It is getting very close to spring, both by the calendar and otherwise. But in the hoophouse, it is already spring. To be specific, I’d say it is around the beginning of April in there. The hoophouse is unheated, so it goes through seasonal temperature cycles just like the rest of the landscape, but it goes through somewhat different temperature cycles. It tends to warm up quicker during the day, especially if it is sunny (on sunny days the temperature difference can be extreme, but there are louvres that open automatically at a set temperature to moderate extremes). At night, though, it can get almost as cold as outside (but at least it is sheltered from wind and snow).
The fact that it isn’t just consistently a little bit warmer inside the hoophouse seems like it would make estimating the equivalent season difficult, if not impossible. But I realized, a couple years ago now, that I don’t have to figure it out; the weeds growing in the hoophouse had already done that. Because of my ‘photojournaling’ observations, I had pictures of when different plants flowered, or went to seed or fruited (or even just when they started coming up). So all I had to do was look at what the plants were doing, and see when they had been in the same stage outside in previous years.
At first, I wondered if the results would be consistent. Would all the individual observations, taken together, all point to the same time frame? Or would different plants handle the seemingly non-equivalent conditions in different ways? But it turned out they did all point to the same time frame. So, I figured, if the plants in the hoophouse were doing what they would do in March (for example), I could plant crops that would be planted outside in March in this area, and they should do well. That has seemed to work pretty well, and gave a method to follow for figuring out when to plant what in the spring even when we were new at growing in a hoophouse.
Hi everyone, I have been having technical difficulties with my site recently and been unable to log in but I think I may have finally gotten it fixed! (I was even having technical difficulties with the tech support!) So, if you have been wondering why I haven’t been posting lately, or responding to comments, this is why. I should be able to get another post done soon, though, as I was halfway through writing one when problems started.
In the meantime, I also added another twenty photos to my shop site, since I was still able to access that because it is not directly connected with this site.
I have added a link to an online store I just created to sell my photography. (If you are looking at this site on a phone the link is all the way at the bottom.) Due to the limitations of the website I am using, I currently have only five photos on the site, but I am planning on adding more. If you see any photos on here that you particularly like, or if you have thoughts on what sorts of photos you would be interested in seeing, let me know!
Over the last month, we’ve been working on planting crops for the fall and winter. Now we’re starting to be able to harvest our first greens from our efforts, but they aren’t the ones we planted! Those ones are still coming along, but aren’t ready yet. The plants we’ve been harvesting are weeds. Many of the weeds that commonly pop up in gardens are actually edible and nutritious, and if you know which ones they are, they can add variety to the harvest (and make it come sooner as most of them are very quick growing and are best harvested young). Here’s a look at what we’re harvesting.
Amaranth
Amaranth is not just a weed, it is a plant that is often grown as a crop, but it also grows wild and is often treated as a weed when it does. We have a wild variety, and we also have a variety that is a cultivar that has probably crossed with the wild variety, and just pops up in the chicken yard now (and wherever the soil from the chicken yard goes, like our garden).
Wild mustard
This is one of our most prevalent weeds and as a stronger green, much more comes up than we can eat. Fortunately, the chickens love it, and we like to share it with them. Especially in the winter when greens are scarce, wild mustard growing in our hoophouse (along with bittercress and some greens from our crops) helps satisfy their constant appetite for greens.
Wild Spinach (chinopodium album)
This plant has a lot of common names, many of which are also used for other unrelated plants. In other words, the common names of chinopodium album are a bit of a disorganized mess. I like wild spinach since it is fairly descriptive (it is related to spinach, although technically it is more closely related to quinoa), and I’ve never heard anything else being called that. Other names I’ve heard this plant called are goosefoot, lamb’s quarters, fat hen, and pigweed (this name is also applied to amaranth).
I have been aware for some time that it usually floods a bit in the spring, particularly in the field, and meadow areas, but this year, we had our biggest flood yet. Never before did we have any real flooding in the hoophouse (besides a puddle at the door), and we don’t usually have flooding in the fire circle or right up to the front yard chicken coop either.
It occurred to me that I had thought the same thing about the flooding we had last year; it was the most flooding we’d had yet. It hadn’t been as surprising; it happened as everything began to thaw for spring, and we had just had a major snowfall, and the snow was about as high as I’d ever seen it. Then, as it all melted, it rained. It didn’t seem surprising, then, when the water crept up all around the hoophouse (but didn’t quite go in), and flooded all of the field and meadow, and parts of the back chicken yard, and even a little of the front chicken yard. It wasn’t surprising, but it did seem like a fluke. It seemed like a particularly wet year, and not something likely to happen again right away.
The year before that had been the wettest I had yet seen it as well, I seemed to recall. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like there had been a lot of ‘wettest spring yet’ years, and we haven’t been here for that many years. I took pictures of the water each time I thought it was the wettest it had ever been (and pretty much any time anything unusual happens) so I was able to look at my pictures to see if I was remembering right. As it turns out, the trend is pretty clear; it has generally been getting wetter each spring we’ve been here. We usually have the most water in March, but last year’s big flood was in February and this year’s was at the beginning of May.
