TO LINK BACK TO THE MAY 15-21 GARDENING THREAD
Posted on 05/22/2021 6:18:16 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
It’s been another week of wet weather here in Central Missouri, and it’s looking like the weekend will be a washout as well.
My tomato plants are not happy right now. They need some sunshine and a towel job. I also see an application or two of Dragoon Dust in their future, if they don’t drown first.
Pepper plants are looking a bit pale too, and there’s no relief in sight. Forecast is for this wet pattern to continue through Memorial Day weekend.
Everything else looks great. Squash is up, cantelopes are up, pole beans are up. I have more stuff to plant, and I need to pull a few weeds, but can’t do any of it in ankle-deep mud.
My yard has needed mowing for a week. It’s going to be a jungle by the time I’m able to get on it with the Kubota.
I put my tomatoes and peppers in on Monday and they are already bigger than they were.
However, we NEED rain very badly.
Central Connecticut -
Most of our vegetables are in the ground - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, zuccinni, carrots, radishes, spinach, lettuce, green beans.
Garlic up and almost ready to harvest (June).
Strawberries, raspberries, and gooseberries ready to pop.
Just put in another 8x4 box garden for more herbs.
Also picked up two new chickens to replace the one we lost at Easter (no, we didn't eat her, they are layin' hens. With names.)
I just planted a rhododendron that color.
I love them.
Our garlic is huge this year and everything is growing well so far.
I have also planted lots of herbs, both for using and for repellant.
If I spend many hours reading on the web, my eyes need a break so I watch videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHzA9w0b7io
Grasslands, Livestock & Hope with Allan Savory (1:49 long)
Allan Savory is from South Africa and has a different theory about climate change. Basically that for thousands of years, bad agricultural practices have caused desertification and as he put it, he walks barefoot on his property but can’t walk in the desert part of it without burning his feet but as soon as he walks into a shaded area or where there’s something growing, he can feel the coolness under his feet. Deserts are hot, plain and simple and growing in size all over the world.
The middle east was lush thousands of years ago. Beijing gets dumped with tons of sand every day due to them having created deserts with bad ag practices. Mr Savory has turned desert back to grasslands in Africa and tutored others to do the same in other places. His method? Animals, lots of them and the bigger the better. There is a seed bank even in desert sands and the animals stir them up, plus add manure.
The video is long but worth watching imho. It gave me some ideas that will save me a lot more time than that on my property and allow me to build soil instead of losing soil.
Here’s a little shorter video from Greg Judy of Missouri on how he became more profitable while working less using some of Allan’s techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPmYlRMuXo8
Never mow and never burn. He quit using Ivermec years ago. He doesn’t plant seed. He doesn’t use hay rings. He always unrolls round bales. Instead of the cattle standing in one spot in their own manure, they keep moving. A large area will get seeded by unrolling. A layer of biomass is added and the ground or soil is covered.
The only thing he uses a tractor for now is to plow the snow off to unroll round bales of hay in winter. They use 4 wheelers for everything else and since they’re lighter, there’s less soil compaction Many years, the cows can still eat what’s growing out of the ground and he mostly uses hay for seeding and increasing the variety of grasses, forbes etc.
(Scroll down! RESOURCE STARTS AT POST 114 of the Jan 9-15 Thread!)
“Walk in your neighborhood to see what grows- and make plant selections based on that. It’s worked very well for me.”
Excellent advice!
When I came back from a trip to Hawaii, I wanted TROPICAL! So, I built a little garden of all tropical plants, but of course, I knew it would just be a one time thing. ;)
I LOVE the look of an English Garden, and some things will do OK for me, but I’ll never be able to achieve the perfect Boxwood Hedge up here on the Frozen Tundra!
I hate that some stores will sell anything to anyone for their landscape, too! I’m all for Free Enterprise, but at least be honest about it!
‘Those plants are fine; but they’re just a Patio Plant to enjoy all Summer.’
And don’t get me started on people wanting to buy poisonous plants on purpose! ;)
I see it! Everything looks so nice! Jealous of your Rhodie!
I’m not posting any pictures until I get more mowing and weeding done. ;)
You should’ve just planted rice and melons this season! Too bad we never have any certain way of knowing what lies ahead, weather-wise. ;)
I have almost all of the mowing done; it took me most of the week to do it, between rain showers, too - but we only ended up with 3/4” of rain - which I’ll TAKE at this point!
I have SO much work to do in the garden that I’m not going to do anything else today - other than go collect my new PUPPY! Yay! :)
When I took the garden picture I had been pulling stray grass out of the iris/flower garden. Got 90% done so I did not take a picture of that. Irises just getting started blooming, most in spike It has been hot and dry here. We have a white rhodo too but it is a bit behind. I use Miracid every 3 weeks or so from spring to fall.
Not to hijack the thread, but I see a bluebird house in the first photo? Any nesters?
We have 5 baby bluebirds that hatched on Wednesday or Thursday this week. I hope to get shots of them fledging in a couple of weeks.
Getting rather dry here. I was mowing last week & kicking up dust clouds that looked like a Sahara dust storm!
Last night was the 2nd fire pit night. Going along nicely, when there was suddenly an awful lot of smoke - I was trying to figure out what I’d put on the fire that was smoking so badly .... realized that the wood chips UNDER the fire pit had gotten so hot, they were glowing like embers ... and smoking. I had a 5 gallon bucket of water nearby - tossed some under the pit & kept on going. I’ll put a large piece of slate we have down to prevent that from happening in the future. Cool night, half moon lighting up the fields, saw 2 shooting stars - gorgeous!
