Consolidated Kansas

[HEChicken]

Hechicken...the stall mas idea should be good....but that will be expensive! Quite the dedication to gardening!

LOL - yep - another reason we haven't done it yet. I figure if I can wait until they are on sale AND I happen to have a 10% off coupon for TSC, that will help a lot. When we worked it out it was going to be around $350-400 before any discounts. But, to have a long-term solution instead of spending $30-50 every so often to renew landscape fabric or other materials, plus not having the take the time to redo it every year or two - that's where the value will come in for us.

 

[Trish44]

My GPs are both spayed so I have not had that issue with them. I had no plan to breed so I wanted them to concentrate on their jobs & not have unwanted puppies either.

 

[chicken danz]

Those with Pyr's..how are they when in heat/
Ours just had her first heat and it was like a fighting pit around here for a few days with the strays showing up!! And she did not run them off!!

Trish the boundary training and rules is what I was referring to. If we let ours roam, she WILL roam!! That seems to get better every month as I work with her.
When we free ranged the birds, she seemed to get bothered when they were out of their "area" and that took awhile to correct! We thought we'd never teach her to quit "chasing" the chickens...turned out she was just "putting them back where they belong". The chickens eat her food all the time, lol...she just lays there and watches them eat it.

Hechicken...the stall mas idea should be good....but that will be expensive! Quite the dedication to gardening!

I live where there aren't any dogs running free nearby, so heat seasons haven't been too bad. We did have one dog that lived about a mile away that kept coming down and eating all my eggs. When my dog came in heat, he was of course very interested but I had my male and there was no way another dog was going to get his woman. I actually accidentally shot that dog. I chased him off a million times and I was sick of him coming in and stealing my eggs then trying to breed my GP. I chased him off one day and he circled around and came back. So I grabbed the rifle as he was running down the field away from me and just shot in his direction without aiming. I thought he was out of range so I was surprised when his back end lifted up off the ground and he yelped. He never came back and I never asked his owners if he made it home or not.
My youngest has been in season three times since I bought her back from Ivywoods. We haven't had any strays at all...Thank heavens.
A GP just takes a while to grow and get over being a puppy. My oldest female has never roamed, and she started working at only about 4-5 month old without another dog around. My male took a full year to even start to work and then my female actually taught him. Cloud, my other female that was killed was trained by my oldest dog as well and started working at about 8 months. So they are all different but I believe that they either have good inbred instincts or not. They are extremely smart which can either work toward them being a great LGD or work against them.
I've had just about every breed of dog it seems and there are no others I admire more than the GPs.
Rooster have you considered a buried boundary fence and a shock collar system for the dog?
Very busy day today. I had to go help move things out of my parents' home. We close on the house Tuesday and there is still tons of stuff that has to be moved yet.

 

[Prairie Fleur]

I don't mind puppy stage too much. They can be a mess but they're puppies after all. I plan to get a couple as soon as I can afford them.
BTW I have a couple of kittens who will make Excellent mousers if anyone needs mousers. Either mama or older siblings are very good mousers. (My matriarch has caught up to 5 mice and brought them to the kitten house and aid them in front of the door for the kittens to eat when I let them out in the morning.) I can't leave any of them out at night anymore or they disappear. I'm dreaming of LGDs...

 

[RoosterLew]

I actually have one of those buried boundry things...used it when I lived in town. I have not had luck with it? My border collie would run then when it was abou to get her she jumped high enough to clear it...funny as all get out, watching a dog Jump an invisible fence. Then our Pit would just tolerate the shock, yelp a it and go on.

Funny you bring up Cats and LGD....our Sizu used to chase our cat to no end, when the Pyr would look at the cat, the cat would hiss and the Pyr kept her distance!

