Seeing work in a different light

 I live where I work.  It is a municipal facility, but my position as manager is a residential manager job.  It is 24/7 except when I take a vacation.  I never thought that I would take to living where I work, especially not my own business.  When you get involved and love your job, it does become your own.  As a result, I get to see this place in a different light, figuratively and literally.  These are just a few of those moments that I got to enjoy outside the regular work hours. 

July garden pics and tips

One hill of each summer squash (not 3) this year. Four varieties are framing the okra in the center which is on a 10" spacing between plants and about 2' from the squash plants.

We are so dry it was time to get out the soaker hoses.  I have cabbages and other cruciferous veggies in a raised mound. Peppers, eggplant, and a few tomatoes are sharing space with radicchio, fennel, and kale in my 3 wooden beds.  Mulch surrounds most of the beds, wood chips while rotted straw is around plant rows.  The soil isn't what I would want, but it will build with time.  

I have a 6x6 patch of onions (Alisa Craig and Copra on kitty corners) alternated with Ambition Shallots and Lancelot leeks.  I have watered them regularly to keep them well hydrated but not wet.

Pole beans and  bush beans are sharing the same space.  I pulled out the netting with twine in the centers to give me more room as my tepee was closing in on my for picking.  I got my first handful of baby beans on Sunday.

My fencing is hardware cloth around the base with a nylon mesh to bring the total height around 8'.  The rest of the garden is at the mercy of what surrounds us.  I hope for the best every day that I see the woodchucks running around the nursery.

The Swiss chard has gone gang busters on me this year.  I planted so few, but boy did they grow!  I don't think the carrots that are interplanted stand a chance.

The garlic ended up in the enclosure because I didn't have anything else ready last fall.  It is almost ready to pull and dry.  My lettuce crop bolted, so the dino kale has been liberated.  The adjacent carrots are loving the space and will really appreciate the garlic leaving their south exposure open.  I tucked a row of fennel plants next to my pea trellis.  I am letting the peas dry down again this year as the seed saving worked out so good last year.  Peas are self-pollinating so they came true from seed.

I am done hilling the potatoes for the season.  There is about 18" of dirt, compost, and rotting straw around the plants. Winter squash was put in at the head of the potato area.  Yukon Gold and Molly purples are my varieties this year.  I miss my Norland reds.

I went with 18 tomatoes this year.  I have a single stake method with twine corkscrew twisting around plants and stems to hold them up.  I put the tags at the top of the poles this year as I couldn't find them in the foliage last year.  Soaker hoses wind through tomatoes and potatoes on mostly separate lines.  I am trying a French variety of rhubarb Glaskins, from seed in the corner of the garden.

Nearly full greenhouses

Spring is coming on in a slow and steady fashion.  All the trees are harvested for planting and shipped out.  Just a few remain for a summer vacation above ground in anticipation of fall planting.  The nursery liners have all arrived, so now we get the ground turned for planting in the nursery again.

The greenhouses have nearly filled up.  We are down to the final plugs that put on growth so quickly, it barely takes a month to get them ready for planting out.  There are crops ready to be moved to the outdoor holding areas to take the slow climb into late spring.  So much is happening at once.  Here's a peek at all that is happening inside our greenhouse walls.

The first spring crops are in my garden.

Leftover plugs that will find a new home in community gardens

The last of the plug propagation, marigold and vegetables

Shade plants, a sea of begonias and coleus

Thousands of geraniums, round one and round two

Supertunias and other 4" pots

Americana Geraniums, gallon and 6"pot crops as well as 100 Milwaukee Peace Project hanging baskets

Cold sensitive crops of Salvia, lobelia, and others

The 4th house is always rotating crops.  Growing the Alyssum from seed up front right now

An experiment in pushing plant growth.

Tropical in so many ways. A sea of Colocasia

Empty now but not for long. Exterior holding area for those cold tolerant crops is the best growth regulator

Hanging baskets coming to a festival grounds near you.  Petunias, petunia, and more petunias

This is really a sea of petunias because they are all Waves

Hardening off the early order

More of the early order that like it just a tad warmer

A few spring shots

Recent rains put us up to our endloader axles in mud.

Our 4"pot crops are filling up one house.

6" pots occupy another.  Some are on drip irrigation systems.

Hanging baskets wait until it is time to move to their irrigation home.

Colacasia take up one house with very little room to spare for others.

The pansies have moved to the cold house in anticipation of planting in a couple weeks.

The first pansy bloom.

Our west coast lilacs came in ready for spring.
They will have to wait for awhile in our unheated
hoop house until the cold weather passes.

