What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Zeedman]

I tore up a 20’ X 20’ space for a seed treatment/foliar treatment plot. The ground was sod over gumbo. I hate tilling up clay. Made tiller and me work. Tilled it 3X. Allowing it to rest, then I’ll till it a few more times before planting.

Sounds like what I went through on my rural plot. Clay silt with poor drainage; dry & cracked on top, but wet 2" down. The garden is sloped, I could only till the upper 1/2 before the tines & tiller box became clogged. About one hour tilling, and another hour cleaning out the tiller. That was just after one pass to break the surface & cut off the weeds; it'll have to get a lot drier before I can till deeply enough to plant. That hasn't happened for the last two years, so maybe the 3rd time is a charm?

As for the lower half... I'll probably give up on it & move the fence line. Unless I can (1) bring enough top soil in to get it above the runoff from the adjacent field & build a berm (which I'd like to do), or (2) plant rice in the mud. Tilling seems out of the question unless I can replace the soil lost to flooding several years ago.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I turned more dirt and have an area to plant in the morning. I cut my first ONE stalk of asparagus for supper. I am not sure if I hurt my blackberries trimming them or what is going on. I guess I will find out. There just seems to be a lot of dead in there and I thought I took all the dead out.

 

[Trish Stretton]

Planted more Chinese cabbage. Put the onions and jalapeños peppers out. They were failing to thrive in cells. My green beans I planted in March are sprouting.

I found that if I watered them with a light seaweed tea, the roots stayed in their pots and they seemed to do much better.
This year, I also did a trial with bits of mushroom mycelium and found they did well even with out the seaweed tea.

 

[flowerbug]

I think that we should re examine some of the growing scare tactics about invasive plants. I would much rather have the Lily of the Valley than weeds. My bed with them gets few weeds. I could poison them (with a paintbrush), or dig them out. The plants Will fill in.
I will transplant some chocolate mint there, too, but I think the mint needs more moisture.
The bed between the north of the garage and where the tree sits (and sheds dead sticks and dead limbs all of the time!) is complete shade and is often too dry to keep things alive.
We will start with digging/tilling the almost 15 x 15' area first and transplant what I have already growing first. I might try some pachysandra there, too.
Anybody here grow that? Does it need partial sun, or do you know?
I would appreciate some advice before we put down $ on something that will fail.

if you have a woodland LOTV will fill in under the trees and take over. their scent is too strong for me. Mom transplanted some here many years ago and they were still alive last year. i asked her if she really wanted them to spread or not when i was running some fence and she had a bad experience with them at another place and said she didn't care so i gave them some stirring and then put a bunch of stuff over them to smother them. they're probably still alive. i haven't looked yet. i'll have to at some point as i need to work on the fence some time soon.

for mints i don't know many that do great in part sun or under trees other than perhaps catnip which i find here or there.

i'm not familiar with pachysandra but the wiki has a bit on it and seems to be useful information.

 

[seedcorn]

I have enough wild catnip to feed every cat in USA. Kill it and 2X comes back.

 

[seedcorn]

I found that if I watered them with a light seaweed tea, the roots stayed in their pots and they seemed to do much better.
This year, I also did a trial with bits of mushroom mycelium and found they did well even with out the seaweed tea.

Good to know on mushroom water. I believe one of my many failings is over watering the starts.

 

[flowerbug]

Sounds like what I went through on my rural plot. Clay silt with poor drainage; dry & cracked on top, but wet 2" down. The garden is sloped, I could only till the upper 1/2 before the tines & tiller box became clogged. About one hour tilling, and another hour cleaning out the tiller. That was just after one pass to break the surface & cut off the weeds; it'll have to get a lot drier before I can till deeply enough to plant. That hasn't happened for the last two years, so maybe the 3rd time is a charm?

