Posted on 01/15/2016 12:55:47 PM PST by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks.
No matter what, you won't be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn't asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no telling where it will go and... that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!
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Mulched the garlic and cleaned off a patio and the driveway, so got some fresh air and sunshine.
Feeling a bit poorly today-cold coming on, but wanted to get the thread posted before I take some medicine and lay down.
Hope all is well with you and yours. Prayers up for everyone. Have a good Holiday weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the list.
I’m here! Ready for Spring.
I should probably start reading this to brighten up the winter. Wife and I both enjoy gardening, but it comes to a very abrupt halt around the end of Oct.
We walked past it a couple days ago, about a foot of snow on it. And the ground should be frozen hard to about 2 feet down. If this were a hard winter, it would be frozen about 4 - 5 feet down.
About now is our days high, which is 5 degrees above zero.
So any of you doing mulching or opening a window today, you won’t have to freeze doing it.
Ugh. Wish you were here. It’s finally back to seasonable temps. I haven’t checked but it’s warm by comparison (flannel shirt over a tshirt) & sunny. I’m going to send you extra prayers for that cold. I’m almost over a real lulu.
It’s almost time to hit the nursery! & will start getting the garden ready this weekend.
Hope everyone is doing okay.
God Bless.
winter crop doing exceptional. Broccoli and cauliflower doing excellent. once days become longer the salad veggies will pick up again.
I've been plugging away on my shop projects in the evenings after I get home from the salt mine. This week I've been fixing on my box scraper. The top link attachment (basically all of the pieces that are painted black) was a bent and twisted mess (long story). Now it's all back in proper alignment and reinforced in such a way that it shouldn't tear up in normal use.
The deer are starting to visit at night (azalea bushes must be delicious!) - 4 were in the yard/bushes last night. The birds are cleaning out the bird feeders every other day. Rain moved in about an hour ago and we’ve got snow flurries on tap for Sunday & arctic air moving in after that. Around here, once we get to March 1, then I start perking up - any snow won’t be hanging around too long. April is about as early as I can get anything in the garden (if I cover the plants at night). Spring can’t come soon enough.
We had a beautiful day here in North Alabama yesterday, I took advantage of it and grilled a couple of ribeye’s for supper. Today winter came back and now I am longing for spring. I planted 484 tomatoes and 50 peppers in plug flats yesterday, I have more peppers and eggplant to plant in the next few days.
My kaffir lime tree is in full bloom and has set several baby limes I have been hand pollinating the last two weeks with an artist’s brush. My seven pineapple plants have taken over the greenhouse, once you taste a plant ripened pineapple you will never buy another one from the grocery store.
Have a lot of the raised gardens ready to receive plants soon. Pulled up all of the mustard greens today, so I can put some radish seeds in the ground. Am starting some Krim tomatoes, and pickling cukes. Have the garden ready for the corn, but can’t do that until 5 March. It’s in a area we used to keep our Llamas. They left some good soil behind. I’ll start some Kentucky Wonders and plant them with the corn.
johnny, if you’re here, I’ve started the Santa Fe peppers, seeds you sent me. Thinking of you TSgt.
What is it for?
Seed packages arrived this week. We haven’t set up our little greenhouses units in the beach house yet but will in the next week or so. We’ll start seeds mid-February and still need to cover plants in early April or May in Missouri.
Some years back, the local butcher shop carried a pepper-infused pasta that we enjoyed as the basis for our “pasta puttanesca,” recipe. They quit making the product but we found another brand called “Pasta Mama’s.”
Find it at www.pastamamas.com.
I picked a dandelion flower out of the gravel drive the other day. Then there was one bloom off a big-leafed Vinca that is creeping through the woods. Strange.
Wow. You’re zooming along. You must be in Florida. We’re not supposed to start planting corn till May or June.
Benderville is suffering through the 4th wettest winter in recorded history. 28 days of rain in December but there were some periods of the day that the sun would come out for a bit. The up side is that has not been any flooding or freezing temps here on the coast but the hills east of us are seeing lots of snow.
Good to hear from ya! Turned real cold here today. Gonna be like winter!
I’m getting some grow lights and planting lettuce in our upstairs tub that we never use (in pots). I can’t stand not having fresh greens for salads. Will get it done next week. Will keep ya posted on it.
Outside is cold, but still have garlic and onions (late, late planting) with green stems. Will probably just cut them and mulch over and let them come back in the Spring.
A few trees have leaf buds early. Hope it does not ruin them for this year.
Box scraper is an earth moving tool that attaches to the rear three-point hitch on a farm tractor. Good for grading gravel driveways and moving small cuts of dirt short distances when doing landscaping projects. Cutting down high spots and dragging the soil into the low spots for instance.
I bought this one during the summer of 2000 and used it to level a spot in the back yard of our old house so I could set up a 16’ above-ground swimming pool for Mrs. Augie and the kids.
The top-link attachment pieces got torn up rather badly on that job due to a couple factors. One being it was not properly assembled at the local farm-n-home store where I bought it, and two I hooked it to a tractor with a Category II hitch when it was designed to mount on a Category I hitch. The geometry is enough different between the two that the hitch took more stress than it was designed to handle.
When that project was done I hauled the scraper to Dad’s place, parked it in the fencerow, and pretty much forgot about it. Couple weeks before Christmas I was unloading a trailer full of slabwood from the sawmill for his stoves and noticed it sitting there under a tangle of vines, wild rose bushes, and a three foot diameter oak tree that had fallen on top of it and done even more damage to the hitch parts.
That’s when my dim bulb lit up...
By the end of last summer the clay in the bottom of my pond had become so hard and dry that it was almost impossible to dig with the front loader on Nanner. Even with the 4WD I just didn’t have enough grip to take a decent cut in that stuff - but the box scraper has ripper teeth that can be adjusted to cut below the level of the grader blade - those things are capable of shredding tight soil so that it can be picked up and moved. DING DING DING!!!
So... I moved the tree, picked up the scraper and hauled it to my shop and got to fixing on it. I added a heavy piece of angle steel between the lift arm mounting points, re-formed the top mounting bracketry back to the way it was all shaped at the factory, assembled it properly, and added some gusset work at the top to make it stronger there.
It also occurred to me that it would make an excellent counter-weight for Nanner when I was working with the front loader, especially if I were to add some additional ballast to it in the form of suitcase weights. I have plenty of those laying around that I used to adjust the front-rear balance and go up in weight classes on my antique pulling tractor back in the day, so I welded in the two pieces of heavy angle steel that you see on the insides of the box at the top. There’s enough space in there to hang seven 70lb weights on each side of the scraper, which will make a world of difference in the grip on the rear tires when the front loader is full of dirt or gravel or when I have a 6’x6’ roll of hay up there on the bale spike.
I’ll post a picture later on after I get it mounted on the tractor and hopefully then all of my babbling will make a little more sense.
Told you it was a long story, probably way more than anyone cares about, but I’m just a little bit tickled with myself over the whole deal. LOL
Our up and down temperatures have taken a toll on the impatience and they have died. The pansies are blooming nicely; peas and lettuce doing well.
I’m a you can’t have enough gadgets kind of guy so I enjoyed your description
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