What Did You Do In The Garden?

[digitS']

I also need to start fall cleanup.

If we have the thru-the-back-fence garden next year, it will be with different arrangements. The neighbor died about a week ago and my gardening there will now depend on the decisions of his family and what will be done with the home and property.

Ken never made much use of the garden space and ill health got in the way of any of his intentions. My involvement on the other side of the fence began with just making use of 2 beds, covering them with a temporary hoop house for a couple of Spring months before vacating the beds and garden by June 1st. A couple of years with Ken doing little or nothing with those beds or in the rest of the garden, we took over and stayed through the growing season. It's been that way for about 4 years, now. Of course, with a gate through the backfence, it was very convenient.

Oh, I just wrote and deleted what should and might be done this Fall and continuing in the distant big veggie garden. That was an easy start and finish there .

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

garden cleanup and deadheading will go on through the fall as we get a chance to get it all done. with so many gardens there's really no time when we can't do something here it is just a matter of what we want to do and working around what the weather does.

last night i was a little tired and tried to go to sleep but after laying here for a while all those bean pods i picked yesterday were calling to me so i shelled some of them for an hour and then i could sleep.

today will be a repeat of yesterday, work on getting a garden cleaned up and ashes buried in there along with bean pods, squash scrapings/rinds, dried bean plants and weeds. as i'm burying things i'm able to turn up some of the deeper clay subsoil into the poorer sand overlayer and also mixing up previous applications of worms/worm compost from the past few years. sure does show up when i hit a trench where i put it down. goes from bright yellow sand to dark brown/black nummyness. the clay subsoil is pretty dark too but it is took much work to really break it up a lot so i don't. i just turn it and let it start to mingle. next spring i'll give it some more if i get a chance. there's really no way i can ever have enough worms/worm compost to put in these gardens, but they all respond very well when i do.

this large garden used to be a tulip garden and then when the tulips were about done i could plant beans over them to get a 2nd use out of the space instead of leaving it bare the rest of the season. the soil is primarily sandy and nutrient poor, but it is getting much better the past few years with the adding of the worms/worm compost. this fall is the first year i get to give it a complete dig down deep in areas because i was scrambling this past spring just to get the drain tubes and pea gravel and any tulips that were still in there moved out of the way before i could get it planted. so i couldn't really mix things up or amend with the ashes like i wanted to do - it was too late. so now at least i can get the ashes in there and do some of the mixing that needs to be done and to get some of that clay lifted and start the process of turning it into prime garden soil. next spring we may even put some tomatoes in there to see how they'll do. it's been planted in beans for the past 10-12 years or so.

um, rambling this morning, haha...

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I put some more cardboard down, but DS said it might be awhile before he gets more. I have so much rabbit manure, I was looking and thinking I want the rabbit manure on the grown and not on top of the cardboard, so the rest of it, I am pulling the tall weeds and take all the rabbit manure and bedding and covering the garden and put I am getting a load of cow manure. I guess just keep watching the weather I would like to get the leaves on the ground, then cardboard, and then the cow manure, but may be no cardboard and just plan on tilling. I actually had to weed some of the compost stuff I put on top of the cardboard a couple of weeks ago. The area for the garlic, I am going to turn and rake again before planting. Really, it looks like I should just put all the manure I can out there and leaves and as soon as possible in the spring till. Then use cardboard and newspaper after planting and see if that helps keep some of it down.

 

[Zeedman]

The home gardens made it through the last frost with no damage, even the Tromboncino still looks healthy. One of the seed squashes had started to crack the long way down the neck, so I cut it off & brought it in before bugs/snails got into the crack. The long neck of that squash has been cut, peeled, sliced, and placed in the dehydrator... an experiment to see if I can turn it into something useful.

Part of the garlic I ordered came in yesterday, two bulbs each of 5 varieties. Still waiting on 3 more varieties from another source. The leaf vacuum arrived yesterday as well, glad that I have some nice days to install it, before leaves start to fall. Leaves are starting to change color, so leaf drop should start next week. My box elder has already started shedding leaves, it always seems to be the first in my neighborhood to sound the charge.

All the sweet peppers from the rural garden have been cleaned & sorted. Four tubs of tomatoes cleaned & sorted as well, and are drying in baskets... still have one variety left to finish. I have a second fridge picked up from a garage sale this summer, we'll turn it on & use it to store the peppers & tomatoes.

