Greenstorm's Journal

The subject of death planning came up today. Someone mentioned they'd paid for their cremation, had a plan, and also had their urn already, though the urn made them uncomfortable to see in their closet.

I don't like the idea of cremation particularly but I love the idea of making my own urn. I wouldn't mind putting it on a north shelf altery thing in my livingroom. It does occur to me, though, that I don't think there's anyone who would want a container of my ashes.

Nor, really, does my body belong resting in the built environment.

But I might make myself a wheat urn anyhow. The prototyping is just seed jars, right? My favourite potter tutorial guy just put out a tutorial on making lidded jars.

Finished planting things April 8. I got in to cells (most of which are germinating, but there will be some misses). One cell is mostly one individual for plant-out space planning purposes.

Allium (6, but I pack them pretty tight into cells and separate at plant-out)
Artichokes (18)
Asparagus (42)
Basil (48)
Dahlia (24)
Goji berry (2)
Ground cherry (24)
Peppers (144)
Potato (144)
Peruvianum (12)
Rhubarb (12)
Tomato (442)
Tomatillo (40)

Hm, my math isn't adding up, need to recount. Anyhow, 12 flats of 72 cells each I think. All planted between April 3 and 8. I will maybe do some cucumbers later, still not sure.

My apples were also starting to sprout, or many of them are, which is super exciting. I need to get them out of plastic bags and into soil.

Also I'm going to grow F1s for two more hand cross tomatoes: one that's taiga as the parent (pollen parent lost) and one that's carbon as the pollen parent (small red as the mother). They kind of sat on the counter all winter, so I'm not sure how they'll work, but it's exciting.

I'm thinking pretty seriously about keeping a clone of each F1 in the aerogarden so I'm sure to get plenty of F2 seed. Not sure how that will work for full-sized tomatoes; I guess I could try kratky finally for them? F1s have no real need to be tested in soil or anything like that, they just exist to provide as much F2 seed, and thus as many variations in offspring, as possible.

Spring was so slow and cold and now it's so fast, snow is almost gone except for on my mushroom bed and the north side of my house as the sunset swings around and sunlight covers more ground every day. Last year was ultra dry - many wells ran out in January - and we got normal snowpack so it's looking to be a dry spring and likely a bad fire season. Fingers crossed.

Costing out re-covering my greenhouse with soft plastic (cheap, need to redo frequently) or hard plastic (expensive, only needs redoing every 20 years).

Whatever is going on with me is still going on; anytime I do things I'm super exhausted after for sometimes days. Luckily I don't need to do too much right now. Hopefully I'm recovered by plant-out time.

First seeds into actual flats yesterday. This is from memory, I may have forgotten a pepper. Tomatoes tomorrow.

Peppers planted April 4: (72 x 2 = 144 cells planted)

Matchbox x Hungarian black F2
Threshold 2021 ancho/bell
Threshold 2021 Doe Hill
Threshold 2022 F2 early greek pepperoncini (F0 was a single early plant from a packet of greek pepperoncini)
Threshold mixed hot peppers 2021
Threshold targu mures 2022
Threshold chimayo 2022
Don's cayenne
Don't fat hot
Don's long sweet hot
Sweet landrace mix from gone to seed
Hot landrace mix from gone to seed

(All Threshold 2022 peppers were hand-dusted with cross pollen but not emasculated, 2021 were field-planted in proximity)

Potatoes planted April 4: (72 + 60 = 132 cells planted)
Colourful landrace mix from gone to seed
Russian blue from (woodgrain or Julia?)
Andean mix from (woodgrain or Julia?)
Clancy crosses from cultivariable
Rozette crosses from cultivariable
Blue tetraploid from cultivariable
Red tetraploid from cultivariable
Wide tetraploid from cultivariable
Nemah from cultivariable
Amarilla from cultivariable
Diploid high dormancy from cultivariable
Blue bolivian from cultivariable

Artichokes planted April 4: (12 cells planted)
Green globe improved (denali)
Imperial star (west coast)

So. Sewing and aesthetics.

