work, the fringe of the garden was clear, and a couple of shrubs or short trees were revealed:

And after several more hours of work, the garden was cleared of most of those annoying plants.  It wasn't anywhere near ready for planting, but it was slowly getting there:

Since I'm still learning the ropes of gardening, and since there's lots of space in the garden, I'm planning to plant the garden in stages.   There are two long planter rows that run nearly the full length of the garden: these are my objective for this year.

I cleared out the plants (mostly grass and small weeds) late in the fall, and I plan to fill one with flowers and one with vegetables after temperatures have warmed up later this spring.  I have a mixture of full-sun and shade flowers to try out this year, and we'll see which grow the best in the part-sun, part-shade environment of the garden.  I've also bought some carrots and green beans - vegetables that I actually eat - to try out in the garden.  I plan to start them indoors and hope that they sprout and get a good start before I transplant them to the garden.  The seedlings will be easier to manage that way.

As for the rest of the garden - well, I think I have enough on my hands for now, between the two garden planter boxes, the wildflower area, cleaning up the branches and junk from the yard, and still leaving some time to enjoy my spring and summer.  In the coming weeks, I look forward to seeing the snow melt, the grass grow, the wildflowers pop up, the leaves turn the trees green, and all of the annual wonders of spring.

Looking Ahead Week: What Stays, What Goes?

Tuesday's post in Looking Ahead Week gave an overview of some of the plant clean-up that I'll be doing over the coming weeks.  This post looks at the bits of human refuse and junk in the yard that I'll be cleaning up.  There's quite a bit out there, and I haven't come close to inventorying it all.  Scattered throughout the yard are bigger pieces, like cinder blocks, bricks, and logs, that I can easily use in the garden and throughout the yard.  But then there are also smaller pieces of debris and junk, like shards of broken glass and this bottle cap:

In various places across the yard lie large and small pieces of wood:

Near the neighbors' fence is quite a bit of old junk...how much can you see in this photo?

I've begun collecting some of this stuff in what I call my Pile of Eyesore.  Eventually, this stuff will either be used somewhere around the yard or discarded.

Even in the garden, I'm finding things of various usefulness.   Here's a string that I uncovered:

There are, of course, also old pieces of junk that may have been useful back when my house was a railroad cart and wagon repair shop, but now they've outgrown their utility.

Either way, for now, they get thrown on the Pile of Eyesore.

Of course, quite a bit of this stuff is junk that I've only recently discovered, either as the vegetation thinned out with the coming of fall and winter, or as I began to look harder for it.

Either way, early spring is probably the best time to find and move this stuff, before the vegetation gets too thick and after the snow has gone, as temperatures begin to warm.  Later tonight, I'll be looking ahead to later in the spring, when it's time to begin planting, with a peek at some of my thoughts for planting in the wildflower areas.

Looking Ahead Week: The Wildflower Area

In the back right corner of the yard sits an area of random wildflowers.  I don't know the names of all of them, but there are purplish flowers and goldenrod, among others, scattered in with black raspberry plants and other thorny plants that I don't know the name of.  It's kind of a random mess right now, and I'd like to add some order to this part of the yard, but I have to be careful, because the deer pass right through here all the time, as evidenced by the deer trail in the photo below.

I already cleared out some of the raspberry plants in the fall, such as the ones below.  (They're the ones with the purple stems, or canes.)

Though parts of the wildflower patch - especially those with the raspberries - can be pretty densely vegetated, other parts of it are somewhat sparse and open to planting:

Farther back, the raspberries and other thorny plants dominate the growth.  The wood log in the photo below marks a short path through the wildflowers; beyond it, I'm thinking of clearing out the other thorny plants and letting the raspberries just grow and see how that pans out.

But in other places, like here in front of the tree, I plan to clear out all of the thorny plants (raspberries included).  In their place, I hope to plant some grasses, wildflowers, maybe a few shrubs or smaller bushes, and probably a few sunflowers.  I'm not sure exactly what the mix will be or how it will be laid out - I'm waiting for the snow to thaw to get a good look at the yard again - but that's the working idea.

The first phase of the project was covered on Tuesday...clearing out the old to make room for the new.

Of course, this isn't the only wildflower patch in the yard.  There's also a relatively large area of wildflowers in the back center of the yard.  In summer and through much of the fall, I found it to be healthily full of a variety of wildflowers.

It's not all flowers, though.  There's a small fallen tree (as well as some tree stumps and logs) that I have to decide whether to keep or not.  An advantage is that the birds can sit on the branches and have their pick of whatever food the flowers provide.  And I suppose it looks somewhat natural this way...but if I get the fallen tree out of the way, there will be room for more wildflowers.

But it's not all wildflowers and fallen trees, either.  Raspberry plants, aggressive as they are, have put down roots here as well (see the purple cane shooting straight up in the photo below).  Early in the spring, before the other vegetation sprouts up, I'm hoping to pull out many of the raspberries to make room for more wildflowers.  

