What Did You Do In The Garden?

[flowerbug]

I hardly know what 4" of rain in 3 days would be like - it has been a very long time since I have lived on the "wetside" of the West.

We have been in a "rainy" time for about a week and it continues. The garden has received additional water several times because there are transplanted broccoli and cabbage out there. Even the tiny onions and leeks would have suffered from the "dry" rainy days if they had not received irrigation water. I am a little exasperated with "less than a tenth of an inch" forecasts.

We have picked up 1/3 of an inch the last 2 days which allows for almost exactly 1" total now that the month is 2/3rds over. Probably another 1" has been added to that by irrigation. It's only adequate because the temperatures are cool and the plants are tiny with roots close to the surface.

The clouds continue to roll by and the forecast looks okay for leaving the irrigation valve closed. I'm concerned that ground may have to be gone over again because days and days are passing since it was cultivated with no transplants or seed going in.

There's @flowerbug busy sifting rock out of his garden soil. It would take days with large construction equipment for me to free the top 6" of gravel in my garden. I'm not even sure what I'd have left. Much passage of tractor and truck tires over this glacial till would turn it into something like a paved parking lot. I've come to sorta imagine plant roots creeping under each bit of gravel as they grow downward. It seems like what they are doing. There is no possibility of straight, downward growth. Ah well, water drains easily

Steve

most of that fell yesterday, they even closed the state highway in town, which does not happen often... probably six inches over the last four days. it is still sprinkling out here but hopefully this will be the last of it. the field across the street is at least showing some dirt now.

since i've been living here, the most rainfall for a four day period was 11 inches.

that kind of rocky soil would make a stirrup hoe a challenge. for a small garden i'd put down some hardware mesh (to keep the rocks from migrating from frost heaving) and then put some topsoil over it. a bigger area... well that is what it is unless you really want to put some $ into it.

 

[flowerbug]

Dug up the aggregate, irregularly shaped cement border in the bed by the back door. Dug a little deeper to lay down cardboard, then placed Most of them back in their spots. While digging up Lily of the Valley marching next to this area I found 2 MORE cement pieces, buried 3 inches down and Under the LOTV! Soooo, couldn't finish laying them all back down bc I will need to extend the border. Most of the 20 potatoes in that bed are up. Eva thought she would help me dig and dug one up, BUT it wasn't sprouting, so no loss.
I also dug up most of one hosta and 1/2 a dozen 2 ft tall ferns on the north side of the house. Drove the LOTV, hosta, ferns and a couple of mint pieces over to DD's house, where we got 1/4 of the area to the north of and including an unneccesary tree, Very Shady area, planted. We dug up some of her plants and moved a columbine, a coral bells, and I discovered that bleeding hearts separates very easily. I WISH the hosta had separated easily! NEXT time I separate a hosta I'm going to let it sit in water for awhile. I had to twist and turn the work the muck out of the roots. MANY hosta leaves are now turning into compost in this bed.
We learn something new every year!
DD is home today and hopes to plant the rest of the LOTV that I brought over. She was worried that they would die in the muck bucket. HA!!! LOTV is SOOOO hard to kill. I also told her to plant any white roots bc they will make MORE LOTV!
I have studied shade plants, but I had forgotten about some of them. She planted the LOTV between 6 and 12 inches apart. There is room for adding more perennials and some annuals, like coleus and impatiens. I will take pictures when the bed is done.
I transported all of the plants in these large tubs, horse owners know them as "Muck Buckets." ("Mucking" means cleaning soiled horse bedding.)
View attachment 35588
I have 3, a pink, a purple, and a blue, and I have bought them for as low as $6/each. They are 40 (forty) quarts, and sturdy enough to hold a lot of weight, easy to dump with sturdy handles. I store my heated hose with it's extension cord in one of them, which I emptied to transport yesterday.

i think the easiest way to divide a hosta is to just chop the clump into sections with a sharp enough shovel - that is also what i did with the rhubarb when i wanted to divide it. a big enough chunk (8 inches across or so) should at least give you some viable pieces.

and nice to have such things instead of having to carry it a bucket at a time or a wheelbarrow at a time.

