What did you do in the garden today?

[Sally PB]

That is one thing I'm so glad we don't have here - fire ants! Yikes, they sound like big, painful jerks.

Me too!!! It's bad enough when I dig into a nest of the little brown ones!

April 1st is when I put seeds to soil.

Me too on that as well.

 

[jerryse]

I have calendula up. A hardy annual sown in outdoor pots. Squill is blooming. Pear and sour cherry are swelling flower buds. Pear trees are on schedule with past years. Wild columbine clumps are getting taller.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Much nicer outside today. I’m working on the garden area for granddaughter. Her birthday is next weekend. I put down cardboard then landscape fabric on that. Edged that with black plastic garden edging so the mulch I’m getting ready to put down stays where it’s supposed to. Nearly all my tomato seeds have germinated and popped out of the dirt with their first leaves. The lavender hasn’t germinated yet but hopefully it will soon. I’m looking forward to starting a few more things after I move all the tomatoes off the heat mats. Looking at the forecast for this coming week the overnight lows will be in the 20’s then dipping even further to 17 or 19F on Friday. Hoping it doesn’t.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

Still fighting the nettles today I removed them from the apple tree, no wonder that it wasn’t doing ok, the roots ( big ones) were almost strangling the poor tree, very hard to pull those roots without damaging the ones from the apple tree, yay, got lots of trees who still need my help

 

[Sueby]

Who knew celery needed light to germinate? Not this girl, lol. You'd think they'd put that on the package.

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

Who knew celery needed light to germinate? Not this girl, lol. You'd think they'd put that on the package.

I had that issue with mint. I believe chamomile is the same way.

 

[Acre4Me]

Y

I might buy some "compost starter" to add to it. I've never used that stuff, figuring everything the pile needs is in the soil. But I've never tried to "start" a pile this early!

Ours was really slow the first year or two. I bought compost starter….maybe it helped some. Then, another year there was a different type of starter on clearance at Menards. I grabbed it, and used it when turning the pile. It definitely helped!! So, for us it was a good choice, but the first one wasn’t particularly helpful as noticeably.

 

[cj2024]

I rescued a little venus fly trap from the garden store this am. Has anyone ever cared for one before? I could use some tips. LOL
I also picked up some spinach seeds.

@Acre4Me (or anyone else with ideas!) any ideas how many sf meat birds need, or what they say the average is? They'd be outside, part under cover, part open.

I made an off the ground 8ft x 3ft wooden framed pen with 1 inch x 1/2 inch screen floor and raised 10 meat birds to harvest in 8 weeks. Their poop falls through the screen floor, so they are cleaner than birds raised in a tractor. However, the underside of their shank where they sit on the screen floor will begin to wear down and if taken past 8 weeks will show abrasion from their excess weight, so they need to be processed at 8 weeks.

 

[Nym]

I have three tanks for my pleasure as well. All planted. One 75g, one 45g breeder, and a 5g orange neocaradina only tank. My 75 gallon has three stripe cories (sucessfully accidently breeding), a school of harlequin rasboras, mutt guppies (color culls that I'm still breeding out for stronger spines and smaller "delta" tails), a single Betta fish named "Mr Swimmy", neocaradina orange "culls", and some otos. The 45g has my breeding colony of black saddle guppies, yellow neocaradina shrimp, a school of lemon tetras, a clown pleco we rarely see, panda cories that breed steadily, and a breeding group of otos. Their spawns don't usually make it into adulthood, but a few have! The only thing I breed on purpose is the guppies, I got tired of seeing these poor overbred fish that have week backs, and huge tails they can't support. So, I picked a strain, and I'm slowly turning it into my perfect guppy.

I never thought I'd be okay with feeding my culls to the chickens but I don't want them reproducing, I don't want people to breed them, and well, I got covid and couldn't keep up with all the work across the 10 tanks I topped out at trying to let fish "retire" It's just impossible with guppies. Haha.

Today some more seeds sprouted. I didn't take any photos, sick as a dog and could hardly muster the strength to water anything, then I was finally able to eat something and after a few hours I coughed so hard that I gave it all to the porcelain god. So now I rest! I'll take photos in the morning, I'm sure more pumpkins and squash will sprout in the night.

I kept a small 3ft tank from the '90s until last year when I decided I could no longer find any joy in the maintenance. Like all living things, the smaller the habitat the more the work.

Over the years I had an Angel fish that killed off all the competition and lived for more than 10yrs! I also had a pink shark who lived about as long. My last reno on the tank was a planted river theme and no fish, but I had planned on trying Guppies. There's nothing so good as tank water for the garden .. things just seem to jump with joy. I threw all the reamining plants, gravel etc into buckets so I could continue harvensting the fertiliser.... if I get to it before the dogs! The plants are growing strongly in the bucket in the full sun.

 

[cj2024]

The honeybees were stinging my black giant winter melon babies, so used the 12 inch by 12-inch aluminum foil sheets from Costco to cover them. I rolled the aluminum onto a plastic tube before I put them on the baby winter melon. I put the foil tubes on right when the flower closed. I hope it works.