Long Overdue Gruene Weide Update

I looked at the blog today after sending the link to a friend and found it's been 10 months since I last posted. That is way too long. We never stopped going out there and caring for Die Weide, I just stopped writing mostly due to very busy work schedule and our youngest daughter's German wedding in July.

So what's changed since May 2014? The biggest change was the purchase and installation of a new 1525 gallon water tank. I had pictures of the event on my cell phone but I dropped it which fatally resulted in losing all my data and pictures. The new tank picture below was taken this Sunday and shows the intake dripping water because the 1525 gallon tank overflows the intake pipe.

Water tank runneth over.

We moved the original 330 gallon tank next to the donkey shed but haven't hooked up the gutters yet to harvest the rainwater. That's a project scheduled by end of the month. Next week we will roto-tiller the garden to plant three pepper varieties (Jumbo Jalapeno, Habanero, and Tobasco) and we'll plant green beans and black-eyed peas. We already have garlic and asparagus growing there.

This past year we lost one peach tree to deer browsing so we planted a new one along with an additional plum tree, three blackberries, and four blueberry bushes. That brings the orchard to a dozen fruit trees, 10 blackberries, four blueberries, and one raspberry (the 2nd one died last year.) Here are a couple of pictures of the new additions:

Newly added peach tree.

Four Blueberry Bushes.

New plum tree in foreground with red wrapping and two year old apple tree blooming in background.

Of the original six peach trees planted as seedlings, one was completely killed by deer, another appears to also have been killed but we're waiting for spring to be sure, and the other four look healthy and in fact, this year was the first year they have bloomed! It would be so cool to get our first peach this year, but we have to wait and see. Due to the deer eating the trees I built and installed a solar powered electric fence. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to keep the deer from eating the trees. It did keep Herbie the donkey out of the orchard, but last fall we surrendered Herbie to our neighbor's care because our once weekly visits left Herbie lonely. They're herd animals and we felt it wasn't right to keep Herbie away from other animals.

The next big ticket item I'll tackle this year is to put in drip irrigation for the garden and berries and bucket irrigation for the orchard. I plan to tackle that update in April.

For the final picture blast I show the compost heap I built several years ago. I worked this weekend to completely scrape it out and re-fill it because it has never generated compost. The material we added was too dry and it turned out one of the upper-most layers was a thatch of straw we used as mulch in the garden - the thatch kept any rain from entering the heap, thus inhibiting composting. I mixed and put material back in with soil and compost added to hopefully get the heaps generating soil amendments. Our compost heaps at home always generate wonderful compost which has made the backyard garden very productive. I want the same compost generated for Die Weide!

Dual compartment compost heap, refilled.

 Finally, here is Penny in a trough. Her biggest joy in life is to come out to Die Weide and chase balls we throw and jump in the trough when she gets thirsty. The water was clear when we got there but she tracked in the mud.

 I'll try not to be so frugal with the writings this year.