What did you do in the garden today?

[pennyJo1960]

Watered the garden good strawberries more coming on

 

[chickengr]

Well if this was 4 years ago you are good. I thought it happened very recently. Most of them have enough common sense to not cause trouble when THEY did something really dumb,but a few of them now. I am not trying to scare you, but just make sure you realize, this is not the somewhat nice little world we grew up in, there is no honor, humanity, or ethics left anymore. People will kill others at the drop of a hat and not even blink because those drugs destroyed what common sense they may have had.

You are absolutely correct, you DO have to call, THEY put YOU in that bad place. But if they do get stupid about it and show up later on, YOU may have to put them down like any other rabid animal that attacks or threatens humans. As I grow older I find myself with way WAY less tolerance for human ignorance, and this whole wave of violence that is sweeping the nation, NOT in my back yard, NO you will NOT!

I can tell you the REAL secret my garden is growing so well !!
Just kidding officer, it was a JOKE!!

You know, speaking of, lets segway this in another direction, this IS a garden topic.

I seen a composter, it looked like a cone thing, with a bucket buried underground, it was for meat products they claimed. This immediately caught my attention because of well, I eat steak, bones, I fish often, guts and bones, an animal dies, bones / compost... type thing. They claimed it works very well and did not really stink much. Has anyone ever used something like this? Me personally I can't see a pile of rotting meat NOT stinking somehow. I typically throw all my meat scraps and entrails etc out / bury them but is there a way to compost them into something usable that's not a huge nightmare?

Aaron

Edit: Let me add to this, I have seen where some will take fish, throw it in a bucket and cover with sugar and let it ferment for a few months to make a super potent tea out of it for fertilizer. While useful, you are spending more money on the sugars, my goal was to compost but not have to throw more money, down the toilet, so to say...A

I bury dead chickens under some tree. meat, fish, etc. can be buried too.

 

[El Paso Linda]

Posted some pics from the garden on my blog.

http://daddykirbs.blogspot.com/

I hear ya cva34, It IS hot in TX already!

I had to partially cover my garden plants so the plants can withstand the intense sun here in El Paso, TX. Plenty of water and artificial shade in hopes my tomatoes, cucumbers, greens, and zucchini will produce a crop. The temp here is over 100 degrees daily.

 

[chickengr]

More rain and storms last night. But we got lucky. An hour to my southeast, they had 10.5 inches of rain. Feast or famine here.
DS and DH were in the city to work yesterday, so I took the opportunity to get all my chaotic house work done without worrying about noise, motion and zoom meetings. LOL.
I love having them around, but it sure puts a wedge in my work and chore days. I feel throttled and things pile up that need doing and then I have days like yesterday, where I have too much to cram into an 8 hour day.
My poor wrist and bad ankle are puffy and complaining today. Grr.
I pulled 3 strawberries, one tomato, and a blackberry from the garden yesterday after a quick beheading of weeds walk through. Strawberries were extra juicy and drippy, so I licked my fingers clean. OMG SO amazingly good, OC spent the rest of the day paying for that lick. SO itchy. DH said the berries were equally yummy.
The orchard has cedar rust. It's been too windy, or too wet to spray. This orchard is $$$$ and has become a pain in the butt. The pears have grown really well over the past 7 years, but have NEVER produced one pear. The apples try hard, but the trees seem stunted, probably a soil condition as I KNOW it is not for lack of water, care, or feedings.
If I were 10 years younger, I'd take them all out and replace them with a huge cutting flower garden.

I had another Tartan design accepted by Scotland. This on is for a listed historic property, so that feels good. An UK heritage thing, ya, nice.

Trip to town the city today. I'd like a couple things from the hardware store, and OC the weekly market trip. DS is tagging along for the ride to town for a couple hours of work, then the ride home.

(BTW I feel I should explain the odd additions to my postings, I use the BYC post in here as my digital diary. It's searchable, so I can remember what I did year to year and why and when. LOL. So if I'm too detailed, boring, or off topic for anyone, skip me or block me. I get it.)

