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Beekissed

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My Yellow Jelly Bean tomatoes are really good ..!

@seedcorn probably wouldn't like them because they are yellow.

Steve

:D I bet Seed likes yellow maters just fine! For the longest time I didn't care for them as they are sweeter than the reds, and I like my tomatoes tart and tangy. But, as I've aged, I've come to appreciate the sweet mix of tangy with the yellow stripeys.
 

seedcorn

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Yellows are alright. Just not the flavor of reds. But I haven't had a yellow in ages. First ones were not good. Dad use to grow because of less acid.
 

bobm

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Added a new layer of chips on the garden, especially around the plants where they were so thin. These chips were half composted, having been piled for a year, but they still seem to be leaching nitrogen from the plants all the same.

This is where I get confused about this method...if one is always adding chips as the other chips compost down, isn't one always experiencing nitrogen leaching from the newer chips? So always having to worry about nutrient balance, how much to add without it being too much, etc.

So, now I have to go and steal some compost from the coop, when I have very little left to steal, and make it into compost tea so it will go further and side dress all these plants. After three years of this method, you'd think that all this side dressing would be over and one could just count on the nutrition from the composting wood chips, wouldn't you? When does it all balance out and for how long? :barnie
Look at what Mother Nature does. She takes dead branches and tree trunks and lays them down on the ground and has all manner and hords of molds , bugs,birds , animals and her own mix of chemicals, etc. to decompose them that takes up to decades to accomplish. She also drops an annual crop of leaves and pine needles down to also decompose. These take a year or more . She also sends rain to wash dirt dust and smoke particles off her plants quite often. All of this takes time to complete the decomposition cycle. Gurus tout the method, but not the fine print.
 

ninnymary

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Bee, my plum tree and one blueberry bush are showing signs of the wood chips leaching some nitrogen. What are you feeding your plants to counter that? Everything else is fine. I'm so happy that I can go a little over a week without watering my big containers!

Mary
 

Beekissed

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Bee, my plum tree and one blueberry bush are showing signs of the wood chips leaching some nitrogen. What are you feeding your plants to counter that? Everything else is fine. I'm so happy that I can go a little over a week without watering my big containers!

Mary

I'm using chicken compost where I can and when I can. When I don't have enough available, I'm doing a light 10-10-10 fertilization.
 

henless

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Hi everyone. I know it's been a while, but I've been busy with work mostly. Have't had much garden time. I did manage to get a good harvest from my tomatoes & peppers. I have several quarts of each in the freezer.

How did you harvest come out Bee? I know you were struggling with bugs this year. I ended up with very little squash. My second round of squash grew pretty good, it just didn't produce very much. I did manage to get rid of most of the squash bugs. I had to rake out the chips to accomplish that. The chips just gave them too many places to hide. :(

I've decided to expand my raised beds. I want to make the higher and not as wide. Having 4x8 is just a bit too wide fro me to work good. I pulled up the bed boards to convert them over and found most of them had rot and tons of termite damage. The squash bed was really bad. I even had termites in the chips.

I'm going with cement/cinder blocks. I have a bed I built with them when I made my chicken coop. It works great, so I'm going with the cinder blocks for my bed sides. I'm hoping to have everything up by spring planting time.
 

Beekissed

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Hi everyone. I know it's been a while, but I've been busy with work mostly. Have't had much garden time. I did manage to get a good harvest from my tomatoes & peppers. I have several quarts of each in the freezer.

How did you harvest come out Bee? I know you were struggling with bugs this year. I ended up with very little squash. My second round of squash grew pretty good, it just didn't produce very much. I did manage to get rid of most of the squash bugs. I had to rake out the chips to accomplish that. The chips just gave them too many places to hide. :(

I've decided to expand my raised beds. I want to make the higher and not as wide. Having 4x8 is just a bit too wide fro me to work good. I pulled up the bed boards to convert them over and found most of them had rot and tons of termite damage. The squash bed was really bad. I even had termites in the chips.

I'm going with cement/cinder blocks. I have a bed I built with them when I made my chicken coop. It works great, so I'm going with the cinder blocks for my bed sides. I'm hoping to have everything up by spring planting time.

Didn't get a single yellow squash and that's always something the most easy to grow here. Just too many squash bugs. Got one cuke off of 8 plants. Plenty of beans and the tomatoes actually made more than I expected they would, but still not nearly like they normally do. The sugar snap peas were show worthy, tons of lovely peas off them. The lettuce and pak choi under the tunnels did very well.

Taters did great, though the chickens and dogs got to half the crop before I could harvest them. Onions were a bust...always are here, no matter the gardening method used. Rhubarb did well for awhile but got disease near the end of the season and one plant even died.

Not really looking forward to next season's garden...I'm feeling too defeated from the pests I had this season. NEVER had gardens with this many pests...can only figure it's the chips? Though everyone else in these parts who were not using the chips had pretty much the same results.
 

henless

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I've come to the conclusion that not 1 method works for everyone everywhere. I've noticed by watching the recent bte vids by L2survive, that not everything is as easy as it seems. I remember Paul talking about his orchard had weeds in it taller than his trees. He had people come in and weed it for him then brought in a bunch of chips. In another one someone was asking Paul how he fertilized the pasture that had sheep in it. He said every fall, he would bring in chips to cover it about 2" deep. The next year that grass would grow green and tall.

He actually doesn't use chips anymore. He just uses the compost from his chicken run to cover his garden. There's a man in England, Charles Downing, that uses compost as his cover to prevent weeds. Personally, I find the chips hard for me to use. Even raking them back so I can plant, I would still get chips down in the hole.

Gotta run pick up granddaughter from school. I'll post more later.
 
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