Posted on 03/17/2017 9:18:45 PM PDT by greeneyes
He doesn’t eat the maise he grows. He just does it because he can and to keep the strain alive. He’s a great gardener.
I don’t know how I’m going to handle a 20 foot tall plant, lol. I thought I was doing well with the 9 foot sunflower plants with 2 foot heads. We get some pretty bad winds in my area out in the country. We had three tornadoes near me on one day three weeks ago.
Looks like my peas survived the overnight lows in the mid-teens the past couple of mornings here in East Tennessee...of course; they’re ‘Russian peas’, so I guess they are used to it. :-)
Russian? Have they hacked your garden too?
Nah...got the peas from Trump. :-)
LOL! :-)
@#$%&**&^%$#@ Weather!!! It’s raining again... YET! We are over 50” with ‘Normal” being 30. Lady Bender did get the strawberry patch (12’ X 15) spaded and I got 2/3 of them planted with 36 plants to go. We have not started a thing in the greenhouse due to this most unusual weather. The temps have been normal 45 nights and 58 by day so I was able to turn the water on for the garden which makes it nice for cleaning tools. I post a couple of photos later...
Daffies finished blooming. Have enough lettuce greens to pick a small salad helping. Pansies blooming, as are dianthus and snap dragons. I have converted the largest planter for vegetables only and can hardly wait to be able to plant tomatoes, cucumbers and egg plant!
Christmas lights. They emit just enough heat to keep the blossoms alive.
Actually get to do some some tilling & chipping this ‘weekend’—I have Sundays and Mondays off. Way too early to think about planting though, other than stuff I opted to Fall plant instead.
I’m using chipped pine cones to help acidify a bit, as well as add organic matter. That’s in addition to the coffee grounds I’ve been using. Unfortunately, I lost my source for these, as the restaurant owner will be using them herself, for her garden. :-(
I have a sweet potato in water in the kitchen to get slips from, if that counts a “Spring planting”. LOL
Garlic is coming up gangbusters; onions not so much yet, except for the Egyptians. Not a strawberry leaf in sight yet, either.
Temps are all over the map: in the past week highs have ranged from mid 30s to 83 today, and everywhere in between, randomly; lows in low teens to mid 40s, as well. By Tuesday, it’s back to freezing overnight, and low to mid 40s for a high, with snow.
The lovely weather this weekend in Central Missouri has caused me to lose my mind.
I got seriously jump-the-gun stoopid yesterday and planted 100 row-feet of potatoes. I know that I shouldn’t be putting spuds out this early, but the moon is right for planting root crops and I didn’t want to wait until late April, so in the ground they went. I’ll either be hero or goat.
Nephew helped me set up some pea fence and seeded ~40’ row of sugar snap peas. We also did one 20’ bed of carrot seed with a few radishes mixed in.
Today we’re going to do another bed of carrots, a bed of beets, and a bed of rutabaga.
The kale I seeded in the cold frame last week has started to germinate.
The freeze we had Tuesday night made a wreck of my orchard trees. Every blossom that was open is dead dead dead. It got down to 15° here, which I would have expected to kill even the buds that hadn’t opened, but new flowers are emerging every day so maybe I’ll get a little bit lucky and still wind up with a peach or two.
Finally getting s few mild days in a row, 40’s here in west Michigan. Daffodills are up - the greens that is - about 4”. Still just doing alfalfa sprouts. Also have 2 pots of tulips indoors - forced in water.
I managed to protect 400 early tomatoes through two nights of 23 and 21 degrees this week in North Alabama. I had about 25 plants that received some minor freeze damage, I will take that in a heartbeat. We have great weather the next several days so I emptied the greenhouses and got everything outside to get some sun and harden off. It’s about to get crazy here with planting, I will post some pics next Friday.
I HURT!!!!!
Had to reseat & rim-seal a tire on the tiller; then tilled about 6-30’ swathes, when the other tire deflated and rolled off it’s rim. GRRRR!
Fixed that, and finished double- tilling a 20 X 30 plot, and a 4’X 30’ swathe between two sets of perennial plantings; and then made about 5 or six increasingly deep passes over a 6’ X 25” patch of transplanted wild red raspberries that never produced an edible fruit the 6 or 7 years they’ve been there.
After that, I rolled out about 130’ of the 330’ roll of 4’ heavy (and is it ever heavy!) field fencing on the outside of the lower side of the garden fence. Got over half of it installed, to repair the damage the elk, and then the deer, did last Fall & Winter. Harder than it sounds, as I ‘m elevating it about a foot and a half off the ground, along the top of the rabbit mesh.
Not all that many years ago, this wouldn’t have bothered me at all.
Some more ibuprofen, and back to bed.
Finished the bach side of the garden fence today, as well as did more tilling. Also got the carrot, turnip, and Chinese cabbage seeds planted. Naturally, I’ll plant more of them later.
The far end of the fence doesn’t need any work, and the front side is in much better shape than the rear was,; but the near end, with the gate, needs the full length of it fixed, so maybe half done.
Light rain tonight, and tomorrow, so should work out well.
I ran across a video making a self-watering seed starter out of a plastic drink bottle. It was on Facebook so getting a link proved problematic (just took me back to the entire page, not that particular post/video). I got to searching around for something similar & found this:
Self-Watering Seed Starter
http://www.homesteadnotes.com/make-self-watering-plant-containers/2/
The idea is the same except for one thing - in the video, a hole was drilled in the bottle cap. A piece of thick yarn was soaked in water, squeezed out & then threaded through the hole, enough to coil around 2-3 times in the bottom of the part that holds the plant. Soil was then put on top of the coiled yarn & that is where seed(s) was planted. The part of the yarn dangling through the hole going the other way went into the water to wick it up into the soil.
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Is this what you saw? There is a video at bottom of page
https://diyallinone.com/2016/12/diy-self-watering-seed-starter-pots/
No, this isn’t the same one, but it’s similar. This one uses a paper towel “wick”. Thanks for the link - with variations of the same idea, you can pick the one(s) you like the best! :-)
Just bought 20 strawberry plants - Eversweet, which takes 100o+ temps, new variety - as GROUND COVER for the extensive rock garden. Harrrrummph. I’ll thwart their efforts to produce berries by pruning the flowers, I want runners to increase cover, and will be pinching berry flowers that escaped my attention on sight.
I will fertilize their planting holes with Espoma’s CitrusTone for avocados and citrus, water in with HasToGrow, mulch with black 5.5PH hardwood mulch, and whatever berries grow, the birds can have them.
By wanting strictly groundcover out of them, they’ll defy me by producing two pints per crown, which I will viciously snip and hurl away from me.
(Y’all think this will work?)
No...
Sounds like a great plan!
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