If you knew me in my teens through early thirties I suspect my current sewing list would be surprising. I bought very little clothing new at that time. For awhile I had a work uniform. Every summer at the folk fest I'd dive into the pile of $10 silky wrap skirts and recycled sari dresses and get at least one or two. I sewed some. Interesting and lovely clothing still came to me, frequently gifted or swapped. I braved thrift stores sometimes but they tended to make me woozy and sick; I now understand why. I did sewing, but mostly alterations: cut off these black army pants to make a skirt, add a ruffle of silk brocade to this other pair of pants, honestly I can't remember a lot of it now.

Each piece of clothing I owned had a story and I celebrated it in curation of outfits. My collection was eclectic so for me the joy was in curation, in figuring out how to make the orange-and-green corset play nicely with the army pants or the silk skirts look like they fit with a long sweater and the men's undershirts that actually fit around my arms. I say joy, and sometimes it was that, but it was also always a challenge. I worked in uniform and that was given to me by my company, but when I had to do something in a role I had to work pretty hard to draw from my collection in a way that would let people take me seriously.

I remember one partner was thrilled and also shocked when I folded a silk scarf into a triangle and wore it as a top to his Christmas dinner with a couple sweaters, but, I didn't have a nice top to wear to that kind of thing. It complicated things to have a bunch of clothing sensory issues but not as much as you'd think; my outfits were already pretty eccentric so it was just another parameter to work with.

This background is probably why I don't think of making clothing as an art. That is to say, I see people make amazing things and I revel in seeing those, but for me a piece of clothing is just a building block. The outfit is the art. And when I feel like it I can mostly make that art out of anything.

...anything except what I've had lately, which is buying several pairs of the same pants, and several of the same shirt, every couple years, in one or two colours. Plus apparently buying a round of fun printed tees every seven years or so. Layering several of the exact same garment doesn't do much for comfort or for fashion. It's harder to do my old style of dressing in the north, too, where basically shredded clothing at the end of its life was a fashion statement that let a lot of cold air in, and bits safety pinned on or huge and hanging open didn't add too much to the warmth. Everything needs underlayers, and I need non-constraining underlayers.

I approached the sew from a utilitarian place but now my aesthetic sense is kicking in. A lot of the cheapest seconds fabrics I got were military surplus stuff, so it's in shades of khaki and olive and that family of greens and midbrowns and brown-greys with some navy thrown in. There are a couple different camos. I tend to buy everything in green, brown, and mid-to-dark blues anyhow since then it all matches; I have several shades and textures in that family to work with. I added a couple pieces that seemed like they'd get along: a deep dark rusty pink, a rose brown, a couple of mixed-colour fancy prints in stretch fabric for waistbands. I'm waiting for a sale or second on some safety orange. I got one sky-blue piece, in a pretty stain-resistant fabric. I stayed away from black; it shows cat hair and breaks the woodsy feel I like best. It's pretty fair to say that most of these fabrics will match most of the rest of them, and I like having several colours in the same family layered on me.

So I'm pretty happy with the colour, and with having a pool of different colours to draw from when dressing in the future.

But. Given that all the colours are acceptable (I skipped the reds, magentas and yellows even when they were on sale)--

I am thrilled with the textures. These are technical fabrics so the textures are functional, there to serve a purpose. But. There are so many textures. I can make clothes to layer, carefully and non-constrictingly. I can add a different texture to a waistband or a cuff. I can take something fluffy and put a deeply utilitarian smooth yoke over the shoulder and patch on the elbow and forearm. I can have a base layer in one texture, an open zip-front in another, a neck tube and fingerless gloves in two more and maybe even different cuffs on the outer layer or, if it's really cold, on a third. I can have slightly shiny slouchy drapey or crisp pants, a matte-but-patterned waistband, and a form-fitting slightly-stripey shirt with a poofy sweater or neck poof.

