The Evolution of Atlas: A Breeding (and Chat) Thread

[getaclue]

Dh planted corn, green beans, and zucchini squash. The youngest grand planted sunflowers. Our garden is doing very good this year. We've already eaten some green beans, and zucchini from it.

 

[speckledhen]

Our gardens are just beginning to flower now. We're at almost 2000 ft elevation in the mountains so our season starts later than closer to Atlanta.

 

[getaclue]

Dh had almost given up on doing a garden. He planted year before last, and last year, but the garden did poorly. 1 of the biggest problems was grubs, and other type bugs. Instead of using pesticides, we got BIG dark tarps, and put over a section of the garden at a time. After a few weeks, we moved the tarps to another section. The dark tarps super heat the soil underneath, making it inhospitable to insects, especially grubs. We did this throughout the winter.

This year, our garden has done well. No major problems with grubs, and other types of underground bugs. A little bit of organic bug spray when the plants first came up, has prevented all the other type bugs, so far. This has really encouraged Dh. Now he's talking about expanding our garden. Yay!

 

[seminolewind]

I've got 5 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, lots of beans from seed, 2 cabbage, a cucumber, Oh, Mustard greens from seed, 6 romaine lettuce that are almost ready to eat. 2 Eggplant, Oregano and Parsley. I'm going to stagger the seeding so I may have some later in the season. So much work!

Then my DD started gardening-vegetables. She had more luck last year after I told her you just can't spray the plants. They were running a sprinkler for 15 minutes! This year she did really well with planting each plant in a shallow-like bowl shape in the dirt. IMO I think her soil is still too heavy. With clay you can add and add and add compost. I'm spoiled. I've always loved my dirt to be where you can stick your whole hand straight in it fairly easily and not use peat.

Whenever I think I'm done, there's more to do.

 

[seminolewind]

Knock knock!! Anyone home?

 

[speckledhen]

Knock knock!! Anyone home?

I'm here! Here's a story for you, Karen.
After gathering these flowers to dry in preparation for future herbal remedies, I passed my very large pot that sits by a gate and saw all my beautiful marigolds and cosmos that had completely filled the pot and were about to bloom upended, the soil dug up and the entire pot trashed. Then, I found the pot next to the house garden gate where catnip was attempting to get a foothold also dug up and ruined. Two nights ago, a pot was completely dumped out on my deck and my lemon balm was dug into and trashed in one end. I LOATHE RACCOONS. Anyone who feeds those nasty vermin should be strung up by their toes! They are not cute. They are not nice. They are dangerous, carry rabies and are extremely destructive. This is why we can't have nice things, tunneling creatures below ground and marauders above ground and no way to repel them or exclude them from any of the gardens or even our own deck without a dog. And my husband is not in favor of having a dog again. He has his stray cat that showed up and attached to him like a leech at the end of 2014, but he's only one cat on acreage and useless in the face of such an onslaught. I feel so defeated. And believe me, I have fought the fight, spent money on remedies, stomped down tunnels, flooded them with water to dissuade the tunnelers, but above ground, the raccoons are also apparently winning. You'll tell me to trap them, but where there is one, there are 50 in the mountains. So, that won't really help much. Plus I have no trap; more money would have to be spent and I'm tired of bleeding green here to just have some beautiful herbs and flowers.

 

[speckledhen]

You might enjoy my latest slideshow video from the channel. You can see things better and in more detail if you enlarge the video (Click Watch on YouTube)

 

[getaclue]

My middle daughter was wanting a Venus Fly Trap. She was showing me a little planter, that is a replica of the Warp Pipe, in the Mario game. The little planters came in today. This evening she brought over my plant, and the special soil mix. We potted our plants. I think mine turned out so cute.

 

[speckledhen]

I've always thought those were so fascinating! I could use one in my dang barn right now! In addition to being a bad tunneling critter year for the garden, it's also a bad fly year for the barn.

 

[getaclue]

speckledhen, I've said for years that we get either bad mosquitoes, or bad flies. Usually we don't get both of them, really bad, at the same time.