((Serious Gardening))

[NanaKat]

We love our raised beds. I keep a piece of 2 x 12 x 18 and lay it on the edge to use as a seat. 16 of our beds are 4 x 16. We set 3 t-posts in 8 of our beds and then hung cattle panels on those. I can use them for peas as well as tie up the tomato and pepper plants to them for support. Compost is added each year as mulch and then turned in when a new crop is planted. It helps to add humus to the soil.

 

[happyhensny]

We love our raised beds. I keep a piece of 2 x 12 x 18 and lay it on the edge to use as a seat. 16 of our beds are 4 x 16. We set 3 t-posts in 8 of our beds and then hung cattle panels on those. I can use them for peas as well as tie up the tomato and pepper plants to them for support. Compost is added each year as mulch and then turned in when a new crop is planted. It helps to add humus to the soil.

I ordered more wood for 2 more beds. My super saw mill got the wood cut and ready in a day. I won't have time to get there till tomorrow evening though. Then I need to order some soil to fill them.

 

[sumi]

I've tried raised beds, but now have sunken ones which I fill with water in the mornings. It works better for us. The heat over summer is too much and I don't want to stand in the sun watering mid-day.
Luckily winter's coming now by us, so it's time for winter veg and all day in the garden. I love winter gardening! I've planted cauliflower and cabbage in seed trays and a lot of onions. I got some carrots going too and we planted some potatoes in an old tin bath. DH planted some very early peas, which surprised us by coming up and looking quite happy in spite of the heat. My tomatoes are still doing very well, but we have a bit of a mouse problem, so I have to watch and pick them the moment they start turning red, instead of letting them ripen on the plant, which I prefer.

 

[happyhensny]

We built the other 2 beds now. They do look quite nice, can't wait till they are full of delicious veggies! Started with the fence posts today. DH found a pile of locust posts at the dump the other day. We will be recycling and using them along with some old field fencing I found behind the barn. Hoping to have time tomorrow to get some carrots, peas and spinach in under covers. Farmers Almanac said they can go in now in my area.

 

[CaroleM]

Our hens love my raised bed - as a dust bath!!!!!!!!!

I have a question and all answers will be appreciated - we live on the side of an old quarry, have a view over the valley and onto Dartmoor of 45 miles on a clear day (not bad for England, since we are only a little country) and the ground slopes at 45 degrees to the vertical. Bungalow is at the top. Having set the scene - here comes the question - any one got ideas for getting rid of mares tail (aka horsetail) a pernicious weed with roots that can go down 5 meters + we have a real problem with brambles? Due to Stephen's stroke he no longer is able to do the heavy graft and things have got rather out of hand, so despite my own physical issues, it is up to me to get it sorted.

I did arrange for a guy to come to clear the worst of it for £600 cash, but the evening before he rang to say he actually wanted £1450. I was very polite but suggested he need not bother to turn up - he took the hint! Well, that was his loss. However it has given me the push I needed to get things sorted myself - slowly and a bit at a time. We do have lovely fruit trees, apples, pears, plums and a cherry that the birds always get to before me, so it's not such a disaster area as it sounds. Any idea will be welcomed. Thank you.

 

[TarainNC]

Our hens love my raised bed - as a dust bath!!!!!!!!!

I have a question and all answers will be appreciated - we live on the side of an old quarry, have a view over the valley and onto Dartmoor of 45 miles on a clear day (not bad for England, since we are only a little country) and the ground slopes at 45 degrees to the vertical. Bungalow is at the top. Having set the scene - here comes the question - any one got ideas for getting rid of mares tail (aka horsetail) a pernicious weed with roots that can go down 5 meters + we have a real problem with brambles? Due to Stephen's stroke he no longer is able to do the heavy graft and things have got rather out of hand, so despite my own physical issues, it is up to me to get it sorted.

I did arrange for a guy to come to clear the worst of it for £600 cash, but the evening before he rang to say he actually wanted £1450. I was very polite but suggested he need not bother to turn up - he took the hint! Well, that was his loss. However it has given me the push I needed to get things sorted myself - slowly and a bit at a time. We do have lovely fruit trees, apples, pears, plums and a cherry that the birds always get to before me, so it's not such a disaster area as it sounds. Any idea will be welcomed. Thank you.

Is it possible for you to get some goats or just borrow some
temporarily to help clear out the brush and brambles?

 

[happyhensny]

Our hens love my raised bed - as a dust bath!!!!!!!!!  I have a question and all answers will be appreciated - we live on the side of an old quarry, have a view over the valley and onto Dartmoor of 45 miles on a clear day (not bad for England, since we are only a little country) and the ground slopes at 45 degrees to the vertical.  Bungalow is at the top.  Having set the scene - here comes the question - any one got ideas for getting rid of mares tail (aka horsetail) a pernicious weed with roots that can go down 5 meters + we have a real problem with brambles? Due to Stephen's stroke he no longer is able to do the heavy graft and things have got rather out of hand, so despite my own physical issues, it is up to me to get it sorted. 


