What Did You Do In The Garden?

[Prairie Rose]

Honeybees or other bees? My actual honeybees don't really come out of their hive. They're still in there, population healthy, plenty of food...but you never see them actually leave or enter their hive. It's just...strange. That aside, in the past few weeks all of the other bee populations have skyrocketed. I am seeing so much bumblebee and mason bee activity it makes me smile to go out and walk through the garden. This is the peak time of their population, isn't it? Don't they start to dwindle as the days really get shorter and cool off?

 

[ducks4you]

You mean, What was I Gonna do today in my garden! I had planned day back from CO to work all day outside. Got a signing in the PM, so that plan got trashed.
Good news! I picked 10 lovely beefsteak tomatoes and DH couldn't stop praising my efforts.
DD's said there weren't that many, but they didn't know where to look.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

My garden really was a failure and I was looking at it and i wonder now if it was the composted cow manure I bought from Walmart. Areas where I worked harder at to get weeds out and spread the manure seem to be where things did not grow. Especially the beans, I cannot blame being root bound in cups like the tomatoes. I put brand new seed into the ground and never had a problem growing beans. I put some on a fence and they are only like 2 feet high and I thought maybe just early and still climbing but I saw flowers and beans and they are not going to climb. I am just harvesting what I can and I am starting on "FALL" cleanup now. I am taking rabbit manure and spreading on the ground and turning the dirt over. I am going to clear as much of the weeds as I can and just turn what compost I have and manure under. I want to get a truckload of cow manure and spread it on top of shredded leaves, but usually it does not work out because it will snow and cover the leaves before we can chop them up with the mower or the garden is not cleared and I never get the manure spread before snow comes and cannot get the manure to my yard, so I am going to clear as much as possible and before all the rain comes get the manure here and if I spread all this then plan on DS renting the big tiller and tilling as early as possible. I am also going to lay tarps and plastic around the edges of the garden and cover with some straw and bricks to hold it down and kill what weeds I can. I decided I want to garden and I need the exercise.

 

[flowerbug]

mowing doesn't quite count, but at least i could step on some weeds along a few edges and then run those over with the mower as i went by.

later on gave a garden tour to some friends who stopped over for pie. he had been here before so he knew what it was like, but she hadn't been here before so that is always fun. there's always plenty to see.

 

[ducks4you]

@Gardening with Rabbits ,
I Know that you cannot attack your weeding like a 20 something, and I found this video to help you.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...DCAw&uact=5#kpvalbx=_HRNBX7H_N46GtQanw52gCA26
On Mid American Gardener several panelists, most of whom are Univerisity of IL Ag graduates, professors, Master Gardeners and Professor Emeritis's, have experimented successfully with growing in straw bales.
I think you should try to replicate using straw bales and cardboard in between your straw bale crop rows.
It will be easier to harvest bc you don't have to bend down as low, and the cardboard really does suppress weeds. If
you lay out your rows with the cardboard First, so that the bales cover the cardboard edges, or even lay out the whole garden with cardboard and put the straw bales on top of that, your weeding should be minimal.
As several videos point out, worms love to consume cardboard and break it down.
In the meantime, after cleaning up your garden this Fall, cover it with cardboard.
We all have these weed seeds that can survive decades underground waiting for the right conditions to grow.
Been there, big battle with weeds at My place!

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

@Gardening with Rabbits ,
I Know that you cannot attack your weeding like a 20 something, and I found this video to help you.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...DCAw&uact=5#kpvalbx=_HRNBX7H_N46GtQanw52gCA26
On Mid American Gardener several panelists, most of whom are Univerisity of IL Ag graduates, professors, Master Gardeners and Professor Emeritis's, have experimented successfully with growing in straw bales.
I think you should try to replicate using straw bales and cardboard in between your straw bale crop rows.
It will be easier to harvest bc you don't have to bend down as low, and the cardboard really does suppress weeds. If
you lay out your rows with the cardboard First, so that the bales cover the cardboard edges, or even lay out the whole garden with cardboard and put the straw bales on top of that, your weeding should be minimal.
As several videos point out, worms love to consume cardboard and break it down.
In the meantime, after cleaning up your garden this Fall, cover it with cardboard.
We all have these weed seeds that can survive decades underground waiting for the right conditions to grow.
Been there, big battle with weeds at My place!

Thank you ducks. I have thought about cardboard and did use it in the past. I am not sure I would be happy with the straw bales. I have to look more into that. I have been thinking of building boxes again. The garden started that way. I actually built a box with cardboard on the bottom and all the straw and stuff like he did in the video and it work, but I think I put the weeds back in my box by mulching the strawberries with straw. I don't know. I will look more into this straw bale gardening. I need to do something.

