What did you do in the garden today?

[BReeder!]

I'm so sorry Alfie, that sounds miserable. The smell of coffee and fresh bread do wonders for me.

Mainly because she's broody and that's making her irritable, but she attacked Mahogany and totally freaked out Dotty. It was kind of funny, two of the higher ranking hens (Amelia and Queenie) saw she was acting aggressive and put her in her place afterward. She's been in jail for about 24 hours now and has calmed down a lot but she's still ticking like a feathered time bomb so her sentence isn't done yet. From what I've read, a couple more days will hopefully solve it.

Oh I'm so glad, that'll be the next purchase, thanks!

My snap peas produced far more than we could eat but they made great pickles. The yellow and green bush beans were both duds for me.

I love pickled green beans, I'll go to Roseburg later when the bean season is going and buy some for canning and pickling. Ohhh and maybe some wax beans too for three bean salad! I love that stuff so I guess I'm officially an old lady.

If I had more space for raised beds I'd plant peas just for fresh eating.

I potted up more zucchini (I'll post pics once I see they are doing well) and cleaned out some of the huge cloth pots for reuse. And I won't have to buy any more salad greens for as long as I can keep everything from bolting. Buttercrunch:View attachment 2649964

And the slug & snail bait seems to be working for now anyway.

Our lettuce seems slow to grow this year. DW planted seeds about two weeks ago and it's just sprouting. I'm hoping to have fresh lettuce soon. We don't have grow tunnels or cold frames, so we have to wait a bit later to put the seeds in the ground. Perhaps next year I'll get cold frames or tunnels set up. That just wasn't a project for this year as I had (and still have) plenty of other projects to get done.

 

[TJAnonymous]

The last of my Gurneys order showed up today. A meyer lemon and dwarf pomegranate. Both are smaller than expected. Apparently 4" pot means 4" deep, not 4" round. The plants look alive though, so I transplanted into new decorative pots and put them in the our bay window, which is where I intend to keep them most of the time. I may put them outside for the summer months, but I worry about gnats getting into the soil and brought into the house.

I would like to say I'll not order again from this source, but I have $30 in credit with them that I'm not going to let go to waste. That will be my last order though through them.

Can you take a picture and post it? I'm curious about what size the plants are.... I saw a video on Pinterest that pomegranates are ridiculously easy to grow from seeds. I waited patiently for some to show up in the store and harvested a bunch from one fruit. Sure enough, I got around 6 - 8 to germinate from about 10 seeds that I tried. I started them in Solo cups. Just graduated one to raised bed. It is easily 6 inches tall already.

I'm curious how that might compare to what you received from Gurneys.

Interestingly enough, I did the same thing with lemon seeds from store bought lemons.

 

[Fishychix]

Can you take a picture and post it? I'm curious about what size the plants are.... I saw a video on Pinterest that pomegranates are ridiculously easy to grow from seeds. I waited patiently for some to show up in the store and harvested a bunch from one fruit. Sure enough, I got around 6 - 8 to germinate from about 10 seeds that I tried. I started them in Solo cups. Just graduated one to raised bed. It is easily 6 inches tall already.

I'm curious how that might compare to what you received from Gurneys.

Interestingly enough, I did the same thing with lemon seeds from store bought lemons.

Ooh, interesting. Im going to try this.

 

[Fishychix]

The last of my Gurneys order showed up today. A meyer lemon and dwarf pomegranate. Both are smaller than expected. Apparently 4" pot means 4" deep, not 4" round. The plants look alive though, so I transplanted into new decorative pots and put them in the our bay window, which is where I intend to keep them most of the time. I may put them outside for the summer months, but I worry about gnats getting into the soil and brought into the house.

I would like to say I'll not order again from this source, but I have $30 in credit with them that I'm not going to let go to waste. That will be my last order though through them.

For a “normal” pot 4” is 4”, deep and diameter. What shape was your pot?

 

[chickinlittles]

My neighbor just spent $200 to have a landscaping crew come in and clean up all his leaves from last fall. For a number of reasons, he got behind on the yard clean up last fall and needed all those leaves gone before they killed his grass this spring. Where I live, we are just starting to see some green grass growing.

As I watched them vac up the huge pile of leaves into a dump trailer to be transferred out to the landfill, I could not but help to think that was such a waste. Over the years, I have learned how valuable all those leaves are and I don't let a single leaf leave my property. In the fall, I mow them up with my riding lawn mower and dump them in the chicken run. The chickens love to scratch through the leaves, breaking it down even more, and the next spring I have black gold sitting in the chicken run ready to be harvested anytime I need some compost for the garden.

