What did you do in the garden today?

[FarmerGirl101]

Haha. Sorry about laughing about how you got scared by the field mouse.

 

[chickadoodles]

Quote: X2 Very beautiful!

 

[lazy gardener]

Beautiful garden and plants. Squash bugs and cucumber beetles are wreaking havoc on my plants. I've found that if I saturate the ground around the squash, the squash bugs come up out of the soil, and I can then catch them and kill them. Am getting about 8 bugs/plant. cucumber beetles just fly off.

 

[Beekissed]

That's one gorgeous garden!!!

My envy meter just jumped off the scale.....

 

[TerryH]

Thanks everyone!! We do love the garden. I think part if not much of our success this year is that we redid all the 4x4 boxes and removed the old and laid down new plastic in the entire garden earlier this spring. It was a massive undertaking but it turned out well. The process is painful. We had to shovel the dirt from one row of boxes into the next row and then reverse the procedure. We removed the old rotten boxes, replaced the plastic and install the new boxes and then shovel the dirt back including all the dirt from the next row and repeat so basically moving the entire garden with a shovel....twice. I got a friend from work to come and help and it still took 3 Saturdays and a lot of Advil to get it done. We amended soil with compost and re-mulched with all cedar mulch. Seems it really woke up the garden.







Next year we'll be changing all the 2x12 boxes. Not looking forward to that either but it has to be done every 7 or 8 years. We use Douglas fir for the boxes and that's about as long as they last. The major lesson learned with all of this is that soil amending never ends and no matter how much you think you've done you probably need to do more. The chickens will provide us with some lovely amendments from now on.

 

[country girl44]

These are my sunflowers from last year and this year



these are the start of this year.

 

[chickadoodles]

Country girl your sunflowers look very pretty.

Terry H. your garden looks wonderful!

 

[Beekissed]

Thanks everyone!! We do love the garden. I think part if not much of our success this year is that we redid all the 4x4 boxes and removed the old and laid down new plastic in the entire garden earlier this spring. It was a massive undertaking but it turned out well. The process is painful. We had to shovel the dirt from one row of boxes into the next row and then reverse the procedure. We removed the old rotten boxes, replaced the plastic and install the new boxes and then shovel the dirt back including all the dirt from the next row and repeat so basically moving the entire garden with a shovel....twice. I got a friend from work to come and help and it still took 3 Saturdays and a lot of Advil to get it done. We amended soil with compost and re-mulched with all cedar mulch. Seems it really woke up the garden.







Next year we'll be changing all the 2x12 boxes. Not looking forward to that either but it has to be done every 7 or 8 years. We use Douglas fir for the boxes and that's about as long as they last. The major lesson learned with all of this is that soil amending never ends and no matter how much you think you've done you probably need to do more. The chickens will provide us with some lovely amendments from now on.

That looks stunning! All the more so because I know just how much work all of that is. Bless your hubby and friends for helping you with that project...that's huge! And so neat and lovely. I can't imagine having such a nice place to garden, what a blessing for sure.

 

[TerryH]

  That looks stunning!  All the more so because I know just how much work all of that is.  Bless your hubby and friends for helping you with that project...that's huge!   And so neat and lovely.  I can't imagine having such a nice place to garden, what a blessing for sure. 

Ummm...I am the hubby. Cheryl....not the hubby...made lunch and brought us tea.

 

[lazy gardener]

Blessings to Cheryl for keeping the food and liquid coming! Super important also!!!