What did you do in the garden today?

[NewBoots]

Welcome back @MrLeeHo!
We caved and hired the lawn mowing and trimming, it looks great and the lawn has pretty well stopped growing due to the lack of rain so it might be a month before we really need to mow again. I pulled all the peas and one of our neighbors said to plant the snap peas again in August and that I could have another crop so I've prepped the bed for a second planting. I was surprised how tiny the roots were, I suppose that means I neither watered nor fed enough for the first batch. Other than that, it's mostly a matter of waiting for the tomatoes to be ready.

I had to cull Mouse (3 month old Sapphire Gem) this morning due to health issues. Hate that. But the other 7 littles are doing great and are coming right along, I can't wait till they start laying.

I made a rhubarb upside-down cake this evening and it is delicious! It'll make a unique desert to bring to get-togethers. It has enough sugars in it to give a dentist apoplexy but that's pretty much what happens with rhubarb.

Assorted flowers in the raised beds:

Water lily in the goldfish pond:

Recent harvests including the sweetest carrots I've ever raised. Nantes half long in seed tape.

And my first ripe tomatoes!

 

[oldhen2345]

I was on the phone with DH when we lived in Alabama, when I pulled my camelback water tank off the garage wall and a HUGE female crawled toward me down the shoulder strap. I screamed so loudly and so high pitched I triggered the autotone dialer on the phone on his end and it tried to dial a second number while we are on the phone.

She was SO fast and SO angry, until I smashed her with a boot. Yup, torched the egg sack. We found half a dozen egg sacks on various garden tools when we got to Nebraska. ::Shudder::

Spiders give me the absolute willies. Only thing freaks me out nearly as bad is snakes. Have seen two footlong snakes in my yard so far while raking and weed wacking.
We used to have industrial strength wolf spiders-they were HUGE - as big as a 50 cent piece. You could hear the thunk when they jumped from the bathroom counter to the linoleum floor. My DH killed them with my meat tenderizer- had to get another one and store that one with tools.

 

[oldhen2345]

OMG you guys are freaking me the heck out!! I'm never moving from CT. Unless it's north. LOL

Yep- sleeping with the light on - after I remove the bedskirt

 

[Sueby]

Got a text from the neighbor this am that the bear was in their yard. The DEEP has told everyone to stop feeding the birds because there is an infection going around that's killing the song birds - yet they STILL feed the birds & bring in the bears. It's so frustrating. I need to put up electric fencing except there is no real good way with my set up.

So I finally pulled the rest of the garlic last night. It looks great - nice & big. It smells like garlic in the shop & in the house. It's everywhere drying. I should have enough to plant in the fall & get thru winter without buying any.

The squash chips came out pretty good, a bit too much salt though.

Finally a day without rain! I have to go into the office for a bit today so nothing doing in the garden.

 

[jerryse]

Thunderstorms and flash flood warnings here . 3.97 month to date before this . They say 1 1/2 -3 already fell . Rain to continue through Saturday . I finished mowing to thunder yesterday evening . That one passed north of me . I try to mow weekly on Mondays but if the rains had stopped me it would have been Sunday . So we will see what the weather is in a week .

 

[BullChick]

Dry here today too.
I planted three kinds of tomatoes, three or four kinds of peppers, watermelon, cucumbers, four kinds of pumpkin and strawberries. Want to know what I still have? After varmints did their thing, I have mammoth pumpkins.

I seriously hope this at least succeeds. I only see one pumpkin, but I didn’t want to trip over the vines to check everything out.
I keep a planter for Duckling’s Roma tomatoes (she doesn’t eat them, but it’s her job to take care of it). I don’t see buds, but I’m going to be fertilizing when the dirt dries up some.

I think the potatoes in bags are doing alright too. The Jonathan and Red Delicious trees have fruit, so I’m hoping to get some apples this year. Hopefully they are edible instead of buggy.

 

[Acre4Me]

Found a tomato hornworm on my potato plants, but it’s acting as a nursery for something- maybe parasitic wasps?

 

[gtaus]

Looks like I am going to have a bumper crop of beans from my elevated sub irrigated planter this year. This 2X4 foot planter is out on our deck and I planted only beans 9 per square foot for the entire planter. Beans are Dear Wife's favorite crop. We eat lots of fresh beans, but she will also freeze bags full of beans for the winter months. Last year, I think we had enough frozen beans from the garden till about February.