Waiting for my first great-nephew to arrive (have 2 great-nieces already) .... labor starting/stopping for the last 3 days. Hospital sent mama home to wait ... he should arrive this weekend!
Nice, yes we have 2 boxes and have seen 2 pairs this year .One built a nest and then abandoned it, some wrens tried to move in and we foiled that, now the bluebirds are back looking more serious. Wrens are terrible to bluebirds. I’m guessing you are more south than we are in Michigan. Congrats on your bluebird chicks I ordered some dried mealworms on ebay for when ours have chicks to feed. We do have lots of bugs around but why not spoil them! We also have nesting tree swallows in 2 nests on either side of our barn. They eat lots of mosquitos.
Our neighbor rolls out the big bales of Timothy Grass for his horses and they replant the entire pasture for him! :)
Quite brilliant, actually.
Many years ago, I had a fenced-in area that I planted with mostly strawberries and garlic. Then a fungus wiped out the strawberries, and the weeds in the garlic patch were running circles around me, and I couldn’t even find the garlic plants anymore, so I just kind of gave up on that patch.
This year I decided to plant apple trees in that area. But when I cleared away enough of the brush to see through, I found the place COVERED in garlic! It seems at some point they decided to fight back. Big clumps of garlic, growing so thick the weeds couldn’t get through!
I pulled a few up to use as spring garlic, but left the rest alone. I’m thinking I might just let them keep growing like that, and only take from the edges. I like food that doesn’t need tending!
As an added bonus, I also found 2 strawberry plants that somehow survived both the disease and the 4 years of neglect that they’ve been through. And a clump of oregano I planted last year that just keeps getting bigger!
I’m still planting my apple trees inside that fence. I just need to be careful so they don’t shade everything out.
I haven’t been able to till my field yet. I still have half a trellis left to take down. Then I need to till 3 times, with a few days between, to control the weeds. Then I can finally start to plant! Some of the plants in my starter trays are getting impatient, I had to repot 6 of the squash already. Others aren’t sure they want to grow yet, I have a melon seedling that seems to be stuck with its nose just barely out of the dirt. It hasn’t moved in 3 days.
Chickens are going gangbusters. We currently have 4 dozen eggs in the fridge! Mom is on a diet that involves intermittent fasting, and it’s helping her a lot! But she was the one who ate 3-4 eggs a day, so they’re kind of piling up now. This week I got a bottle of something called “egg cleanser” in case I decide to try selling some.
The heat and humidity are getting bad. I may need to switch to a nocturnal schedule soon.
Yes, I live in central Indiana. My bluebird antagonists are House Sparrows, so I’ve put out 4 houses for them to choose from. Usually the bluebirds pick a certain one, but this year the Sparrows started building there. I keep taking out their nest, but they build new ones back. You’d think they’d take the hint. Anyway, Billy and Betty Bluebird (I name most all of the birds I have regularly) chose a different house next that one this year. I have successfully had bluebird babies the last 3 years, and hope they keep choosing one of the 4 houses I offer. My home is in a semi-rural area, just on the outskirts of a small town. I feed the bluebirds mealworms year round, and they visit daily except during when they are teaching the kids where the regular insects are. Then they come back to the feeders after about 6 weeks off. They stay throughout the winter so I’m lucky.
For a little while, I was tossing bale after bale in the same spot. When I cleaned up the piles a couple of days ago that I had raked up 1-2 months ago, I found a bunch of 1/4" x 6" earth worms in them. The biggest worm I'd seen before that was 1/8" x 3-4" or about half size. The very bottom 1-2" layer right on top of the soil, actually looked like soil. They were eating hay and pooping soil.
I took all the piles I had and spread them about 3" thick in an area where nothing was growing except rocks. The rocks grown from flush with the ground to sticking up 3". In other words, I lost 3" of humus and top soil which happens wherever I disturb the soil. It's real bad around the perimeter of the fence where I drove the tractor over it dozens of times while building the fence. I need to get a chipper/shredder so that when I thin out the trees, I can chip the branches and mulch the rocky places with them, then place half bales on top and let the goats eat and spread them. All that placing of bales will be when there's not much for the goats to eat of course.
I've got 3-4 acres of fairly flat land with 1-2 foot of good top soil and the other 10+ acres is hilly and rocky. Gotta be careful in my transformation from forest else I'll just have rock. Some places will stay forest and the rest I'll thin out just enough to get enough sun to grow grasses, forbs, weeds etc. Keeping all the big acorn dropping oaks and plan to get pigs. Someday I'll have enough cleared to roll out the round bales. Need to make a custom bale trailer for my tiny tractor so I can get them on the back forty.
I'm watching Kiss the Ground, a documentary along the lines of the videos I linked to, narrated by Woody Harrelson of all people. All these new generation farmers believe in climate change but don't necessarily believe in living like we're back in the stone age to fight it. Some are taking over the family farm but they're not putting up solar panels. They just quit using the tractor, plowing and seeding all the time and are trying to mimic nature, moving animals across the land quickly, grazing 1/3 of the way down instead of down to 2" stubble, not brush hogging, trying to let the animals eat year round without hay as much as possible, rolling it out when they do etc. It seems to work.
Nice you have had success! We have no sparrows hardly at all. Just the stinkin’ wrens, nasty birds.
I’ve eaten laying hens. With names. ;)
Fond memory? I grew up in inner-city Milwaukee, WI. My Grandma watched me during the day while my folks both worked. Going to the Municipal Market (Farmer’s Market that was open all the time) with Grandma was always a treat, especially when she’d buy a live chicken.
“Now don’t get too attached because we’re having roast chicken for supper!”
You can take the girl off the farm, but...
Miss you, Grandma! *HEART*
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