 

[chicken danz]

You need to clip the neck hair shorter where the collar sits so it makes good contact and put the flags up and train them to it on a leash. I don't have one because I put up a hard fence instead. JosieChick uses them very successfully and if she reads this she can sure explain her success with them. I was considering doing 20 acres with it because you don't necessarily have to bury the cable everywhere, but then I got the third dog and decided if I do anything to the back acres I might just put up electric fence. I think brand has something to do with success as well. I can't say much cause I don't own one.
It's going to be a crazy week. I have stuff going on every day but one until next week. I hate that. I feel so overwhelmed. I am most happy when I just do my normal thing at home without other obligations.
I lost another really nice English pullet to the heat day before yesterday. I had fed and watered them and they appeared okay but yesterday morning I found one in a corner in one of the houses. She was just about 6 months old. Why is it always the girls that get overcome? I ran extension cords and rebuilt some fans that had gotten overheated from last year so at least there is fans in some of the houses where I have to keep the birds penned.
I know it was cooler yesterday but the humidity was still insane. I thought it felt awful outside.

 

[cherwill]

I agree with Danz re the Brussels Sprouts. It sounds like they are bolting and once they start to bolt, you really can't do anything to stop them. I had mustard greens and one type of kale that bolted so I pulled out the plants and replanted seeds. Although it is still warm, by the time they germinate and start to grow and get to the point they are mature enough to eat, I'm hoping it will be fall and cool enough that they will just produce edible leaves instead of trying to bolt.

Cherwill, my hat is off to you - that is a huge amount of garden space. Ours is 50' long by 24' wide but the cardboard makes the usable area about 40x16 and I've found even keeping up on the weeds with that amount of space has been a lot of hard work. With all the rain we had this year, the weeds wanted to take off and we had to spend many, many hours out there keeping them under control.

I grew my Cherokee Purples from seed this year - along with all my other tomatoes. The only one I planted from a seedling is called "Mr. Stripey" and it is an heirloom that we saw at Dillons on Mother's Day. DH bought it for me as a Mother's Day gift. I should add that although i started from seed, I did it indoors so it was seedlings I was planting outdoors after last frost. Do you save seeds from your tomatoes? I still have lots of seeds left from this year's planting and since I store them in the fridge, I think they should be fine to use again next year. But I do also plan to save some seeds from my own fruits this year. It would take a lot of organization but I read a blog where the lady saves the seeds from every single thing she cuts into. Then, after they've eaten it, she only dries and saves the seeds from the best-tasting fruits. In other words, if she cuts into 6 of the same variety of tomatoes, she saves seeds from each of them but discards those from the 5 that weren't quite as tasty as the 6th. I can't imagine how you set them aside and remember which seeds came from which fruit!!! Her opinion is that not all fruits are created equal even coming off the same plant. I can see where that would be true but I don't think my taste buds are refined enough to pick up subtle differences like that!

I did consider that but haven't had a lot of success with it in the past as far as lasting for long. What we are considering will be expensive but very long-term so it might be worth it in the end, to not have to redo it every other year or so. We're considering using stall mats. Each one can be cut in half and laid butted up against each other. We were thinking to put down either black plastic or landscape fabric under them to prevent weeds growing up through the seams between mats but the mats being there long-term will help protect whatever we use under it so it should last years too. The mats will stay in place permanently as the tiller can't get that close to the fence anyway, so we'll just till between the mats and leave them there. Those stall mats are rubber so they can stand up to sun exposure as well as rain, snow etc, so I think they are a good option. They are really heavy and difficult to maneuver but if we can get them on sale and then just make a day of it getting them in place, it will be a one-time thing and then hopefully we'll never have to worry about it again. They'll make an awesome foot path around the garden area too. It won't be happening any time soon as DH is too busy at work now so we still have time to think of the "cons" but right now that's the plan.

It is a lot of garden, but I have help. DH almost always goes out there with me, and my aunt will come out if I call her. We share the garden with her, but she doesn't really do much maintenance unless we call. We don't call too often because we usually just stop out there when we're out doing other things.