We have been very busy in the greenhouses and nursery.  Everyday is several gains and a couple setbacks to be righted.  Rain has made our digging operation a challenge, but we keep slogging through the mud.  We are trying some things for the first time (pansies) and working on perfecting how we do things to serve each one of our customers in the best way possible.  Working at a nursery and greenhouse is long days and hard work, but I couldn't be happier in my work.

Digging season has started

It's that very busy time of year at the nursery.  Anyone in this industry will tell you there are just not enough hours in the day or enough energy in the tank to get it all done.  I have been busy tagging trees so that our crews can dig them for our orders.  As a municipal nursery we are unique in that our customer may be our Forestry districts, but it is also the person who has that tree in front of their home that the city owns and maintains for the pleasure of all.  These are our tree lilacs and ornamental pears which are just a small amount of the nearly 1,500 trees we will dig balled and burlap.  Since we ship directly to the yards that plant, we also do several hundred trees as bare root.  The crews are efficient in moving these into their sites, and can do the job quicker with less soil to handle along the whole path from field to planting site.  The trees are "heeled in" to chips and kept watered until they can be put in to their permanent home.  I will try and share some photos from our operations to give you an idea how this all takes place.  I just need the time to stop and do it one of these days.

2016 Maple Syrup Run

The sugar maple grove is much cleaner this year

Black walnuts are also tapped

Maple syrup run has started in Southeast Wisconsin.  I purchased 10 more taps and hangers, so I am up to 20.  I have 14 on sugar maples and 6 on black walnut.  Saturday was a very beautiful day to get out and put the taps in the trees.  The day before we hit over 50 degrees in our area with extremely high winds.  The bags would have been all over the woods if I had them up any earlier.  I was also thankful to have some assistance with tapping the trees this year.  My daughter got involved with tapping the walnut trees and did a great job on her first time installing the taps (spiles).

We did some clearance with equipment around the fence line this winter, so we took advantage of the opportunity to eliminate the buckthorn that had grown up around the maple trees so thickly.  It was a dream to walk from tree to tree with the collection containers and not be fighting thorny branches at every turn.  I had to take my hand saw out and clear up around the base of the trees which was nothing in comparison to what the machine accomplished.  It also cleared up some of the larger fallen limbs and formed some decent mulch around the roots of the trees.

A family first

We had some help on Sunday to collect the first round of sap.  Friends moved back from California to the old neighborhood.  They had been watching the process via social media last year and were missing Wisconsin and the activity going on here.  I made sure to give them a call and let them know the sap was running.  It was great to have help with the collection process especially with the extra bags on the trees this year.  We all had a fun time getting around and exploring as well.  Their daughter wasn't nearly as interested in the syrup process as the exploring.

The sap has started off slow as the temperatures fell overnight and didn't come up much in the morning.  We had more rain than snow this winter, so we are also not getting that slow soaking with the snow melt.  You can see that the 50 degree Friday did not leave any cover on the grass at all.  I am not sure if this will affect the sap flow this year yet or not.

The kids leave the collecting up to the moms for a selfie shot

In all we ended up with about 15 or so gallons of sap from the 14 trees.  There was much less sap from each of the black walnut trees.  We kept that separate for boiling down separately.  This was done completely on the propane stove as there was less than two gallons from the six trees.  

Many hands make light work so we soon had all the sap back and by the fire for boiling.  I made a small investment in some deep pans from the restaurant supply store.  I also put together a wood burning unit to save on money on the propane investment. The wood had been cut and stacked last year.  My husband had a loaner splitter and was able to put up a full cord plus of wood last summer.

There is still some tweaking to do with the system, but I was able to patch something together with things literally laying around the place.  I put a bunch of holes in the bottom of a barrel bottom and laid it on its side.  Some old grating in odd sizes fit both inside the barrel to form a wood burning grate and over the barrel supported on cement blocks.  After the first boil down, we have decided that we need to add burner holes along the top of the barrel to up the heat coming directly under the pans.  These will have to be drilled rather than punched with a railroad pick though.  An piece of metal flops up in front of the opening to hold the heat inside pretty effectively.  Not a high efficiency stove, but the price was right.

I also purchased a hydrometer this year to measure the sugar content of the syrup.  I did not receive instructions so I researched on line for videos and such.  I thought I knew what would happen, but the hydrometer did not float at the level I thought it would when I reached my boiling point of 219 degrees.  It wasn't even close.  I will have to send some photos to the company and get a little help here.

All in all it has been a good first day of the 2016 season.  There are about 6 ounces of black walnut syrup in the frig.  It has a very nutty flavor that was worth the time and effort.  I also have two and a half pints of maple in jars with a smidge left over for breakfast this morning.  Life is sweet.