What did you do in the garden today?

[TJAnonymous]

I have a lot of square iron pipes around. (paper) wasps make nests in there. I live in piece with them as there are no honey bees near by.

rain, rain, rain. we need it but I am bored inside the house. need to find someone to cut grass/weeds that became jungle.

Oh yes, I can relate... We have these heavy (ridiculously heavy) iron bar fence panels that are used around the barn and coops. The bars are open at the top and wasps like to crawl inside and make nests inside the panel. I stuff old feed bags in them to block the holes. It looks like really ghetto but it works. I could probably go get some expanding spray foam and it would look better.

 

[TJAnonymous]

One of my neighbors, who came to buy eggs this morning, brought me a nice beefsteak tomato plant and bell pepper start. He also was going to give me a cucumber start but I told him I have nowhere to put it... So instead he's just going to bring me some cukes when they are ready. *cha-ching*

 

[Minanora]

Or go vertical with hanging grow bags.

If these survive I will probably just build the narrow raised garden bed that runs along the lean-to and dedicate it.

I looked in the bags yesterday and noticed moisture in most of them. I had to emergency plant them into my most acidic garden beds. 6.8-7pH average. Of the 70 that I got, 5 were totally dead, and a few had areas of the oldest leaves on the crowns molding or rotting. So I had to get them planted ASAP. I also put some in pots that I had available. 18 Albion are in pots, the rest are in between tomato plants in my mulched bed.

All of the Honeoye are in beds that get shade at the hottest part of the day in summer between squash plants, peppers, and in the half block of the newest garden bed that will be shaded by the corn.

I mowed the lawn and then mowed down the weed patch out front. While I was mowing DS got the mail. In the mail was a letter from the city telling me that my yard "has previously been, or is considered a future, fire risk" and to do weed abatement by June 1st or they will, and will charge me for it. If I didn't want to stay off of their radar I would go give them a piece of my mind. I've kept my front weed patch mowed (it's wild brome grass) since the beginning of March. So they wasted paper and postage to make me grumpy. My shrubs and trees it front look really nice... Even my pathway does!

What really irks me.... I spent TWO HOURS spreading Preen and!!! And!!!! Roundup 6 MONTH pre-emergent TO PREVENT THE WEEDS!!! It. Did. Almost. Nothing. I even timed the application, verified the rate, verified the species. The only thing that it stopped was most of the Storks bill and chick weed.

Storks bill has been a huge issue this year for me. It's trying to out compete my clover in the orchard but it's looking like the clover is winning now that the clover is sending out runners.

Anyway, I also got 3 of the 5 blackberry plugs planted. I have 2 to go. I put them in existing pots, big ones. I will cut wine barrels later. I just don't have the time this weekend.

I also potted some of my grape cuttings yesterday.

It rained this morning! Enough to get the ground wet, but not water anything.

I still need to get my drip lines set up for the gardens.

Looks like the potatoes are getting ready, some are starting to die off. Very excited to reclaim that bed for cucumbers, tomatoes and herbs. I will cut and pressure can most of the potatoes this year. I have an excess of quart jars that will be perfect for the project.

My blackberries are in full bloom!

The cardboard is waiting for mulch. That'll happen eventually.

I walked 9 miles yesterday, 7 of those were from yardwork.

 

[igorsMistress]

I planned tomorrow’s list today, that’s it. I have four five projects I really need to work on and have been procrastinating so I’ll be out before the sun is up to work on some of them while I water. I am dreading the shed

 

[Acre4Me]

We got some rain yesterday, so I decided to apply the nematodes bc ground was nicely moistened by rain. It started to rain lightly as I finished up, and the forcast was for a little more rain. Well, I wasn’t expecting the 1.5” + rain we received over the next few hours. Hopefully the nematodes just got nicely watered in the ground rather than washed away.

 

[catsndogs4us]

We are getting rain today and it's warm-ish. I set some seedlings out of the greenhouse to enjoy the rain for a while. I have the week off work. I hope to get a lot done between the gardens and young chicks.

 

[TJAnonymous]

Nature hates me. Apparently I'm the last to figure this out...

I have 5 apple trees of various ages:

Mystery Apple - this was labeled a Pink Lady but it's not. It's a yellow-green apple instead of pink. This is the 3rd or 4th year I had it. It's probably 8 ft tall and my most mature tree. I got 3 apples from it last year. It was the first time it produced fruit.

Granny Smith - I purchased this tree locally 2 yrs ago. It's about 6.5 ft tall. It has never flowered or fruited.

Honeycrisp - I purchased this tree locally last year. It's just under 6 ft tall. It was loaded with flowers last year and I used it to hand pollinate the mystery apple tree. This year it produced lots of blooms, even though it really needs to focus on growing bigger. The deer seem to LOVE this tree though and they've nearly killed it this spring by eating over half the branches.

(2) Sugar Bee seedlings that I grew from store bought fruit last year. I put them in the ground this spring. They are doing great but still under 3 ft tall.

So what's the problem??? Well, I tried to hand pollinate the mystery tree and Honeycrisp because I wasn't really seeing any bees around. A few weeks later I noticed baby apples all over both trees. I was delighted but also very annoyed that the Granny Smith is a dud this year. Then the deer struck and wiped out most of the Honeycrisp. And because of all the rain, I didn't get to spray the trees in a timely manner based on bud recommendations. Well the fruit is now about thumbnail size so I decided to go bag it to keep the bugs out. I started with the mystery tree... I was dismayed to discover nearly ALL the fruit dropping the minute I touched it. I did manage to bag TWO apples but only 1 feels solidly attached to give me confidence of reaching harvest. I also noticed a lot of the fallen fruit looks deformed. Lumpy. Then I went to the Honeycrisp tree. It only had about a half dozen baby apples left on it after the deer raid. Same size as the others - thumbnail size. I noticed almost ALL of them were also deformed and lumpy. I picked off all but the best two and bagged them.

So what would cause that? Plum curculio maybe?

Very disappointing

 

[Smokerbill]

Well, the grandkids weren't interested in planting their own gardens so I planted them for them today. Radishes, carrots and red onions. Hopefully seeing things grow through the season will help them catch the gardening bug. LOL

 

[akroberts1085]

I haven't done anything in the garden because it's supposed to rain.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Well, the grandkids weren't interested in planting their own gardens so I planted them for them today. Radishes, carrots and red onions. Hopefully seeing things grow through the season will help them catch the gardening bug. LOL

I’ve tried having the grandkids plant seed before but they quickly lose interest. Only when I point out a specific ingredient of Sunday dinner was something they planted. This year I picked up starts for them to plant. They seemed more engaged with that “instant gratification” of seeing what they planted. I had hoped they could have planted the pea seeds in that new bed, however we just ran out of time. I really think they’ll get there.