Weekly Gardening Thread ----- Tossing Around Ideas

My "pea" brain | 1/24/08 | Gabz and GardenGirl

[JenB]

Well, really only three or less. It was -19 this morning so I’m feel deep in the throws of winter. Nobody told me Iowa got this cold :(

[Gabz]

OUCH.........that’s gotta hurt.

[Red_Devil 232]

So you do not turn your piles every so often?

[Jemian]

Please add me to the ping list.

Does anyone have any ideas on getting orchids to bloom? I live (currently) in a tropical area.

[Gabz]

OK - I won’t complain about our temps, although our weather is rather weird. So many folks hear “on the coast” and Virginia and immediately think way down south where it’s always warm HAH!!!

[SunkenCiv]

In cold climates, frozen soil permitting, try turning over the soil where the squash and pumpkins are going to go in order to let old man winter kill off the squash beetles during this part of their life cycle. Do this more than once. Keep an eye out for earthworms so you can take appropriate life saving measures for them.

[Gabz]

The only help I can give you is to tell you I’ve added you to the ping list. My knowlege of orchids consists I know One, well some, when I see one :)

[Gabz]

Do the squash beetles attack other plants, or just the squashes? I ask this because I rotate where I put different crops each year and so won’t be putting my squashes in the same area they were in last year.

[SunkenCiv]

They bore into the vines and kill ‘em, or at best stunt them so they can’t bear. They make little perfectly round holes in the ground right next to the vine, and get on squash (even summer squash and zucc), and sometimes pumpkins, not on watermelon (which is not a cucurbit) that I’ve ever noticed. Nothing else I know of.

[Gabz]

Thanks.

We are actually going be able to turn over our space more than once this spring before it’s time for serious planting, thanks to the generous offer of the use of equipment from the folks that bought the acreage across the road from us. The past 3 years we’ve paid to have it done and thus could only have it done once.

[Roses0508]

Does anyone have nice easy ways to keep dogs from digging up beds? I planted some lovely bulbs last year and they were beautiful until the pups dug ‘em out. They really like digging holes.

The two things that have worked for me: 1) Give them a nice soft place of their own to dig. When they dig inappropriately scold and show them "their" digging place. 2) "Mommy loves it". Show great care and concern as you plant the bulbs. "These are mommy's bulbs". "Your job is go guard mommy's bulbs", etc. It doesn't matter what you say, its your tone of voice and your obvious concern. Most dogs will try to protect what you value.

[Roses0508]

These folks should be helpful. I haunt a couple of the other forums. I haven’t become obessessed with orchids yet :-)

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/orchids/

[JenB]

Hmmm...

They’re labs. (Mostly). They have great awareness of what they are and aren’t supposed to do. So when they’ve gotten into the trash because it’s so irresistable and we’re out of the room, they then run and hide in their cage until we find the mess and haul them out.

They’re very funny about it. So I’m sure I could make them understand they shouldn’t dig up my bulbs but I’m not sure they won’t anyway. But it’s worth a shot. Or I just replant the front beds where they can’t go.

[Roses0508]

My neighbor has two labs - “the boys” - that’s what I call them. Adorable but a little dingy. My dog is part pit bull and has the typical bull dog goofiness. His name should have been “Duh!”.

At our house the kennel/crate/cage is the safe zone. Felco will run and get in when he is in trouble also. That means that nothing else bad can happen to him while he is so housed. Since he HATES to be separated from us, the most useful punishment is to SHUT him in his kennel for some period of time. He was bolting every time we opened the door. So after every bolt (once we’d recovered him), he was roundly scolded and locked into his kennel for a couple of hours. Everyone once and awhile he looks around like he’s thinking of bolting, but the price is not worth it. He was pretty easy to persuade that he should not be digging in my flowerbeds, but then he really is pretty easily persuaded.

Good luck with your labs. Try to figure out what motivation is most effective and use that. My husband did a lot of dog training, so he usually has helpful ideas. Dogs are all different though.

[Roses0508]

Add me to your ping list please.

Thank you.

[Gabz]

Thank you for that link. I had forgotten about the Garden Web forums because I had lost all my bookmarks awhile back!!!!

[JUMPIN JEHOSPOHAT]

bookmark

[Gabz]

LOL!!! I was just about to ask you if you wanted on when I noticed you weren’t!!! You are now.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Here in Louisiana we have so many weeds that it makes gardening a nightmare. The worst of the worst is nutsedge, which will keep you working the entire growing season. I absolutely hate spending time tilling, using the hoe, or just plain pulling grass and weeds, when I could be doing something more productive. Clean it all out -- spotless -- and 3 days later it's hard to tell you did all of that work. Once the vining plants start to spread, tilling is almost impossible.

So this past year, here is what I experimented with. I bought landscaper's quality landscape fabric and covered my beds. These beds were left over from rowing-up the year before and I did not kill the existing vegetation -- I just laid the fabric over it. This drew criticism from everyone. Most said that the black mulch would prove the death of my plants once the temps reached the usual 100^o that we see here. Others said the nothing would inhibit nutsedge. I too was skeptical, but determined to find some easy weed control.

For my experimental plot, I used 5 rows of 100 feet each. To maximize my area, I placed cattle fence panels upright to run the cucumbers vertically. (BTW, I will NEVER, EVER, plant cucumbers to run on the ground again!) The rows are on 40 inch centers. The landscape fabric is 48" wide and overlapped and pinned in the middles of the rows.

This first photo is very early on in the garden, I had just started putting in the tomato and pepper plants. The tomatoes are on the far right row and the fence panels on the far left-hand row.

This photo was taken about 4-5 weeks later, and is intended to show how the fabric was overlapped and pinned in the middle. Also note that the ends of the rows contain earthen dams in order to facilitate furrow watering.

This photo shows the cucumber plants climbing the fence panels. This is the ONLY way to crow cukes! They climbed the panels perfectly and the cukes were so easy to harvest.

The following photos just show the garden in full production. And you don't see a single weed among the plants!

This year I will plant my entire garden under landscape fabric. The test plot was 500 row feet and the fabric cost $70. I intend to do twice the area this year. While the price may seem high to some ... it is worth each and every penny. I produced thousands of dollars worth of produce with that $70, and I didn't spend a single minute pulling weeds.

But the benefits didn't stop with the lack of weeds ... I saved water because there was little loss to wind and sun evaporation. I increased production because the garden plants were not competing with weeds.

I invite your suggestions and comments.

[Gabz]

I invite your suggestions and comments.

One comment: AWESOME!!!!!!!

I'm looking out the the door to my upstairs deck and can see my "garden" -- I can actually see each section of the black mulch that I left from last year----because it is currently WHITE!!! The 40% chance of rain today has turned into a snow/sleet mixture and definitely not conducive to being outside, let alone even thinking about gardening :(