and it never fails....as soon as we have 2 straight days of beautiful sun in may....the dreaded 3month apocalypse begins. yes - you guessed it ----- black fly season! so we were butt nekkid with stupid bug suits on! i tried to go out and see if the black flies would stay away for even just a little bit - but no - they were swarming me the minute i went out the door!!! so bug suit season begins - arghghghgh!
i mulched the strawberry hugelkulture with our home-made mulch!
that mulch is pure gold...so good - i could eat it! bahahahahah!
jambaloney made a more stick-like mulch to amend our pea bed and carrot bed today...tomorrow he will make more and amend the rest of the beds.
my man has an incredible talent for finding junk on the side of the road and figuring out a use for it! i have always been amazed at how this man can turn junk into something useful. i think this is my favourite piece of junk - an old swingset to use for our pea bed - is it awesome or what????
several people have asked if we put the fences around everything to keep out any wild animals. nope. we put fences around everything because of the cats! they love digging around in fresh dirt!
i planted 200 sugar snap and shelling peas in the pea bed and in the very front and back planted 33 old beets for beet greens. we loooooove beet greens!
here is the amended carrot bed with some transplanted, overwintered kale. we'll plant the carrots, new beets and radishes tomorrow.
at 2 o'clock this afternoon the sun was at it's zenith and we had been out since early morning. so we stopped and shared a celebratory Steigl Radler....which is a mixture of grapefruit juice and beer.
i don't normally like beer but this was quite refreshing. jam's working on his contract and then we'll be off to make some sushi for late dinner - yummeh! then we'll be off again to do more odd jobs around the yard until jam has to do his remote procedure thing for work.
we are both looking forward to a cool evening - we neeeeeed the hottub!
EDIT: here is a link to all of the beneficial uses of comfrey
Bug suits? How nice! I hate all those things that bite (and HURT!), especially horseflies and deerflies. They're vicious and attack totally unprovoked.
ReplyDeleteI think ticks and chiggers are better than blackfly swarms. I used to see something similar up in Wisconsin and it sucked.
ReplyDeleteI cringe at the thought of clouds of black flies! They love me. You two have quite a farm going up there! Thank you for the link about comfrey. I have tons of it and have been feeding it to the sheep to help boost their immune systems. I will now make a nice comfrey tea/fertilizer! xo
ReplyDeleteP.S. That recycled pea structure is pure genius!
DeleteYou might be able to make a temporary greenhouse of your swingset and jump-start your peas next year.
ReplyDeleteBlack flies. Something I do not know what they are and suspect I do not want too.
ReplyDeleteOne of our local beers, Shiner, makes a grapefruit beer called Ruby Redbird. It is a delightfully refreshing summer treat.
Glad we dont have black flies here, like the idea of bug suits never come across them before
ReplyDeleteA swing set pea garden.... I've officially seen it all!
ReplyDeletePure genius with the swing set! I have plans for one now....for any vining thing it would be great! seeing new purpose's for old things is a talent!
ReplyDeleteThe swing set idea ought to win a prize! And you always amaze me with how much you plant. The black flies, though, that would be a real challenge. I've not seen bug suits like that!
ReplyDelete