BYC gardening thread!!

[chickenboy190]

I'm different, so what.

It's cool! I say it too.

 

[SunnySkies]

I paid my neighbor $15 for my straw round bale and it was huge.

My hay bales were $40 for 800 pound round bales, but I had to drive 40 minutes away to get them.That was the cheapest I found them this year; average price was $60. Last year they were asking $100 a round bale!

That will probably happen here later this year.

$40 gets you a 400 lb bale. $55 gets me a 700 lb bale. $65 would get me an 800 lb bale, but I'd have to drive an hour each way. My two hay guys are 40 minutes away, one west and one north. I'm planning to keep the horses off the pastures until after we can hay in early June and see if my neighbor will cut it and bale it for us. He has cows, though, which means his hay isn't very good and I can't buy it from him. He baled wet this spring.

I already used two round bales on my garden and need 5 more. Argh. Another reason to go till-free...makes mulch last longer.

My garden is covered in snow right now, it's snowing hard today, and I'm kind of glad I don't have any winter crops out there.

 

[urbanchange90]

After much research ill be doing deep raised beds this year. I am following the vegetable growers bible volume 2

 

[marktoo]

The way the rain situation is going in California, I may have to fore go the row crops & just try to keep my my perennials alive. Generally it seems that abundant rain seasons follow bad fire seasons but this is not proving out thus far...it's setting up to be another dry year.

 

[Allysha1990]

You should look into doing hugelkultur mounds! That is what my boyfriend and I are going to build in the spring

 

[lazy gardener]

RE: Hugelkulture. Allysha, I'd heard the term before but not very familiar with it, so.... thank you very much, you've sent me on an extended bunny trail researching the topic. I love to experiment, have lots of downed and rotting trees, but without some heavy equipment the standard hugelkulture mound is not happening here... So, here's my experiment for garden season 2014: "chicken litter hugelkulture hybrid". I'll take all the litter out of my coop, make a raised hugelkulture bed, covered over with soil from the adjacent pathways, and see how well it will cook/produce. Could be quite interesting. I've long thought that the nay-sayers who say to never use wood chips in the garden b/c they'll rob nitrogen from the soil... are missing something. Wood rots, and feeds soil microorganisms, just takes longer to do so. Next topics for experimentation: home made bio char, and bone char.

 

[Allysha1990]

Awesome We don't have any machinery either, but I have a strong boyfriend haha! We dragged a bunch of logs to the path through our back pasture so we can easily collect them in the spring. Can't wait to build them

 

[lazy gardener]

Between ageing bodies, neither my husband or I are up to the task, nor is he interested in my granola bent! He does the occasional eye roll, helps me when a task is beyond my physical ability, and has great mechanical, electrical knowledge as well as being well educated in building design, so, I present him with what I'm trying to accomplish, then he rolls his eyes, rolls the subject around in his head for a bit and comes up with a plan that has me saying: "DUH, why didn't I think of that!" We've got -18 F temps coming, with 12 - 18" of snow this weekend, so I'm hoping to get the coop cleaned out before the storm hits or temps get too cold.

Depending on how big a mound you're planning to build, you might want to beg, borrow, or steal some heavy equipment. Tell me where you're going to put it, how big you're planning, how it will be oriented in relation to the compass, on flat land, any wet areas to deal with?? Let me live your project vicariously, and drool from a safe distance!

 

[Timskins]

I'm looking for some suggestions on places to buy organic/non gmo heirloom seeds. I'm in Phoenix, Az but will probably have to buy online.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[mlongworth]

My favorite places for non gmo are bountiful gardens and baker creek.