What did you do in the garden today?

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LifeSimpleAndSweet said:
There is no way for me to run drip lines, or anything that relies on pressure here. My hose, on full blast sends out a wimpy water stream about 12 inches before free-falling.

I've built pressure tank systems before for a window-washing business. It is what would have to be done for good pressure here. :/
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Can you do a gravity fed system? Drip Depot has resources to help you with those types of systems
 
gtaus said:
Wow, it would be a full-time job just trying to keep up with all the posts on this thread! I've been busy outside and have started sifting my chicken run compost and top filling my raised garden beds. I posted this following update on the thread Show Me Your Pallet Projects!. Would love to hear from anybody on that thread on their pallet projects related to gardening, or any other uses of pallet projects.

Just a quick update on some small pallet related projects with my chickens and gardening. Yesterday I sifted out 18 cubic feet of chicken run compost in my cement mixer compost sifter. Rough estimate of value is a big 2 cubic foot bag of compost costs $5.00 (or more) at our big box stores. So, I sifted out about $45.00 worth of chicken run compost in a few minutes yesterday.

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Note: The pallet platform I constructed for the cement mixer compost sifter is working great. The ground is not completely 100% level, so the top pallet was starting to slide a bit off the bottom pallet. I fixed that with a couple of scrap pieces of 2X6's which I used to screw the 2 pallets together on the backside. Now the pallets are locked together.

Initially, I thought I would have to screw some lag bolts down into that front leg support into the pallet wood. But I found that the compost sifter did not move around at all when I put it into use. The operation is rock solid now and it sifts out the compost as fast as I can toss stuff into it.

:old Having said that, I don't shovel into the sifter all that fast anymore. Still, it only takes me about 10-15 minutes to fill up that Gorilla cart with 6 cubic feet of sifted compost. At that rate, I'm still making sifted compost at $60.00 per hour, or more, even at my slow pace.

For those of you that might know about the cement mixer compost sifter, here is the working end of the system. I use a pitchfork to toss in the compost litter while the drum is turning. The sifted compost falls through the wire screen in the barrel and drops into that black Gorilla cart under the wire. All the stuff that is too big or not yet fully composted, gets rejected out the front end and into the garden cart in the front of this picture. I typically just toss all that rejected stuff back into the chicken run for more composting, but it also makes for great top mulch later in the growing season when the plants have been established in the garden beds.

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I managed to top off 4 of my raised bed gardens with that (3 wagons full) sifted chicken run compost. Looking good. Where I live, we don't plant most things until after our last frost date of 29 May. In the meantime, I'm planning on building some more pallet wood raised beds this spring. I'll be posting some pictures after the build. I'm thinking of using a different design this year. So, stay tuned...
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Considering I inadvertently put a cutworm in one of my raised beds because I didn't sift my compost, I'm definitely considering your design here.... 😂
 
CNJ said:
I saw a video of someone putting a piece of fish in a planting hole with lime and grew massive won bok with nothing else. He put the lime to mask the smell, so animals don't dig it up. Have you ever tried that?
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No. I know the native Americans did plant with fish. The coons here would dig it up. They even dig up trees when planted and flower pots. No smell involved
 
jerryse said:
No. I know the native Americans did plant with fish. The coons here would dig it up. They even dig up trees when planted and flower pots. No smell involved
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I put a bunch of fish scraps in trenches in my garden in 2021. Bad idea... Maybe if I had used lime to cover the smell but critters tend to have a very refined sense of smell.... 😂

I put crayfish scraps in the ground this year but I have the ground covered with landscape fabric, cardboard, and mulch. So far no signs of digging.... Secretly I'm hoping the smell underground will also deter voles, gophurs, etc...
 
TJAnonymous said:
Considering I inadvertently put a cutworm in one of my raised beds because I didn't sift my compost, I'm definitely considering your design here.... 😂
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I don't know what size a cutworm would be. I have different sized screens that I put inside my compost sifter. My smallest screen is 1/4 X 1/4 inch hardware cloth which I use to sift out compost for seed starting. I have larger screens for sifting compost into my raised garden beds. Typically, I use a 1/2 X 1/2 inch screen. I suspect that a full grown cutworm would be noticed if it dropped into the sifted compost and could be manually picked out.

What size screen would you need to sift out cutworms?

I converted my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. I don't have the time or energy to sift as much compost as I make by manually sifting by hand anymore using a compost sifting frame on top of a wheelbarrow. The cement mixer compost sifter has allowed me to harvest much more compost, in a much less back breaking way, and has paid for itself in just a few hours of use (compared to buying that same quantity of compost in bags at the big box stores). FWIW, I have more than doubled my raised garden beds as a result of using the cement mixer compost sifter because it's just so much easier to harvest the compost needed to fill and refill the garden beds.
 
TJAnonymous said:
I put a bunch of fish scraps in trenches in my garden in 2021. Bad idea... Maybe if I had used lime to cover the smell but critters tend to have a very refined sense of smell.... 😂

I put crayfish scraps in the ground this year but I have the ground covered with landscape fabric, cardboard, and mulch. So far no signs of digging.... Secretly I'm hoping the smell underground will also deter voles, gophurs, etc...
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One year I used diluted fish emulsion-the kind sold in stores, so it is somewhat deodorized -still smelly, but nothing like freshly made. I diluted it, poured it in some beds. And sure enough…some digging. But all the digging was shallow -as if the critter was looking for the source but could never find it bc it would dissipate enough to stop digging. Then, it would move to another spot to dig a little.

This year I’ve been bagging banana peels, chopped up, then put in the freezer. I plan to add these to my beds to encourage worm populations. Hopefully bananas aren’t wildly appealing to raccoons. I know they love marshmallows, but maybe not rotting banana peels.
 

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