New goings on at Birch Creek Farm

Here I am taking another stab at blogging my garden experience.

2021 was a year of loss and learning for me. I started out well, taking photos and getting my garden pens in order. But we had some setbacks due to COVID and the ensuing heat wave became problematic for not only me but farmers everywhere. Still, there were some valuable learning experiences.

Among the things I learned:

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Good Afternoon Everyone from Birch Creek Farm

Good Afternoon Everyone from Birch Creek Farm    

by Kathy Osborne

Here I am taking another stab at blogging my garden experience.

2021 was a year of loss and learning for me. I started out well, taking photos and getting my garden pens in order. But we had some setbacks due to COVID and the ensuing heat wave became problematic for not only me but farmers everywhere. Still, there were some valuable learning experiences.

Among the things I learned:

1.       Don’t plant nightshades near a walnut tree. I lost my entire tomato crop last year and the
potato crop the year before due to this ignorance.

2.       Deer are opportunists. Don’t underestimate them. If they can’t fit through the hole, I swear,
they send in the kids!

3.       If deer get the chance to mow the potato patch, it will not necessarily recover. The plant
above the ground will, but not the tubers.

4.       Garlic needs to be moved to a new location every year to thrive.

5.       Carrots and beets love each other

6.       Compost is even more important than gardeners wildly emphasize that it is. Sigh-

7.       Bears do in fact climb plum trees, and break branches and leave poop in the orchard.

8.       Cedar Waxwings and Robins are beautiful to look at and love my Rainier cherries as much as I do.

9.       Once tomatoes suffer heat shock from too much sun it is very hard to save them.

Well, there is more but it mostly has to do with weed control which I hope to write about after I have a chat with Chase from the Bonner County Weed department. As much as I hate to kill anything, the weeds have overtaken my hay fields and I must deal with them – Red Sorrel, Oxeye Daisy, Yarrow, St. Johns wort, and a wicked thick lime green grass thing that creeps along the ground and creates a mat worse than anything I have ever seen before. I can’t find it on the invasive weed list so will probably have to dig up a square and take it in for identification. Thank The Good LORD I don’t have Knapweed.

Quite a few good things happened in 2021 and there was much to be grateful for.

I learned to prune a fruit tree properly. All of the fruit trees I planted in spring 2020 lived through the winter and came back quite vigorously. My small pen garden system, dividing the garden into smaller 8’ x 16’ or 16’ x 16’ pens with livestock panels helped control the deer. Only when I left the gates open was there any sort of problem. Sigh-

Drip irrigation is the bomb! This is so great I plan to implement it throughout all my garden spaces over time. It was so hot last year that everywhere I watered with fan sprinklers just seemed to dry out faster. It was the pens with compost and a direct watering device that did the best.

That’s about it for this first post. I will have pictures next week as the garden will all be in just in time for the next round of rain. And that beautiful space beneath the walnut tree that kills nightshades and dahlias? I am turning it into a meditation space! I found one of those big wood spools and put it in there along with some chairs I found cheap. With a table cloth and a vase of flowers, this spot will be perfect for resting between orchard and garden chores.

Back to Eden Gardening - Hot but Growing

July 12, 2021

As I write this we have been several weeks without rain here in north Idaho. So far I have been able to keep the lawn and garden watered but it has been a challenge. I often water very early in the morning and after the sun has set in the evening rotating between the yard and garden. This has really helped.

My Beefsteak tomatoes are suffering from physiological leaf roll as they did last year, presumably from weather stress. They are well watered and I have added calcium to the roots. It has been helpful to know that even if the stress is removed, the leaf curl will not go away but neither will it hamper production. The plants are growing like crazy and flowering as well. They just look so sad!

My Brandywine tomatoes are doing very, very well! They are in two patches: one is in a fully mulched, clay/loam soil in Ponderay. It is on a little hillside in full sun and so far the plants are happy and have set bloom. The other patch is in layered soil, mulch, peat moss, more mulch and composted barn cleanings. These plants have also set bloom. Both patches have marigolds nearby for pest control. And I am watering at ground level to keep the leaves dry. Strangely, the Brandywine tomatoes are not suffering from leaf roll to any degree.

My squash and pumpkins have all set flower and are responding to the heavy mulch treatment. The potatoes are sending up spectacular, strong stems. I am now in the process of hilling them with more compost and mulch.

As the hot summer continues I have made use of a sub-irrigated grassy area. My horses will not eat this particular grass as it is rough to the tongue. So, I am mowing it and mixing it with barn litter. I then spread it between the garden rows to help retain moisture. So far, so good.

My small engine repair guy is not able to get to the wood chipper for a tune-up. So for as much as I wish wood chips were in my immediate garden future, they are not. This is sad as I was hoping to get that part of the project in place early. But now it looks like mulching with grass, barn litter and shredded Japanese Knotweed debris will have to do.

Japanese knotweed is an invasive weed in Idaho and was already present when I purchased the property. It shades the south side of the farm house and I keep the stand severely mowed for control. The shredded dead stalks pose no threat to the garden. However, one day an excavation of the area will be required to remove the plants and their aggressive root system. It is a great space to plant grapevine and possibly build an arbor out from the south facing windows to provide shade until the nearby fruit trees can take over.

This last week I took the first greens out of the garden including Butter lettuce and beet greens. The garlic scapes were delicious. So the layered garden concept is working in my herb garden as well. I plan to keep it up all summer and into the fall.