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[Nyboy]

In India people keep pet peafowl because they are great snake killers. I read turkeys are the same. i once had a snake in my kitchen, after ingesting a handful of sedatives I called the Bronx zoo looking for mongoose breeders. I couldn't buy a Rikki Tikki Tavi

 

[henless]

I wouldn't mind having a mongoose, but a guinea would be easier to keep. Guinea's are great for snakes, if you can stand how loud they are. They scream at anything that moves.

I would love to have an anteater. Plenty of fire ants for it to eat.

 

[Nyboy]

Problem with peacocks breeding season male can be heard for miles. Turkeys seem to be best bet. They keep place snake free, then dinner Thanksgiving Christmas

 

[Finding God in the garden]

I don't know if anybody here remembers me but I introduced myself in December or so. I'm doing wood chip gardening and have 4 apple trees and one cherry tree recently planted. This is my first year really trying to do gardening so I'd love any advice any experienced gardeners here can give. It's been a rough year so far.

First my apple trees got what I think was a case of powdery mildew which I sprayed with Neem oil and that seems to be mostly resolved.

Then only one or two of roughly 20 tomato seeds germinated and they are still quite small. I direct seeded which I know isn't very common but I don't really have a place to set up seedlings and don't really want to deal with grow lights and "hardening them off" and things.

After that my apple trees appear to have gotten mild to moderate apple-cedar rust which sounds like it will be a perennial problem unless I can happen to find the infected cedars and get the owners (apparently within a mile radius) to do what is necessary to remove infection.

Then my potatoes got attacked by Milkweed bugs I think which I can't find any documentation anywhere that they eat regular potatoes but apparently they do. Now the potatoes have gotten brown spot/early blight, especially my German Butterballs. In my experience I thought maybe it was just the milkweed bug damage or they needed water. I have tried to remove various yellow or dead looking leaves just in case but it got away from me and had to heavily trim a few and cut a few down to soil level. I hope I have it contained. It's so hard to know whether to cut entire plants down or try to rescue them and risk losing more plants. From advice Ive read elsewhere, next year I will try to space the plants 2 ft. or more apart and cut bottom leaves off after the plants get fairly mature and make sure I'm watering right at ground level, maybe even putting some drip irrigation tubing in.

Does anybody have any advice for any of my messes?

 

[Nyboy]

We all been where you are I joke my gardens name is death valley. You might want to make things a little easier in the beginning. Rather then trying to grow tomatoes from seed buy started plants every box store and nursery sells them. If you buy cell packs there not that expensive. I planted a small orchard of different fruit trees. I am begining to feel apple trees make great fire wood. Where i am they need way to much spraying for me. pear trees need a lot less care still give lots of fruit

 

[Finding God in the garden]

We all been where you are I joke my gardens name is death valley. You might want to make things a little easier in the beginning. Rather then trying to grow tomatoes from seed buy started plants every box store and nursery sells them. If you buy cell packs there not that expensive. I planted a small orchard of different fruit trees. I am begining to feel apple trees make great fire wood. Where i am they need way to much spraying for me. pear trees need a lot less care still give lots of fruit

I guess I could try the packages of tomato starts next year but I'd eventually like to do seed saving and reuse my own seed.

I was under the impression apple trees were the easiest to grow in my area with tart cherries a close 2nd. I would like to have some sort of fruit or vegetable, preferably 2, freshly harvested almost year round and I love apples so it seemed pretty natural to plant some.

 

[Beekissed]

Then only one or two of roughly 20 tomato seeds germinated and they are still quite small. I direct seeded which I know isn't very common but I don't really have a place to set up seedlings and don't really want to deal with grow lights and "hardening them off" and things.

Tomatoes are pretty easy to start as seedlings in trays right on a windowsill, no grow lights needed, and hardening off is easily done too. I moved my seedlings outdoors pretty early this year, from windowsill to the outdoors all the time with the use of some Agribon and some hoops on my outside sink/butchering table. You can use any kind of stand or table for this outdoors and use sheets instead of Agribon cloth. My granny used to grow tomato seedlings in an old washtub on her porch...no potting soils, just garden soil. Did that every year and had massively good gardens.

You might try spraying your spuds with copper fungicide to prevent blight...you can find it at any garden center and it's organic. Also, if you are using a heavy mulch, it's likely you don't need to be watering spuds...I never water mine. The chips, hay or straw will maintain good moisture levels to the roots.

Don't have much advice for the trees...I've never been much good at raising fruit trees.

I hope you keep us posted with your progress with the BTE. I tried it for 3 yrs but couldn't source the chips enough to continue, so switched to hay instead. I'm loving the hay WAY more than the chips and so is my plants.

 

[Finding God in the garden]

Tomatoes are pretty easy to start as seedlings in trays right on a windowsill, no grow lights needed, and hardening off is easily done too. I moved my seedlings outdoors pretty early this year, from windowsill to the outdoors all the time with the use of some Agribon and some hoops on my outside sink/butchering table. You can use any kind of stand or table for this outdoors and use sheets instead of Agribon cloth. My granny used to grow tomato seedlings in an old washtub on her porch...no potting soils, just garden soil. Did that every year and had massively good gardens.

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You might try spraying your spuds with copper fungicide to prevent blight...you can find it at any garden center and it's organic. Also, if you are using a heavy mulch, it's likely you don't need to be watering spuds...I never water mine. The chips, hay or straw will maintain good moisture levels to the roots.

Don't have much advice for the trees...I've never been much good at raising fruit trees.

