December 4, 2020: A Couple Of Hours In The Garden

I got up a tad early today. I've been missing the time at home, and since it's Friday I figured I could wake up a couple hours early and get in a little time at home. Never underestimate the power of a couple hours with your hands in the soil.

I could have gotten the hallway baseboards done today, but much to Melissa's chagrin I decided to spend that time in the garden. I'm glad I did.

The first order of business was to check on the buns. They've been cute and exploring their best box lately, so I wanted to see them. When I got over there one was outside, but he ran back in when he saw me. The kiddos came over and we handled the pile buns a bit and took pictures.

Explorabun, babo, and the ever watchful mombun

Mombun nomming on comfrey

Big fat pile bun

A pile of pile buns

Another pile bun

After playing with the buns, I did a few garden chores. I harvested and replanted some sunchokes after @bobydimitrov talked about them in the @naturalmedicine gardening discord channel. I didn't dig long, but I found about twenty tubers and one potato. I think I'll do like Bobby and make a ferment with this batch. I'd like more fermented foods in my diet, and coincidentally this is a good way to do that!

About half of today's jchoke harvest

After that, I decided it was time enough to snip the blackberry tips and count how many canes I need space to plant next year. Thirty two, though there's still two buckets on the front canes. Probably around forty new bushes total. I wonder how I'm gonna do that... might end up trading a few for things. I've got to say, the garden looks much better without ten white buckets strewn about with blackberry canes poking into them. I did damage the roots on two of the canes unfortunately, as they had grown through the drain holes in the buckets. I'll have to find a way to avoid that next year. Good thing blackberry roots are medicinal, so any damage done to those plants can be harnessed and used for good.

Seriously y'all, how can I start a berry farm with all these new canes? I never imagined what I'd do with forty blackberry bushes. If I don't use them, how do I establish a value on a bucket full of rooted blackberry canes? OMG, the model of abundance comes with some excellent problems.

Blackberry plants!

I think the pole beans that I had pop up mysteriously are lentils from a cover crop mix I planted a while back. I picked the last pods from the dead vines and brought em in. I will add them to the mix of dry beans that I plant next year; more on that plan later. I picked the dry okra pods as well to harvest more seeds to share. I'll grow okra again next year of course, but probably not as much as I grew this year.

Lentil seeds and okra seeds

The three smaller peach trees, one pecan tree, and our big red oak are the only trees with the majority of their leaves left. Well, besides the apples which are proving to be damn near evergreen.

The little peach tree, all growed up. @bobydimitrov, check out the shape on that peach tree!

It was a great couple of hours this afternoon. I really loved having that time to do a few small things. There's still more of course, I think I'm going to order kale seeds to plant as a winter green for the buns and I. Is it too late to plant kale? I'll find out.

It's time for bed now, so I'm gonna do that. Thanks for reading about my fun couple of hours.

Love from Texas

Nate 💚