In 2014 there were some large puddles of snowmelt in the field and one at the edge of the meadow that seemed impressive at the time. The next year was similar, but there was water at the edge of our field that was a bit more than I had noticed before… we had a wet summer that year too. 2016 was the first time the creek overflowed to mingle with the water pooled in the field and meadow, and there were big puddles in the back chicken yard too. In 2017 almost the entire field flooded with the exception of a small island where the telephone pole was, and the edges where we put our hoophouse, fire circle, and front chicken yard. In 2018, we had quite deep water covering the field, meadow, and a good portion of the back chicken yard, and it surrounded the hoophouse. It was also encroaching on the front chicken yard. And this year, not only did the hoophouse flood, but the water in the field was so deep that it was almost knee high in places.
Ironically, we have also had issues with the land getting too dry over the summer in more recent years. It might flood in the spring, and then almost not rain again until fall. Water is an important resource and getting so much of it in the spring wouldn’t be a bad thing… if we could properly channel and store it. That, then, is our challenge.
Yesterday morning, a red winged blackbird was spotted out the kitchen window. He was perched in a cottonwood tree, apparently alone. But red winged blackbirds don’t arrive alone in the spring, and it wasn’t long before we heard the calls of the rest of his flock.
When I lived in Florida, the red winged blackbirds spent the winter hanging around our pond (and other such areas), and now, in Michigan, they nest around the marshy areas in our field. It would be hard not to notice when they arrive; they travel in large flocks, and sit in the treetops chattering loudly. This year, their arrival has coincided quite exactly with the arrival of warmer weather, which has been a bit sudden this year. They seem to have timed things nicely for themselves.
In winter, both the colder weather and the warmer weather have their benefits. The cold keeps things dormant that should be dormant, and helps to reset parasite populations for my bees (and also, the dog loves it). The warmer weather is easier on the chickens, and makes it easy to grow greens in the winter. In general, though, I tend to hope for most of the winter to be fairly cold, because that is what plants and animals of this area are accustomed to and able to handle. It is still possible to grow vegetables in the winter when it is quite cold. And the chickens do all right with fairly cold temperatures when they are well cared for.
The kind of weather we have been having lately, though, is not beneficial to anything. The temperature rose about seventy degrees in the span of a few days, highlighting the extreme fluctuations that we’ve been having. Earlier this winter I had noticed that some plants were trying to leaf out, and then getting frozen. And now the dog and the cats are shedding as though it is spring, and there are mushrooms growing from the mushroom logs (I don’t know quite as much about mushrooms, but the mushrooms look a bit stunted, so I’m pretty sure frigid weather is not optimal). Everything seems a bit confused right now, unsure what to make of the weather. Though not as visible, honey bees are also prone to this kind of confusion. They may start raising brood, or raise more than they can keep warm at low temperatures that they were not expecting. If the temperatures drop really quickly they may have difficulty getting into their winter cluster in time. Other animals (like chickens) can get acclimated to temperatures that aren’t optimal for them over time, but the constant change keeps them from getting acclimated.
It may have been a little slow in coming this year, but winter is finally bringing some real cold. And by real cold, I mean that the temperature is taking regular dips below zero degrees (Fahrenheit). At this point, most people aren’t thinking about their gardens, and what they could harvest from them tonight. There are a number of possibilities if you have a hoophouse or cold frame. If not, though, the options are extremely limited. One is a plant most people have never heard of (machè). The only other that I know of, is thyme. To be harvestable in this weather, a plant has to not only still be alive, but also be able to be harvested while the plant is actually frozen, without turning into mush when it is brought into the house and thawed. Most plants’ leaves wilt while they are frozen and revive once the temperature rises above freezing as long as they are still connected to the living plant. (This is part of what having a cold frame or hoophouse helps with; the sun usually warms the interior to at least a little above freezing each day, allowing for the plants to actually be harvested). Thyme leaves don’t even wilt when they are frozen.
We are expecting even colder weather tomorrow, and the outside thyme may get to the point where it more closely resembles dried thyme than fresh, but it will not turn to mush. Sage is similar, and can be harvested when frozen, but gets dried much sooner than thyme.
(And the thyme in the hoophouse will still be green, as long as the voles don’t get to it.)
There are several full bags of recently harvested salad greens in our refrigerator right now. I wouldn’t be surprised, except that I didn’t plant any this fall. I still wouldn’t really be that surprised; after all, many of last year’s greens did go to seed, but there are a few of the chickens that are living in the hoophouse that have been regularly escaping from the area we have sectioned off for them, and they are desperate for greens at the moment. Still, both of those things are inconsequential compared to the issues we have with voles. Voles are rodents that eat greens, and also dig and gnaw on roots and stems.
And yet, somehow, there are still greens to be harvested.
In the spring of 2015 we planted a bunch of spruces, to one day be a windbreak for our house, and also the bee yard. We planted them much closer together than fully grown trees would fit, otherwise we would have had to wait many years before the area would fill out and the trees would have any effect on the wind. As the trees grew, we would eventually have to thin them, much like people do with crops in their gardens. Whenever I do that, I usually try to find a use for the thinnings. In the case of the spruce trees, the ‘thinnings’ are our Christmas trees.
This year is the first year that we were able to harvest one of those trees (the particular tree we harvested was actually from our tree nursery, where we had put a few extra trees we did not yet have space prepared for). It is still small, but it gave the trees around it some room to grow, and we had some tiny ornaments that looked really nice on it.
(The title of this post was inspired by my Dad’s sense of humor.)