With the exception of the garden carts and that green kneeler, it's all stuff I've researched for myself. I'll probably be getting one of those kneeler/seat combos. Will probably get a seeder too and I like the Hoss one. Seems to be a decent all purpose unit, heavy duty and I like the old wheel hoe design.
Need to get a new hoe tomorrow. I turned mine into a pointed hoe this morning. Worked good for making a little furrow to plant onion sets into. It was a cheap one.
Thought about the paperpot transplanter when sticking onions in. Even sets as opposed to seed starting might be worth sticking in the paper pots if you were planting 2-300. Spend less than an hour putting them in the paper pots with some soil mix, compost or even straight peat. Spend less than another hour dragging the transplanter and never have to kneel. Onion sets are cheap and you wouldn't have that space taken up starting from seed in trays. Buy them, stick in pots, transplant into ground - 264 onions from purchase to planted in half a day. There are 264 pots in a tray/coil.
Guess I'll go get my seed potatoes in the ground. My neighbor buddy has a small disc harrow made for an ATV. Need to see if I can borrow it. I can use that with middle two blades removed to hill up the potatoes.
Seed taters are in. Dug a trench just about as deep as a spade fork will go. Scraped a V in it with the new pointed hoe and laid the tubers in. Covered them with a little over an inch of soil, used the drop spreader to dust it with goat manure, spread an inch of compost on top, then watered with the drip soaker line. I really like that thing and will get more. Then I added another inch of soil and watered again.
I did straighten out those three up close to make a nice straight line. One Rodale book said 6" spacing and the other said 6-12" spacing so I eyeballed 9" spacing.
All the clumps broke up easily since the soil was at least somewhat moist. This spot was my garden several years ago and I ran my beds on contour which is about 45 degrees from these new tunnel beds. That makes these beds spotty between brown and brownish-yellow. Brownish-yellow is the native soil and I'm surprised several year old beds held their brown color from being amended so long ago but they did.
I got another picture but it turned out bad due to lighting and the angle I took it at. I had sowed 8 seeds of Daikon Radish a couple of weeks ago. I had all the automation stuff removed from down there so I had no way to keep it moist while I'm gone for 12 hours on work days so only 3 germinated. Didn't know about those until today.
I just bought little misters for 1/4" drip line and got to try them out today. Way too windy for mist but I turned them down and they put out small droplets in a small area, 2-3 foot. That's what I've been looking for and tried micro-sprinklers hoping they would do it but those tiny suckers can be in the middle of the 22 foot wide tunnel and reach both sides.
Really pleased with the misters. I'll be able to keep a single bed or part of a bed moist for direct sown seed. I also have it in my mind to have a seed starting area in the tunnel and would be able to top water trays until germination.
My skinny butt almost got blown over a few times today. When the misters were on full misting mode before I turned them down, I could feel it hitting me 20' away. Lately I'd been thinking I'm getting carried away with these automated sides but not after sitting out there for a few hours today, not so much. Crazy windy.
I went from bifold that hinge on the bottom, to looking at roll up sides until I noticed they take four minutes to roll up, to bifold that hinge on the top and raise up and now I'm back to hinge on the bottom and lower down. Full circle.
I watched those poor little Daikons getting whipped around. Had to put a piece of roofing against the tunnel for the misters to work at all and even then, set them off to the windward side a little. I can just see newly transplanted 8-12" pepper/mater plants getting smacked down by the wind.
When I was first thinking about this tunnel thing I talked to my neighbor buddy and wondered out loud why I don't see many around here. He gave me the obvious answer - "You see the few that do exist right? They're all torn apart." Good thing I'm crazy and stubborn.
Nice job!
I have three tools I will never part with - my Grandpa’s pointed hoe (he also made it himself!) and my hand-held Korean Hand Plow - goes through the soil like BUTTAH, and a three-tined hand-held tool (what is it called?) that also rakes the soil nicely for smoothing or prepping for small seed planting.
Oh, wait - one more - a short handled shovel with a weird head on it called a ‘Poacher’s Shovel’ for small digging jobs - or stealing part of a perennial plant from the neighbor under cover of darkness, LOL!