The Garden Report.

OK, so I haven't been taking any long distance motorcycle trips this summer. I did do a 4 day trip to Road America this spring, but I've only taken the bikes out for local day trips since then.

This is our first year with a garden in Wisconsin and I've spent a lot of time in it! I am very happy with the results so far. I posted about tilling and hauling in compost for the garden back in May. The typical date of last frost is usually right around the fist of June and I planted about that time.

The rhubarb, tomatoes, tomatillos, green and jalapeno peppers are from small starter plants from the garden store. The sugar snap peas, zucchini, bush beans, and green onions I planted as seeds.

I'm proud to show the first edible produce from the garden.... sugar snap peas.

The last couple of weeks have been quite warm and the effect on the garden has been great. It seems like most of the weather up until the last few weeks has been cool and the plants just hadn't taken off like they have in the last week or so. We are just now starting to run the air conditioner.. that's how cool it's been.

Here is what the garden looked like 2 weeks ago.......

And today.....

The tomatillos have tons of blossoms and have started to set fruit. The tomato plants have lots of fruit. The zucchini has lots of blossoms, same as the beans. The dill is tall and fragrant, and the rhubarb is doing nicely.

Zucchini flower...

Tomatillos a plenty...

Bush style green beans...

I made my tomato cages from a 50' roll of 5' wide, 6" x 6" square, welded wire concrete reinforcing mesh. I cut off 5' long pieces and cut the bottom wire off to make feet, secured the ends...

Nancy and I have a lot more flowers and plants on the back patio and around the outside of the house.

We continue to be visited by all sorts of wildlife.

More as the plants produce!


Richard asked me about fencing to keep the abundant deer out of the garden.... Well, to answer that, I did a lot of research and watched a lot of videos on youtube, before I finally decided on what to use. I originally thought about making a 7' high fence with electrical conduit and light weight mesh. But I was intrigued by the monofilament fences I saw. Several people have reported good luck keeping deer out of their gardens using not much more that fishing line.

Here's what I did. I started with 4 steel fence posts, one at each corner. Then I ran a row of 2' high poultry fence AKA chicken wire, around the garden, in the same line as the steel corner posts. I used some wood lath to keep the chicken wire fence upright. It stands about 1.5 feet high, as I put about 6" of it on the ground to discourage small critters from going under it.

Once the low fence was in place, I used a roll of clear 20# test monofilament fishing line and circled the garden with 6 strands.

The theory is that the deer brush against the fishing line and because they can't see it, the back away from it, and because they're unsure of what's there, they won't try to jump it... in theory.

So far, it has kept everything out... We'll see.

An Early Season Road Trip.

I don't have any cross country road trips planned for this riding season. My new garden, some home repairs and yard projects will take up a lot of my time this year. I did manage a nice 4 day trip this last weekend. My riding buddy, John, came up from St. Paul, MN last Wednesday evening.

On Thursday, May 28th, we had the bikes packed and we were off to Oshkosh, WI. We were going to stay in Oshkosh and ride back and forth to the Super Bike races at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI. The races were taking place over the next three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I had booked and paid for three nights at the local Super 8. John had purchased the event tickets for all three days. We were set!

At the Oshkosh Super 8.

A MiG-21 we could see from the motel.

Friday morning we woke up and checked the weather. It was looking like there was some possible rain later in the day. We had breakfast and decided to check out the EAA Museum that was just down the street from our motel. We could have spent the entire day there. More than 200 aircraft, a large library of books and manuals, countless displays of historical artifacts... Too much to see in just one morning.


Everything from a German WWI tri-plane to a Piper Cub. Lots of experimental aircraft and even a replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer.

A collection of WWII nose art...

There were even a couple of Harley-Davidson powered airplanes.

Then things went bad... On our way out of the museum it started to rain. We quickly made our way back to the motel. Once we dried off, we checked the radar. It looked like we were in for at least a half day of rain. We waited out the rain while watching the Turner Classic Movie channel and checking the news and radar. By the time it cleared up enough to ride to the track, the races would be over before we would get there.

