What Did You Do In The Garden?

flowerbug

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took the shelves out of the garden shed. finally down to bare walls and so now can get into prepping the walls so i can get the plywood up.

i was a bit wondering today if i was ever going to get the supports for the old shelves off the wall, but i ended up taking the circular saw to them and then i could break off the wood and then i could get at the nails to pull them. had sawdust flying everywhere and then when vaccuming up sawdust didn't notice the vac was blowing it out the other end as it was sucking it in so made a bit of a bigger mess out of it than i had to... hahahaha!

took advantage of the break in the rain to get the lawn mowed. only a little bit of work for me in that job. Mom still cranks along but she doesn't do the hills or the River Nile.
 

Beekissed

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Bee, you don't think those earthworms could be from the wood chips finally decompsing?

Mary

Nah...those wood chips have been on there 4 yrs now and I've never seen that many worms in there. Add hay, LOTS of worms. The other day I went to scatter rotten bales that had sat all winter out in the weather in the garden where the chickens had scratched up the hay, causing little bits of grass to grow. In between each flake of hay were numerous large earthworms....hay is good eats for worms, apparently.

Not only are there more worms, but they are much, much larger and well fed looking than those found in the chips.

This lady did a little experiment with both and then counted the worms per shovel full...

 

digitS'

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Set the first of the tomato plants out. Poor things really needed out of their pots and into nice deep holes.

Their new home has had no fertilizer so far but I think it's okay. It has not been part of the garden before.

Messed around with the irrigation system for this new section. The 4" sprinklers barely reach it so I'm lining up pvc sprinklers in addition. Several years of watering tilled ground that has had no use since it was a hay field 5 years ago, bothers me. It seems that it should grow something besides weeds to make use of the tilling and receiving about half the water it needs to produce garden crops. The water is available, it just needs better management.

Steve
 

ducks4you

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I have been piling up wood Shavings for years now. I dug into a 5 yo pile not too long ago, never been turned, and they hadn't yet broken down. I know that we shouldn't till, but compaction happens even with soiled bedding piled up outside, and it's too much work to try to dig it out, so I DO till mine to move it.
I still cringe when somebody uses hay or straw that could be fodder, for basic fertilizer. Plus, some of my hay is FULL of seeds evidenced by the little grasses that pop up, and nobody likes pulling unexpected "weeds" from their beds.
Yesterday I worked in DD's yard. I pruned their Rose of Sharon, huge with some dead branches and needed pruning 3 years ago. I found tree of paradise and maple volunteer saplings. I dug down 3-4 inches, cut with my reciprocating saw, covered with cardboard and put a rock on top of each. (The previous owner brought in a LOT of good sized rocks.
Their Drop Dead Red looked a little bit dead. I dug it out to nurse at my house. We'll see...
Meanwhile I planted a miniature rose, "Baby Elizabeth", and another red mini rose, a pack of pink and white wax begonias and a pack of snapdragons. The lavendar rose is green at the base, but hasn't grown any leaves yet. ALL of my roses at my house have good growth, so what gives?
I did the basic weeding, pulling and digging, while the bee guys did their thing.
Apparantly they sent DD's photos. I was too busy to think to bring my camera. More on that when I get a copy.
 

flowerbug

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Do you eat them raw? Never tried one.

Mary

yes, just a green with a bit of a bite. if you plant daikon radish seeds the first leaves are bigger. don't miss any, they will take over... unless you like radishes. then you have a few foot long radish about the size of your arm. i like their flowers and the seeds are edible too.
 

digitS'

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I think that radish seed pods are ..

. better eating than the roots :).

Fairly short day, outdoors. Too hot! And, we had things to do at home.

Planted zinnias. Already had marigolds in place. Hey! I have volunteer pole beans again for 2018! Maybe I can get those moved, tomorrow. Will also finish planting the tomatoes. Supposed to be much cooler with clouds and some rainstorms.

Ran the 4" sprinkler line and the auxiliary for another test of locations and to benefit the new transplants. Finally have the east side of house watered here at home. Mowed the front lawn and may have just enuf energy to run the weed whacker out there after dinner ...

Steve
 

Collector

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We have 2/3 of the garden planted now most of the transplants are doing fairly good in the heat of the last couple days. They kinda get witty in the afternoon heat but perk up when it cools off. Most of the garden space this year is brand new first year growing, so I hope it does ok. We have 33 tomatoes, 3 rows of potatoes, 3 kinds of beans, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, sunflowers,and some other things I cannot remember at the moment lol. My back is 80% better but I smashed my foot with a log at work yesterday it rolled off another log while I was bucking it up. Foot is a little black and blue but the swelling is down quite a bit so I thankful for that. When log fell I tossed the saw away so I wouldn’t cut myself with it. The log was so heavy I could not budge it at all it was super painful and I was working on job alone. I called boss to come help but he was 40 mins away. After about 10 mins of struggling trying to pull foot out I stretched out far as I could and reached the saw and cut log off of foot. The owner still has not hired any laborers and first my back now my foot. The worst part is being on these sketchy mountain side job sites alone all the time sheesh.
 
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