What did you do in the garden today?

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

I had 2 of 8 new beds hand tilled, and then asked about borrowing FIL's tiller to re-till 7 beds and to till up the rest of the new beds (all 15 are 12 ft long, and almost all are 4 ft wide, so lots of work). Of course, the DAY BEFORE he was going to bring it, he says, "It has a couple of little problems and needs a tune up. You can't plant until late May, anyway, so I'm not bringing it tomorrow." I let myself be frustrated for a few minutes because I definitely NEED to get my potatoes in, and there are other crops you can plant before the average last frost date, and then decided, "Screw it, I'll do it by hand. If he gets it to me before I'm finished, cool. If not, it will be a good thing I didn't wait."

Wednesday, I tilled up the final 2 of 8 new beds (remove the grass, dig out at least 8 inches, put the grass in the bottom of the bed upside down, put the soil back in). Yesterday, I spread compost on them and started to re-mulch the strawberry and asparagus bed. Then, it decided to rain, so I had to stop. Today, I finished that up, and got 3 out of the 6 remaining old beds weeded/raked. So, it seems I won't be borrowing the tiller.

That is hilarious!!!

ETA: I forgot I had hand-tilled 2 beds before realizing how much time it would take, and then asked about borrowing the tiller.

I got my tiller back, then found it was doing the same thing. Honestly, two times off to two different repair people...

I think it just needs a belt. It works for a little while, then gets weaker and I smell a belt burning.

Yesterday, I just HAD to get in my tomatoes. They were a foot high and still in the 72-cell starter trays.

So I killed myself using a broadfork to break up this soil. I was able to till it a little after that. Enough to get the tomatoes in before they died.

I was really glad I invested in this broadfork. I'd wanted one ever since I'd seen Elliot Coleman on TV in the 1980s use one.

Here's mine:
https://meadowcreature.com/collections/broadforks/products/peoples-broadfork-12

 

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

No frost but predicted for next 2 nights, I hope the fruit tree blooms survive. Here is a pic of seed grown thornless blackberry plants. Grown from grocery store berries. Not all survived the winter. Should put on enough growth to bloom next year. So 3 years from seed, View attachment 3476860

Have you successfully done this before and brought to fruit production? My Doyle Thornless Blackberry dropped tons of seed that sprouted one year, but they didn't grow like the original, so I took them out. I just propagate by cuttings from that.

 

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

I am currently seeking clever, innovative, out-of-the-box solutions, or just a nifty idea on how to add a rain/shade cover to this swing I just built. The top beam is 12 feet long.

My troubles? It's got to be able to withstand strong winds and it's got to fit into my frugal budget.

 

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

I got stuck on a 277volt circuit at work and woke up in the hospital. When they sent me home I thought that the spinning in my head was caused by the morphine they was giving me for pain. However, one morning when I woke up and sat on a chair, the spinning in my head spun like a tornado and it scared me because I couldn't stop it.

My elder sister did a search on the internet and found an exercise for vertigo, she printed the exercise pictures and gave them to me and they worked. It only took a few days to get rid of my vertigo.

The exercise makes me feel like I am putting the loose liquid in my brain back where it belongs.

Have you tried the vertigo exercise?

The funny thing about my experience with vertigo is it felt like if I could make it spin faster it would generate a force, but it went away before I could figure out how to channel it.

That's pretty amazing. I once woke up from sleep vomiting from how badly the room was spinning. It took years for it to gradually go away. There are exercises?

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Good morning gardeners. A little nicer today. Still a bit cool, around 50F right now. Had I kn own we would be having such a cool Spring I would have planted broccoli. Still not warm enough to plant the tomatoes and other warm season crops outside. I'm trying to come up with a plan that requires less work for clearing gardening spots. I checked out the area I'm putting the grapes and that won't be as labor intensive. Yesterday evening I started putting one of the arbor arches together and thank goodness it's really easy. Still no sign of onions germinating but hopefully when it does warm up perhaps that will encourage them to grow. The baby blueberry shrubs are looking just fine. I definitely will have no peaches this year. Among the other things that didn't really bloom, I only got two or three branches of blooms on my forsythia, a few scattered blooms on my purple azalea, and the lilac is trying to produce flower buds but none have opened yet. Of course the dandelions are blooming like crazy. LOL! My daffodils are doing well and so are the tulips - not blooming yet but just about. The grass in the front yard has been enjoying the weather and is begging me to cut it. That's on the list of things to do for tomorrow. It appears, so far, that we are done with frost but the temps are still in the mid to high 50's with occasional 60 degree days. I really should have planted broccoli. Oh well. Have a great day.

 

[jerryse]

Root grafted mulberry variety Illinois Everbearing. Day 7 at 85 degrees in old incubator. In zip lock bag with moist coco coir. You can see callous tissue. I potted these and have 4 or 5 more not ready to pot yet. I have variety Kokuso also.

 

[Sally PB]

I also checked my bee hive.

How's it doing? I have my hive set up, in anticipation of getting bees in two weeks.

I was really glad I invested in this broadfork.

Dumb question... what exactly do you use a broadfork for? My mom never had or mentioned one, so it's nothing I'm familiar with.

 

[CedarLane]

Does the cardboard around your tomatoes make them difficult to water?

Congrats on your strawberries!

I used cardboard last year with wood chip mulch (instead of straw I'm using this year...). I didn't have any problems with rain penetrating through it and it did a great job of holding moisture in the soil while blocking weeds.

This year I'm using the cardboard again (with straw mulch) but I've added dripline irrigation below the cardboard. This is how I'm hedging the inevitability that Mother Nature shuts off the sky spigot through July and August every year.

We use cardboard around our tomato plants. My husband runs a soaker hose down the row after planting and before laying down the cardboard (often cereal boxes). We usually put them between 2 cattle panels -- expensive at first, but we've been using them for over 10 years.

 

[Sally PB]

We had widespread frost this morning. I'm going to check the cherries and blueberries to see how they fared, but I think (hope) they're fine. Next week when we have a frost, it could be a different story...

 

[LifeSimpleAndSweet]

Dumb question... what exactly do you use a broadfork for? My mom never had or mentioned one, so it's nothing I'm familiar with.

No question is a dumb question! It's seeking information that you've not been given as yet. So it's smart!


It's for digging down deep and turning over the soil. You step on it, rock it from side to side to sink the tines down deep, then step back and crank that soil up. It breaks up soil really well.

Here's a video:
https://vimeo.com/47193165?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=12838993