3R Home and Barn Project

[charlz]

Originally Posted by MtnViewRanch

I asked Mark about the cherry trees and he laughed, said that the cold wouldn't be a problem. Might be coming up your way later in April, won't know for sure for a few more weeks.

Cold isn't a problem unless it is extreme, I have cherry trees here in Idaho. Lack of cold can be a problem. Most fruit trees have a 'chill requirement' where they need so many hours below a certain temp. What is the growing zone? I think cherries are good up to zone 9.

[denmansoft]

We have cherries here on the island as well as in the interior of BC. They don't mind the snow or cold and seem to grow well in the temperate rain forest we have here, as well as semi-arid climate of the Okanogan valley.

[3RRL]

WOW, a lot of replies and a lot of information ... thank you guys !!
Loretta is going to research all that information and of course, I will help her put it all together when she makes her mind up. We have 2 weeks up here this time so we can get going on the irrigation project for sure.

I wanted to share a couple photos of how she planted the fruit trees.
She got wire cages that went around the root balls of the trees. They were pushed into the 3' deep holes and partially filled with a mulched and fertilized soil. They stick up past ground level about 4 to 6 inches. The are to protect the roots from burrowing critters we have here. You can see them inside the outer cage in that first photo below. Then she made 2-1/2 diameter cages out of chicken wire that stand about 4 foot tall. The bottoms of those are 6 to 8 inches deep in the soil. They are to keep the deer off the trees until the plants are larger. I guess we can fill the outer and inner cage with some mulch to hold the moisture in better?
Rob-

[Mrs3RRL]

Originally Posted by rox

Please let Loretta knwo that she will have better success with almonds if she plants two different varietals tha pollinate each other. If oyu plant allt he same type of almond tree you won't get very many almonds. Also not almonds are the same, the best are the huge almond nuts. Check U.C. Davis website for tons of research on almonds. Also she might enjoy getting the fruit and nut newsletter Merced County - Tree and Vine Newsletter
I don't know if you can grow them there or not but I have always wanted an avacodo tree.

Thanks, Rox! The almond that I planted is an All-In-One almond. It's supposed to be good for home gardens, because it's self-fertile. That seemed to be the only kind that was for sale around here. How long does it take before I can tell if it needs another almond tree around?

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

I'm pretty sure we can grow avocados, because the weather and altitude is almost exactly like Rancho Cucamonga, and avocados grow there very well. Both Rob and I had avocado trees in our yards when we were growing up, and we both love avocados. I just remember having so many avocados that my mom was always looking for a way to use them - she even made avocado ice cream one time (that was REALLY awful!)

[Mrs3RRL]

Originally Posted by thunderworks

Rob,

You might find it helpful to get Loretta a book titled:

"The Backyard Orchardist", but Stella Otto. It's a fantastic source of information for the small orchard grower . . . Gives info on which varieties self pollinate, which don't. Really a useful book.

R.

That's great! Thanks! I've been looking to see if I could find some kind of 'Fruit and Nut Trees' book. You used to be able to get all kinds of fairly inexpensive 'paperback' books on various gardening topics. I have several by either HPBooks (I don't think they exist any more) and Sunset: Vegetables, Herbs, Water Gardens. Since they're focused on a particular kind of gardening, you get lots more specific information.

[Mrs3RRL]

Originally Posted by MtnViewRanch

If your neighbor has had them for awhile and they are making it, that is great. Mark and I have seen many citrus trees die due to frost, I was thinking that no way would they survive any snow, but then again it does not really have to be all that cold to snow.

There were a lot of orchards that died when we had that long, hard freeze a couple of years ago, but the occasional snow or getting below 32 one or two days doesn't seem to bother them.

[Mrs3RRL]

Originally Posted by firefighter9208

This is what the vegetable growers around here use. Dripworks - T-Tape (Drip tape) For Drip Irrigation .

Wow! I've never seen that before. I've used the drip system before, but it was the kind where you punch a hole in the hole, then fit in the dripper fittings.... which ALWAYS seem to get clogged. I remember spending so much time cleaning them out that it wasn't worth it.

This looks soooooo easy!

If you want I can take a picture of my regulator set-up this afternoon and post it for you.

That'd be great!

Hill Farm Boer Goats

Boer goats, huh? Interesting. Rob and I have been talking about getting a goat or two, to keep the weeds down. But we have so much work to do, that the work to put up a fence just seems enormous!

Do you think one of those wireless electric fences that are used to train dogs to stay in the yard would work to keep a goat confined to a specific area?

[Mrs3RRL]

Well, now I've done it.

I've wanted chickens my whole life. And now that we're up here, I've wanted them really, really bad. But that meant building a chicken coop, which was just way too much, considering everything else we have to do right now.

And I couldn't find anywhere local to buy them, so I'd have to mail-order them - and everyone had a minimum of 25 chicks! Way too many for a beginner.

So, I contented myself with just reading all about them, poring over the chicken catalogues, and deciding just exactly which breed I wanted.

Then Rob saw an ad from TSC saying they had chickens available in the store. Well. We've never been to the local TSC in Tulare. We kept saying we were going to go check it out, but we were afraid we'd spend way too much money. I didn't dare say I wanted to go there to buy chickens, because, as I say, that would mean more work to do, building a place for them to stay.

But, when we were in town looking for irrigation supplies, Rob mentioned that TSC had booster pumps. Aha! My opening! I casually agreed (not wanting to tip my hand). Then, while he was over looking at booster pumps, I was over looking at baby chicks! They were the cutest things! But I couldn't tell what breeds they were (not that it mattered, as it turns out). The manager could tell me what they were, though, and I pleaded with Rob to let me get some. He agreed. Yippee!

