What did you do in the garden today?

[Sally PB]

I think I will have enough tomatoes to can a batch on Sunday or Monday!

<-- I only get that excited about the first canner load. Then it becomes work.

Since we got about 2" of rain the other night, I was able to pull some weeds in the heavy soil garden. I didn't do it all; I went up there to check on/pick tomatoes, but my 15 minute visit did last over an hour.

An update on my not-Cherokee purples: 5 out of 7 plants have only large cherry sized fruits. 2 have those AND some bigger ones, like fist-plus sized.

 

[WthrLady]

I have some picking to do tomorrow. I'll get the weed stick out there too. Some of the windmill grass is getting aggressive.
I fed the tomatoes today and need to pick about 10 pounds worth.
Mowing needs done tomorrow, and then I MUST process tomatoes. MUST.

The zinnia patch is overgrown and has a bunch of tall grasses growing in it, but to pull them I have to yank my zinnias and I'm not ready to let them go yet.

I also need to pull sunflower heads before the canaries get them. I was going to do that today, but the flu jab I had last Friday is STILL kicking my butt.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

We butchered 8 meat birds today. I have peachicks and call ducks hatching in the incubators. No gardening today.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

Harvesting, butchering, need to work bees, take my son to dentist appointments, homeschooling starting... and I get a jury summoning.

 

[Elyrian1]

Harvesting, butchering, need to work bees, take my son to dentist appointments, homeschooling starting... and I get a jury summoning.

Blegh... well you're homeschooling, so aren't you the primary caretaker during the day? Therefore, cannot be summoned?

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

Blegh... well you're homeschooling, so aren't you the primary caretaker during the day? Therefore, cannot be summoned?

My husband is a farmer, technically he is home most of the day. Maybe they won't choose me.

 

[pennyJo1960]

But you are the teacher ? should be your out

 

[Bear river lodge]

Harvested, cucumbers, beans, kohlrabi, rhubarb, celery, tomatoes,....., watered (A LOT, 4 hours of hand watering ) dug up and disassembled an old raised bed and built 2 new ones, filled them, built a fence, turned my mountain of compost, and had cucumber sandwiches to celebrate a productive day

 

[gtaus]

Made my second attempt at canning Spicy Pickled Beans. The first attempt was OK, but I thought the vinegar taste was too powerful. The pickled beans did taste better the longer they were in the refrigerator, or maybe it's all in my mind. This time, instead of 2 cups White Vinegar, I mixed 1 cup White Vinegar with 1 cup ACV as recommended by others to see if that makes a difference. If not, I guess I'll have to look for a completely different recipe.

 

[chickengr]

I raised rabbits when I was a teenager. I had about 100 rabbits at one time. I never thought about the smell back then. But I guess the urine can be powerful. I had all wire cages, and the urine and droppings fell through the wire floor. I used straw on the floor to soak up the urine and as long as I keep it clean, it smelled OK for my younger me.

After having chickens and using the deep litter method, I think I might try having the rabbits in an all wire cage but using deep litter (wood chips, etc...) under the cages. I think that would work better than the straw I used way back then. Like I do for the chickens, I would fluff up the deep litter as needed and/or add more fresh wood chips to the deep litter. Rabbit manure is a great fertilizer and the deep litter could be a wonderful compost for the garden. You don't have to age the rabbit manure, but the deep bedding of wood chips would probably need more time to compost with greens before going out to the garden.

If you want to collect the rabbit droppings separately to use immediately in the garden, you might be able to put a window screen under the wire floor of the rabbit cage. That would catch the droppings and the urine would flow through the screen. I would scrape out the rabbit droppings as soon as possible because if the rabbits urinate on the droppings, then you have wet, smelly rabbit droppings to clean up. Maybe the screen under the rabbit cage could be at an angle, allowing the rabbit droppings to roll down and out of the way of the rabbits urinating. Dry rabbit droppings are not offensive to me. Wet droppings smell bad.

As far as the rabbits themselves, they don't smell to me. In fact, baby rabbits have no smell at all so they can hide from predators better. Clean rabbits in clean cages should not smell. Like many things with small animals, if it smells bad, you need to rethink how you are raising your animals and make some adjustments for their health and yours.

I still have many of my rabbit cages and someday I think I would like to raise rabbits again along with chickens. But I don't have a good building/shed/barn to house the rabbits in the winter and where I live, it's just too darn hard to care for rabbits outside in the weather. But I am excited for you and wish you well with your rabbits.

I have rabbits on the hardware cloth with dirt underneath. no smell and easy to collect their droppings and hay/straw/clover, etc that they manage to push through wire.