What did you do in the garden today?

[PopoMyers]

Picked both kinds of strawberries, red and hula. Also snow peas. Just been doing a bunch of clean up, weeding, mulching. Weather is finally conducive for warm weather crops to get going. Planted pole beans for the third time. Sprouts had been eaten. Fighting moles as well.

 

[littledog]

Do you have a preferred style of cucumber trellis? I don't want to do a netting or string. Thinking of leaning some small poles against the back fence and doing some cross poles.

I use T-posts with leftover pieces of wire fencing in between.

 

[littledog]

We have 7 chicks, so far.

These all hatched between yesterday and this morning and the incubator was getting crowded, and not much activity from the rest of the eggs, so we put these in the brooder a couple hours ago. There's one egg still trying to hatch, one that partially zipped but hasn't moved for several hours, so maybe it died...the rest are not doing anything, but it's still day 21 so we'll give them another couple days before we give up on them. But these 7 are doing well, eating and drinking and active, so not bad for our first time using the incubator.
My other weekend project was this:

I found this really elaborate cat tree by the side of the road last week. It was covered with cheap fuzzy fabric and pretty dirty and scratched up but otherwise in good shape, so I took it all apart, re-covered all the pieces with carpet scraps and heavier-duty fabric from my scrap bag, and reassembled it. The only expense was a $4 roll of sisal and a few staples. Sarah likes it (that's her tail sticking out of the curtains of the little house) but Pumpkin hasn't noticed it yet.

I got my pumpkin seeds planted to fill in where the butternuts didn't survive, and got my 4 new beds leveled, filled half with wood chips and half with the dirt I had saved. And spread another trailer of chips over the cardboard, but have a lot more to cover. Still need to mix in compost - I was going to let the new beds sit until next year, but I discovered a lot of volunteer tomato plants, so might just put those in and see what they do.
Finally, I watered - unfortunately I broke the connector on the sprinkler as I was moving it back to the middle of the garden, so I had to dig out a couple tiny sprinklers and use those.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Good morning gardeners. Hope all are well in the southern states and Indiana. Bad storms and heat. We are still in a rainy and ridiculously humid period. Yesterday I managed to mow the front yard during a break between showers. This morning was a little better and I was able to do some weeding in the nightshade garden and the corn patch. I'm about halfway done "grooming" the corn patch to make way for the beans and squash. I also put down some more fertilizer on the nightshades and lima beans. With all the rain we've been getting I'm concerned the nuitrients are getting washed out of the garden area.I picked a few peas but I still think they need a few more days to plump up. My daylilies are finally blooming. I love bringing them inside. I'm still way behind on planting flowers. I need to go to TSC in a little while and I thought I would stop at the local greenhouse and pick up a couple of packs of flowers to plant in the front planters.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I've noticed that one of my peach trees had a couple of yellow leaves deep in the center of the tree. Last week, the yellowing picked up steam. Did some searching and discovered a 7 ft x 7 ft peach tree needs about 90 gallons of water a week? Wow! Seriously? That's an insane amount of water... Mine definitely isn't getting that much. It is on the irrigation system and getting watered daily but only a gallon or two. I will have to add more emitters around it to increase the watering. The rain we got yesterday should help.

Just weird because the other peach tree nearby is bigger and has no yellow leaves.

 

[Sueby]

Wow! My peach tree will NEVER get that much water!

It hasn't rained the last couple days - then the concrete truck showed up to pour the pad for the hot tub & the skies opened up the very second he opened the chute. Of course.

Pulled a couple flowers off my volunteer tomatoes, they're too little for fruit. Got some fish fertilizer on the cucumbers & beans but forgot the tomatoes. My life is turned upside down with the garden shed moved, I'm lost.

 

[TJAnonymous]

Wow! My peach tree will NEVER get that much water!

It hasn't rained the last couple days - then the concrete truck showed up to pour the pad for the hot tub & the skies opened up the very second he opened the chute. Of course.

Pulled a couple flowers off my volunteer tomatoes, they're too little for fruit. Got out some fish fertilizer on the cucumbers & beans but forgot the tomatoes. My life is turned upside down with the garden shed moved, I'm lost.

Yeah, that recommendation came from Plantnative.com. Even Rutgers has what I consider an insanely high recommendation.



The general recommendation is 10 gallons of water for every inch diameter of your trunk. Per day.

 

[pennyJo1960]

I have small yellow neck squash showing, New normal here.

 

[Sally PB]

We've been getting rounds of rain today. I'd guess we've gotten 3/4" since it started raining yesterday. Nowhere near drought busting, but a good amount, mostly gentle (with a few heavy downpours), soaking rain.

Tomorrow should be dry, and I'll go start knocking down the weeds. I'm going to sit in the chicken run and enjoy the sound of the rain.

 

[Swiss]

We got another .1" of rain last night. And it has been on and off today, so I'll have to check the rain gauge before bed to see what our total is. I pray this breaks the hold the super dry weather has had on us, and that we get more consistent rain.

Took the pup on a walkabout through the meadow and a little bit into the woods this morning. Found these crazy shiny and iridescent beetles on a mystery plant (just looked it up and this is a dogbane beetle on a dogbane/Indian hemp plant) :

The butterfly weed growing out there has started blooming and looks so pretty with the purple vetch flowers:

We came back inside to do chores, and poof! my energy was gone. I don't know what caused it, but I laid down for an hour, and when I woke up, 2 hours had passed! I had a strawberry and banana smoothie to help me wake back up, but I'm still laying on the couch because my body feels sapped of energy. It's pretty weird, but I'm wondering if it's my body/brain recovering from a stressful situation we had happen to us this weekend.