They had them in big livestock watering troughs. There were Leghorns and Aracaunas in one trough. The next trough had some Rhode Island Reds and various kinds of Bantams. The third trough had 2-week old Rhode Island Reds and Astalorps. I had never heard of Astalorps, but Rhode Island Reds were definitely on my list.

I picked out 2 RIR's and 2 Astalorps. Well, at least I think they're both Astalorps. There were several very large ones, I actually think they must have been 3-weeks old, because they were at least 2x bigger than everyone else in the trough. So, I picked one of those. Then, there was one that was mostly gray, but it's wing feathers were sort of beige - kind of like the RIR's. He had said all the gray ones were Astalorps, but I'm wondering if this is either something else, or if it's a mix or something. It's really pretty.

He said that he had to get rid of them pretty soon, or he'd come in and they'd be flying out of the trough and all over the store. So he sold them to me for $1 each.

Here's a photo of them:



We have them in a box in our dining room right now. We got them almost a week ago, so they're about 3-4 weeks old. I have a lamp attached to the box with a 75-watt bulb in it, and they're doing fine. The big one has figured out how to jump up on the edge of the box now, and he jumps up on the water bottle and eyes the top edge. I had a couple of child-gates, so I put those up around the edges.

Now that it's getting warmer, I take them outside during the day. They like that.

I was a little worried about Coco, but she mostly ignores them.

I've been researching about chicken coops, and I wrote down all the features... of course, Rob already had a design in mind. I'd have been happy with something very simple, but you know Rob - he's already thought of the fact that new chicks shouldn't be kept with the older ones, and that broody hens need some privacy to raise their little broods. As my son put it, if Rob builds it, it will have air conditioning, hydraulic elevator, and shag carpeting.

I'd like to be able to let them run free during the day, and then just have them in their coop at night, but we'll see. I've been trying to get them used to me and used to being handled, so I can catch them when I need to, but they're really freaked out when we come close to them.

They sure are cute, though.

[Mrs3RRL]

So, I see Rob has been posting about our garden.

I wanted to post a couple of things about what I've already done - even though the garden isn't ready.

First of all, I have a small, rocky area set aside outside our back door for an herb garden. I may end up planting herbs in the bigger garden as well, but since it wasn't ready, I made do.



I don't have much in there yet. On the left side is horehound. It has gotten really huge this year. I make horehound cough drops with it.

On the lower right, tucked in a corner is my St. Johns Wort. I haven't done anything with it yet... I thought it had died last year, but it came back.

I had a great lemon verbena growing in there last year - it had just gotten up to a size where I figured it was pretty safe from predation, and when we came back after a week in Rancho, it was gone. I mean totally gone. There wasn't even a hole where something had pulled it under.

I have a thyme plant that I'll put in there now, and you can see I have a lavender in a pot (I'll keep it in the pot until I think it's big enough that they can't pull the whole thing underground.

I also have some spearmint that's sprouting up in one of the pots, and some peppermint.

When I lived in Whittier, I had a 20'x20' herb garden, and I just loved it. I had to leave it all when I moved to Rancho to get married to Robbie, but I'm hoping I can plant all my favorites here.

[Mrs3RRL]

Here's the other thing I've been doing.

Since the garden wasn't ready, I planted some seeds in pots. I've never been really good at that, so I also ended up buying some seedlings.



I planted peas - several times, actually. The first set, I planted in peat pots, then transplanted into 1 gallon containers when they got bigger. But as soon as I transplanted them, they started to do poorly, and ended up dying. So, the next set, I planted in the peat pots, and there they still are. But, what's really interesting is that long after I did that, there was an errant pea that sprouted in one of the gallon containers - and it's now 4 times as tall as the ones in the peat pots. It's getting too hot to plant peas again, so I'll wait until next year to replant those.

I also planted lettuce and cabbage in peat pots. All the lettuce died. The cabbage is still living, but growing very, very slowly. I'll transplant them when the garden is ready, and I hope they'll take off.

I have one zucchini (I know my limits... you can only use so much zucchini), and I bought some red cabbage seedlings. I like red cabbage more than green cabbage.

I also have an artichoke, and a couple of eggplants. I tried to plant eggplant from seed, and it never even germinated.

In addition to all that, I'm ready to plant asparagus, potatoes, onions, and strawberries.

Rob spent 2 days removing a couple of trees in the middle of the homesite circle, where the garden is. I hated to lose those trees, but they shaded the orchard too much.

Yesterday, I worked at pruning and sawing all the chippable stuff off the trees, while Rob worked at removing one more tree, and digging a trench for piping for a faucet for my garden.

Boy, that's really hard work! And, of course, yesterday was the first really hot day we've had here. But now the faucet is in - it's beautiful, really. I don't have a picture of it yet, maybe Rob will post one.

We still need to get all the trees bucked, limbed and chipped before we rototill the garden - and then I'm hoping I can start planting.

For those of you who've been following our adventure, you know that Rob & I are total opposites. So, after we had finished installing the faucet, and we were taking a break, Rob was musing about the garden - how it would have huge paths around the outside, and through the middle, separating the neatly geometric sections - looking just like a checkerboard. On the other hand, I had envisioned a meandering path through the area, with smaller sections, and some herbs lining the path in places, with vegetables tucked away in some forgotten little spots.

Well, I've never had to worry about gophers, ground squirrels or deer before, so we'll see how I do. I have some cages to plant the seedlings in, but have no clue what to do for the corn....