Posted on 04/01/2024 6:23:19 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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That sounds great! Now I’m really looking forward to putting in the effort to do lettuce in containers.
I thought of another benefit — gophers won’t have nearly as easy a time destroying everything if it’s in containers. Let the pests go ruin someone else’s hard work. :-)
For me the no bending over is great. Here’s a good shape for getting a lot of lettuce.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Style-Selections-22-17-in-W-x-7-05-in-H-Rust-Resin-Planter/1000175867
I have three similar about 27 inches long. This is the quickest picture I could find. Don’t need a drain tray if its outside. Just drain holes and I have at least a couple of inches of packed shredded straw under the garden soil. It’s more lightweight and at the end of the season they all get dumped on their own little compost pile. I reuse the next year and add some compost. Leaf lettuce doesn’t like to be crowded and likes good drainage. The shredded straw is great for that. The three varieties that do the best for us are regular romaine, Little Gem, and Red Butter Lettuce. If no rain I water at least three days a week, lettuce loves a spray.
Wow, what a great and creative idea!
That sounds scrumptious!
Hi fellow gardeners!
I have a raised bed question. My husband wants to just dump soil on top of the grass inside of the wooden frame. Does that same right?
He says the roots of any of my vegetable plants won’t go that deep.
Would there be any point in killing the grass first? Or should it be rototilled up?
If you ever find the cheese, get it! I can’t stress that enough. It’s life changing if you love morels. I give it as gifts when I visit friends and family.
A must-have cheese.
Yes! My butcher is so happy that I buy his stock of it so frequently. Meister offers several others which we’ve tried, but this is my hands down favorite. It’s nice with eggs, but it shines gloriously on top of steak. I would imagine it would be amazing over a great cut of pork also. Haven’t tried that yet, but we will!
Well, these (source plant) yews grow a lot more than that, but I can’t seem to get starts off cuttings to save my life. Maybe if I dug up some roots???
By all means till it up or pull out the clumps. Yes the grass will eventually die but your drainage will not be as good.
Nice set-up! ‘Organic’ Critter Control. ;)
Something like that would work great for my raised beds - what is the frame made of ... did you make it or get it somewhere?
“Wild Morel & Leek Jack cheese”
I will second that recommendation! We had a WONDERFUL shop (three locations) called Brennan’s and they had fresh fruit, veggies, every wine under the sun and their own line of cheese. I would always buy the Morel & Leek Jack. So, SO GOOD!
I really miss that store. Never did get the skinny on why they closed up shop - it wasn’t for lack of business and half my paycheck some weeks, LOL!
Of all the lettuces, Romaine has the most nutrition. I like the CRUNCH, myself. I make my own ‘salad blends’ at home. Romain is always the base, then I add baby greens, shredded carrots, spinach, sliced radishes, etc.
It takes about 30 minutes of prep work to have a big bag on hand for the week. We have a salad at least once a day. Can’t wait to be growing my own again!
Last year, I bought monarda - a red one and a ‘native’ light purple one for my new medicinal herb garden. Both got powdery mildew (which we talked about - copper spray), but I noticed yesterday they are coming back beautifully and much larger than last year.
I offered them to my SIL and she was hemming/hawing about it, so I am trying to figure out what to do with them. Mom and I talked this morning & I was looking things up .... they do beautifully in large pots on patios & balconies where they have full sun and air movement. Mom has been wanting to put pots of something on the patio and it looks like the bee balm might be our plants! She just loves red and purple, probably her favorite color combo. She’s got some very large pots (the dirt in them is not good) that we could use. I’m going to dump the dirt & take dirt from the herb bed where the monarda are growing. so they will feel like they’re still ‘at home’.
It’s sort of exciting to think about taking something from here and moving it to the new place. Any suggestions? One thing I read (aside from watering instructions) is that they don’t like heavy fertilizer - if you add compost to the pots, that gives them the nutrition they need. I have my compost pile from fall before last so I could mix some of that in with the soil from the bed. The dirt in that bed is ‘new’, topsoil I amended with sand & added some organic fertilizer. I think if I added compost to it, it would help ‘lighten’ it up (the sand helped some) and provide some good nutrition for growing. No problem with full sun - our patio gets sun from mid morning to sunset.
Plant a Garden
~ Edgar Guest
If your purse no longer bulges
and you’ve lost your golden treasure,
If times you think you’re lonely
and have hungry grown for pleasure,
Don’t sit by your hearth and grumble,
don’t let mind and spirit harden.
If it’s thrills of joy you wish for
get to work and plant a garden!
If it’s drama that you sigh for,
plant a garden and you’ll get it
You will know the thrill of battle
fighting foes that will beset it.
If you long for entertainment and
for pageantry most glowing,
Plant a garden and this Summer spend
your time with green things growing.
I bought poultry fencing. It’s cheaper than all the fancy hoops systems the garden catalogs sell.
I don’t recall how long we cut the lengths. When I get home from church, I’ll measure them and let you know.
The ones I use cover a 4’ wide raised bed and are about 2’ tall.
I guess doing the math with a diameter of 4 feet, for a semi-circle, it would be a length of just over 6 feet long. Since it comes in rolls, it likes to stay curved, which works out well.
I’ll still measure and let you know though.
It’s this style of poultry fencing. The larger rectangular openings and it’s pretty stiff and metal.
https://starkline.com/collections/pest-control
Not the plastic stuff, the netting.
Thanks .... what is the black frame?
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