What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Zeedman]

Parenthetically, don't enter into a "contract" to do yard work for the property owner -- unless you are a vigorous @Zeedman .

Well, my machines were vigorous.

I agree with you, @digitS' , about carefully defining any limits on sharing produce. That could really get out of hand, especially if you were breeding, or setting things aside for seed. Share-cropping was never a factor in any of my agreements, but I shared freely when I had produce to do so - which was often.

(Yes, there were problems with theft in our community garden but never, obvious, in ours. I did have a guy stand there as tho ready to step over the fence telling me how God grew the garden. Seems like that there is some kind of joke about how it looked when God was doing it by himself ... but, I just looked at the guy and he didn't step over.)

Theft was definitely an issue in the San Diego community garden (City Heights). I knew & liked most of the gardeners around me (except the one absentee weed gardener). I came in one day to find a woman & her kids wandering through my neighbor's garden. When I asked whether she had permission to be there, her response was "this is a community garden, so we can take what we want". And take they did... I came back another day expecting to harvest my sweet corn, only to find that someone had already done so. Another gardener said they saw someone selling corn on a nearby street corner, which was probably mine.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

When I was part of a community garden, we had to pay for our plots every year. And the gate had a padlock on it.

 

[flowerbug]

we actually were able to get outside for a while today and that was really great to do as i got a few gardens put up for winter and Mom helped and got a few others mostly done. it was a bit cold with the wind blowing but i had three layers on. i could not get the last three buckets of ashes spread and dug in and i still have more weeding to do but before i came in i did get a nice big trench dug out so that i can bury everything i'll be scraping off tomorrow. the weather should be calmer and not so windy so spreading ashes won't go flying all over the place and it won't be as cold. my back said it was sorta ok with what i was doing. it's not fully recovered and is gradually getting better but i'll know later on today or tonight or tomorrow morning if it really is upset or not. doesn't seem to be for the moment.

if tomorrow actually happens we'll be mostly done with all the gardens inside the fence. other than some spot weeding and raking and fixing up a mess i made last year ... haha, always plenty more to do.

 

[Zeedman]

We've been fortunate that the last few storms that rolled through each gave us just a dusting of snow, which quickly melted & left us (mostly) dry. It's been relatively warm too, at least 30's - low 40's. So DW & I (with a little help from DD#2) took down, cut up, split, and stacked firewood from the large tree which would have shaded the garden extension. Although it was necessary, it saddened me to cut down a living tree (a mature slippery elm) when so many ash trees in our yard are dying. I anticipate planting a lot of replacement trees in the coming years, none of which will be as beautiful (or useful) as the white ashes & American elms we've lost to insects or disease.

 

[flowerbug]

hopefully sometime the next several days i'll get out and bury a bucket of squash that couldn't be used. it will be too wet the next few days unless i want to play in the mud. i have enough other things to do that i really need to get done that have a higher priority so this can wait a few more days.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

hopefully sometime the next several days i'll get out and bury a bucket of squash that couldn't be used. it will be too wet the next few days unless i want to play in the mud. i have enough other things to do that i really need to get done that have a higher priority so this can wait a few more days.

Where you are planting the squash, will you be able to plant in that area next spring? I have a few old squash and some apples that I have raked up and was either going to put in the compost bin, which is not really going to compost down for a long time, but I was thinking of burying things, but I am not sure where to put it and if we run a tiller next year what it would be like.

 

[flowerbug]

Where you are planting the squash, will you be able to plant in that area next spring? I have a few old squash and some apples that I have raked up and was either going to put in the compost bin, which is not really going to compost down for a long time, but I was thinking of burying things, but I am not sure where to put it and if we run a tiller next year what it would be like.

if you don't bury them deeply enough they will sprout again when the weather gets warm enough. apple seeds will sprout after being cold stratified. if you don't want either of them to sprout you'll need to grind the seeds up or kill the seeds somehow. personally i don't mind either of them growing, but i also just try to get all the buried stuff down deeply enough that it won't ever reach the germination zone.

 

[flowerbug]

buried a bucket of squash innards and the stems and anything else that couldn't be used or fed to the worms.

it having rained pretty hard a few days ago plus a few inches of melted snow the soil was more like mud so i got to play in that for a few minutes. it is warm enough outside today that i had on a t-shirt under a light sweather that was open and didn't feel a bit cold at all. the weather station says it's mid 40sF, but it sure felt warmer than that. ok, i was only out there a few minutes and moving the whole time to get the hole dug and everything buried but i wasn't cold.

 

[digitS']

... a wheelbarrow's worth of fresh manure and some straw, then laid down another wheelbarrow's worth. I was a sloppy stall cleaner yesterday and only took the poo.

I've thought of this picture several times with the comments here and elsewhere on manure.

This is the downtown not far from where I live, a little more than 100 years ago. It might be just about anywhere in US cities in those years.

There are other means of transportation to be seen but the piles gathered to be carted off gives you an idea of how important horses were. And, I'll just let you imagine the smells that the young fellow is experiencing, while leaning against the lightpole .

Steve

 

[digitS']

And, to go with that, here's a little something to freshen things up:

Well, maybe not!

Steve