What did you do in the garden today?

[appps]

Let's see, first I picked some beautiful big tomatoes. Then I cursed at the fruit fly marks on them and threw them out. I've never had any problems with my tomatoes, this year if I'm not throwing them out with fruit fly I'm disposing of them with caterpillars

 

[LittleLakePhil]

Yes plants definitely need dark I grow hot peppers so I try to keep 12hrs on 12 off.

 

[Beekissed]

Let's see, first I picked some beautiful big tomatoes. Then I cursed at the fruit fly marks on them and threw them out. I've never had any problems with my tomatoes, this year if I'm not throwing them out with fruit fly I'm disposing of them with caterpillars

You throw them out if they have marks on them???

 

[Beekissed]

Made homemade seed tapes the other day for my onions and will try to continue that with my lettuces and such. It was easy to do, just took some time and cheap toilet paper.

Checked the soil being built under the chips and leaves, it's moist and black but interspersed with wood chips still so not sure how long it will take to turn to mostly soil in that layer. Under that is my usual clay soil, hard as nails as per usual, though softer than it normally would be with the covering of chips on it to hold in moisture. Saw a few worms but not as many as I'd like.

This warm weather has my rhubarb thinking it's spring, though, so nice new leaves coming out on stalks 4-6 in. Just covered those up with leaves to keep them warm when the temps drop and hope they don't die completely under there when they get frozen later on.

Scavenged more leaves for my orchard and for my son's BTE setup we started in his front yard. He lives in town in a cookie cutter neighborhood, so I can practically feel the outrage going on in the neighboring houses. Dirty looks abound. Mostly elderly folks, so their idea of gardening is still stuck back in the till and hoe days of agriculture, I'm thinking. No one even has flowers in that neighborhood due to all the deer running rampant....which is why we are placing electric fence around Joel's space, a single strand and barely noticeable, but the deer will notice it greatly when they come to eat the only tender things around.

 

[politicalcenter]

Here are a couple of pictures from inside my new greenhouse. I know it doesn't look like much but they are cuttings I have rooted and some in the process of rooting. They have been moved from a house that was a little too dark and they should come around before spring.

I also have about 200 creeping phlox rooted and in pots outside and they are doing well. I am showing some brugsmania trees (rooted) and 2 kinds of ice plant (rooted) and some roses not quite there yet. I also have some fig trees started and other things going on.

 

[hennible]

Very nice

 

[politicalcenter]

Let's see, first I picked some beautiful big tomatoes. Then I cursed at the fruit fly marks on them and threw them out. I've never had any problems with my tomatoes, this year if I'm not throwing them out with fruit fly I'm disposing of them with caterpillars

Chickens will eat them. We have pigs and we have no food waste at all. What we don't eat the pigs eat. What the pigs don't eat the chickens eat. We also have goats that eat just about anything green so we don't even throw carrot tops away.

 

[politicalcenter]

Very nice

You are too kind. I am trying to use water to heat the thing but I still put a heat lamp in it when it gets below freezing. But I have another house with a small tomato plant in it with no heat except a water container and it was below freezing last night with no frost damage. I am trying to get a house with no outside heat whatsoever. In my climate I might be able to pull it off.

The new house has a whole lot of Pepsi cans filled with water and stacked on top of one another. It seems to help...but it takes a lot of cans.

I plant to keep adding water.

 

[Guvnah]

You are too kind. I am trying to use water to heat the thing but I still put a heat lamp in it when it gets below freezing. But I have another house with a small tomato plant in it with no heat except a water container and it was below freezing last night with no frost damage. I am trying to get a house with no outside heat whatsoever. In my climate I might be able to pull it off.

The new house has a whole lot of Pepsi cans filled with water and stacked on top of one another. It seems to help...but it takes a lot of cans.

I plant to keep adding water.

I've seen people saying that they put the turkey carcass (after carving off all the meat) in the chicken run, and the birds peck it clean down to the bones. I've never gone that far, but I certainly give a ton of stuff to the chickens. What they don't eat gets raked up and tossed on the compost pile. What they DO eat means that-much-less I have to buy in chicken feed.

And it's not just kitchen scraps. After I pick corn, the chickens get the cobs, the husks, the stalks, the roots. They eat it all. (Corn is just a type of grass, after all.) Bean stalks and leaves. HOPS!!! They love the vines and leaves after I harvest my hops. It all disappears. Weeds. Broccoli leaves and stalks. I cut wild grasses and alfalfa from the local fields, and dump a trashbag of that about twice per week in the summer months. It all disappears.

In late August I had to divest myself of my chickens (long story) and I'm constantly lamenting their absence when I have pumpkin shells, watermelon rinds and all sorts of kitchen scraps. I'm getting new chickens in the spring. In preparation for that, I sowed alfalfa throughout the entire chicken run. It all sprouted. I essentially have an alfalfa lawn in there now. Alfalfa puts down DEEP roots (as much as ten feet!) and I am hoping it will be well established by the time I get new birds. Then, even if they peck the plants to the ground, those roots will keep putting up new shoots.

 

[Bugseye]

BTE? I'm so slow, but I do know about the cookie cutter neighborhoods. We've got snow falling, so it's nice to see everyone else's projects going on. Keep posting, while I enjoy a crackling fire and a view of conifers laden with snow.