I am not at all describing this well but I'm starting to be excited about it. I know enough that I don't entirely need to clone one or two shirts and one or two pants in all fabrics. I can vary lengths, necklines, front openings, snugness (as long as nothing is too snug) to make myself a palette. Everything from that palette should mostly work with itself if I don't want to think about it, but it should allow me to have fun getting dressed again.

( This is the fabrics I have to play with, it's a bit of a long list so you may want to skip it )

I didn't get everything potted up, and didn't get anything into the ground. Still, this is what fruited best:

chimayo
sugar rush peach
my saved pepperoncini
matchbox, always
my matchbox/hungarian black f1
sarit gat
Shishito

The rocoto peppers fruited but were very slow, I'm interested to see how they do if I overwinter them and start them again

My doe hill were stunted, and early jalapeno didn't do much
Scorpions etc were very slow
Ks White Thai was not stabilized, I got weird stuff out of it
Sugar rush variegated is pretty but didn't make many fruits
For some reason I didn't plant any hungarian black this year and the one didn't wake up a second time this spring

I've moved a ton of pepper plants indoors for the winter and am working on getting lights up, etc.

 It's Lughnasadh, day of first fruits. Every year I don't think I'm going to get any fruit, it seems way too early. Every year I am wrong.

Last year I'd had my first tomato by this time and this year I have only had my green grocery store cherry tomatoes. 

I had a big bowl of saskatoons yesterday, the bushes are literally bent double under the weight of berries. I pickled the cereal bowl full in a few minutes and the bush looks untouched. I have a bunch of saskatoon bushes around here but this one, my favourite, provides enough for the freezer on its own.

I picked a couple of the first raspberries today, this year, despite not doing any pruning last year at all so there were dead canes, some single year canes, and a whole ton of this year's canes all mixed up together and bending over. It looks like there'll be a decent harvest of them after all.

I've been eating lettuce salads since the lamb's quarters finished, though I am still terrible at making viniagrettes. Josh is an artist with them and I just cannot get the delicacy they need for fresh homegrown lettuce. Today's salad had some of that very nice chard (I only like chard without offensive stalks, which means "perpetual spinach" or biatola e costa) and some oxeye daisy flowers and some chive seeds.

Most importantly to this time of year, I've sorted out some planning on the woody perennial part of the garden just off the house, and put in the remaining apple tree and some accompanying grapes, with spots roughed out for the haskap, a kiwi (issai), some sour cherries, gooseberries, and the roses. With a bow towards Hestia as home and hearth I'm centering the backbone of the gardens in rings on the garden firepit (apple trees in a 36' ring) and on the chimney/woodstove. If I put a bonfire ring in the back the third ring will center on it. 

This doesn't mean a solid ring of trees, but it means that an arc of apple trees punctuated with taller cherries along the south of the property will shade the south side of the garden from south sun and then with raspberries underplanted shade the house from west sun, will part to let the drive run through, and then either spiral out into the plum trees or just continue along the edge of the plum bed. Within that some arcs of roses, inside the fence of the inner garden, will screen the more private area there. 

Running a ring off the chimney will be a little more challenging that running one off the firepit, but I can probably use my work laser for that.

Spent a ton of time this weekend moving the sprinkler around for the garden and being super exhausted. Will make a separate post about corn etc.

Alright. So it's my job as a land steward to create a system that fits into the larger ecosystem. Sometimes that's fun and easy. Sometimes it's challenging. With the crows, obviously, it's challenging.

Here's a first brainstorming run:

Like with coyotes, crows are smart and it makes sense to cultivate a resident population that has behaviours that help me and that don't harm. My friend T had a raven issue (apparently where they are ravens are territorial, here I get a ton of them) and they killed the problem ravens, then had a pair of ravens move in that didn't do those behavioural issues. Having crows here does keep ravens away, which helps for not having farrowing pigs eaten but causes obvious crop problems.