We still haven't found time to visit the rural garden, so don't know yet how much survived the last frost.

 

[Prairie Rose]

Still working on cleaning up here, but it goes slow. Today I planted a shrub rose I picked up on clearance last week, moved some more mulch between my garden beds, and planted some bulbs. It frosted a few days ago, so I have a tray of clippings from my favorite summer annuals in the kitchen to overwinter. Repotted my ginger, and my garlic arrived in the mail yesterday. I am hoping to get it in the ground by this weekend.

 

[flowerbug]

I also need to start fall cleanup.

If we have the thru-the-back-fence garden next year, it will be with different arrangements. The neighbor died about a week ago and my gardening there will now depend on the decisions of his family and what will be done with the home and property.
...

i'm sorry to hear about the loss of your neighbor.

 

[digitS']

Cut down cornstalks and broccoli plants. Carried off more cabbage and more tomatoes. More Tomatoes ?!!

And, wheeled away these:


A major commitment to making winter squash a big part of the diet through the off-season. And, this isn't even including the pie pumpkins and whatever-it-was that grew on squash vines at the other end of the garden!

Steve

 

[Zeedman]

Today I harvested the dry "Gardensoy 12" edamame soybeans. What was interesting is that I experimented this year with 2 different plantings 2 weeks apart. Soybean flowering is triggered by daylength, to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon variety... so I wanted to see how much difference there would be between the two plantings. The 2nd planting reached edamame stage about 5-7 days behind the 1st. For dry seed though, both plantings ripened at about the same time. There was little to no apparent difference in yield, which I find remarkable.

Gardensoy "12" (I think it is really Gardensoy 24, mislabeled)

Not much else going on in the gardens today, DW & I are just cleaning out some long-neglected parts of the property.

EDIT: added photo

 

[flowerbug]

Today I harvested the dry "Gardensoy 12" edamame soybeans. What was interesting is that I experimented this year with 2 different plantings 2 weeks apart. Soybeans flowering is triggered by daylength, to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon variety... so I wanted to see how much difference there would be between the two plantings. The 2nd planting reached edamame stage about 5-7 days behind the 1st. For dry seed though, both plantings ripened at about the same time. There was little to no apparent difference in yield, which I find remarkable.

Not much else going on in the gardens today, DW & I are just cleaning out some long-neglected parts of the property.

i would be surprised if they were identical in dry weight. let them dry down good, close your eyes and take 100 from each batch and measure how much they weigh.

 

[flowerbug]

i dug a big hole in the the garden where i'm mixing the soil in layers. by big hole i mean about 8ft by 6ft by 3ft. we can use it for burying garden debris from a few of the front gardens where Mom is deadheading and also the bean garden where it is at has some things that need to be buried deeply. there is a surface layer of small weeds that drop a lot of seeds that i can scrape in there to reduce the weed pressure and sequester those seeds down deeply enough that they won't be disturbed often if ever again. i have five more buckets of wood ashes to use up so they will probably all get used in this hole as i layer the plant debris, the sandy soil, some clay subsoil and then keep repeating until i get the dirt all back in place. it will increase the elevation by a foot or two until the plant material gets compacted down again and the worms do their magic. i'm not seeing many worms. i know they're in there, but they don't really like plain sandy soil very much so this mixing will help encourage them by giving them more clay and also the plant debris.

this is the same garden that has the spring whitlow grass which is a PITA, but this is also a tough weed to eradicate i think it might be Blunteaf Bedstraw, but i'm not exactly sure, but i do know it is also a PITA because when it grows among tulips you have to find and remove each and every plant before it flowers and drops seeds or it will be back. the stirrup hoe does help to control it, but you do have to find each plant underneath and around things. when growing beans over them they'll survive in the shade ok. it takes a very consistent effort to get rid of them. i haven't managed it yet...
was not very consistent this season.

after getting that dug and resting a bit i went out and got started on trying to finish up picking the north garden beans. Mom came out a while later to help and we got almost the entire garden done now. only a few bean plants left there to finish that i didn't want to pull out yet (some Dapple Grey). so now i have a bucket and a half of more beans to sort and shell out tomorrow morning. after picking beans i came in and had some food and then got warm and fell asleep for a while.

the deer have been wandering through there again and eating all the strawberry plants and chomping on the comfrey. i don't mind as i don't expect anything outside the fence to survive. they'll probably start getting after the clematis too.