What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

Thinned out my seeds in the trays this morning and tossed on some green sand. My lettuce was looking oddly pale, so I switched to the full spectrum and fed them.

Waiting for fog to lift to get out and plant the berry bushes.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Thinned out my seeds in the trays this morning and tossed on some green sand. My lettuce was looking oddly pale, so I switched to the full spectrum and fed them.

Waiting for fog to lift to get out and plant the berry bushes.

Hi @WthrLady, good to hear from you after all that nasty weather you had to deal with. I finally got my rooster into his bachelor pad this morning. He is one angry chicken. The weather here is finally improving. The high winds have settled down so I can actually get outside to get work done. Tomorrow is forecasted to be in the low 60's so I'm planning on getting peas, radishes, lettuce and spinach planted then. All my seeds that I started indoor have sprouted except for the jalapenos. Many of them have their secondary leaves already. Good luck with your berry bushes.

 

[jnicholes]

Hello,

So, I have another Gardening experiment. Here is the idea.

The Aztecs put their raised beds on the water, and they filled the boxes with soil above the water level. The water full of nutrients fertilized the plants and helped them grow.

These raised beds were called Chinampa.

This is my next experiment, to see if these chinampas were effective in growing plants.

I actually talked to the Idaho Department of Agriculture about this experiment a while ago, and they told me some advice and told me some things that need to be done before the experiment can be started.

They said that the materials needed to be all natural, and they could not be invasive species, by this I mean being unable to flow down a river and be invasive somewhere else. This was a must.

Another must is that the materials used to make it cannot harm the environment.

Another must was I need water rights, in order to do this experiment. This is the only difficult part, finding a place where I can actually build a raised bed in water, and test this experiment. Maybe somebody has a pond in their house they may let me use for this experiment.

What do you think about this experiment? If I can pull it off, it might show some interesting results.

Or, I could have a fish tank, and have a small garden on the top to test this. This might work.

I also posted this on the garden.org forum. One thing you have to know about me is that I love to experiment.

Jared

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Good morning gardeners

I've decided to play hookie from work today and finish my pavers. I was so tired and stiff last night and thought for sure I would be sore and creaky today. Nope, I feel great! It's so good to get out and get the muscles working!

Have a great day all, I need to go water this morning

Good morning gardeners

I've decided to play hookie from work today and finish my pavers. I was so tired and stiff last night and thought for sure I would be sore and creaky today. Nope, I feel great! It's so good to get out and get the muscles working!

Have a great day all, I need to go water this morning

Good for you for taking some time off. I don't know how some of you keep it all together working outside the home and then all the work you do at home and in the garden. I did it the last year before I retired and after I stopped working I stayed inside for a week and just rested. Enjoy your "sort of" day off.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Hello,

So, I have another Gardening experiment. Here is the idea.

The Aztecs put their raised beds on the water, and they filled the boxes with soil above the water level. The water full of nutrients fertilized the plants and helped them grow.

These raised beds were called Chinampa.

This is my next experiment, to see if these chinampas were effective in growing plants.

I actually talked to the Idaho Department of Agriculture about this experiment a while ago, and they told me some advice and told me some things that need to be done before the experiment can be started.



They said that the materials needed to be all natural, and they could not be invasive species, by this I mean being unable to flow down a river and be invasive somewhere else. This was a must.

Another must is that the materials used to make it cannot harm the environment.

Another must was I need water rights, in order to do this experiment. This is the only difficult part, finding a place where I can actually build a raised bed in water, and test this experiment. Maybe somebody has a pond in their house they may let me use for this experiment.

What do you think about this experiment? If I can pull it off, it might show some interesting results.

Or, I could have a fish tank, and have a small garden on the top to test this. This might work.

I also posted this on the garden.org forum. One thing you have to know about me is that I love to experiment.

Jared

We noticed Jared. LOL! I would go with the fish tank idea first. Good luck.

 

[RenoHuskerDu]

Thinned out my seeds in the trays this morning and tossed on some green sand. My lettuce was looking oddly pale, so I switched to the full spectrum and fed them.

Waiting for fog to lift to get out and plant the berry bushes.

Ours are in, for 2 weeks now, budding well. I hope the birds don't find the fruit.

Speaking of greensand, what a weird name. It's big here in Texas, they actually call it Texas Greensand, and nod their heads sagely, saying "oh it's very good" but nobody can say why. Well, I love a mystery.

Infogalactic says greensand is "a source of potassium in organic gardening"
https://infogalactic.com/info/Greensand. Potassium is the first number in fertilizer ratings. https://infogalactic.com/info/Labeling_of_fertilizer

Here in Central Texas it's the middle number we need, Phosphorus. But garden shops around here push greensand anyway. We typically have plenty of Potassium, and plenty of Nitrogen but it's bound up due to high pH in our limestone-based soils. Even our Bolar Clay Loam is around 7.5 in this area. Lower the pH and bingo you get your Nitrogen.

So why do local shops push greensand? I dunno. Maybe it helps lower pH. I used 97% sulfur in tiny yellow pellets. Maybe in your area it's what you need.

 

[Farmdog267]

Some of my seedlings are getting their second set of leaves. I'll be fertilizing them over the weekend along with thinning some of them too. Hopefully the rain today don't make things too soggy for the remainder of the weekend. I was hoping to get some composted soil and mix it in to finish the garden prep work. Hopefully plant some strawberries too!

 

[RenoHuskerDu]

Hello,

So, I have another Gardening experiment. Here is the idea.

The Aztecs ... SNIP

Give it a try! Sounds a bit like hydroponics.

How about renting a mini excavator that can trailer behind a pickup? Rent a pickup if you don't have one. Should cost you less than $400 to do it all. I rent a 4 ton excavator for $270/day. But you don't need one that big. 1.5 ton should work fine, a lot cheaper. Dig yourself a tiny pond for your experiment. And let us know!

I studied their culture for my degree. Try reading Jorge Luis Borges short stories, many of which are available in English if you don't speak Spanish
https://infogalactic.com/info/Jorge_Luis_Borges . Aztecs were primitive and violent in many ways, curiously advanced in others. Some suspect that they were visited by aliens. It's not politically correct to mention this, the "noble savage" being very much a la mode. But it's true. That said, their agriculture wasn't one of the areas I studied.

 

[jnicholes]

@RenoHuskerDu, I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the tip! I had no idea you studied them! That's so cool!

 

[igorsMistress]

I got the last of the pavers in and I've begun to rethink the compost pile a bit.

I have a TON of aloe that's still green and half a ton of half composted mesquite limbs with some green acacia limbs mixed in. The mesquite tree in the backyard is in very poor soil and I've read they can be allelopathic. I'm going to make a barrier wall 5 feet in diameter around the tree and compost the aloe and mesquite limbs inside the barrier. This will get the mesquite out of my compost but still use it.

I'm going to do the same thing in another area of the yard to prep the soil for another tree or large shrub. No mesquite there but I'm not sure what yet.