So categorically, options seem to be trying to keep all ravens away through killing them or scaring them (this seems unlikely to work long-term since if I kill them more will move in, and scare-based stuff tends to loose effectiveness over time unless I get a bird-chasing dog or something); training them not to go after my corn; or making my corn inaccessible somehow. A fourth option, giving them something else nicer to eat, isn't a real option because of how population dynamics works: they'll just keep multiplying until they can eat both my garden and my offered decoy food.

I suspect what works will be a combination of these things. I definitely prefer less infrastructure and inputs, and will be working towards breeding corns that the crows tend not to bother (taste? strong roots before a shoot comes up so they can't be pulled? who knows what the plants will figure out) but I need enough seed for heavy selection to make this work.

Right now cost is a bigger issue for me than amount of input, I think. I also like to reduce plastic use, especially short-lifespan plastics.

Killing/Scaring

Killing the current set *might* cause a different set to move in that doesn't have the learning that pulling up corn is fun.

Keeping the pig and bird food extremely tightly controlled so they can't eat any of it ever might help keep the population low and the level of interest in my garden commensurately low. This would involve a bunch of infrastructure: each field would need an enclosed pig feeding structure (or maybe only in winter and early spring, since that's when I'd expect the most starvation to occur). Birds are easier to make an enclosed feed structure for but harder to exclude crows from that structure since they are also birds. There is almost always some kind of food the birds get at when I do grocery pickup at the store, grocery pickup might be a casualty of this or I'd need additional indoor shed space to store the food plus the garbage it makes.

Scaring crows involves movement, noise, and things that look like predators. A dog that chases crows would be great, though keeping it out of the garden would be important and I have trouble imagining how to keep it hostile towards them instead of acclimatizing over time. It's possible that a radio and some gunshot noises or something that sounds like people and bangs, if deployed only during the seeding window, would help keep them away for a season or two before they figured it out. It might be a helpful layer of control but certainly not dependable.

Almost everyone recommends killing one and hanging it up to scare them, or getting "halloween crows" to hang up, whatever those are.

Training

Maybe it makes more sense to call this "convincing" the crows.

If there's something that makes the corn taste bad maybe the birds would stay away from it. Since I do a pre-soak anyhow it wouldn't be difficult to soak it in something. I see there is a commercial repellant called "avipel" that I would need to look into.

The crows aren't eating the kernels at this point, but it's possible that if I low-level poisoned some and set them out (think stomachache, not death) then the crows would leave the corn alone in future, or maybe if I set some out each year before seeding. That has some drawbacks: dose so as not to kill anything is important, I'm neither looking to kill them nor to get bad stuff into the food chain, I'm not sure what would produce that effect, if the poisoning agent had a scent maybe the crows would just not eat whatever smelled like that.

I have limited water pressure and power up there, but there are motion-activated squirting devices that are supposed to also deter deer etc. I'm not sure how well they work, or whether the crows could outsmart them, and they're not cheap, but I've been considering them for a couple years now.

Maybe running an electric fence wire right over the row of corn might shock them if they couldn't avoid touching it when they pulled the corn up? Not sure how well grounded crows are and this would take infrastructure.

Removing Access

Floating row cover is working best for me this year, but it's a consumable plastic item (lasts a couple years) that also costs money. It does make the corn grow faster and protect from frost. They do seem to try pulling the corn up when it comes off but there must be a size where they give up on that. I have 5' wide strips right now, square blankets that would cover most of my garden at once would make it easier to keep bird out from the edges. This costs money.

Piles of twiggy branches may help keep the crows from getting at the beds, or if they can make their way into the twigs (they do move through trees no problem, after all) it can keep them from flying away quickly so maybe they will feel unsafe/I'll be able to get one with a pellet rifle and then they'll feel unsafe.

