What did you do in the garden today?

[igorsMistress]

3 new babies Luna Pearl and Snow

 

[pennyJo1960]

Very cute little dukies

This is cheating a bit, this actually happened yesterday! Of course my wife let me know we were getting low on carrots after we had a snow storm that dumped 2ft in our area of New York. So that meant using a snowblower as one of my tools to harvest some fresh carrots from the garden.


Made my way out to the garden with the snowblower clearing a path through the 2ft of snow.





After removing the snow on the carrot bed I then pulled the straw aside and dug up some carrots.


After cleaning, so nice to harvest fresh carrots from the garden in Feb. in New York state. Sure getting some from the store would have been easier but this scored way more cool points than store bought carrots.

View attachment 2514477

Very cool points there

 

[WthrLady]

I used soapy water for gnats and didn’t water the plants for a while, no ACV in it. Had to repeat a couple times but no more gnats. Unless they’re around the fruit

The jar has he ACV in it for a trap, not to water the plant.

 

[igorsMistress]

The jar has he ACV in it

The jar has he ACV in it for a trap, not to water the plant.

 

[igorsMistress]

The jar has he ACV in it for a trap, not to water the plant.

Yes’m I didn’t use the ACV in the trap

 

[Hermits Garden]

I bought potting soil yesterday for indoor houseplants. We've got a mile-long to-do list until Monday next, so the repotting will have to wait til then.

Snow's almost all melted out on the acre (where I'm itching to plant all the heirloom iris, shrub rose and salvia from our last house) but it's ankle deep mud, so...that'll have to wait a bit too.

Oh--and to y'all potato growers; I heard about growing them in cardboard boxes. You start at a lowish level of dirt, then keep adding a little more dirt at a time as they grow. Never did it, as the hubs always says, "Aren't potatoes really cheap at the store?" but maybe this year I'll just do it. We moved right before Christmas, so it's not like we're short of boxes!

I'm guessing this would work with plastic bins with holes poked in the bottoms, too.

 

[CluckerFamily]

I bought potting soil yesterday for indoor houseplants. We've got a mile-long to-do list until Monday next, so the repotting will have to wait til then. Snow's almost all melted out on the acre (where I'm itching to plant all the stuff I dragged from our last house) but it's ankle deep mud, so...that'll have to wait a bit too.

Oh--and to the potato growers; I heard about growing them in cardboard boxes. You start at a lowish level of dirt, then keep adding a little more dirt at a time as they grow. Never did it, as the hubs always says, "Aren't potatoes really cheap at the store?" but maybe this year I'll just do it. We moved right before Christmas, so it's not like we're short of boxes!

I'm guessing this would work with plastic bins with holes poked in the bottoms, too.

I do this for my sweet potatoes.

 

[Acre4Me]

Soil tests are back. I have 11 raised beds totaling 600 sq ft. Then a large bed that is 600 sqft for a grand total of 1200 sq ft of useable garden area. So, I had 6 soil tests submitted- four of the raised beds and two from the large bed. These were composite samples taken with a coring tool I borrowed from the county Ag extension.

ALL beds have pH that is too high, although two were 7.3 and 7.5 and fell into “optimum” range....still too high for me. The other beds were 7.5-7.8 pH. So, will use sulfur as soon as ground is workable, along with acidic peat moss. Both of these are recommended on the analysis forms. Last year the large bed had a pH of 7.8, and it is down 0.2....I was hoping we did enough to have lowered it more, but I guess not. So, it will apparently be another 1-2 years for that bed to be more optimum.


All beds are low in Phosphate and Potash. We will need to source some 0-46-0 as recommended on soil forms. Also, they are recommending 5-10-5 or 10-10-10 (depending on the bed). But, I’ll likely just get a 10-10-10 and add to all beds.

All beds have A LOT of Magnesium and calcium. Must be all the gypsum we’ve added to the soil! Also, bone meal and egg shells. We’ve never particularly done anything to add magnesium. We did use Azomite last year (trace mineral source), so that is likely helping too.

The other good thing this year will be our compost. We have the first batch to use this year! Last fall we moved the pile to the middle section and began a fresh pile. The middle section was looking nice and dark, but still a bit chunky. We did use compost starter last year, so each time we turned the pile, more starter was sprinkled into the pile. It won’t be enough for all 1200 sqft, but, can add some compost to each planting hole.

It always seems to take about 3 years of working the soil and amending for things to really take off (or at least perform noticeably better). Year one is under our belt now. It is actually year 3 of gardening here, but we did some major overhaul of the area, including hauling in 120+ tons of dirt, so that reset the garden start date.

 

[Sally PB]

Bright sunshine at the moment. Snow and bitter cold are coming. This morning's dog walk will be up to the green house to snip the last of the kale. I don't think it will survive. Might as well go to the chickens today.

Acre4Me, wow, sounds like you are on top of things there! I have acidic soil, since there are so many oaks around here. Some pine too.

Last year was my first garden season being blessed with chicken poop, and I put it to use in the compost bins. I looked up the Berkely method of "hot" composting, and started putting finished compost on the garden about 5 weeks after starting the pile. It's fast, but a lot of physical labor. You have to turn the pile every other day, to keep stirring it up and adding oxygen to the mix. I did get some impressive (to me) arm muscles out of it, as well as the compost. I'll be doing that again for sure this year.

Wish it were warm enough to go turn a compost pile right now. Sigh.

 

[Swiss]

I haven't been on here since the end of November, and gave up on catching up on all 200-ish pages!
We had 2 very sunny days in a row, so my brain started dreaming about spring. That came to an abrupt postponement when I heard about the snowstorm we are forecasted to get starting around 4 pm and going for the next day or 2.