New Beds going in

The Miyabeana cuttings, coming back to life

4/3-8

For the last 2 weeks, we have been planting the cuttings from our first harvest. It seems frantic, mostly due to the weird weather we are having. Almost no rain, hot  sunny days and cold nights until this week.  I still suspect there will be another cold snap, but since the cuttings are starting to sprout leaves and roots, we don’t have the luxury of waiting. 

The Miyabeanas and Flame cuttings were the most advanced in their spring growth. I got them in first, and they looked peaked for the first few days. We went back to hand-watering and thankfully perked them up enough to survive. Some of the thinner, less robust varieties are turning black - bad sign. I've cut the black parts off where I could, but still not sure they will live. I've been planting them on the edges and trying ad hoc to guess the best layout and location for questionable stalks. What do other willow farmers do when a whole block of new stalks go bad? I had thought of buying some from other growers but it's really too late in the year for purchasing. I guess there will be some holes. :(

We are doing a few things differently from last years plantings. First, to combat the ongoing wind that continues to rip up our landscape fabric,  (regular 30-40mph gusts, everyday) we have put down 1 foot strips of netting on all the fabric edges. Cutting the strips is tedious, and right now we are constantly tripping on them, so those are the downsides. But it holds up to the wind really well! The first test beds did not blow away!  

The other new thing we are doing is using 10” heavy galvanized landscape nails (Amazon :( about $45 for 100)  to hold down the fabric and netting. Very effective, though the nails really need a washer of some kind to hold the fabric without tearing and the netting without slipping. We tried rubber washers but they still allow the netting to slip out, though they are great on the fabric. So right now, the hack of the moment is, wrapping apiece of rope around the nail under the head and using that as a washer.  We did one whole strip with a rope perimeter to try that. Hope it stays - it’s the cheapest solution so far. 

Final change in MO this year: we hacked together a planting tool to preserve our backs. We took two pieces of wood, two of the 10" nails and some bolts and rope and slapped it together. It works, but isn't really strong enough to stand up to hundreds of holes - the nails are bending in the hard clay and then the planting holes are wonky. We have to put in new nails in the tool every new strip we plant, and we are trying to improve it a little each time, but I think we will have to get one forged next year. This year, we are just glad not to be on our knees fighting with the clay. 

Step on the top bar to sink the nails, pull up
with the rope. Inspired by the system used to 
make crop circles 

We are just halfway through, and now that we are getting good rain every few days I am more hopeful that the last stalks will survive. At the outset I wasn’t sure!  And all of our now 2 year old plants are coming back strong, even the ones still in pots! Our now 1 year old bed is coming back now too, though I see we cut some back too short and they are getting caught under the landscape fabric. That's another reminder for next year, cut them a little taller! 

The 1 yr olds, coming back to life. 

Even the potted willows are coming back!

There is so much more work to do this spring! Here's what we had planned before the summer: a storage shed, foundation and install done; a built-up pad for parking an RV (a gravel base with railway timbers supporting it); selling our walk-behind mower and getting a used riding mower; getting some big water totes up with a roof to collect rainwater; and not least, build or buy a catio so we can come live on the farm this summer and close down the house in Hickory. 

However, if our SS checks don't come this month or after, we will have to skip everything above and just move us, the cats and the RV over and shut down all other expenses, including internet. We will hunker down and start a vegetable garden asap. Life will look different, but we and the willow farm will continue. I hope. 

Where did winter go?

 

I am just getting back to this long-form journal of our little pocket farm now starting it’s third year. The area is starting to recover from Helene, and there’s been a lot of personal stuff going on to distract us so I never came in and filled in those months. 

The main thing we did do, and it was a commitment of mine this year, was to get the beds tilled and covered with landscape fabric before the winter rain set in. Guess what, we actually did that! I have the photos to prove it and it looked so nice. Looked. 

Before I could brag on it, the valley got several days of big winds and all of the fabric pulled up and flew around. I have my neighbors video to prove that. 

So back to square one, and just as the cold weather set in. We got all the fabric back, only a little worse for wear, and it was obvious the pins were just not up to the wind in that valley. We didn’t have the time or health to replace it, and I needed to find the right solution to the wind problem. 

And since we are old ladies and the recent extreme cold has us hunkered down at home, we let the field fend for itself til it warmed up. And it has, suddenly, and here we are in a very early spring. So we are back at it, just as I feared, in a kind of panic that we can’t get the new shoots planted in time for spring rainy season - - if we get one!!!

We’ve started harvesting and I posted on IG my very first rods. Kinda paltry in comparison to the lovely bunches (sheaves?) of willow from the more established farms there. Do I have rod envy??? Maybe. 

We seem to have about a week of warm sunny weather ahead, and then hopefully a rainy period. Tomorrow we will go for the third trip to harvest the remaining one year plants, and maybe get a few second year varieties harvested too. The usable shoots are being cut in lengths and put in bags on a chilly patio for the moment. 

