Back to Eden Gardening

[Beekissed]

Lucky you, Miss Mary...no weeds, no bugs, plenty of manure and chips! God is surely blessing your gardening efforts greatly!

Me, on the other hand, while I still feel deeply blessed, am striking out on finding chips locally. Going to put an ad in the locals to see if I can rattle up any offers.

I'm also battling bugs like crazy and feeling like I'm losing every day. Now I'm having to replant the cukes due to fusarium wilt, caused by the extreme number of squash bugs and cuke beetles. I've spent the evening trying to combat the hundreds of squash bugs mating and laying eggs on my squash plants...literal hoards of 'em.

This is one drawback of the BTE method....too many places for them to hide, thrive, procreate, etc.

Oh, and score another point for the Rogue hoe tonight....killed a black snake with it with one chop! Four foot black snake DEAD. Works as good on snakes as it does on weeds!

On the bright side, I have this to look at each day!!! GREAT year for blossoms!!!

 

[ninnymary]

I love that color on the railing! What's it called and by whom? The flowers are lovely.

I'm so sorry you have all those pests. Is there anything natural that you could make to spray them with? You would think there has to be something out there.

Did Paul ever mention whether or not BTE would create bug problems? I wonder how he handles that.

Mary

 

[thistlebloom]

Bee! What beautiful blooms you have in your beds! Love your place.

 

[Beekissed]

I love that color on the railing! What's it called and by whom? The flowers are lovely.

I'm so sorry you have all those pests. Is there anything natural that you could make to spray them with? You would think there has to be something out there.

Did Paul ever mention whether or not BTE would create bug problems? I wonder how he handles that.

Mary

That color is just "barn red" and I don't remember the make of the paint right now but we've used it to trim out the place...my coop, trim on the woodshed, on the house, etc. At first Mom was not sure about that...she had lived in a brown world. Dad only liked to paint things brown for some reason. When I arrived I encouraged her to inject a little color into her world, so we made some subtle changes indoors and then this pop of color outdoors. Now she loves it!

Paul said that bugs are only attracted to plants that are weak or stressed in some way and that they put out a chemical signal that bugs are drawn to and that we wouldn't have so many pests in the garden if they were healthy plants being grown in a BTE manner.

So much for that, I guess. I've had more pest bugs with the BTE method than I've had in all the gardens I've had over all my life combined. No joke, no exaggeration. We never had slugs, never had Japanese beetles, squash borers in huge numbers, never had squash bugs and cukes beetles in these numbers, never had horn worms...the worst pest I'd ever had before this was potato bugs and that was when I lived on the other side of the state. Before now I've never had to try and figure out pest solutions.

I've used Neem oil, soapy water, lime dusting and pyrethrin dust to no avail. I've had to rip out squash, pumpkin and now cuke plants due to the pests this year...never had to do that in all my gardening life to this degree. Now replanting all of these, so we are WAY behind in the garden. By now we've usually been eating yellow squash for some time and would be seeing the fruit of all the other plants growing.

Bee! What beautiful blooms you have in your beds! Love your place.

Thank you! We've never had flowers this pretty at this place before and never in this profusion, so this must be a great year for flowers of all kinds. I can't take much credit for them, as I just planted seeds, fertilized and God grew them from there.

 

[seedcorn]

Second the thought, beautiful place.

Mulch does bring slugs, but they should go away when heat hits.

 

[thistlebloom]

Bee, what kind of tree is that blooming?

Got my 8" Rogue yesterday afternoon! Went out and attacked weeds! I like the size of the head for getting large swathes of weeds out. I opted for the shorter handle since the longer one I chose would have made it back ordered
and I wanted it ASAP. I wish now I had been more patient, the shorter one makes me hunch a little, but it may be also because I was have to put more effort into the rocky areas. But it did get the weeds out, it just does a bit of stuttering when it hits a large half buried rock. And I cringe because I don't want to mess the blade up right out of the box. But it was a dream in the mulched areas and the deeper soil.

 

[Nyboy]

Bee pretty flower beds Really love the deep purple of butterfly bush. Mary you gave horse manure woman 1 tomato

 

[thistlebloom]

Bee pretty flower beds Really love the deep purple of butterfly bush. Mary you gave horse manure woman 1 tomato

She's trying to tease her into giving her lots more, gotta dangle that carrot in front of her you know.

 

[Finding God in the garden]

Hi everybody,

I'm new here. I'm just starting a back to Eden garden in the Tulsa, OK area. Right now it is only about 15'x20'. My primary concern right now is keeping Bermuda grass out of my garden. I've been seeing everybody is buying the Rogue hoe. How are people using that in the wood chips without mixing the wood chips and garden soil underneath? Is there anything specific you need to do to use the hoe?

Anybody that is doing a Back to Eden garden have any words of advice or wisdom?

Thanks,
Andrew

 

[ninnymary]

Bee pretty flower beds Really love the deep purple of butterfly bush. Mary you gave horse manure woman 1 tomato

NO! haha. I gave her 1 dozen eggs, several zucchini's, some green beans, and 1 hugh Black Krim. She was so happy cause she didn't expect anything.

I reread my post, where did you get the idea that I only gave her 1 tomatoe?

Mary