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Front yard garden is finished, aside from the mole hunt and maybe replanting beans.

Yesterday
* Drip irrigation installed and working fine.(big water saver)
* Shade cloth pulled back but ready to extend over the entire area when/if needed.
* Picked up a truck bed load of compost for mulching and will dig a little in on each side of the rows first.

Taking tomorrow off as a PTO day which will turn this week’s, bi-weekly three day weekend, into a four day weekend.

High tunnel time.

If I get the frames built, treat the surface rust, get them in primer and get the post holes fully dug, that’ll be fine. I don’t have the primer but do have all the additives it requires.

Automotive paint itself will cost more plus I’ll need to buy the additives, activator/reducer so that will have to wait a week.

Might be able to rent a walk behind trencher for the mole exclusion trench. I’m thinking heavy duty pond liner with plenty of holes big enough for water and tiny soil life to get through but too small for moles. Trench will be 2-3 foot outside of the frame/tunnel.

Pollard; I lost a number of Pole beans and had to totally replant a section. Sow and pill bugs were responsible for some, but one Section I over watered and they melted away. I plant directly into the ground. There are solutions to moles/voles, but they usually involve a wire barrier underneath your row of plants! Bother! Drip irrigation, Summer time; when you start your watering remember to check the temperature of the water coming out of your hose. I have a hose hookup to my irrigation system and and purge the hot water from the hose end before I divert the water to the irrigation system.

Discussion hot water on plants

Summer heat and Pots... I do some plantings in large black plastic pots that I have recovered from a local nursery's recycle bin. (I.E. Free pots!) I have not had success with vegetables in previous years due, I think, from the elevated soil temperature, which at the surface can get up to 130-135 F.

While It defeats the Free part, this year I purchased some Rustoleum White Elastometric roof coating, cleaned some of the pots and painted them to see if I could get those temperatures down, and they are much lower at the surface. (I am also using rice hulls as mulch, and they are a very light color. )

Container Gardening Temperatures

Good luck!