Winterizing the Orchard

We ended up bringing in 14 bales of pine straw from off of the farm. In the future I think we can just pull from the farm, but honestly, this was just easier. At about $3 each it was worth it to us to save the time and energy that we would have spent raking and gathering. We brought in the 14 bales, used about 10 of them on the beds on top of the mulch we had already added. It made it a lot more aesthetically pleasing as well as filled in areas that were sparsely mulched. We used the other 4 bales to surround all of our sensitive little saplings. The apples would probably be alright without filling the cage to the height that we did, but we did them last and the cage was already in place, so we just used the last of the pine straw. The paw paws are more sensitive so they have plastic wrapped around the outside, about three quarters of the way around the cage. We did the same thing to the fig, including the plastic, and laid some pine straw around the bottom of the goji berries and the gladiolas as well. All of the pine straw in the cages is very loosely placed in the cage. We're going for insulation, not suffocation. We'll leave this set up in place for the next two months or so during the coldest months. Then, probably in early February, we'll take it all down, prune them while they're dormant, and put it all back up until after the last frost.

Wheel Bug

Look out! It's a wheel bug! Well, if you're a japanese beetle or a stink bug, you're in serious trouble. These big wheel bugs are at the top of your food chain. That long red nose isn't just goofy looking, it's deadly. They use that bad boy to pierce the backs of their prey and inject their saliva to dissolve the tissue inside... and then they drink it. If you're a human and one of these guys gets a hold of you don't worry, your insides won't melt. However, it feels kind of like a wasp sting, with a marginal amount of additional pain.

I found this professional assassin while clearing out the front. He's a beneficial bug that eats a lot of pests, so he's certainly welcome to stay. But I'm not planning on petting him.

Wheel bugs are common in Eastern North America, but they like to hide and ambush their prey, so you don't often see them. I'm elated to see him because he's a positive sign that my little ecosystem is healthy (and pesticide free). Seeing the apex predator of a food chain usually means that the food web beneath them is thriving.

Have a good day little buddy, so sorry to disturb you. Please don't bite me, just go about your day. I'm sure you've got a lot of murdering to do...

Mulching for Winter

Here's a before and after comparison of the mulching Meredithe and I completed today. Technically the pictures are of two different beds, the before is of the North bed, the after of the South bed, but you get the idea. The smaller clippings that you can see piled to the right in the before picture were the most useful, having been clipped this spring and summer and decomposing the most. Meredithe put the best stuff underneath our struggling gardenia and azalea bushes. The remainder of the mulch was the smaller stuff from the bottom of the brush pile that had been sitting undisturbed since the end of March. It's mostly broken down blackberry debris and stems of large grasses from when we first cleared the garden area. We were running a little short of the really good broken down material so we raked out some of the dead taller grasses from the longer brush area you can see in the top left of the before picture. We were able to cover both beds with about 1-2" of fairly well broken down mulch material without having to bring in anything from off of the farm. We've considered adding pine straw on top to ensure we've got a good 2" of mulch evenly spread across the beds. It would make them look more uniform and aesthetically pleasing as well. We have pine straw on farm obviously, but we may bring in a few bales from off farm too, maybe next week.