On Tuesday morning my general helper and I headed out for a local wood mill to look at their grades of wood chips. I needed a lot of them for the little trees, both old and new. We made it home just as my helper friend arrived.
I set my general helper to watering all the seedlings and my helper friend and I went to the barn and got the cement mixer. We got set up and started loading the mixer.
Almost immediately we had our first problem. The soil test indicated I had to add 3 lbs of sulfur to the mix. That couldn’t be right, it had only been none or tiny amounts in the past. We went over the soil test, the math, the formulas again for the 3rd time, but it was all correct.
This meant we had to grind a large amount of sulfur into powder. Fifteen years ago when I first bought the sulfur, it had come as flat pellets. So my poor general helper was pulled off watering and given a marble rolling pin, waxed paper and set to grinding the pellets to powder. She did a heroic job and had the amount we needed in time.
Next, we could not find a 50 lb. bag of boron anywhere. We’d seen it less than a month before when looking for something else. After moving all the bags and buckets in the shed, we started emptying the trash barrels and found it under the BulbTone bags.
The next problem was that the amount of amendment total was far higher than it had been in the last couple years. We had to carefully divide each item in half as we had to make 2 batches so the mixer could properly mix.
We finally got the Big garden mix done, in the pink tote in the top photo. Having found all the needed ingredients, making the Small garden mix was far easier. My general helper went back to watering seedlings and she and I finished just as my helper friend had to go.
I was cleaning up the sulfur mess in the kitchen when the wood mill called and said they’d be delivering the 18 yards of chips in 40 minutes.
They don’t drop the chips in more than one place, so I had to have them up in the parking area. Now we will have to move them somehow to the little tree areas. But we have 2 tractors and a truck…
This was their lowest grade and they were far nicer than the chips I’d used from our own trees at time of construction in 2020.
My general helper had showered while I cleaned the kitchen before the delivery. I make sure my helpers can use the shower to clean up after really messy jobs. It’s not good to have the amendment on your skin for a long period. We also use masks for the dust.
Once the delivery was done, I got a shower and finished the cleaning up. I was on the couch the rest of the afternoon.
My son had gone out and done some more weedwacking around the yard.
My brother was home early so we got our respective suppers started. He was having mashed potatoes with kielbasa cooked in garlic sauerkraut. I was having marinated salmon and sugar pea pods. While it cooked we went out to continue the digging of the horseradish, started the night before.
He got this many more peripheral roots before digging the main ball.
There were 3 main roots, this is one.
Then we selected the best crown and replanted that. There was another smaller one and we set that in the ground for my general helper to take home on Thursday.
My brother washed up all the roots he had gotten after setting aside a couple good sized ones for my middle brother. We’ll be mailing those to him.
We got 4 bags of roots, ready for grinding to make sauce. We’re going to try storing some in the perforated bags I made, and perhaps some in the sand box in the root cellar. Horseradish doesn’t store for very long, 2 months in the bags in the fridge and maybe all winter in the sandbox. But that’s when you dig it in the autumn, not late spring like we did.
On Wednesday I am going to try to use the Kubota to load chips into the truck. It might be too small for the job, but I will see. I hope to get some chips on the new little trees. It’s to start raining about 2PM.