 

[Zeedman]

I love those big buckets; we have 6 of them, and they will all be in use once the garden gets going. Could even use more of them, actually. They are good for storing the cut-off soybeans for final drying, because mice can't climb the sides.

Put 4 cherry tomato plants in large pots and 4 beefsteaks in the soil.

These aren't in the distant garden and I'm hoping I don't get into trouble. Four potted tomatoes spent days wrapped in 2 tarps last year during cold nights. We only have like 41°f forecast after, I guess, these rain clouds blow away. That is colder than the plants will appreciate and it's usually a couple of degrees cooler in my yard than forecast. These tomatoes are well hardened off, however.

The eggplant and peppers are a long way from going out. They have been out of the greenhouse once for several hours in the shade. I think that there is a good chance that I will put many of the peppers in the ground in the greenhouse after carrying out the benches.

Of course, this kept me from the South Wall sill replacement last year! Dang, both winning and losing with some of these warm-season crops. Guess that I need two greenhouses ... one for extending the growing season. The other for needed maintenance, then cool-season crops. Hey. Maybe 3 greenhouses!

Steve

@digitS' , it sounds like you could use a couple movable hoop houses for your heat lovers.

 

[ducks4you]

i think the easiest way to divide a hosta is to just chop the clump into sections with a sharp enough shovel - that is also what i did with the rhubarb when i wanted to divide it. a big enough chunk (8 inches across or so) should at least give you some viable pieces.

and nice to have such things instead of having to carry it a bucket at a time or a wheelbarrow at a time.

I KNEW somebody would say that! Here I was trying to be careful, to preserve the roots.
NEXT time I will soak a hosta in water for an hour, first.

 

[flowerbug]

I KNEW somebody would say that! Here I was trying to be careful, to preserve the roots.
NEXT time I will soak a hosta in water for an hour, first.

with the number of plantings i've done with them by chopping a one-gallon planter into four pieces and still have almost all of them survive... well, for a large enough plant i don't think it is much of a risk.

with hotter weather coming on just gotta make sure they get watered if it gets too dry and also probably trim some of the leaves off so they don't put so much stress on the roots before they get rerooted and able to regrow.

 

[flowerbug]

I love those big buckets; we have 6 of them, and they will all be in use once the garden gets going. Could even use more of them, actually. They are good for storing the cut-off soybeans for final drying, because mice can't climb the sides.

oh, funny, i did have some box tops of soy beans drying down in the garage and sure enough the mice decided to raid them and take them around and make piles and stocks of them. at the time Mom was still making her stepping stones and we had pallets with layers of stepping stones stacked, i.e. perfect places for mice nests and stashes of soybeans... we got a lot of laughs from finding those as we sold off all those stepping stones. i now do all my bean drying in my room here as much as possible. i only leave the box tops and bags outside for one evening to let the bugs crawl out and get away before i bring them inside. i also do a lot more early shelling if i can if the beans are mostly dry enough already it takes up a lot less room to dry down beans and not the entire pods.

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

DH built 4 raised beds for my herbs and perennials. I planted all four beds today and tucked in sunflowers wherever I could find a spot. Saw the first bean beetle . I hate those things! So I smooshed it and felt good about that lol. My peppers and tomatoes are doing well after they were fertilized. Also clearing out a large area in the woods to keep our 2 goats.

 

[digitS']

@Cosmo spring garden ,

you can think of those bugs as plant food -

just desserts.

Steve

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Transplanted last of the tomatoes and peppers which I started because I thought my first batch was going to die. I had a horrible aphid infestation in my greenhouse and than the wind beat them when I was hardening them off. But they have bounced back. I have more tomatoes and pepper plants in the garden than I need but I'll be able to share. I have a zucchini flower! Every year I plant way too many zucchini and get overwhelmed at harvest time. This year I only planted 4 plants. Plenty to eat, preserve and share. My okra look sad. I hope they bounce back. I'll give them water soluble fertilizer today. It's a beautiful day here!

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

I was transplanting tomatoes and I asked my 5 year old to take some pictures of the garden for me. He usually takes very nice pictures but today he was grumpy and this is what he took. There are lot more just like these. LOL.