As for the lower half... I'll probably give up on it & move the fence line. Unless I can (1) bring enough top soil in to get it above the runoff from the adjacent field & build a berm (which I'd like to do), or (2) plant rice in the mud. Tilling seems out of the question unless I can replace the soil lost to flooding several years ago.

if you get flooding enough to remove the topsoil it doesn't seem to make sense to replace it to only have it get washed away again unless you can protect it. around here there are regulations about what you can and can't do along river floodplains (but a lot of people ignore them).

 

[ducks4you]

Today I finally got a chance to get some gardening done. Planted my tomato and pepper seedlings, piled some more sticks into the hugelkulture experiment, and also planted some flower sprouts. Mom worked in the flower bed we made last fall, digging out dandelions and bits of bindweed that we missed. I have two gallon-sized pots of delphiniums to plant before I quit for the day...and I bought a lavender rose from Lowe's that I want to get in the ground before the rain hits.

Clean up the bindweed pods this summer. Bindweed grows from both seeds AND runners underground. If you get out your shovel you can dig them up. I dump the soil clumps into my wheelbarrow and separate the bindweed pieces, put them in a bucket and Throw them in the garbage.
I won't scare you about how deep they Can grow, just that the longer they linger in a spot, the deeper the roots grow. If you cannot dig deep enough, get out weed killer and a paintbrush and brush on the weed killer.

 

[ducks4you]

Thanks @flowerbug ! I was delighted to find some LOTV growing in a very dry spot on the NW side of the house bc it is a very weird micro climate between DD's garage and that tree. It SHOULD be wet all of the time, but much of it is bone dry in the summer. I spotted a patch of 2 x 10ft of common ferns that I don't need, and I could dig up for this purpose, too.
We have both spent money on this patch and had most of the stuff die, exCEPT for the 5 ferns I bought her.
Apparently, the vinca I have loves sun, so she can't use it there, maybe somewhere else, bc it is escaping a sunny bed by the street.
I also have some bleeding hearts and I think, hellebores, plus we have 7 hostas between us that need to be divided. I told DD that we have a 2-3 week window to get this done, before everything opens up full time.

 

[Zeedman]

if you get flooding enough to remove the topsoil it doesn't seem to make sense to replace it to only have it get washed away again unless you can protect it. around here there are regulations about what you can and can't do along river floodplains (but a lot of people ignore them).

The flooding is not due to a nearby waterway - it is due to the slope & terrain of the farm field about 100' away, and the location of the garden. There is a (wash? swale?) that runs through the field, and extends into my friend's property. No marsh, just a low spot (although there is marsh down slope from me). The area is dry most of the year & cultivated, but there can be a lot of drainage from the field during heavy rainfall... my friends jokingly call it "(their name) River". It flows harmlessly across their lawn, and can wash away exposed soil - but nothing regulated by the DNR.

When I first started gardening there, the rain mostly went around the garden; but a heavy flash flood several years ago (4-5" in a few hours) flooded much of their yard, and stripped away a substantial amount of topsoil from my garden in the lower 1/3 (that same storm flooded my culvert onto the street 15" deep, and nearly reaching my foundation.) Subsequent cultivation filled in the low spots, but the resultant level was too low to drain properly.

The garden is permanently fenced on two sides, with the two open sides used for tractor access during tilling (those sides are fenced just before planting). The water enters through one of those open sides. If I move the fence to cover the presently open sides, I can build a berm against the fence to direct the flow around the garden (which will also bury the lower part of the fence). That would (or should) prevent any further loss of soil, and allow me to restore the low area to its previous level. It will probably require about 2 cubic yards of topsoil to replace what was lost.

That is if DW & I still want to garden the full 10,000 square feet of that garden, in addition to the 1600 square feet of our home plots... something as yet undecided. My heart says "yes", but we are not getting younger, and it may be time to scale back. I will be extending the home plots a little more this year, as part of a gradual shift away from the rural plot... but regardless of scale, I would still use that remote plot for saving pure seed.