Windbreak--Planting Fill In Trees

Maintaining a Windbreak--Part 1--Filling in the Gaps

Windbreak and new trees on right

We live in the West Antelope Valley, in a transition area from foothills to the Western edge of the Mojave desert.  It is windy out here...I mean really windy.  We regularly have sustained winds of over 30 mph.  Gusts up to 70 mph are not unheard of.  What this means is that an adequate wind break is a must.  A windbreak is essentially a line of trees on the side of your property where the prevailing winds come from.  In our case, it's the Western boarder of our property.

Loading the trees into the truck

We took advantage of a dust mitigation program offered by neighboring Solar facilities, Mid America Solar and S Solar, which offered area residents 10 free trees.  We decided to use these trees to fill in the holes in our windbreak. 

Water delivery

We picked the trees up in mid December and placed them near where we plan to plant them.  Since we have not added irrigation lines or water to the back portion of our property, we have been watering the trees using 20 gallon tubs and 2 gallon buckets run from the back of the truck.  Not the easiest way to water, but it gets the job done.

Fabulous husband getting started

Figure out where your gaps are in the windbreak and decide where to place your tree.  Since the trees are super heavy, it's best to use the container to gauge your placement and the depth of the hole.

Not quite deep enough

Once the hole was deep and wide enough, we added a bit of composted horse manure to feed the tree.  Since the previous owner of our ranch raised thoroughbred Arabians, there is no shortage of this around here!  We added about a gallon of water and then placed measured using the planter to be sure.

Depth of hole equals correct depth to plant

Low tech irrigation

We took the tree out of the container and cut the roots to loosen.  These trees had been in these pots way to long and had become root bound.  It's essential that the tree's roots be able to spread out and a tap root reach the ground water.

Making cuts to the roots to ensure growth.

Now it's time to place the tree in the hole.These weigh over 150 pounds so it took both of us.  We oriented the tree slightly into the prevailing winds and checked to make sure we were satisfied with its placement before filling the hole.

Checking depth and placement

Now it's time to refill the hole and add a support.  You can use any sturdy stick, but living on a ranch, you end up having all sorts of fence posts and rods laying around...just use what you have.

Add a support

Back fill the hole

While filling the hole, after every few feet of soil we added about a gallon of water.  This is to give them a drink as well as help our little trees be successful.  It also helps with settling and lets you know if you have any drainage issues.

Add a gallon of water several times during the fill

Finish back filling the hole

Now that the holes have been back filled, we add about 2-3 gallons of water.  We check drainage and their level to ensure the trees are where we want them.  After the trees are settled in, we will attach the tree to the support post with a piece of cloth to support our tree's growth in the wind.

All done!

So one tree down....nine more to go!!

You might be wondering why I titled this blog post, "Part 1."  The answer to this is that maintaining a windbreak is a twofold process.  What we have been avoiding since we moved here about about a year and a half ago is cutting the dead wood from the existing windbreak trees.  This is a tough one, because even though there are large sections of some trees that are clearly dead, they still provide a break from the wind.  We don't want to remove too much.

Max with our puppies Rudy & Valentino August 2014

Like everything else in a rural setting, it's trial and error.  Living out here also forces you to do a lot of the work yourself.  It's tough to find an expert and if you can, they don't want to drive all the way out here...lol!

For more information on how to do this in your area, check your local county agricultural extension office. 

Hope you enjoyed our windbreak sage, part 1! 

Cheers for now~
Marti

Back To School in the Garden

 BACK TO SCHOOL!

Existing raised beds 

September is back to school time for many of us.  At the preschool, September is when the new sessions of the LA Up begin, so with this group of kids, we are starting from scratch!  Ms. Jeana Courson, the Academy Director at La Petite, ordered a new raised bed kit just for these students.

The kit was easy enough for our four year olds to put together with minimum help from the adults in the class.  The children  put the boards into a square and added the corner supports.

Then stakes were added to the corners to secure the box to the ground and hammered into the ground for added support.

Decorative caps were attached and hammered down for good measure.  Each kid got to "tap-tap-tap" three times with the hammer!

The box was then filled up with soil by the students.  The pink shovel proved to be very popular with our girls.  Luckily we have several.

The teachers determined that the class would like to grow a salad garden, which is perfect for a Fall growing season.  The kids planted spinach, baby lettuce, heart lettuce, rainbow lettuce and bambino carrots.

We added marigold plants as a beneficial element.  Most pests do not like marigolds and it really helps to have something established in the box to encourage the kids to water.  Most preschool aged kids do not understand watering dirt, but can get their head around watering the plants.

So they did.  The teachers are really good about making the watering cans available for the students to water, and they LOVE to water.  It's a good thing, because out here in the high desert, plants need a lot of water to thrive.

Since I have been working with the younger group of kids since May, we did a different project for these classes....planting flowers!

The kids put the soil into the pots.  This is always a favorite activity.  Many worms were spotted, sparking a great deal of excitement!

Finally, the impatients were transplanted into the pots.  We talked about how some plants like sun and some like shade.

All in all, a great day at school!

Cheers~
Marti Lindsey~The Garden Lady

Potato Harvest at the Preschool!

From the Marti Lindsey--Garden Lady

Back in June, we planted potatoes in some regular 2 gallon pots at the preschool.  These weren't seed potatoes, just potatoes from my pantry that had started to grow eyes.  Although it is not recommended to use regular potatoes from the grocery store, my philosophy has always been that if they were growing in my pantry, that they would certainly grow in the garden!

 

Washing the potatoes

First we placed the pots on a small table so my tiny friends could see what they were doing.  We then dug until we found potatoes.  Because they were grown in fairly small pots, most of the potatoes were fairly small.  After the potatoes were dug out of the pots, they went to the orange washing station to be cleaned.

Tuesday's Harvest!

Out of 4 pots, we harvested 28 potatoes!!  The students had planted other vegetables throughout the summer and there were also several tomatoes and beans ready to pick.

YUMMY!

We got the potatoes inside and gave them an additional wash.  The larger ones were cut into bit sized pieces and the smaller ones were left whole.  We steamed them with some season salt and pepper and served them with lunch.  The kids loved them!!  We will most definitely be growing potatoes again.

Cheers~
Marti--The Garden Lady

Old Friends and New

 
Today I started a new adventure as a Garden Coach at a local preschool.  I made lots of tiny friends today, thanks to an old friend, Jeana.  Jeana used to work with me many, many moons ago when I was a District Manager at Kindercare.  Jeana's new school has a preschool program along with an LA Up Program, both with amazing, dedicated teachers, but not much time for gardening.  Enter Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady.

All of the kids were excited and eager to help!  What kid doesn't love to play in the dirt, right?  

We started off by removing some of the compacted soil in the existing garden boxes.  The kids filled a 20 gallon tub, one shovel full at a time!

We added Kellogg's Organic Soil to amend the old soil in the beds.  Then the kids started planting!  Today we started an elevated raised bed with herbs and three regular raised beds.  One bed is all strawberries, which was very exciting for the kids.  The other beds will house a variety of vegetables including beans, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

I am excited to make new friends and share my love of growing with the kids!  Here's what's growing at our place right now:

Radishes, Carrots, Turnips & Golden Beets

Lettuce

Spinach

Peas & Purple Cauliflower

I'm so excited to go back next week and do more work with the kids!  Until then, keep on growing!

Cheers~
Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady