Always something new to learn - nitrogen fixing

[digitS']

and become worm food.

And, with all that nitrogen based protein, worms themselves.

Steve

 

[Suzee]

I never heard of it.


Thanks for this link. I’ll go back and watch all the videos.

For the nodules on legumes, I cut off the vines, leaving the roots to rot over the winter. Maybe I’m wrong, but my thinking is to leave the roots to release all the nitrogen.

Hey heirloomgal, for electroculture, I was wondering if one has to place an antenna near each plant or what? I use 4’x8’ beds. Just wondering what you do.

 

[Suzee]

And, with all that nitrogen based protein, worms themselves.

Steve

Gotta love worms! They are my best garden buddies!

 

[Suzee]

Electro culture is my new favorite nitrogen/fertility booster @Suzee. I made some veggie records this year with it.

Speaking of records, I began a garden journal just after I moved out to the Helena area. It has really helped me to keep track of what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure most of us here journal, but if you don’t, I highly recommend it!

 

[heirloomgal]

Hey heirloomgal, for electroculture, I was wondering if one has to place an antenna near each plant or what? I use 4’x8’ beds. Just wondering what you do.

I tried a couple different methods, since I have gardens and pots all over the place and a single pole will only do 15 feet out in all directions. So for the main beds I used birch saplings 10-12 feet tall, working my way across the beds as need be. For many of the pots I used a bamboo stick wrapped in copper wire. A side benefit to the electro culture was that I've had intermittent problems with voles, and also with mice eating soybeans and the odd cutworms. This year with the electro culture I've had none of those. The only pest that was a bother was snails, but I only had the snails on peppers out of the range of the poles because I had so many pots all over the place.

 

[heirloomgal]

Speaking of records, I began a garden journal just after I moved out to the Helena area. It has really helped me to keep track of what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure most of us here journal, but if you don’t, I highly recommend it!

Thank you for a great reminder! I'm a terrible journal keeper, but I'm going to make a more concerted effort at a binder with seasonal performance stats per variety. Luckily, I tend to take a lot of pictures so that has been a visual record I can count on. But a binder would be better!

 

[Alasgun]

On the subject of “records”; i have a binder and have used it for several years but i’m finding pictures far more helpful. Phones take amazing pictures now-days and everything note worthy is in my phone, going back to the day we built the Greenhouse and garden beds. Starting each spring the sequence generally looks like this. Bed’s tilled soil temp monitored, what’s planted where and when, first cukes etc. Then in the fall when i cut the potato tops, when i harvested bla, bla, bla.

It’s interesting to me to look back, comparing this or that from year to year. I have far more garden pictures in my phone than Grandkid pictures!

My thoughts on electro-culture are similar to @heirloomgal’s. I saw better performance in some things but not all. For me the biggest gain was no slugs and none of those little black beetles that work my Strawberries over every year. I will expand my antenna numbers to take in everything including the fruit trees and a couple other beds.

 

[digitS']

I began a garden journal just after I moved out to the Helena area. It has really helped me to keep track of what works and what doesn’t

Keeping a daily record can be tedious. I knew that I would not follow through with daily but could, at least, do something and it was mostly with regards to timing of gardening activities.

That was about 1990 and only continued for several years. ummm, until the internet era began for me . Simply writing things down enhances memory. A lot of thought involves a kind of "talking things over" with ourselves. Organizing those thoughts into words, sentences, etc. allows me a chance to see some of those ideas in black and white.

Gardening is very much about life and in life "timing is everything." Well, maybe not everything but those dates and with those follow-up notes on success and failure, guided me into a fairly comfortable pattern of production.

Steve

 

[Alasgun]

Dates are the most important thing for me and pictures have dates. I compile “to do or not to do” notes in the binder for all the project items, improvement and such that will be done in the off season. Another very helpful “note” is my cart on a couple seed vendor’s site. I build the cart thru out the season and once im sure the vendor new stock is available i’ll place my seed order, always before Black Friday and sometimes pretty early in November. This has proven to be a winner; even during the pandemic when the whole world decided to garden!

 

[heirloomgal]

On the subject of “records”; i have a binder and have used it for several years but i’m finding pictures far more helpful. Phones take amazing pictures now-days and everything note worthy is in my phone, going back to the day we built the Greenhouse and garden beds. Starting each spring the sequence generally looks like this. Bed’s tilled soil temp monitored, what’s planted where and when, first cukes etc. Then in the fall when i cut the potato tops, when i harvested bla, bla, bla.

It’s interesting to me to look back, comparing this or that from year to year. I have far more garden pictures in my phone than Grandkid pictures!

My thoughts on electro-culture are similar to @heirloomgal’s. I saw better performance in some things but not all. For me the biggest gain was no slugs and none of those little black beetles that work my Strawberries over every year. I will expand my antenna numbers to take in everything including the fruit trees and a couple other beds.

On the topic of slugs @Alasgun DH just happened to mention to me today (I was talking about snails, and he considers them the same thing I guess) that when he was doing the electro culture research he had read that slugs are especially drawn to soils high in iron. No idea if it's correct, and if that also applies to snails, but it's an angle I haven't heard of before.