Category — Jim's Thoughts

We’ve mostly used our local “free-cycle” mailing list to discard no longer needed items. Similar lists serve various parts of North America at least, the most famous of which is craigslist. What we like about “free-cycle” is that everything is exchanged for free. Last month an ad came up for free grape cuttings suitable for crafts or propagation. This opportunity seemed something we couldn’t pass up, even though we have little experience with propagating cuttings. [Read more →]

We’ve had two good days largely above freezing. The warm weather has made good progress toward melting the snow that covered our garden beds, even if it’s left our dirt driveway rather “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful” as I think e e cumings would say. I walked to lunch without zipping my coat let alone pulling on my gloves. But most importantly, the warmer weather has rekindled a hankering for rhubarb. [Read more →]

Winter is more than just a couple months of bad gardening.

Another inch or so of snow settled during the night, snow as fine as parmesan cheese grated off the bottom of the clouds. As I pushed it off my car, I pondered again how many different kinds of snow there are and how many different kinds we’ve seen this year. Last week it was the sodden, thick kind of snow, the snow that makes shoveling nearly impossible and which often has a layer of water at the bottom, water that so easily turns to ice. [Read more →]

It’s snowy, cold and the only thing growing in our 20minute garden are the icicles hanging from the storage barn. It’s the perfect time to build something useful, like the trellis I made a couple years back for our black raspberry canes.

The reason why I wanted a trellis is to keep the tips of the canes from touching the ground. Raspberry canes will sprout roots and eventually will create a new plant if the tips touch the ground. I’m already pushing the limits of how many plants I can keep healthy in a small amount of space. Plus, if the canes aren’t pointing upward, I can’t see them to prune and thus encourage more fruit.

This trellis was built entirely of scavenged wood plus a couple pieces of hardware that made the task MUCH easier than I expected. Normally I despise traditionally treated lumber but I made an exception with this project because the wood will never actually touch the soil, plus since I had scavenged it, I rationalized that most of the surface chemicals had already washed off. Having said that, BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL with the sawdust. Don’t breathe it and be very careful to collect the sawdust and discard it properly. DON’T COMPOST IT.

I am including a sketch of my actual trellis as built plus a page of scribbles I made as I was working toward the final design. Don’t just build what I did. Think about it a moment and you probably will come up with something that suits your tastes better. My design is obviously based heavily on telephone pole because the line that support the canes reminded me a lot of telephone lines.

The cut list for my design is:

4×4’s (for BOTH trellises)
• 4 vertical posts @ 36″
• 2 upper horizontal supports @ 36″
• 2 lower horizontal supports @ 24″

Hardware:
• 8 galvanized 4×4 fasteners (used for fastening deck posts perpendicularly);
• lots of stainless steel screws (pre-drill!) The kind of fasteners I used required 12 screws apiece;
• enough plastic coated clothes line for the number of holes times the length of your bramble bed;
• 4 of those cute copper fence toppers. (This solved a couple problems not the least of which was an UGLY cut I’d made on a couple of the posts. Also, they divert rain from pouring right down the most vulnerable side of the post. And they look cool;
• 4 “spiked post holders” for lack of a better name. They hold a 4×4 and helped me avoid having to use a longer post and bury half of it in the ground. Another trouble with a buried post is they are wont to rot out, just around the 6 or 8 inches where soil contacts the post. Lower down, there’s no oxygen and higher up, it’s not constantly wet. The concern I had using these spiked post holders was that they seemed to be designed for structures where most of the stress was applied directly downward, that is, not torqued, that is, they would most definitely NOT be good for a fence of any height. Since the weight of the canes and wires is negligible, I thought I’d give these a try. So far they’ve been pretty good, though I won’t discount the contribution of our thick clay soil.

I had a good chuckle about this so I thought I’d share.

I had several days off work around the holidays and usually, I’m filled with a fair amount of dread at the prospect of going back to work. However, last Sunday, I had a little nap in the afternoon and woke up feeling quite peaceful. I thought to myself “It’s the last day of vacation which means tomorrow, you’ll be going back to work.”

And then I realized that I really wasn’t stressed out by the prospect. I said “Well, you know, when it all comes down to it, what’s so bad about work? I really enjoy working with plants.” I could actually see the long vines roping the greenhouse and leaves wider than the span of my hand.

But then I realized “Hold it, you mostly work with computers, don’t you? Hardly at all with plants.”

And finally I realized that I actually work ONLY with computers. I’m still chuckling about that drowsy thought process.

So though I don’t work with plants especially around this time of year, it IS however the perfect time to curl up with a cup of tea and leaf through the seed catalogs. This imaginary gardening is some of the best because whole crops can sprout and grow to fruition… and be replaced with other crops, over and over. I suspect that this whimsy is what prompted my dream in the first place.