Once the last cuttings had been planted, at the end of May, the job was to keep them alive through the heat and drought. We had almost 600 new babies and while the larger bed we planted in March is pretty well established, the May babies had to be, well, babied. We went up to the farm to water twice a week in June. We lost all of the last few Packing Twine cuttings so no new bed for that variety, and a last minute replant of Belgian Red in that place also did poorly, losing 10 out of the 15 we salvaged from our harvest. Amazingly, all 6 of the Brittany Green cuttings survived, surprising because we cut them off the sad and spindly 3 year old pots. Crossing fingers for those to prosper.
Probably all of those we lost were too thin, too young or too long in the water bucket. If you read our last posts, you know we had a successful fall harvest for cuttings but we got caught flat footed by the early heat wave to finish harvest and replant new beds.
So far, all of our newly purchased cuttings are doing well in that same bed. Seven new varieties, different families, 20 of each. The 100% survival is a credit to Dunbar Gardens, the source for these new babies. I’m so interested to see what Triandras and Daphenoides are all about!
In the meantime, I’ve come up with a plan for water stations we can quickly (I hope) deploy this week while it's still raining. Some numbers on water usage follow, skip to next paragraph to avoid math…
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Apparently, 1 inch of rain falling in 1 square foot of space equals .623 gallons of water. Assuming that quantity fell on my willow beds (about 4000 square feet), that means a total of almost 2500 gallons, about 2.25 gallons per plant. This is far and away more water than I can provide by jug watering, or irrigation, even with an array of the big 275 gallon tanks.
My quickly deployed and cheaper water stations use a 2x8 corrugated roofing panel to capture rain, so 16 square feet of area that will capture 10 gallons per 1 inch of rain, but only 1 gallon at 1/10 inch of rain. The limitation is the size of collection panel and the requisite structure to hold it down over the barrel. The bigger, the heavier, the costlier.
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If it just rained an inch once or twice a week, we wouldn’t have to spend time and money to go up there to water or build a system to irrigate. If only!
But there are 3 problems with my rain collection plan:
- Our normal weather pattern is a regular afternoon rain, but at scant quantities - 1/10 inch is common. Every day, but quickly passing. That's what I should plan for.
- We are currently watering the bare minimum, at about 20 plants per gallon, and we are there 2-3 times a week. To replicate that in a drought, each tank would need 30 gallons - per week - just to keep young plants alive. It would take 10 days of rain in the normal rain pattern to save up 10 gallons for any number of water stations to provide one watering for 1/3 of our beds. When we are in drought, we wouldn't collect any at all.
- There’s no telling exactly how much water falls in any given rain event. Being an off-site farmer, we have to estimate based on weather reports, but those numbers are often inaccurate, particularly in mountain valleys like ours. The valley just over the ridge can get soaked while we get nothing.
I can address the third issue with a rain gauge, though readings will be less accurate if we aren’t taking them every day. I plan to have 3 stations for the new beds, and that will triple the potential collection. And we can always cart up jugs of water to fill the tanks, but that defeats the purpose.
And possibly the number of stations will be moot if it rains in a big dump like it did yesterday. If it rains like that on a regular basis filling the barrels wont’t be a problem or even needed. In fact, this being the Smokies, the environment can get so wet that clouds form off the ground. That was originally the premise of locating in this valley - it’s just off the high mountain ridges and so gets both mountain and valley rain. Willow does really well in this valley as a result. We barely watered at all last summer.
Anyway, having started this post during drought and find myself finishing it during deluge, welcome to western North Carolina.
Among the tasks this month -
Cleaning the beds of weeds is going to be ongoing, so I am trying some different solutions to the very determined weeds that poke through the X hole that the willow is planted in. You’d be surprised just how crowded it can get. I have tried loose wool as a mulch, but that has been easily pushed aside so I am trying a few new ideas, including collars made of felted wool, heavy butcher paper and cardboard. I’ll report back on which does the best.
It seems being a stick farmer, you end up with a lot of sticks. The short branches and discards from cuttings are sitting in piles around the house right now. I need to bundle them up and they could be used for kindling, but I also could make a dead hedge with them, maybe around a compost pile. That’s the current plan anyway.
We’ve been folding up our DR weed trimmer and packing it up to the farm in the SUV that way. Even if we can’t properly mow, we can trim along the planting beds and our access paths. There’s no progress on our ailing tow vehicle, but this is the minimum we can do right now to keep the field under control. I’ve been looking at used tractors these days for that purpose, but until there’s a storage shed for that, or a tow vehicle for our utility trailer, big equipment isn’t in the immediate future. Frustrating, but everything has to be done in order. And everything in that wish list costs $$$.
So another thing we are trying to do is generate money. I am selling off most of my fiber tools and supplies this month at Anything Fiber Sale (Asheville, July 25th). I would also like to sell off my felted inventory as well, and I have a web store for that on the sidebar (on Nice Threads. We are selling some nice stuff on the Tinker and Spinner shop also) Anything you buy will fund our infrastructure and equipment purchases, so thanks for taking a look!!
One other task this summer is to find a local willow weaver to advise us on qualities and suitabilities of the willow we are growing - a Friend of the Farm. I plan to take some classes as well, but I think there might be someone out there who could share some experience that we don’t have yet. If you are in driving distance of Asheville/Old Fort and have worked in willow frequently, we would love to meet you! Please email us if you are interested.
That’s it for mid-summer. Thanks for visiting.
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