Working indoors while the quantities are still small. 
This is Jaune de Falais, the longest rods this yr, 6.5'

60 cuttings from Jaune de Falais, including some 
very slender - see the pencil in the center for size.

  

Miyabeana had the most cuttings - 83! From 11
original plants

Check out the variety of colors in the Miyabeana!

This time, we are going to put down a test length of fabric with 10" nails instead of pins, and a couple of ideas I’ve had to thwart the wind. One idea is to nail down a strip of netting over the edges of the fabric. Netting doesn’t have enough surface area for the wind to catch and might keep the wind from getting under the fabric to pull it up. Another idea is to run a cord taut from nail to nail around the perimeters, giving a continuous pressure at ground level, instead of  every few feet.  Both of those ideas are reasonable in cost for a large area and far less work than massive use of pins or burying all the edges. We’ve got a little time to see how it holds up before we plant. 

There is a benefit to laying down fabric just as we plant, and that is that the willow shoots themselves act as pins across the rows, and adds more resistance to the wind. Our first bed had very few problems with edges being ravelled or pulled up, and I think that’s why that worked. 

I hope we can get this all done with our rickety selves creaking from the cold and inaction.  

Update 3 days later: We've gotten all of one plot harvested, 9 varieties, about 94 plants, still counting and cutting but it looks like we are getting a good rate of reproduction on most plants, only a few did not produce usable rods and those I'll give another season before I dig them up. The one thing I am sure of - my earlier estimates of quantities were way off. I thought we'd have over 1000 new plants, but a more reasonable guess is about 600. Maybe less. Anyway, I am trying to quickly remap the plots because that update means we only need about half the landscape fabric down! I'll need to get more cover crop seeded but so much less work!! Silver Linings, always. 

After the Storm

Photo from Oct 4th, a week after the hurricane. Soggy, but intact.

Last I recall, we were waiting out the season, watching for longer lengths and fuller growth. There was a bit of rain early in Sept., but not enough to spare us the trip out to the farm every couple of days. My expectation was that a freeze would come in late September so this would be the last few weeks of active growth before the willows dropped leaves and go dormant for the winter.

Then came Helene. We couldn't get out there for several days, Old Fort was devastated as well as the up-mountain areas. We made a quick text to one of the neighbors to confirm that the farm did not wash away and that neighborhood was without power and water but otherwise ok. 

Good, and maybe the willow will be twice as tall with all the rain!

Not really, but the property was in fine shape. We were then back to drought and slowly the willow leaves  started looking dry and falling off and the whole bed was  looking very thin! There have been no catkins on any of the varieties yet, even on the 2 year plants. We are supposed to have warm weather through November, so I'm not sure what the schedule will be. 

I just hope the rods set buds! 

We had our friend with the tractor come and do a last mow and a first till of the new field. We are laying down compost on half and ryegrass as a cover crop on the other half. Then we'll lay out new landscape fabric for the new rows. Hopefully we can get to that next week, while the weather is still nice. 

First results are in

A month has gone by, and as we go into fall, the year-end result is coming into view. I did an inventory yesterday to get an idea of how many shoots will be ready to plant in February. You can see the new field behind me in the photo, 6000 square feet currently in a cover crop, and I need to know how much of it needs to be turned over and covered in landscape fabric next month. So I counted rods, only the pencil thickness or larger ones so I was very conservative. All the plants have some number of thin shoots, too flimsy to plant, so they'll get cut and composted. (Are there any uses for them? Tiny baskets maybe?) 
Some as the varieties have done exceedingly well, with substantial, upright tall rods, but most of the purpurea varieties are short, thin and floppy. Many also have an annoying side growth habit that means they are lying in the walkway. I'm not cutting those til next season. I've noticed that the second year growth really strengthened several of my first year plants, at least the ones I got in the ground in time. So there are 6 varieties that fall into the ‘not yet’ category (and sadly, most are basketry favorites like Packing Twine and Dickie Meadows) I'm hoping that plan will allow me some more time to determine if they'll do well here. 

All of the current plants are listed, with the number of plants that are viable or struggling.
Available Rods times Length (in feet) gives the number of 12" cuttings to be planted.

The varieties that excelled are typically other than purpurea, and are the varieties likely to do well for landscaping purposes. No problem there, since one of the first uses I have are living fences and structures on the property. Baskets will come later. 
OK, now for the numbers - I have potentially 1100 cut rods for planting! That’s largely from the 170 first year plants; the best performers are averaging 3.5 useable rods per plant.  Jaune de Falais, by itself,  will yield 200 plants, from 11 originals. My second year plants are only producing about 100 of those starts; Those are my live-and-learn babies: get those cuttings in the ground asap! No more pots!
Of course, when February rolls around, things could be different. Late fall here is usually pretty warm and rainy, so more growth is still possible. It could also go the other way, some of these rods may not set buds, or other problem. 
I’m planning for the best case, and it’s already about 10 times what I expected.