The Little Easy Bean Network - Get New Beans Varieties Nearly Free

[ninnymary]

Yes, Marshall always sends too much seeds. I asked for 6-8 and he sent me at least 100!

Mary

 

[897tgigvib]

...yabut it was just a few each of a bunch of different kinds.

 

[Blue-Jay]

Marshall is going to get a package next week that will put him back on his 2014 garden drawing board til springtime.

 

[Hal]

Sounds like Marshall is going to have to make more growing space.

 

[897tgigvib]

The grape rootstocks are coming out, and I am making another raised bed.

almost completely planting only bush beans
only planting new varieties this year
and it may add to only 5 plants of each variety.

Also, making anti gopher cages



Yup, I better get to the drawing board!

 

[thistlebloom]

The grape rootstocks are coming out, and I am making another raised bed.

almost completely planting only bush beans
only planting new varieties this year
and it may add to only 5 plants of each variety.

Also, making anti gopher cages



Yup, I better get to the drawing board!

What are you making your gopher cages out of?

 

[897tgigvib]

That is still "on the drawing board" so far, but one thought is to make frame boxes of 1 x 2 wood, sized to fit in each bed. A typical size would then be 3 feet wide, just about right for 3 foot wide chicken wire to be stapled to the bottom of it.

For the bush beans, and I plan this year's garden to be mostly bush beans, I'd make them also 3 feet deep so they could go in the ground 8 inches or so. (Ground is raised bed soil.) The sides would probably receive heavy plastic. Gophers CAN'T climb at all. (insert mad scientist cackling).

Not sure about if the top needs to be covered at all. I don't think so, but at the first sign of a climbing gopher, chicken wire tops will go on!

What do you think of that plan Thistle?

I have Gophers building armies and alliances, and getting generals named Napoleon, scouting and circling my garden even as I type!

Well Gophers, get ready to meet your WATERLOO this year! The 7th coalition shall prevail!

Lol!

Basically, make the boxes inside fort knox, have the soil for each bed appropriately removed to set the box in, then shovel the soil in to the depth, adjust things.

Bean roots go good and deep, but i do see that gophers are not after stringy roots. they want the fleshy stems. the ^%&*%^*.

They got my beautiful Huecheras! Field Marshall Marshall has declared total war on the gophers!

 

[thistlebloom]

I would use hardware cloth rather than chicken wire, especially for the underground portion. Gophers can squeeze through regular chicken wire really easily.I found that out the hard way. :/ And I think that maybe they can climb, in our formerly gopher infested property I found where they had dug down on the inside of a cage I had around a conifer. I figured he had to get in over the top.

My dh used to take a stool out to a new mound and wait with his 22 loaded with "shorts" for the gopher to pop up. He got a few, but it was more of a satisfaction to gopher-frustration than an effective eradication technique. The Macabee traps worked well, but the two gopher annihilator cats were the best!

 

[journey11]

Chicken wire will rust out pretty quickly too, in just a couple of years. That's what happened on my old coop...the opossums just pushed right through it and it gave way. Hardware cloth is more expensive, but well worth the investment.

 

[897tgigvib]

Hardware cloth it is then!
(Whooo, I'll need 200 feet just for the bases).