The plan for this wildflower patch for this year is to remove some raspberries and other thorny plants, but to otherwise let things grow naturally.  I have enough other stuff to attend to around the yard.  After a full year of seeing this area in action, I can better decide if I like it the way it is.  In the fall, the wildflowers died off to make way for this year's batch. Next year, they may be making way for a new and improved wildflower patch...or maybe just more of the same. 

To close the post, here's a look at the whole backyard.  The wildflower patch that I'm planning to re-do this year is in front of and mostly behind the pine tree at the right of the photo below.  The other wildflower patch, which I'm not planning to do too much with this year, sits at the back center of the photo.  Beyond it, of course, are the creek and the dock.

Tomorrow, Looking Ahead Week continues...

Looking Ahead Week: Clean-up

Now that we've taken a look at March weather in Freeville, Looking Ahead Week moves on with the first tasks of spring.  Since I'll have to wait until April at the earliest (probably more like May) to begin planting new things, the first task of the spring will be yard clean-up.  And yes, there's plenty to clean up.  I don't know where the clean-up will start, but this post starts with the various piles of fallen branches around the yard.  They'll have to be chopped up and taken to the recycling center, which accepts branches up to 4" in diameter.  I'll also have to collect the fallen branches from around the yard and add them to the pile.

There's also plenty of dead wood hanging out around the yard, waiting to be cleaned up. 
For example, there are dead branches and vines still leaning up against this maple tree.

And in the photo below are actually two plants: a live maple tree and what looks to be a dead vine of some kind.  All of that dead wood should be cleared away.

The back end of the yard is congested with thorny plants...both black raspberries and the other thorny plant with small red berries that I haven't identified yet.  I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with this area of the yard, but I'm thinking of turning it into a raspberry patch.  Either way, I'm pretty sure that I'll be clearing out the other thorny plants to make way for something else that might attract more birds and wildlife to the yard.

I'm also not sure what I'll do with the wildflower patch at the back of the yard - my vision is for it to eventually be teeming with wildflowers throughout the whole warm season - but I do know that I want to clear the raspberry plants (and other thorny plants) out of here.  It's possible that I'll transplant them to my new raspberry patch in the back corner of the yard.

Not sure if I'll be able to pry this branch down, but it would certainly make the tree look nicer!

And then there's the thorny plant patch at the side of the yard.  I don't plan to tackle this area until next year, but I would like to clear out the pieces of wood and other junk that's stuck in there before the plants expand with the warmer temperatures and increased sunlight.

So that's a quick look at my clean-up projects, which should take up most of March and might even bring me into April.  I haven't mentioned anything about the pieces of human eyesore - bricks, cinder blocks, chains, trash, and other junk that is scattered across the yard - but I hope to begin cleaning that up, too, before the vegetation gets thicker.  That's where tomorrow's piece of Looking Ahead Week will pick up.

Looking Ahead Week: March Weather

This week is "Looking Ahead Week" here on Acorn Place, and the goal is to lay out a plan at least for the beginning of spring - the next couple of months - as far as what I plan to do in the yard and in the garden.  The first step, of course, is figuring out when I'll actually be able to get outside and get some yard work done.  I went back over March high temperatures at the Cornell weather station since 1995.  The graph above shows the high temperature from March 1 - March 31 each year.  The red line is the average of all the years, and each other line shows one particular year, labeled in the legend.  You can see that the month usually starts off with highs in the 30s, and highs reach above 40 consistently beginning in the middle third of the month, starting around the 11th.  By the end of March, highs are usually right around 50 in the Ithaca area.  It looks like in many years, there's often a little warm stretch between March 5-18, followed by a short cool spell right around the vernal equinox (March 20 or 21 depending on the year), and then a warm-up right near the end of the month.  Last year, 2012, was a major exception, with over half the month experiencing highs over 60 degrees and a record-warm week with multiple daily record highs from the 17th to the 24th.

Right now, the ground is covered by a few inches of snow, and we've been consistently getting up to a half-inch of new snow a day recently.  The forecast for the coming week is for temperatures to rise from a high high in the upper 20s today to a high around 45 by Saturday...I think Saturday might be the earliest I'll be able to get anything done outside.


I've also taken a look at the longer term forecast, which is released by the Climate Prediction Center.  Shown above is the 8-14 day temperature outlook, good from March 11-17: next week.  It shows that here in Freeville, we're on the edge of the area where there's a chance of above-normal temperatures next week.  I haven't shown the precipitation outlook (you can see it here), but the expectation is for a 40% chance of above-normal precip next week.



I've also taken a look at the 30-day outlook for the whole month of March, and both temperatures and precipitation have equal chances of being above-normal, normal, or below-normal.  What does this mean for me and my yard?  Well, it looks like the snow cover should be gone by sometime next week, and I'll have to pick and choose my days to get outside between now and the end of the month.  Right around the end of the month, though, it should be nearly warm (and light!) enough for me to get outside just about every day, and the lawn might be due for a little trim.

Tomorrow, Looking Ahead Week continues.  March is definitely too early to plant any seeds - maybe some bulbs - but it will be a great month to round up some of the eyesore around the yard...both human refuse and dead stuff.