in this random rambling thread we post random pictures

[BelovedBirds]

 

[Isadora]

I don't use herbicides. My weed killer is goats and geese. I tear out the grass by hand and take it to them, they eat it. We have good, non-poisonous grass.
Sometimes I get tired and then I let the geese on the path, they come and pluck everything there themselves. But you can’t let them into the garden, because they pluck not only weeds )))

I don't use herbicides either. I have small children, not to mention all the animals, running around so it would worry me to use chemicals of that caliber. I mix up a gallon of vinegar, a cup of salt, and a tablespoon of dish soap and spray that on the weeds.

 

[azurbanclucker]

 

[Cold Canadian]

The soil here is heavy and clayey, if planted in it, potatoes will not yield a crop, i.e. it can be harvested by volume exactly as much as it was planted (by weight). But if you make such bulk beds from old manure, sand and ash, then potatoes grow quite well. It’s customary here, we don’t use herbicides, and in order to suppress the growth of weeds in some places where something is planned in the future (flowers, trees, bushes), we plant potatoes there for 1-2 years. The soil is loose and well dug up.
Sometimes it makes sense to drive with a cultivator, but I'm too lazy to do it, I usually get by with just planting potatoes. In addition, the old bedding from the stables is replete with rotten hay, it can wrap around the cultivator mechanisms, which is inconvenient. But potatoes grow well in such a bed, there is even a way to plant potatoes under old hay.
The only incidental detail is that my goats often eat barley and oats, they are not always completely digested in their stomachs, and then these grains begin to germinate in this manure. Considering that chickens often spill wheat, it turns out that the main weeds in the garden are wheat, oats and barley))) I don’t weed them out, they start to ear and then goats eat them.
Due to the amount of grain, I have to periodically organize a war with rats that come from an abandoned garbage dump, located about 8-10 kilometers from my house. Previously, a lot of garbage was transported there from Moscow, then some minister decided to stop this business, some sorting plants were built, and there was less garbage. Unfortunately, Moscow produces a lot of garbage.
When they stopped bringing new garbage to the landfill, the rats became very upset and began to ply the neighboring villages in search of food. I had to catch them, poison them and even shoot them. Now the situation with rats has become calmer, there are either almost none, or very few. I hope this will continue, because I want to sow sunflowers, and rats love to eat them more than anything.

I seldom use manure but if i can i prefer horse or sheep manure just because i find they do a better job of digesting the seeds which if i use cow manure i always had a weed problem .I have changed my garden location a few times simply due to soil conditions , now i have a very sandy location which is great as weeds just pull out and with a bit of compost now and then it really produces well .............here we just have issues with Raccoons or Deer , the occasional skunk has shown up but for the better part it's only in fall when the vegetables are being harvested .Right now the problem is moisture ...........way to much rain so far that i can't even start , last year i was planting but this year who knows .........

 

[Pasha838]

I seldom use manure but if i can i prefer horse or sheep manure just because i find they do a better job of digesting the seeds which if i use cow manure i always had a weed problem .I have changed my garden location a few times simply due to soil conditions , now i have a very sandy location which is great as weeds just pull out and with a bit of compost now and then it really produces well .............here we just have issues with Raccoons or Deer , the occasional skunk has shown up but for the better part it's only in fall when the vegetables are being harvested .Right now the problem is moisture ...........way to much rain so far that i can't even start , last year i was planting but this year who knows .........

Here, foxes and stray orphan dogs sometimes annoy me, trying to get into poultry houses and kill and eat someone. But most often this problem is not very critical, because at one time I strengthened these buildings. Of the wild animals, I have only seen moose here, but they are rare here, for some reason they live a little south of Moscow, and I live north. I have also seen wild boar droppings, but I have never seen a wild boar here (and, to be honest, I am not very eager to have such an encounter, because wild boars are usually large and can be aggressive).
There is almost no pronounced poisonous grass here, occasionally nightshade sprouts, imported with hay from somewhere in the southern regions, but it does not stay here for a long time, it grows like a weed only in greenhouses, and if it is removed, it will no longer grow. The only poisonous plant here is yellow buttercups, but if they are cut and dried well in the sun, they practically lose their poisonous properties.
Otherwise, all the grass here is very fodder, so I don’t fight weeds much, more often I keep a rather unkempt garden, which I weed when there is a lot of grass there. I just rip it out so that it does not interfere with cultivated plants, put it in a wheelbarrow and take it to the geese, the geese love to eat grass. The paths between the beds are often overgrown with me, but I don’t even weed out there, but just periodically mow this grass with a scythe, sickle, or a long knife that looks like a Cuban machete. I give the cut grass to the goats.
There are no raccoons here, and for some reason there are no snakes at all here, there are only very small harmless lizards. On the other side of the Moscow region there are snakes - snakes, as well as poisonous vipers, but here in 25 years I have never seen a single one. Either the local hills are too dry, or the soil freezes too much in winter, or it is because there are many birds of prey here like kites, only I forgot the name of these birds. There is a bird that looks like a kite, but it does not hunt chickens, but mainly catches mice, sometimes rats, and possibly young snakes. There are a lot of these birds here, they constantly dive down to grab a careless mouse.At the same time, they are not at all interested in young chickens. What can not be said about magpies and ravens - these birds are very annoying and dangerous, and I always keep young poultry in barred rooms.
There is almost no horse manure here, there is only one horse in all the village where about 2000-3000 people live, it is some kind of small horse, about the size of a young donkey, but I know for sure that this is not a pony. The owner of the horse earns by riding small children on it.
Someday in the future, I also want to buy a horse, but I am not a rich person, and horses are quite expensive here.
Moreover, I have no experience in working with horses. I'm thinking of taking a simple path - I'll just buy for a pittance some very old horse, written off from some Moscow hippodrome, and I'll walk it, keeping it just like that, for the sake of manure. I heard that it is good to grow champignons on horse manure. In other words, I have been wanting to implement this idea for ten years, but so far there is no way. After I have had some experience with this very cheap horse, I might think of getting another, decent one.
P.S. And so - well, it’s customary for us to look at what year, if the summer is cold and rainy, we plant more cabbage, because cabbage tolerates cold more easily and loves watering. But it is easier for me to reason, because I am not a farmer, I am not bound by any obligations, and everything that I grow, I eat myself, i.e. I can plant anything, I don’t have any contracts, according to which I will have to grow potatoes, or cabbage, or, of course, wheat. The place where I live is called the "Risk Farming Zone", where the harvest can be unpredictable, the summer can be dry, and then it will be difficult to grow cabbage, or very cold, because of which corn can fail. Usually only onions grow stably and reliably here. Therefore, farmers from our area do not grow anything but onions, but at the same time they are harvested by truckloads of onions.

 

[Kiki]

 

[pertnear09]

View attachment 3104689

Mighty pretty

 

[cavemanrich]

 

[Cynthia12]

View attachment 3095326

This mommy looks so happy.

 

[Cynthia12]

View attachment 3100457

Bought me some today.