I hope you keep us posted with your progress with the BTE. I tried it for 3 yrs but couldn't source the chips enough to continue, so switched to hay instead. I'm loving the hay WAY more than the chips and so is my plants.

Well, my DW isn't very enthusiastic about dirt and plants sitting out in the living room or kitchen (and I can't really blame her much, we have a 3 year old that gets into everything. The only place she might be ok with it is the laundry room which only has a north facing window so it wouldn't get much light. So you're saying you can do the starts outside? What will keep them warm enough in your granny's bathtub or something comparable?

I will probably try to use the copper fungicide next year. Ive just heard frequent use of it can cause copper toxicity in the soil. I guess the technical term for my potato disease is brown spot not early blight. They are relatives but a little different. Any ideas on the milkweed bugs? I'm guessing based on what Paul Gautschi says that those bugs sensed the Brown Spot fungus before I did and were trying to clean house?

I struggle with when and how much water to water everything including my trees. I watered several pine tree saplings 2 gallons a day for a few months and then all but one died in the hot summer temps and they all had virtually no root system when I pulled them up. I'm pretty sure it was root rot from too much water. So with these apple trees I've been doing 5 gallons 1 time a week and so far they appear to be doing ok. I might have to increase that to 2 times per week when the upper 90's and 100's come around. On Paul's video he says he doesn't water anything after it sprouts but then he says in one of his tour videos on YouTube from l2survive that He plants potatoes in an area that has a tendency to stay pretty wet and he said they love water. I'm so confused.

As far as my wood chips, I'm not really having weed problems at all. I'm shocked at how few weeds I have and I have a source that can dig them out and put them in my little hatchbacks trunk but I only have so much time to do that and it's a lot of work. I've gotten 3 area tree services to say they will bring some by when they're in the area but 6 months since then and none have come. I'd like to triple my garden size for next year if for no other reason than gradually having less and less of our 2.3 acres to mow and also because I have a lot of Bermuda grass which even when shaded out by cardboard/newspaper can send out runners/rhizomes through several feet of shaded area from the non-shaded areas along the border. So I have to keep expanding each year to continue to kill off the plants sending out the runners.

Will Spinach/carrots be affected by the fungus from these potatoes if I plant them in the fall?

 

[Beekissed]

I struggle with when and how much water to water everything including my trees. I watered several pine tree saplings 2 gallons a day for a few months and then all but one died in the hot summer temps and they all had virtually no root system when I pulled them up. I'm pretty sure it was root rot from too much water.

More likely that they didn't have the root systems to mine for water deeply when it got really hot. I never water anything here....don't know how dry your spring weather gets where you live, but here we get spring rains and then they taper off, causing the plants to put down deeper root systems to mine for water and nutrients.

Folks who water from the beginning usually have to keep watering, as the root systems stay shallow and small because of it. For trees, in particular, this can be a death knell in these parts...then again, not sure what it's like where you live or the nature of your soils, but around here we have clay based soils, which holds a good bit of moisture down deep...the roots have to be strong to get through it, so watering them early and too often prevents a strong root development.

The use of good compost and a deep mulch should hold enough moisture for potatoes to survive without watering unless you live in a very arid, dry climate...even then, the BTE method is supposed to help preserve moisture to the roots of the plant.

Not sure about milkweed bugs...never heard of them...from what I could find, they are a beneficial bug in the garden, so maybe they weren't eating your spuds? Around here we usually get flea beetles or the Colorado potato bug, along with Japanese beetles, that prey on taters. A good spray with soapy water or a dusting with lime really helps with all of those.

So you're saying you can do the starts outside? What will keep them warm enough in your granny's bathtub or something comparable?

They only have to be inside long enough to germinate, which for tomatoes means a couple of days. Depending on your weather where you live, you can then transfer them to a place outside where they get a lot of sunlight for most of the day and cover them with something like I've done...Agribon or a white sheet, which will protect them from getting too cold and/or too hot. Some people will use 4 mil opaque plastic but it won't let the rain through like the cloth. The white covering gives them a better exposure to the sunlight~maybe diffuses the light?~ than they will get on a windowsill, so you won't get plants quite as leggy as you would otherwise.

I even did pepper plants outside this year under that tunnel and they did better than I've ever seen any of my peppers do before.

We had temps down in the 40s and even a couple of times into the 30s when mine were out there this spring, but the Agribon kept them protected and warm.

 

[Beekissed]

Some pics of my hay bale spud bed....the vines are already blooming there. These are located in the back half of my garden.

Pumpkins on the left, raspberries way in the back, along with asparagus, some tomatoes on that CP in the background on the left, pepper seedlings in the black cloth on the right. The other haybale bed has sweet onions, carrots and turnips.

Planted directly into the bales to climb up that CP arch are butternut squash, cukes, a cherry tomato and a beefsteak variety. At each fence post are mammoth sunflower seedlings and Fortex beans.

Taters in the compost rings are also doing well and starting to bloom....

Will try to get more pics today. All the tomatoes are doing well despite all the rains we are getting, some even have bloom on them and had to be suckered as well. Just reached high enough to start weaving them into the CP panels.

Half runner beans are looking good...some need replanted due to not germinating. Cukes are looking good so far. Strawberries are coming on...the rains are not treating them well, resulting in berries that are too wet and rot quickly. Sweet onions are doing better than I've ever had in this particular garden, so I'm hopeful for a good year.

Haven't set out my flowers in the garden yet...got them in the trays late, so they aren't big enough to set out just yet. I'm finding that this hay is so deep that seedlings have to be pretty big to have leaves above the hay when planting them.