Arctic Light

I came across a post on building spiral gardens on Tumblr this morning, which reminded me that I really want to get into permaculturing my yard and garden in the next few years. We are extreme Hard Mode for gardening and especially for the kind of gardening I want to get better at, which is self-sustaining gardening that uses minimal commercially purchased soil amendments - our climate is very cold and very dry, with a short growing season, poor acidic soils, and in our specific case, a yard composed mainly of mining tailings. So it's not really the sort of situation where I can find the answers in a book, beyond general strategies. There just aren't really books for USDA Zone 1. (Although this one, on permaculture gardening on Canada's cold, rocky maritime coast, is fairly applicable to our conditions too, and is the book that got me interested in local, sustainable permaculture in the first place.)

Next summer I'd like to start working on water collection/retention (our yard is extremely porous and dry; I have to water constantly) and passive solar heating to extend the growing season. Linking mostly for my own purposes: I found this article on permaculture farm basic planning, this one on soil-building, and this water management article.

I have been extremely happy with my compost results over the last couple of years. That was one thing I'd always struggled with - we are also Hard Mode for composting because it's so cold - but I figured out a few tricks (such as pre-composting in black plastic tubs) and have been turning out some really nice, usable soil from kitchen scraps. We simply don't produce enough scraps to provide all my fertilizer needs just from our household scraps, but it makes very nice, fertile soil and it feels so good to turn trash into vegetables. Hopefully next summer I can take a few more steps towards making our garden more sustainable and self-sufficient.

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On a completely unrelated topic, I'm having fun with this Elfquest elf name generator, in large part because some of the names you can get are entertainingly ridiculous. Sometimes they're perfectly nice-sounding elf names. And sometimes you get Hamster, Frogbat, Birdsniffer, or (my personal favorite so far) Shroom.

There's also Convert your name to a Wolfrider name. (Mine is Lakelace, which I actually rather like. Pretty sure all it's doing is finding words in its database that start with as many as possible of the same letters, but that's still a nice result.)

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Edited to add: I also have open in a tab this article on a lady who went missing 30 years ago (apparently just walked away) and turned up recently in a nursing home in Puerto Rico. I feel like there's some fascinating story fodder here.

Okay, it's down to two possibilities for the garden-picture Tumblr. One is the top vote-getter on the last poll; the other is one that was suggested in comments, and I really can't decide between them. Aesthetically I lean somewhat more toward the first, but I have "alaska" in the name of most of my non-fannish social media (layla-in-alaska, usually), so I hate to lose the theme. Help me out, flist! :D



ETA: Actually, that turned out to be much simpler than expected: I completely forgot to check "alaskangarden", and it turns out someone's already using it (though I knew "alaskagarden" was available). Welp, that was an easy dilemma. XD

Today was gorgeous, by Alaskan October standards -- sunny, in the 40s -- and probably one of the last nice days we'll have before it snows, so today was a "getting ready for winter" day. ( Cut for nattering about farm stuff )

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I am so happy with the garden this year. I started everything from seed (the only sets I bought were a couple flats of petunias for the front garden bed and baskets, since my petunias didn't bloom 'til late July), and the entire garden, beds and all, was constructed from scratch this spring. And everything has been doing great. From two large garden beds (one in the greenhouse, one outside) and one small one (that I built to use up the extra dirt) I've been able to supply most of our salad and vegetable needs this summer. I haven't had to buy anything for salads since early July, except the occasional tomato -- the one thing that has done rather poorly this year has been the tomatoes, because of all the rain.

But I'm going to have way more cabbage than we can eat (I will be making saurkraut, I think -- from purple cabbage! That'll be fun!). I have three nice-looking pumpkins on the vine; I don't expect they'll last all the way to Halloween, but I can make some nice autumn pies (which I guess means I need to learn to make a decent pie crust).

And autumn is coming. There are yellow patches in the trees and a chill bite to the air. We're still about two weeks out from the first frost (three if we're lucky) but it's definitely on the way.

Garden notes for next year: ( Notes to me )

Anyone have good recipes for things to do with green tomatoes?

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Dirt: obtained! And, um, wow, a cubic yard of dirt is a lot of dirt. Our poor half-ton pickup looked very ... flat. (Truck: "I am not rated for this! Make it stop!")

But the raised garden beds are filled, and there is still quite a bit of dirt left. I'm thinking about using it for some perennials around the edge of the yard, perhaps some roses or such. We have a rugosa rose, put in by the previous owners, that's been doing wonderfully and blooming its little heart out every summer. It looks like it could use a friend or two.

lunabee34 is having an impromptu Multifandom Refrigerator Commentfic fest in honor of her deceased refrigerator. (We never appreciate them until they're gone.) As explained at the link: "Whatever your interpretation, no matter how oblique--saving a beloved character from fridging, freezing temperatures, literal refrigerators--feel free to leave prompts and to fill them."

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Today was a yardwork day ... putting together the frames for raised garden beds and partially filling them with semi-composted chicken litter (sawdust, mostly). I think I'm ready to go get a pickup truck load of topsoil in the next couple of days -- our yard is gravel tailings (old mine waste) and we have NO dirt except for the odd bit of river clay here and there. This year, for the first time in the seven years we've been here, I'm attempting an actual, respectable garden rather than a couple of containers with tomatoes in them. It's not going to be huge, but large enough to grow some tomatoes and squash and corn and salad stuff.

The weather's been great -- 70 degrees and not too cold at night. We usually figure the end of May is the beginning of the "no frost" gardening safety zone, but the weather's supposed to be up to 80 by the end of the week and I doubt if we'll be seeing freezing temperatures again this year. My little seedlings are outgrowing their bitty containers; I need to get them transplanted. The trees are barely turning green, but it feels like summer!

And we have 24 hours of daylight now. The sun sets around 11-ish (actually a bit earlier for us, since we're in a valley) and comes up about 4 a.m. By the middle of June, it'll barely dip below the horizon for an hour or so in the middle of the night. Mmm, summer.

Also, we watched the last few episodes of this season of Supernatural and ( here's what I have to say about that )

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