What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Dahlia]

In my greenhouse I planted chickweed, miners lettuce, sheep sorel, and stonecrop. I am in the process of planning out my outdoor garden next year and I think I will include garden markers like these!

 

[Zeedman]

Over the last few days I got so much done.
After work on Sunday, I plucked my baby tea hedge and got almost half a big bowl of leaves. Normally, I take them inside and dry toast them in my wok, but after reading that this is done to sterilize the leaves, I just popped the bowl on the hood of my work truck and every now and then, rolled the leaves in my hands. By the end of the day they had all dried down to a very small jar- I should have taken a before and after pic. Its quite shocking how small the end result is...but I still think its worth it, nice fresh organic green tea.

Monday was quite busy, I started the day fixing up the next shelf in the porch, I was going to call it the top shelf but yesterday I decided there was room for one more.
Anyway, the brackets I had used were too unstable. I finally found ones that were better and changed them out and the decided that I should put the last one up as well, so now there are three shelves for my seedlings and cuttings.

By the time I had done all that, it was time to go around all the lawn edges with the line trimmer aka weed eater, as well as the faces of the rock walls and then mow the lawns.
The clippings from the back lawn were used to sprinkle around my newly planted out things. In the front, I scraped off the old clipping from the little path between me and Julia and used that to mulch one of the beds alongside of the house. The fresh lawn clippings were just enough to cover our little path. I always tread them down and if they are a little dry, water it so that they will cook any weeds that think to grow here.

It wasnt a root planting day, but I had 2 6 packs of kim chi/korean radishes that really did need to go in the ground, so that got done.

The tea hedge was looking alittle leggy, so that needed to be trimmed, mainly the sides.

Today, the dump was open, so I did a couple of runs. One was just getting rid of some aluminium framing that I had been given to use as a greenhouse but it just didnt work out so it was broken down and dumped. The second load was green waste- sometimes, you just have more than you can deal with and good riddance, especially when its full of weed seeds.
Before going home, I went shopping for some blood and bone that I needed to feed the new plants with. Also got some seaweed/fish fert cos i wasnt sure that my homemade stuff was okay...and happened to notice a couple of really good looking rock melon plants and a pot with two, not one gherkins so they had to come home with me as well.

Two of the San Marzano toms didnt look very good so they were pulled out and the rock melons have replqced them.
I have mesh trellis that just needs a bit of a trim which will then be put up for them to grow up.

I noticed that the cucumber that was not supposed to be a climber....was trying to climb, so I set up a trellis next to it and coaxed it over and up.

....and lastly, all the plants got a little feed of blood and bone powder, just in time cos it then started to rain, yet again.
This has got to be the wettest coolest spring for a long time.

Heeeuuuwww... I'm exhausted just reading that. A good day in the garden is both tiring, and fulfilling.

 

[Zeedman]

Yesterday I had hoped to split the trunk pieces of wood from the apple tree I took down. There were also some very large slabs left over from several trees the neighbor took down last year which he said I could have (all of the smaller pieces were taken). I had just used the splitter a couple weeks ago, to split a pile of wood for DD#1... but try as I might, it wouldn't start. It turns out that in the short time since helping DD#1, mice got under the engine cowling & chewed the spark plug wire. They probably crawled in there as soon as I returned, while the engine was still warm. The ironic part of that is, the splitter had been idle for about 8 years before this, and untouched the whole time.

So apparently the plague of rodents that I experienced this year will continue to be a problem. It is too cool & wet to do anything outside now; but when the weather clears in a couple days, I'll have to rodent-proof all of the machinery. The splitter will be getting a lot of use in the coming years, so I'll have to fix it, and protect it from further damage.

 

[ducks4you]

@Zeedman , we have volunteers from peach pits in the compost. DW is particular about the fresh peaches she buys and so, she is delighted to see the seedlings.

One grew into a nice tree, produced a tremendous crop of white peaches (just as she liked), sickened from blight, and lost its ability to produce decent fruit. I cut it down, cut it up and hauled it away. Disappointed everyone, including the neighbor who could reach several pounds of fruit from her side of the fence. Well, there is another volunteer that produced it's first crop of about 10 peaches, last year. Yep, same tasty fruit!
...
Steve
who leveled a backyard bed , yesterday - where the ground wasn't frozen.

