Since the only thing to do in the garden right now is weeding, which is not terribly exciting, we decided to show you some of the plants and the trees.
Stony, sandy ground -- I imagine water just drains right through it and doesn't hang around for plant use long. Probably very easy to pull the weeds out, though. Maybe you can find a horse manure pile somewhere close for adding to the soil. Among other things, it would help keep moisture hanging around measurably longer for the plants to use. Alternatively, there's all that potential green manure (weeds?) you have growing between your distributed gardens that could be cut or pulled and then laid around your plants as a mulch (which would eventually add organic material into the soil below).
Pretty area. We're still waiting for spring here in Minnesota -- 19 degrees F this morning -- but we did get our peas in.
Does your part of the world have deer or other browsers that chew on fruit trees and flowers? Here, we have to fence things in because of many hungry young and growing white tail deer (furry locusts).
It's very stony, but not sandy, it's clay, which is good for moisture retention. We do make fertiliser from the weeds, yes, garden soup. I use the pulled out weeds as not quite mulch but to prevent fresh growth along intergarden paths. It works, so I'll try the mulch idea, thank you! It's easyto pull them out when the soil is moist. Once that clay dries, it's tough but I don't mind. No deers around here but Vlad and Sara, the next-door Rottweiler, are pretty annoying, hence the spinach eyesores. 😂
I'm curious -- what are the outcropping rocks made of in your area? I'm wondering if it's the soil's parent rock type that created the unusal combination of dominant clay with subsidary rock fragments. Seems strange to have a stony clay soil, when sandy clay loams or clayey sandy loams are the usual thing. Steep slopes of shale lurking uphill of you maybe?
I don't know the name of the rocks around but they are mostly the sort that breaks really easily, in layers, as it were, kind of like what nails sometimes do, if you forgive the unappealing image. Wikipedia says it's probably schist. I'll do a video of the rocks one of these days. Our neighbour jokes that since we're on a slope at the top of the village, the rain washes all the soil goodies to the flatland below us, leaving us with the rocks. Might be some truth to that.
There is complete truth to what your neighbor says about the goodies washing down hill. If the rock pieces have some very small shiny crystals that are light-colored and a bit flat-looking, mixed with darker less flat ones, it is probably a schist of some kind. But, seeing how you still have clays up where you are, you do still have a lot of soil goodies where you are at. On the other hand, if there are no small crystals in your rock fragments, you could have shale or mudstone -- they breaks even easier than schist into layers, and also weather down into clays much easier schist.
Thank you for the expert explanation! I'll ask the resident rock person, aka Cat, to check for crystals. She collects rocks and she does occasionally find one with shiny specks. In any case, we have a lot of work to do to fertilise. Oh, well, no one said it would be easy.
Looks as if you are going to have a bumper crop of Strawberries, Irina! Congrats! You Fruit trees look great too. There used to be Mulberry trees in different yards around my neighborhood as a kid. Now there is none to be seen.. they bore well.
Nice video. No problems with vertigo here. The camera work seemed pretty good to me. I enjoyed seeing all the growing things and that weeds are a universal problem.
The technical term for a big bird house such as you are building is an aviary. Not to be confused with a big house for bees, which would be an apiary.
Typical cat, trying to steal the show and make the video all about him...
I don't know if you have similar there, but around here, these live oak trees drop a load of leaves several times I year. When I want a lot of compost, in addition to collecting my own leaves, I steal the bags of leaves the neighbors have put on the street for pick up. But, it looks like your neighborhood must have much larger (more spread out) lots that we have here.
Thanks for this gorgeous view!
Five olives are better than none, lol.
I must say that the bird house looks only a little smaller than a former NYC apartment. Lucky birds.
Cheers
Thank you for this Irina. Lovely video. I honestly prefer this over reading and I hope you can make more of such videos.
Your soil is poor compared to ours but your potatoes are doing very very well.
Good job. Keep on squeezing those beetles!
It's not the best soil but we're working on it and not giving up! I'll try doing more videos, I enjoy it.😊
Stony, sandy ground -- I imagine water just drains right through it and doesn't hang around for plant use long. Probably very easy to pull the weeds out, though. Maybe you can find a horse manure pile somewhere close for adding to the soil. Among other things, it would help keep moisture hanging around measurably longer for the plants to use. Alternatively, there's all that potential green manure (weeds?) you have growing between your distributed gardens that could be cut or pulled and then laid around your plants as a mulch (which would eventually add organic material into the soil below).
Pretty area. We're still waiting for spring here in Minnesota -- 19 degrees F this morning -- but we did get our peas in.
Does your part of the world have deer or other browsers that chew on fruit trees and flowers? Here, we have to fence things in because of many hungry young and growing white tail deer (furry locusts).
It's very stony, but not sandy, it's clay, which is good for moisture retention. We do make fertiliser from the weeds, yes, garden soup. I use the pulled out weeds as not quite mulch but to prevent fresh growth along intergarden paths. It works, so I'll try the mulch idea, thank you! It's easyto pull them out when the soil is moist. Once that clay dries, it's tough but I don't mind. No deers around here but Vlad and Sara, the next-door Rottweiler, are pretty annoying, hence the spinach eyesores. 😂
I'm curious -- what are the outcropping rocks made of in your area? I'm wondering if it's the soil's parent rock type that created the unusal combination of dominant clay with subsidary rock fragments. Seems strange to have a stony clay soil, when sandy clay loams or clayey sandy loams are the usual thing. Steep slopes of shale lurking uphill of you maybe?
I don't know the name of the rocks around but they are mostly the sort that breaks really easily, in layers, as it were, kind of like what nails sometimes do, if you forgive the unappealing image. Wikipedia says it's probably schist. I'll do a video of the rocks one of these days. Our neighbour jokes that since we're on a slope at the top of the village, the rain washes all the soil goodies to the flatland below us, leaving us with the rocks. Might be some truth to that.
There is complete truth to what your neighbor says about the goodies washing down hill. If the rock pieces have some very small shiny crystals that are light-colored and a bit flat-looking, mixed with darker less flat ones, it is probably a schist of some kind. But, seeing how you still have clays up where you are, you do still have a lot of soil goodies where you are at. On the other hand, if there are no small crystals in your rock fragments, you could have shale or mudstone -- they breaks even easier than schist into layers, and also weather down into clays much easier schist.
Thank you for the expert explanation! I'll ask the resident rock person, aka Cat, to check for crystals. She collects rocks and she does occasionally find one with shiny specks. In any case, we have a lot of work to do to fertilise. Oh, well, no one said it would be easy.
Looks as if you are going to have a bumper crop of Strawberries, Irina! Congrats! You Fruit trees look great too. There used to be Mulberry trees in different yards around my neighborhood as a kid. Now there is none to be seen.. they bore well.
Wehipe the strawberries survive today's snow, cold rain and forecast subzero temps in the night. Can't catch a break this year
Nice video. No problems with vertigo here. The camera work seemed pretty good to me. I enjoyed seeing all the growing things and that weeds are a universal problem.
The technical term for a big bird house such as you are building is an aviary. Not to be confused with a big house for bees, which would be an apiary.
Typical cat, trying to steal the show and make the video all about him...
I don't know if you have similar there, but around here, these live oak trees drop a load of leaves several times I year. When I want a lot of compost, in addition to collecting my own leaves, I steal the bags of leaves the neighbors have put on the street for pick up. But, it looks like your neighborhood must have much larger (more spread out) lots that we have here.
Very beautiful, Irina.