Garden Expansion – Fencing

The fence posts have been put in place. The initial holes for the trees have been enlarged.
Planting the trees is waiting for the completion of the fence. While it was unlikely Bambi and Thumper would dine on the bare root trunks, we were not going to take that chance.

The fence in the front stops back from the house so we can have additional work done on the house later in the year.  A gate was included on the downhill side to allow a way to get out to the rest of the property and our neighbor’s property and home.

Wire is on most of the new posts. Some of the T-posts from the old fence are re-used to extend the temporary fence to the new permanent fence which will be completed later.

Garden Expansion

We spent part of Thanksgiving weekend digging fence post holes and holes for the initial phase of the orchard. The machine also had an attachment for trenching so the bulk of the trenching for the water system was also done.

The new fence line at the base of the hill proved to be trouble for post holes. even the machine had issues getting through the ground there. There was lots of rock as well as some sandstone spots that were encountered.

Some of holes drilled for the trees also did not want to happen. It was good to find that out well in advance rather than as we were planting trees. In the cases were there will be four trees planted closely together (an alternative to having four grafted to a single trunk), the higher elevation of the uphill trees will be used for the entire group. That should help potential drainage and issues with rock. Things seemed a bit better as we got further from the road, but still there was a lot of smaller rock in the soil.

Pomegranate Jelly

We returned from a trip visiting family in the Fresno area with half a dozen very large pomegranates. Pomegranate jelly seemed like the logical thing to do with them.  Actually, that was about the only thing I could imagine.  With something like apples I might have a lot more options.  With pomegranates, my experience is pretty limited.  Almost nonexistent, actually. 

As far as I recall, the first time I encountered a pomegranate, I was a freshman in college.  Right before we went home for the holidays, the dinner was a fancy buffet which included ice sculptures and decorative fruit arrangements.  I remember that one of the my group for dinner grabbed a pomegranate and made a fuss about it.  Like a lot of other things that year, it was a new experience.  Since then I have seen a lot more pomegranates – in the produce department in the fall or hanging on someone’s tree, but never actually had one in hand. 

So besides instructions for making jelly and a recipe for the pomegranate variety, I needed to find out how to get the seeds out and extract the juice.  The process went well for a first try and we ended up with four and a half jars of jelly as a result.

Mouse

We brought up several boxes of junk garden related things from the shed. When the back of our vehicle was unloaded, this little guy was still there. Sort of cute if you don’t think about the mess his kind make.

 

Rain, Rain

Shortly the arrival of fall came the weather.  Summers on the central coast have so little variation in the weather that if the local forecasters didn’t go out and report from various community events, it would be hard to prove we weren’t seeing reruns. 

In the past few weeks we have had some rather hot days, a couple warm and humid ones, and even a few cool days that actually felt like an autumn day.  And then we had our first real rain.  Since I was planning to water so the ground would be soft enough to weed and plant some groundcover seeds, I was happy to be spared the effort of dragging the hose around and adjusting the sprinkler to get at the needed spots.  A week later, the weather was very hot again and all of a sudden there were thousands of baby weeds popping up.  What had been looking like an hour or so with the hula hoe turned into a project for Roundup.  It cooled again after the area was sprayed, but then got hot again. 

As the weather cools once more, it looks like the weedlings are dying off.  As there is no rain in the forecast, I probably should water the area to confirm it is ready for the clover seeds to be planted.