I will be saving seeds from the Cherokee Purples and the Sun Golds, If I'd known I couldn't find any last year, I'd have saved them from that first plant. I plant mostly Romas, but I plant a lot of them. I start those from seed inside, weeks before I want to plant them outside. That friend of yours has a great idea and a lot of dedication, but I'd end up with my seeds all mixed up!

Since we don't own our garden plots, and they are all tilled by the manager at the end of the season and the beginning of the next season, we can't do anything permanent. I really like the stall mats idea. It would be expensive, but it would be a one-time expense and could save a lot of labor. I'd certainly consider it if I had my own land to garden on.

 

[chicken danz]

Hey Cherwill. I used to build garden ponds in my side business. I used EDPM Rubber. It's pricy because it has to be a fish grade for fish, but you could buy rubber roofing material in place of it for gardening. It is like 45 mil thick and heavy enough it will stay in place. It will last 50 years in a pond so I am sure it's life would be very close to that in a garden. You can cut it to size so you could cut it just wide enough for between the rows. You wouldn't have to stake it down. And at the end of the season you could just roll up your pieces and store them until the next spring. I suppose if there were a really sharp rock you could penetrate it by walking on it a lot but it's not going to rip apart either. Now that I think about that I would use some of mine for the same, but mine is the fish grade kind and some day I may want to build another pond or two. I think the roofing companies also sell it in different colors if you didn't want black. Could be worth checking into. The cardboard worked well for me last year. This year I would be lucky to have the time to even put some down.

 

[tweetybaby2005]

Cherwill... I'm not sure about saving the seeds of the Sungold F1 because it is a hybrid, the offspring may not be true to it. That was what I was told back when I had the seeds. The 2nd year sure didn't come out the same for me.

It was definitely a tad cooler yesterday but the 0.05" of rain added to the already high humidity. I think today's humidity will be low and temps in the high 80s. I certainly like it.

I'll be pretty busy for the next 2 weeks trying to get some projects done in the chicken pen/yard. It will be very nice once I get it all cleaned up and the trampoline pen built for the birds.

On a sad note. My old Sheltie has been having some health issues lately. He is going on 11. His eye sight started to deteriorate a couple of years ago and now his hearing is slowly gone as well. He has been vomiting on and off these last 2 weeks and recently can't quite control his bladder. He started having non-cancerous cysts on his chest and then I found a much bigger one on his rib. His vet did a smear test and concluded that it was non-cancerous. I'm not sure if it is just him getting old or what. I'll be taking him to the vet this week to see if maybe he just has minor infection that can be fixed. He still enjoys life but he doesn't tolerate the GPs when he has to go outside to do his business. He would much rather stay inside and sleep all day. I will be keeping a close eye on him to make sure his quality of life is not compromised. I brought him home after I lost my Schnauzer over 10 years ago, right after my daughter was born. He is my baby and it will be a sad day the day he has to cross the rainbow bridge.

 

[Trish44]

I actually have one of those buried boundry things...used it when I lived in town. I have not had luck with it? My border collie would run then when it was abou to get her she jumped high enough to clear it...funny as all get out, watching a dog Jump an invisible fence. Then our Pit would just tolerate the shock, yelp a it and go on.

Funny you bring up Cats and LGD....our Sizu used to chase our cat to no end, when the Pyr would look at the cat, the cat would hiss and the Pyr kept her distance!

My GPs love the cats, you see them laying on top of them in winter keeping warm. The GPs will lay out in the snow, it doesn't bother them at all & the cats just use them for big cushy, warm beds.
My quote didn't come through, I'm sorry about your Sheltie, it's so hard when pets get older. It's such a balance between quality of life & longevity. You always want them to enjoy life as long as they can.

I had one casualty of the heat the other day when it was 104 degrees, I lost my favorite New Hampshire pullet. She was fine when I did chores before I left to go to Wichita & gone when I returned. She was a beautiful bird & I just hated losing her. This heat has been hard on my birds, I'm sure they will feel relieved this week for it to be a bit cooler.