What Did You Do In Your Garden Today?

[StonyGarden]

I hate fire ants! I grew up in Charleston, SC and delt with them every summer. Luckily I don't have to deal with them here in South Central VA

I finished building a raised bed and filled it with peet moss and garden soil. All my seedlings are still too small to transplant so that will have to wait. I'm also waiting on mulch to be delivered by my landlord. He said it would be either today or tomorrow. I hope it will be today. It's just so nice outside.

 

[ducks4you]

Got regular and dwarf sugar snap peas planted, and planted some dwarf sweet peas, too. Then, it rained on them last night.

 

[897tgigvib]

Joz, have you tried DIATOMACEOUS EARTH?

It is not a poison, and does not harm worms or mammals or birds. It ONLY gets crawling insects with exoskeletons. It's fossilized plankton that has microscopic spikes on them, and it takes awhile, but it rips a crawling insect's exoskeleton up so much that it dehydrates and passes on.

I used 25 pounds in 2 applications of something like 12 or 13 pounds a time around my cabin. Got rid of our STINK ants slowly but surely. Now I have very few. Just dusted the perimeter under my cabin then outside of around my cabin. Full sized house might take 50 pounds. If I had an ant problem in my garden I'd put it all around and right on the hill. I did use some in my greens bed last year for the aphid problem. Hard to tell how well it did because i also mushed those buggers a lot, but they did disappear.

25 pound of food grade diatomaceous earth at tractor supply cost last year less that 13 dollars. I don't think i'd ever want to eat it though!!! It is like a bag of greyish chalky clay and is very dry, dusty.

Yeehaw Lesa and Ducks! Got your Peas in!

Today I switched gears and got the 2nd bed pertnear done, and removed a pole from the berry bed to use it to make a low frame for part of it. It was a horizontal pole that was for before I enlarged my garden and no longer needed to be where it was, the middle of the berry bed.

Gave the flat of baby bean plants a baby quarter strength dose of fish emulsion added to their water. Some of them that sprouted from premie seeds that I picked around december first made their first true leaves yellowish. They'll be ok. Mom bean plant made baby beans even though she had no more direct sunlight is all.

 

[joz]

I've got a big ol' bag of DE in the basement. Need to get it out to treat for fleas in the side yard, too. Will dump some on the ants and see.

Problem is.... I don't mind the ants until they bite me. I rather value their predation of termites.

I wish I could encourage them to move into the neighbors' yards. The neighbors NEVER go out back, and thus have weeds 4' tall immediately adjacent to my garden. So I get their weed seeds, their mildew, and their bugs. Hrmph. Surely safeguarding my ants is adequate compensation?

 

[ducks4you]

Finished planting dwarf sugar snap peas last night and threw a couple of those cheap boxes of flower seeds on the whole bed, too. It's the bed that surrounds my cement cistern top, south facing, on slope, 9' x 12' "U" shaped, 2 1/2' wide bed. Rained again last night. Took me 5 minutes to plant and kick the loose dirt over the seeds.
TONIGHT and tomorrow--not online--I'm planting my salad bed ( 3' x 8' ) with lettuce, radishes and onions, and planting carrots in my tomato beds. Already have my sand. The tomatoes won't be planted until at LEAST Mother's Day, and, if it's cool, they don't go in until Memorial Day.

 

[897tgigvib]

So far today I cleaned up some, then finished the 2nd bed, composted the west side of the north berry bed, and then switched gears again. I made another 8 foot section of framinf for the middle part of the berry bed so I can make the compost and soil there much deeper. then I did a rounds and picked up twigs from the roadways here that blew down from all the wind.

And now it's my lunch break.

After lunch I'll fill in that middle part of the berry bed, then mulch the rest of it good and deep.

If I'm still kicking, another 8 foot long bed will get a wagon load of compost added, else that's tomorrow.

After that, it's pretty much only about 36 feet of the middle bed to the north, next to the berry bed, left to add lots of compost to to raise it pretty good. But I know me. I'll probably frame up at least some of it.

I checked on the roots of the beans in the flat. Lots of roots down there!!!

 

[StonyGarden]

My garden area just got tilled today. The MIL and I will be sharing a garden this year. Hopefully by Friday we will be working the ground into rows and getting seeds planted by early next week.

 

[canesisters]

Rotmore is no more.... I created the garden, in the garden today. Or at least, I flattened Rotmore out to be ready for planting in a few days.

Was a little bit bitter sweet. On one hand, Rotmore is the only sucessful thing I've 'grown' in my garden so it was sad to not see that big pile sitting there. On the other hand it was sort of like the 'harvest' for the compost pile so it was good to see it become what it was meant to be.

 

[897tgigvib]

ROTMORE PLATEAU?

 

[curly_kate]

DH put the potatos in today! I didn't do nuthin!