What did you do in the garden today?

[Pensmaster]

Oak no good either then. I have all the wrong kind

 

[CapricornFarm]

I am putting off going out again. Need to water the pumpkin seedlings and feed the rabbits again. He either eats it all or throws it out. I am thinking of calling him Trouble.

 

[Pensmaster]

today I didn't do much,
took the tiller and went over one of the raised beds to soften it up for planting strawberries.
that didn't go too well. the spot I chose is very dry and hard.
I ended up just re-making the raised bed with the tractor.
I am trying todownsize my chicken flock.
that is not going well , either.
A gal we know dropped off 2 roosters.
then today the same gal went out of the chicken hobby and dropped off 6 laying hens.
anybody need a rooster? FREE ? I have 5 ...

I had to replant my beets. it looks like some are coming up.

I luck out every couple of years when Asplundh trims the trees along all the electric lines. they chip the wood and always need a close place to dump the chips. it doesn't happen every year, so I make a hog of myself and get as many loads as I can.
right now I have about 40 cubic yards of it piled up..
I got it last year. it is rotting up nicely.
there are a lot of uses for wood chips..

...........jiminwisc......

I'm in the same chicken boat. Really need to move a few to camp fridge keep getting side tracked. And my neighbor just brought me a rooster.

 

[jvls1942]

the best wood chips are the FREE ones.
the ones I get are everything mixed.
much of it is green when it is chopped up so that helps it decompose ..
after 3 years or more, my pile will look like black dirt.
I use it in the winter in the chicken coop as the first deep layer on top of the concrete floor
it insulates and helps drain any spilled water.
my coop stays dry all winter.
I fill in holes around the yard. use it instead of dirt. I once filled in a 150 foot long ditch along the driveway and made a nice slope that grass grew out of. I can ride my mower up and down that slope.

too hot to be butchering chickens now. but you just wait until September...

.......jiminwisc.......

 

[Egg-citable]

I had started some Delecata squash and Zucchini in my green house and trans planted them into the garden. They took off really good but my surprise all the plants turned out to be Zucchini! That's ok I will dehydrate them and make Zucchini chips.

 

[lazy gardener]

I use the Back to Eden method. GIANT crops, no watering and very little weeding. No digging up the garden in the spring... I love love LOVE this method![/QUOTE]

Annie, tell me please, how long you have been doing BTE? I started in my garden last fall. Right now, I'm a combination of wide beds, and BTE. So, still in the building process. Using fertilizer to help balance out the nitrogen. Have been doing deep mulch in gardening for 30 + years, have been working the current site for about 6 years. Sandy loam with good sun exposure. Tell us what your soil was like before you started, and what the progress was in your garden comparing the first year of BTE to subsequent years.

Oak no good either then. I have all the wrong kind

While "they say" that certain kinds of wood are better than others, IMO, any kind of wood is better than no wood. I use soft wood in my HK, b/c I'm not going to burn that. If I have decent hard wood, that is going into my wood stove and not being turned into mulch or used in HK. And, you can always add other materials. I lay down cardboard or news paper, follow up with leaves, if I have them, and then finish off with chips. I'd also use a combination of leaves and grass clippings, or even hay under the chips. What ever you have is better than nothing.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I agree. If you have oak wood chips, just use them. I've used oak stump grindings and they worked great. "Best" vs "worst" is just a matter of how quickly they do the job but all of them do WORK, jut some work better.

Who cares if it's perfect? You're working with living, adaptive things. Just stick em in and it'll be fine.
If you are only going to use the very best stuff, you might as well give up. It's gonna be forever before you find something that's perfect. It's all gonna be dusty, dirty, rotting things in the end.

I would just avoid certain specific plants. Pine has a LOT of acidic oil in it, cedar kills beneficial insects, eucalyptus and walnut has specific chemicals that retards plant growth and can even kill them.

Anything else will function just fine. Just some will break down faster. But use whatever.
PS. The most effective thing to use is poplar sawdust. But the best is whatever you've got that won't kill your plants.

 

[Lazy Farmer]

I am putting off going out again. Need to water the pumpkin seedlings and feed the rabbits again. He either eats it all or throws it out. I am thinking of calling him Trouble.View attachment 1078987

 

[Pensmaster]

That was an awesome video on BTE covering gardening. Definitely going to get started with it. I compost a lot here but this is so much easier.

 

[NanaKat]

I agree. If you have oak wood chips, just use them. I've used oak stump grindings and they worked great. "Best" vs "worst" is just a matter of how quickly they do the job but all of them do WORK, jut some work better.

Anything else will function just fine. Just some will break down faster. But use whatever.

Hard wood chips take longer to break down so I use them in paths in the 20 x16 bed. Like carbon in the compost pile, adding greens to the chips helps speed up the process. The composting process uses up nitrogen in the soil. Therefore putting the hardwood chips in a compost pile slows down the process.
Soft wood chips break down more quickly. These I use for mulch in the beds....especially if they have been used in the chick and duck brooders.