I planted pole beans out in the main garden, but deer ate all the plants down to the dirt. So nothing to show there.... I also planted some pole beans along the back fence wall of the chicken run. Those beans are starting to grow and I hope they will start to take off soon. We have had almost no rain this year, but my chicken run is close enough to the house for me to run a sprinkler out there. So those beans are getting water every few days. No rain, just sprinkler.

Here is a picture of my first attempt at transplanting strawberry runners (stolons) into small 3 inch pots. If they take root and start to grow in the pots, I'll transplant them to a new hügelkultur raised bed I have ready for them out in the main garden.

I actually potted up another 10 runners in other pots that are sitting out by the strawberry patch. I just brought these 3 cuttings on the deck because they were extras.

It is interesting to read that some people here on BYC forum are getting more rain than they can deal with this year. As for me, I don't think we have had a rain day in maybe 60-70 days. There were a couple days in that period that we got maybe a light sprinkle of rain for a short hour, but that's about it.

My beans in the picture above are doing well because that planter has a large reservoir of water in the bottom 3 inches of the planter. So all I have to do is to refill the planter when the water is used up. Last year, with normal rainfall, I think I only had to refill my elevated sub irrigated planter maybe 3-4 times for the summer. Currently, I have to refill my planter twice a week in this heat and no rain. But all I do is stick a garden hose down the fill tube and about 5 minutes the planter is refilled.

My main garden is suffering terribly, too, from lack of rain. The only success I see out there is my hügelkultur beds which are performing much better than I expected. I guess it must be true that the hügelkultur beds are able to retain water and release it later for the plants, whereas the "normal" raised beds are all dried out. I cannot keep up with the watering requirements of the plants in the main garden this year, but at least what water I am able to give them seems to be most advantageous in the hügelkultur beds.

 

[chickengr]

Understand. I have a small creek that runs through my property out into the lake. Normally, I just drop the suction end of my pump hose into the creek. Late in the fall, the creek usually gets pretty low and is not usable at that time. This year, without any rain, the creek is already almost bone dry. So I have to draw water from the lake itself. Not a big deal, but need about another 50 feet of garden hose to take water from the lake.

More to your concerns, today I tried running my 12v water pump from my rain barrels by the main garden, through a sprinkler, and it did a fair job of watering the garden. Then I decided to draw the water from the lake, which meant another 7 feet of head height and another 50 feet of garden hose. At that point, the pump did not have enough power to run the sprinkler in the garden. My 12v water pump is rated at about 5.5 gallons per minute, but I assume that is on a flat surface. As you start pumping the water up hill, and for a longer distance, you lose water pressure and the flow rate drops.

I tested the flow rate of the pump drawing water from the lake, uphill about 7 feet, and using a 50 foot hose. I filled a 5 gallon bucket in 1 min 45 secs, which is about 2.85 gallons per minute. That was not enough to run the garden sprinkler from the lake water.

So, my current plan until I get a better pump, is to first pump my rain barrels (55 gallons X 2 barrels) full and then switch the pump to run water from the rain barrels to the garden. I suspect that if you have to pump water uphill, you too will probably see a big difference if you have a holding tank up on top of the hill and then run your garden water from the holding tank(s). Unless you have a really strong pump, you might not have much flow left directly to the garden after pumping all that water uphill.

If you plan on buying a 12v water pump, I recommend that you pay a little extra money and get the 12v demand water pumps. The "demand" portion usually pressurizes the output to about 60 PSI, but what I really like is that you can then use any garden hose sprayer and when you shut off the water, the pump will shut off too. My 12v water pump is a transfer pump and has no ability to sense pressure and shut itself off. If I had a 12v demand water pump, I could put in a float valve in the holding tanks and when the tank is filled, it would shut off the water flow, causing the pressure to quickly build up in the hose line and the demand pump would sense that and shut itself off. My current transfer pump would just keep on trying to push out water until it burned itself up. So, my recommendation is to spend a few dollars more and get a demand pump. You have many more options with a demand pump.

thank you. this is really helpful.

 

[gtaus]

My main garden is next to our lake. The other day, when I was out attempting to water the plants in the garden, I saw these swans swimming not far beyond my dock....

Sorry the picture is a little blurry, but I only had my phone on hand. Here the section of interest cropped....

Appears to me a family with 4 young swans between them. Not too often we get swans here, so seeing a family out on the lake was a real treat.