Netting over the field would also help with harvest time, since I suspect I'll have an even bigger battle there even if I bag each corn ear. This would involve a lot of posts for infrastructure, and I think there are some downsides for small birds (they can get caught in the mesh?). Posts are something like $15-20 apiece right now, this isn't a cheap option.

Polytunnels, either high or low tunnels, with either mesh or actual poly on them: these are expensive, they'd mess with my breeding a little bit (if I used poly they'd be warmer so I'd get better crops), they'd need irrigation inside. On the other hand they'd do the job, they could function as barriers to cross-pollination so I could control that better, high tunnels might be good overwinter spaces, I could grow way more stuff, they're generally great. These would also need irrigation if they have poly on them.

Hilling, which I did this year, involves pulling soil up against the stem once the corn is a couple inches tall. If only the leaves are sticking out, the birds can't grab the base of the stem to strategically pull out the roots and the plant is less likely to be injured, plus they just don't seem to go after them as much once hilled. This is cheap, a little labour intensive, and only works once the corn is a couple inches tall so it needs to be got to that point to start (maybe through row cover or a bad smell/taste).

Deep planting is what I tried doing this year, putting the seed in deep and tromping the soil down around it fairly firmly so it's not easy to grab the seedling and pull up the root but instead the top just breaks off. The crows wait until rain/watering when the soil is soft to pull, but it seems to still help and allows for some regrowth at least.

Mulch isn't precisely a barrier, but I tried putting fresh green mulch down in the hopes the crows would have trouble seeing the new sprouts to pull. Because they slowly walk across the field from one end to the other this didn't help much; they're not just flying over and spotting things that way. Also I know the infrared on dying plants (like ones cut for mulch) is much different than on healthy ones and I'm not sure how crows' vision is.

It's possible a deep straw mulch would be helpful at obscuring the seedlings until they were too big to pull. It would soften the ground, making it easier to pull. On the other hand it would add organic matter and retain moisture so it would be good for the plants, and big bales of straw are relatively cheap, though they're labour-intensive and need to be bought the fall before.

Someone mentioned that they plant into their weeds, making a little 8" wide opening and putting in several kernels of seed, then only weeding the rest of the weeds when the corn is a foot high or so.

I've noticed that two plants growing close together are less likely to be pulled up than plants evenly spaced. Maybe put 2-3 kernels together per foot, instead of spacing 4-6" in the row?

The crows didn't really touch my Saskatoon White. I wonder if that was a fluke or if it means I should just grow more Saskatoon White?

Okay. There's a bunch of stuff I just have to take off the table from the garden this year. No true potato seed, few physalis, no eggplant, no okra, a bunch of things just didn't get planted because I thought I was moving mid-June. What still gets planted:

I'm going to try a spring barley, fava, sweet alyssum, and maybe storage beet and mixed green bed. It's late but let's see how it goes. The barley will be dango mugi and sumire mochi. The fava will be my big mix. I'm trying just a few beets in many, many places to see if I can't avoid voles finding one patch or row and chomping on though.

I'm going to try a few spring wheat patches(khorasan, ceres, prelude, and chiddam blanc, and honestly maybe a couple spring barley) with favas, sweet alyssum, and corn patches. Probably a couple turnip seeds in here, and of course some greens of some kind, maybe lettuces, and maybe a couple salsify seeds in there too.

I'll do my bouchard dwarf soup peas in with the gaspe patches for a miniature mix. Salsify and scorzonoa will be good in here, the first year's growth on that is quite blade-like and shouldn't compete too much.

My bigger corns will get squashes planted between the patches but not amongst the stalks. I am going to try pole and runner beans on some of the outside stalks. As always, some flower and greens seeds will go between them, and this will get the most of my relatively low-density turnip and beets.

Snap peas will mostly go along the fence, even though they're largely dwarf and don't need support. Tall dry peas will go along the other fence.