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

Are you re-adjusting to the Inland NW after those years in Texas and now considering these conditions "hot?"

yes yes and more yes!

 

[flowerbug]

cardboard only works for a season or two in areas with enough moisture to get it rotting as the worms do love it and the pill bugs too (aka wood lice). what i have done with it is use it to suppress weeds and topped it with wood chips and chunks of bark to hold it in place. after the 2nd year i redid it by scraping back the wood chips and chunks of bark and put down a few layers again the replaced the wood chips and chunks of bark. by the time that cardboard broke down again the area was sprouting a few weeds here or there but not many so if i weeded and didn't disturb the soil too much it wouldn't get very weedy at all. eventually though the wood chips and bark pieces degraded enough that it turned into humus and that would sprout any weed seed that managed to get in there. so we covered it again with a few layers of cardboard, put down weed barrier fabric and then we had a bunch of engineering bricks given to us and we didn't know what to do with them so they got put there to cover the area.

for the vegetable gardens we now mostly keep them bare dirt instead of mulched, not because i like it that ways but because there's no way i can keep enouch mulch on all these gardens and also because Mom thinks any thing on the surface looks untidy. so cover crops left to wilt in the fall and protect th soil through the winter are not what she wants out there. one year i did winter wheat and winter rye (the grain, not the grass) and she liked the looks of those, but she did not like how the chipmunks and mice moved the seeds around so that wasn't repeated, but i did love how those plant roots really improved the clay soils.

for a bare dirt garden the stirrup hoe and having larger gardens improves how easily i can take care of them but we have purselane and some other weeds which like to grow and it gets harder as the season gets hotter to keep every last weed out of the gardens. right now i do some spot weeding as i pick beans but i don't get every last weed or i'd never get the beans picked. it is mostly in decent condition. it has been much worse in the past. i just try to get the worst of the weeds picked out before they drop seeds. it also helps that most of the gardens are covered by beans right now so the weeds don't have it easy getting light. but in order to keep all of them out of the gardens i'd have to be out there now about six hours a day and the heat isn't making that possible. the harvest also is keeping us rather busy (which is a good thing )...

 

[digitS']

More harvesting, today.

So . Many . Cucumbers ! (Taladega & Marketmore, with some Munchers) The broccoli buds filled a 3 gallon bucket, again. Another bucket of green beans and there were just a few bell peppers and eggplant - both Japanese and an Apple Green. We had eggplant yesterday for dinner .

I thought about a picture of ripe/ripening tomatoes on the vines but it wouldn't have been much of a picture, a mass of foliage, mostly. Larger tomatoes are lagging. Oh, there were some ripe fruit near the ground. Well over a gallon was picked but they were 90% cherries. That's fine but that's what we have been getting from the 4 plants at the foot of the backsteps for weeks. I guess that I will be making pasta sauce with cherry tomatoes because there are now too many to eat fresh - oh, such horribleness . That sauce sounds like it would be very sweet. I guess that should be okay.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

we had to pick tomatoes again this morning, most of them are going to other people in trade for canning jars. we have one case left here of quart jars and that's it. possibly tomorrow we will be getting four or more cases but we'll see how that turns out. not sure about what the store might have. hope so.

so today i picked what i could of various dry beans. by far not through all the gardens yet, but getting there. some look pretty good, others not accomplished much this season. i do need to water the plants that are still remaining but i wanted to get some of the dry beans out of there first before i water tomorrow morning.

when i was checking out the beans in one garden where the melons are at there was a melon off to the side pressed between two rocks, it was ripe enough i could smell it so i picked it. oh, my i had to cut it up and try some right then. it was such an odd shape that the interior was compressed into a smile and the teeth were the seeds. i should have taken a picture. but nope. i ate the smaller half and cut the rest up for Mom to have. she just had some a bit ago and said they were definitely keepers. @ninnymary we'll be enjoying these when more of them ripen. i think i have about 30 of them out there. i keep finding more every time i look. they certainly like growing on the rock piles we have around the raised beds.

after cutting up the melon i started shelling some beans to check them out. rested a few minutes, went out and picked some more, rested again, canned 9 quarts of tomato chunks and 1 quart of tomato juice (to use up the split cherry tomatoes that otherwise would have gone to waste). and an extra pint of tomato juice in the fridge.

feels good to stretch out and be off my feet or not sitting. after a bit of rest i'll get the shelling going again because i always want to see what has been happening with the beans, but also it takes less space if i can shell out the dry beans that are mostly done right away so it doesn't take up as much room to finish drying some of the remaining pods. it's a tiny place and my room is full as it is so i have to figure out how to arrange my stacks of box tops to where they can all get enough air flow and finish up, plus keep them all straight. haha... my favorite time of the year when the beanos start coming in.