I actually love reading about other people's day. Shows me I'm not the only nutter

Go out and commune with the bugs today everyone.
OH fun youtube shows I found this past week, You Can't Eat the Grass gardening/flower market show and Restoration Home, which is OLD and amazing historic homes in the UK that are redone. It's kind of history meets fix-it-up show.

if you were 10 years younger you would probably conquer the world! I get tired reading how many things you manage to do every day. I wish I had 1/3 of your strenght.

 

[alfie10]

rained again last night ,very cool this morning but sunny .got a lot done yesterday outside weeding ,pruning some shrubs so i can walk along the paths better. going to make a lge bucket of comfrey 'tea' for the garden ,will make it really strong then put into a water barrel and top up water so i don,t have to faff around diluting it every time i want some .my compost heaps are growing potatoes so i think i,ll wait and see what they produce. have a nice day everyone .

 

[Sally PB]

Possibilities for rain for the next 8 days. I was begging for rain a week or so ago; not anymore. At least I don't have to worry about wells running dry around here.

Not sure if I'll get anything done in the garden today. Weeds will be easy to pull when I get out there, that's for sure!

 

[Ascholten]

Lake affect storms, yah those were fun. 17 inches of snow in your neighborhood, 2 inches everywhere else. I remember fondly shoveling the snow off the roof of the house too. It'd make a huge pile, and we'd yell and flail and jump head first into this huge snow pile. My dad had a snow blower, thing was a fn monster, it'd throw snow 50 feet. Id run it and often times do the neighbors driveway too. One day I was doing Ed's driveway when all of the sudden this thing started clunking, clinking and shaking for a few seconds, I was like WTF, then looked up. I didn't see it under the snow but Ed has his garbage bags out for the trash man, I scooped them up with the snow blower, shredded them and threw them all up in his drive way, oh his roof, on his car....... Being a teen ager, I did the right thing though. I laughed my ass off, and went inside to wait for him to come over and bitch about it
Ahh yes the memories. Now I appreciate watching the h urricanes narrowly miss.

Aaron

 

[Phaedra Geiermann]

Roses start their time here, last year I bought about 25 bare root roses, and after more than half year waiting, it's nice to see them grow and blossom.

 

[WthrLady]

I grew up in Northern Indiana. Two words - Lake Effect.

View attachment 2735424
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Looks like our stint in North Dakota.

 

[WthrLady]

Morning all.
Storm pounded us.
It stayed just below severe limits officially, but to go through it I'm shocked.

In came in looking like a classic plains mothership but it moved SO slowly.
It went midnight dark at 815 at night and the winds howled to 52 mph for over 15 minutes.
Sheets of rain knocked the visibility down to less than 50 yards and we got just under 2 inches of rain in less than 30 minutes.

The fact there was no hail was shocking actually.

As it passed the sun had just set so there was just enough light between storms to go out and check for damage; One crooked ear of corn and a broken elastic tie on the garden fence, and two snapped apple tree branches on a sapling that is already on the list to be culled.. OMG that was it! All of our wind mitigation put in last year WORKED! (This time)

I swear when I put the flashlight on the sunflowers they looked at me and said, "bit breezy wasn't it?!" LOL.

Chickens were sleeping, alpacas only glanced up from their evening cud chewing and yawned.

Remarkable.

DH and I decided to cull out the orchard. Me mostly, as I am the one that works it. There is something in the soil in half the orchard that is keeping trees from thriving or outright killing them. We have that problem with maples on this hill too. It's some fungal or bacterium, can't remember which. My neighbor on the next acreage has the same problem, No amount of feeding, spraying or irrigation fixes it. Trees not in the area are slow to grow but not moving backwards. So I'll mark trees that will be removed, plug their irrigation outlet and well let the whole area go to a wildflower field that will only be mowed in the fall. The remaining orchard trees will be allowed to do their thing and will keep their individual water lines in case of drought.

This has been a 7 year battle. All the 40 trees have been replanted at least once, if not 3 times, food, water, spraying, note keeping, soil checks, giant holes with fresh growing soil, root treatments, deer invasions, hail storms, freezes in June. Nope, there is a clear line of good soil zone and bad out there, so I will stop trying to force it to work and instead will work with it. (Yes, these trees are local purchased/grown trees from this area, for this area.)