This week was a slow week on the homestead. I was mostly out of commission, focusing on work and a series of headaches. My biggest asset in this entire enterprise is my capacity to work. My time, energy, grit, and physical resilience require management. Towards that end, I’m taking the fact that I’m feeling burnt out quite seriously. Next weekend, I’ll be off. Not just away from work, but away from domestic life. I’ll take a weekend getaway to Indiana and sign off.
The weather was pretty hot and dry; we wound up watering everything pretty regularly this week in the back. My front bed is suffering, and I’m considering getting a soaker hose running in it. In back, I’ve had a lot of weed pressure and the shrubs that refuse to die, continue to refuse to die. The next step is copper nails, and possibly resorting to an herbicide, especially around the air conditioner. Unfortunately, I was overzealous weeding the side bed and may have killed one of the hazelnuts as well. I snipped it; I’m just hoping it recovers. If not, I’ll plant a replacement this fall.
I’ve taken action on the prairie bed as well. To help control weeds and bare ground, I overseeded the entire bed using a homemade seed mix. The mix started with more Indian grass, little bluestem, and prairie clover seeds, Then, I mixed in a sterile wheat cover crop and many of the remaining annual seeds from the year.
All in the seed mix contained:
- ReGreen Cover Croop
- Little Bluestem
- Indian Grass
- Northern Blazing Star
- Prairie Blazing Star
- Prairie Smoke
- Dill
- Cilantro
- Balsam
- Dahlia
- Basil
- Lemon Bee Balm
I’ll overseed the bed again this fall and then enrich even more in the spring. After reflection, I’ll include annual herbs in spring as well. I threw the mix together, mostly using seeds I already had around, but in the future, I’ll continue to include the herbs and some flowers next spring. But in fall, I’ve already decided to include golden alexander, milkweed, echinacea after I plant the alliums.
Gesneriads
Gesneriads look promising. African violets aside, the entire category grows well in wicking systems, which I can likely integrate into the aquaponics setup smoothly. I’m still pretty heavy in research mode with this, but I hope to design a dedicated rack for growing these by the end of the summer. I’ve also started looking into additional rack designs for other flowering plants. My research is indicating that these guys might not do as much for the filtration side of the garden as I would hope.
Aquatics Update
I’ve had a rough week on the aquatics front and nothing major to report from the aquaponics side of things. I’ve had some real issues with water quality and bacterial / algae blooms in a few tanks. A bigger problem has been shipping. My grindal worm culture went missing in transit, which was disappointing. I’m not entirely sure about the viability of my black worms as well. There’s more to report over on the pumpkinseed site.