I want to hear More about your peach volunteers! I have been heartily disappointed in my new peach tree. It's a LOVELY tree, highly suitable for a suburban yard, but I'm getting 1-13-NO peaches from it. I DID hear about stringing the old timey OUTDOOR Christmas lights to it, and plugging them in in the Spring when it gets blossoms to prevent a cold snap from freezing them off. I guess I will try getting the lights strung soon, and running an extension cord to them in April. Those old outdoor lights produce heat and could warm it up enough for fruit in 2021.
As you may have read, I got ONE peach last year, which DH spotted mowing with the tractor and reached up to grab it. It was super marvelous sweet delicious...and I WANT MORE!!!!

 

[flowerbug]

i did not take advantage of the nice day yesterday and i wonder if there will be any days warmer in the next few weeks or not. can't say.

still it was ok. just the time of the year when i start counting days...

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ducks, I've had that happen in Arkansas with peaches, plums too. Either the tree is so full I pick a bunch off while small to stop the tree branches from breaking under the weight or you get nothing. With mine it was usually not a late freeze. It warmed up too early so they bloomed, then one of those Arctic air masses came through at the normal time and killed them. So no peach or plum jam, jelly, or chutney. I enjoy a fully ripe plum straight from the tree even more than a ripe peach and those peaches are heaven.

The one I heard was to spray the blossoms with water before they warm up and thaw on their own. That's supposed to save them. Getting out there that time of day in those temperatures and spraying four trees with water was not much fun. There may have been something wrong with my technique, it never worked for me.

I don't know how those Christmas lights would work. The old tiimey ones produce a lot of heat. If the tree is not too big you might try covering it, maybe with sheets, to hold the heat in. Warm air rises. If you can trap it in there it might do you a lot of good.

 

[digitS']

@ducks4you , I've been wondering where you have been. Gardening season? Yeah, I was out for a walk in a park yesterday. I'm pretty sure that the ground was frozen! Another little snow storm is just about to blow in ...

I think that we are too far north for such a casual approach - saving peach volunteers. The variety may bloom late enough to avoid the frost but, maybe, it is the winter cold that sets them up for blight. The commercial trees are grafted on blight-resistant root stock.

I wish that we had gone with either one of those or an apricot or a French plum. It's not that I like eating apricots or plums better, it's just that I see those trees, severely neglected in some cases, soldiering on, year after year, with amazing crops! Must acclimate well here.

Steve

 

[Zeedman]

Yesterday I had hoped to split the trunk pieces of wood from the apple tree I took down. There were also some very large slabs left over from several trees the neighbor took down last year which he said I could have (all of the smaller pieces were taken). I had just used the splitter a couple weeks ago, to split a pile of wood for DD#1... but try as I might, it wouldn't start. It turns out that in the short time since helping DD#1, mice got under the engine cowling & chewed the spark plug wire.

It was warm enough outside yesterday to fix the splitter - and it runs now. So I was able to split both the larger apple pieces, and some 2-year-old dry elm wood. That apple wood sure smells wonderful, makes me wish I had a smoker... but it packs a lot of heat as fire wood too.

Carpenter ants had severely colonized the elm wood. 6-7 pieces were riddled with tunnels, hundreds of ants, and each piece had dozens of winged queens waiting for Spring... so it was fortunate that I found them when I did. The ants were almost completely immobilized by the cool temperature. I split open those pieces to expose most of the tunnels, and dumped the ants out in the grass to feed the birds. That wood will be burned in the fire pit this week, to kill any ants which may remain.

I had planned to split the large stump pieces from some trees the neighbor took down last Spring; but unnoticed by me, the brush between our yards had capitalized on the increased sunlight, and become nearly impenetrable. It makes a good living fence, so I have no wish to clear that brush (maybe just keep it trimmed to 6' or so). Those heavy pieces will need to be hauled out with a small trailer, and with dry relatively mild weather forecast this week, that will probably be my last outdoor task for the year.

 

[flowerbug]

it was nice enough to get outside for a while this afternoon and pick some of the bean vines off the fence. still more to go, but i may not get back to this until spring so i tried to get as much as i could before my hands got too cold again. i meant to do this earlier in the fall before it got so cold but i got sidetracked. oops.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

Gardenia has improved the heat zone map since last I caught sight of the rare and fleeting thing. Thought I would share the upper temp range map because its pretty useful to me here in the land of "air you can wear".