I did arrange for a guy to come to clear the worst of it for £600 cash, but the evening before he rang to say he actually wanted £1450.  I was very polite but suggested he need not bother to turn up - he took the hint!  Well, that was his loss.  However it has given me the push I needed to get things sorted myself - slowly and a bit at a time.  We do have lovely fruit trees, aples, pears, plums and a cherry that the birds always get to before me, so it's not such a disaster area as it sounds.  Any idea will be welcomed.  Thank you.

I know that my goats love to eat that king of stuff. Here in the US I have heard of people renting goats to browse an area to clear it of plants and brambles. Know anyone that has some goats?

 

[CaroleM]

Thanks for the suggestions about goats. I had thought of that, but our 'lovely' neighbour vetoed that one. Complained they would smell - well compared to the stink of his cigerettes they would be fragrance personified - he's a right royal pain in the a..., only tolerates the hens because they are no where near our shared boundary. Even complained our cats kept walking across his shed roof and looking in his sitting room. Trouble is, this is a suburban area and many residents are real townies (city folk I guess is the US equivilent). According to my mother-in-law, cows are wild animals - you get the idea!

We are prepared to put in the hard work and get our back garden back to something resembling a back garden. However we do have to put up with neighbours, this time directly below us, who cannot mend a hole in the fence and their ****** dog keeps escaping. On it's last 'adventure' it murdered our sweet little Australorp hen, Alice. It's been escaping for at least 4 years and is not the nicest natured animal I have ever met. (I volunteer at an animal sanctuary with feral cats, so don't back down from much with 4 legs, this animal meant serious business when I tried to catch it to get it off the road). Our hen breeder suggested a 12-bore shotgun, an idea but one both the neighbours and Police would have 40 fits at, I considered 2 very bad temered ganders. Will be settling for strands of electric wires going through the new hedging I intend to plant. (Even out vet suggested an air-rifle, but thes neighbours, yet again would be an issue).

I'm seriously considering a joint attack on the mares tail, using a systemic herbicide (much against my better judgement) and masses of thick black plastic. Apart from not looking pretty, there would be little the neighbours could moan about. I have tried to get an electric brushcutter for the bramble, but they only seem to come using either petrol or a battery, both of which are too heavy for me to cope with. Unfortunately a drunken driver left me with damage to not only my back and legs but also to the nerves in my neck and arms, so weight of things is a bit of an issue. What do you all think about using systemic herbicides? I feel very uncomfortable about using it, but we do have quite a large area to clear. In England a quarter of an acre garden in a suburban area is a massive garden. These days, gardens coming with new build homes are about the size of a postage stamp, so we are lucky to have this size garden.

Over here, it seems that animals are not available to be rented out for land clearing for instance. If they were I'd be after a couple of pigs later on to plough up a veggie patch for me!

 

[Carols Clucks]

My dad was a serious gardener, he would allow no one but him to touch a thing in the garden, gentle hillside filled with fruit trees, berry brambles and heaps of "treasures" aka old wood and other materials he saw purpose left in.

For 10-15 years this meant very very little was cleaned up or trimmed up as his health declined. When he finally realized his gardening days were done, I was allowed to start cleaning the mess up. It has been a 7 year process to turn it from a jungle to almost looking good and productive.

If I could do it over and had the money, it would have been so much better in the long run to have paid to have someone else come and do it for us (the clearing) with heavy equipment because it could have been done in the matter of a few days.

But when money is limited, as much as I hate to say it, some round-up help would have done wonders. That and a good layer of plain cardboard-maybe even topped with the black plastic. The plastic could be removed after a bit and the cardboard left to kill off anything that attempted to return. I would suggest that after that, if there is some good plant that would choke out your weeds in the future, something that will not cause future issues, that might be good to plant there. Is there a local ag department that can give you some ideas?

 

[CaroleM]

It would be brilliant if we had an Ags Dept for gardens over here. Mind you, most farmers often wish the Ag Ministry to hell and back with all their silly rules and that's not even getting on about all those that we get landed with from Europe!

Much of my problem is that the site is very steep. We can look over the valley, onto Dartmoor and on a clear day have a wonderful 45 mile view. All there is between us at Dartmoor is a very large valley. At least I know what the weather is doing 30 minutes before it comes waltzing in our back door and I can rescue the washing off the line before it gets a soaking!

I think that a two pronged approach using something like roundup (if Europe hasn't banned that yet, they have made us get rid of so many of our effective garden things, including ones accepted for organic usage) and laying cardboard and black plastic. It has been suggested to me that a couple of goats would do the job effectively, but we have one neighbour who would complain to the Council and unfortunately we are semi-attached to him and share a boundry. He reckons goats smell - compared with his fags - goats are fragrance personified. He even moans that our cats look in his sitting room window!!!!