I have 3 acres of land with lots of tress, and in the fall I am on the riding mower for hours every week mowing up those leaves. Last year I had so many leaves that after I filled up the chicken run with about as much leaves as I thought it could hold, I built an additional 8X8 foot holding pen for the excess leaves. My chicken run compost litter was about 18 inches deep, and that made me bend over in the run as I have bird netting on top of the 6 foot high fencing. So I started piling the leaves in the holding pen.

My chicken run compost is made up of free wood chips I get from the county landfill, grass clippings I get from mowing the lawn, and all those leaves I get in the fall. I put everything down in layers, and just let the chickens stir it up and break it down for me.

This spring I will be enlarging my chicken run so it will hold more leaves in the fall. Also plan on making a gate big enough that I can drive my riding mower with dump cart into the run. I have made so much chicken run compost, that I am seriously considering buying a front end scoop for my riding mower so I can move the stuff around easier. A few years ago I was buying compost by the bag at the big box stores. Now, with all my excess chicken run compost, I am actually giving compost away to my neighbors who have gardens.

Anyway, it was a shame to see all those leaves from my neighbor's house heading to the landfill....

Oh yeah paying someone to take away garden gold doesn’t seem very cost effective. I make large leaf mold bins. We have alot of oaks and the leaves take a long time to decompose. These bins line up along the road of our 2.5 acres and are a great privacy screen and sound barrier as they turn themselves into gold for the gardens. While they are working I have planted trees and bushes in front of them to take thier places after they are taken down. This process takes a good 4 to 5 years so that give the new plants a good amount of time. I always have bins going and never need to buy soil amendments. I’ll take a picture tomorrow .

 

[chickinlittles]

I completely understand your trepidation regarding the vaccine. We haven’t had it, don’t think we will. We wear our masks and use the sanitizer still.
What color geraniums did you get? I have a light pink and a dark pink because I already have a lot of red stuff here

We are going to continue to wear masks social distance and use hand sanitizer.
i got orange, pink and purplish colors. A friend gave me a beautiful salmon color too! I put them in pots today and got them situated in the gazebo. I felt pretty good today, noticed my energy and strength is a little less then usual so I worked half day in the garden and then went to the studio to finish a painting I am working on. I’m Iiking how it’s coming along , it’s almost there, just needs a little more work to be done in the foreground. Here it is so far. I love painting Bison.

 

[gtaus]

Oh yeah paying someone to take away garden gold doesn’t seem very cost effective. I make large leaf mold bins. We have alot of oaks and the leaves take a long time to decompose. These bins line up along the road of our 2.5 acres and are a great privacy screen and sound barrier as they turn themselves into gold for the gardens. While they are working I have planted trees and bushes in front of them to take thier places after they are taken down. This process takes a good 4 to 5 years so that give the new plants a good amount of time. I always have bins going and never need to buy soil amendments. I’ll take a picture tomorrow .

Yes, when you get to a point that you have more compost than you can use, then you don't really care how "fast" the stuff composts. It takes about a year for my litter in the chicken run to break down into good compost, but that is using wood chips, grass clippings, and leaves. Obviously, the grass clippings speed up the process compared to just wood chips or leaves. But I'm feeding the grass clippings to my chickens during the growing season.

I like to put things down in layers, and let the chickens turn it over and mix it up. I don't water the litter because it gets enough natural rain. But you can see the chicken run litter literally turn black after a good rain. I used to re-pile the litter in mounds every so often, but it did not take me very long to figure that it took the chickens about 5 minutes to flatten out a pile that it took me about 30 minutes to work up. So I felt that was wasted effort on my part and I don't do that anymore.

Ditto with pallet compost bins. Since I have more compost than I can use, I just fill up a bin and let it sit. I don't bother to turn it over and over. I just build more bins and let the stuff slowly decompose on it's own time. I had 3 pallet compost bins from last year, this spring I built another 2 bins, and I have enough pallets to build 3 more bins this summer if I need them. If you don't need compost in a hurry, you can really go the lazy person's way and let nature break down the compost on its own time. In the end, it all looks the same when ready to harvest.

 

[igorsMistress]

We are going to continue to wear masks social distance and use hand sanitizer.
i got orange, pink and purplish colors. A friend gave me a beautiful salmon color too! I put them in pots today and got them situated in the gazebo. I felt pretty good today, noticed my energy and strength is a little less then usual so I worked half day in the garden and then went to the studio to finish a painting I am working on. I’m Iiking how it’s coming along , it’s almost there, just needs a little more work to be done in the foreground. Here it is so far. I love painting Bison. View attachment 2650120

Wow, that’s beautiful!

 

[chickinlittles]

Wow, that’s beautiful!

Thank you for saying so

 

[jonalisa]

I'm in seacoast NH, about an hour north of Boston. Our last frost date is May 15th. That's when you can plant from seed outside or plant your plants outside that you started indoors.