I think the fall cabbages, diakon, and melons may end up together in the patch in the field that's still pretty wet, they won't need to go in for awhile and that'll be dry by then. Kales and raabs can go together.

It looks like tomatoes will be in rows and peppers will be in beds two plants wide. Maybe I can put the quick salad turnips in there too.

Am I missing anything?

Fava/grains will go in the wood field. Kale/raab will go in the shady side of the pig field. Flour corns will go in the south haskap garden with the intersectionality squash (hulless acorn). Flint corns will go in the far field with the maxima squashes and some tomatoes and peppers and dry brush beans. Gaspe will go in the pig field also with some tomatoes and peppers, and with the pepo squashes and bush snap beans. Late sowing of greens will go in the central garden when the ducks are out. Cucumbers will maybe go along the fence with the peas?

Yesterday I ordered 15 chestnut seedlings from Zero Fox Tree Crops. They're descended from the Kelowna Gellatly chestnuts; basically someone planted a bunch of European and Chinese chestnuts there maybe 70 years ago and the trees have been thriving in close quarters ever since. Kelowna is harsh winters and very hot summers so it's different than the Cor, but it's a good start.

There's a second place I'll be getting trees from, called Nutcase on Denman Island, who have a mix of European, American, and I believe Japanese chestnuts. They've been doing some selection on them. Those trees may be able to wait on June though, or even getting seed from them this fall rather than seedlings.

If this sounds like a lot of trees, it is! Here's the thing: chestnuts are wind pollinated. They like to be close, and in groups. Given my experience with them in Agassiz, they like to be on slopes. Behind the house there's maybe 1/6 of an acre of steep slope with alder (a very short-lived) on it currently that really needs stabilizing, and that strip is a total of 3.5 or so acres of hill. I haven't been up there but it's older trees with what may be some gaps. Chestnuts may not produce so much in the shade but they can grow closely shading each other and a little bit shaded by other trees; rhododendrons and pawpaws (which also won't produce much in the shade) and loquats (which would love the shelter) can live at their feet. My plan, at least on the slope, is to make a relatively dense chestnut forest.

Pawpaws are super hardy here but are marginal in their ability to ripen fruit in our cool climate. I need super early ones for this, and I'm approaching this in two ways: I've acquired seed through a Canadian charity drive for the Ukraine, and I'm going to order grafted known cultivars like Pennsylvania Golden and KSU Chappell.

In all cases where I'm planting seed or seedlings I'm anticipating a long wait for a lesser individual return; that is, many of the trees will not do well in the climate, will not fruit appropriately, or will not taste good. 15 trees might be 3 or 5 good ones; likewise 40 pawpaw seeds may give me one or ten or twenty individuals who will grow here by the time they're seven years old and producing fruit. On my fiftieth birthday I can cut a bunch of them down and plant seed from the ones that did well, beginning another ten year cycle.

I'd really like to run some grapes and kiwis of various kinds up these trees -- one of my favourite plant memories is a nice regular fuzzy kiwi climbing fifty feet into a cedar tree at UBC Botanical Gardens in Vancouver -- and also keep some kiwis down where I can monitor and actually harvest them (hey, I wonder if squirrels will be distracted by kiwis and leave me some chestnuts?). I plan on nailing down some grapes soon, but maybe waiting on the kiwis unless I find something really unusual. Or maybe not? There's going to be such a big nursery full of pots for awhile as the property is prepped. Even the back hill I'm planning here may or may not get a retaining wall put up, and that needs to be done before the bottom part gets planted.

I do know that I need to grab muscat-type grapes while I can; it's pretty hard to import grapes into the province from the rest of the country, for disease prevention reasons, and nothing can get in from the US. So, if it's rare I snag it. If it's less rare I can pick it up locally and not have it go through the trauma of mail. Tonight it will be Jupiter and Osceola muscat/Es 8-2-43.

And maybe some kiwis.

And maybe also some plums.