Saturday wasn't any better. It rained heavily the whole day, and the temperatures had dropped. We spent almost the entire day at the hotel.

Sunday was sunny but very cool. We made the hour drive to the track and watched some practice races and real races. We spent some time walking around the paddock and vendor areas before sitting at turn 5 to watch the races. We both would have liked to stay much later and watch the Supermoto races, but the cool temps and 6 hour ride home made us rethink our staying late.

There were several cool motorcycles at the track. It seems everyone had a scooter or a small bike of some kind. There was even a candy lime green Concours 14.

Even with the rain and cold weather it was a fun weekend!

Compost Awareness Week?

I never knew that there was such a thing, but there is.

Earlier in the week, I called about buying 2 cubic yards of compost and I was informed that because was "compost awareness week", their product was half price, $8.50 a yard. The problem was that the place selling it is 170 miles from home.

Why would I even consider going that far for composted yard waste? Well, there are several places around me and in neighboring communities that accept yard waste, but NONE of them do anything with the waste. They typically do not charge a drop off fee and the grass clippings, leaves, and tree trimmings are usually just left to rot in a hole in the ground. Nancy and I called several of the contact people listed for these sites, and none of the people we spoke to recommended using their "compost", and I use that term loosely, in a garden. Some of the people we spoke to said that the incoming waste often contained household garbage.... What a waste of a great resource!

In the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, it's a whole different world... Yard waste can't be tossed in the trash for curb side pick up. It has to be recycled, either curb side in a special bin or special large paper bags, or you have to haul it to a yard waste facility yourself. They charge you to drop off material, and they charge for the finished product. It's been that way for many years.

Years ago, when I lived in the suburbs, I made countless trips to the drop off site. When I had a small backyard garden, I made use of a lot of the finished compost. It's a fantastic soil amendment. I had some very productive tomato plants...

1990??

On Thursday, I had business to tend to down in the cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul MN) so I brought along my trailer. I stopped at the Empire Township Compost Facility. I wish I had brought my camera because the piles of product, in various stages of completion, were huge!

I had them dump a FULL skid loader bucket in the trailer and just as much in the truck bed. I would have loved to drive over the scale before and after because it was a big load. I ended up with 2 very generous cubic yards worth of black gold!. The load in the back of the truck was more than 16 inches deep.

The trailer was loaded about as heavy as I'd ever want it loaded. The springs are almost flat and there's not a whole lot of clearance between the tires and the underside of the fenders. I looked after I got home, but I could not see any evidence of the tires rubbing on the fenders. The ride home was smooth, it rode like my old Eldorado.

I did a little figuring as to how much that heavy load really cost me. If I accept that I had to make the trip anyways, and I can normally get a solid 20 MPG with my truck on the trip. The difference in added fuel use wasn't too bad. I gassed up on the way down and again just before I got home. I figured that I averaged 17.6 MPG pulling the trailer. I drove a total of 380 miles on that trip... so.... on a "normal" empty trip, I would have used 19 gallons of gas (380/20=19). The same trip with a loaded truck/trailer, at 17.6 MPG... 380/17.6=21.6 gallons... A 2.6 gallon difference @ 2.499, Thursday's fuel price, it cost me an extra $6.50 in fuel. Not bad for all the miles and extra weight. Even better is the half price product. $34 worth of compost for $17.

On Tuesday, I drove an hour or so away and picked up a truck and trailer load of what was supposed to be "well composted" cow manure. It was advertised on Craigslist as "odorless" and "finished", but in reality it still has an ammonia smell and a lot of the pine bedding is still visible. The contents of the compost should be unidentifiable. I spread only a small amount on the garden and made a large pile of manure near the garden. I'm going to cover it with a dark brown tarp and let it finish decomposing. It should be fine by fall. Also, there was a difference between what each person calls a "yard". This guy's yards seemed a bit light compared to the Empire Facility's...

Manure...

The garden with half the compost spread on top and the manure pile behind it. I'll till this in and add what's still in the trailer...