What did you do in the garden today?

[Elyrian1]

Fill material set up nicely overnight, looks good, firmed up after being sprayed down with the garden hose and is packed enough to park on! Should stop the flooding in the areas where we aren't planning to grow things. DH went crazy with the diatomaceous earth when he found out it can kill black widows. The RV is now dusted with it around the wheels, lol, as is a portion of the fence. Looks really funny but haven't seen the shiny ladies in a few days... Hopefully they died. I use it to kill ant nests, just drop a big dollop off the hand trowel and job's done within a day or two.

DH legit didn't believe me when I told him we'd have black widows everywhere. Not until he saw it with his own eyes. Now he's a believer! Now I just have to get him in the habit of wearing gloves when he works outside. He asked me why we have so many of the darn spiders, I told him it's the South, it's normal. He about had a fit. We're planning on making the garden wolf spider friendly, and letting mud daubers do their thing.

 

[vall]

what temperatures are required to grow pineapples? could I use supermarket pineapples to start with? I have seen in youtube that we can cut top of pineapple and plant it. is it how it works?

The temperature needs to stay above freezing. Yep, you can use "twisties" from the supermarket. Cut off any flesh, pull off the bottom few leaves, and let dry for a couple days, then plant.

 

[vall]

we'd have black widows everywhere

Two years ago I had tons. Last year I removed every single spiky egg sac I found and now there are just a few again.

 

[Sueby]

ONce you use them for garlic, they belong to the garlic. LOL
tripping on trays here at thrift stores, seasonal grocery, and the dollar stores...next time you go out.

Ha - VERY good point I probably wouldn't have thought of!

Holy cow @Elyrian1 on the black widows! Are they aggressive or do they prefer to hide from you? I've never seen one.

 

[WthrLady]

Females guarding egg sacks are VERY aggressive. Stupid spiders.
We brought tons of egg sack with us from Alabama, they did not appreciate the -25'F winter, THANK GOD.

 

[chickengr]

I'm looking at maybe getting a 12v demand water pump that puts out 60 PSI on the discharge end. I could drop the suction end into the lake for as much water as I want. I know you can use those pumps to go uphill, but I don't know how much pressure you would lose. Most pumps give you a graph of how much water you can pump at any given height of rise. If your plot is way up the hill, you might need to pump water into a holding tank up the hill by your garden, which might be slow to fill, and then use another pump to take the water from the holding tank to water the garden. If your holding tank is big enough, then you really don't care how long it takes to fill. You could put in a shut off float to turn off the water when it reaches your desired level in the holding tank. Kind of like the toilet bowl tank float that shuts off the water automatically once the tank is refilled.

But yeah, I'm getting too old to tote water to the garden to hand water each and every plant. This year has really been dry and I am rethinking options for a better garden next year. I really enjoy growing our own food, but this year I don't expect to get much from the main garden because we have not had any rain.

thanks.

I was thinking about building a tank for water. the stream might not have enough water in summer.

 

[Elyrian1]

Ha - VERY good point I probably wouldn't have thought of!

Holy cow @Elyrian1 on the black widows! Are they aggressive or do they prefer to hide from you? I've never seen one.

These hide during the day, but wthrlady is right. Once they lay eggs they WILL go after you with their little front legs raised up in the air ready to strike. These are all huge and fat by the time I find them too. DH likes to play with fire, so a map gas torch is his go-to for any spiders out in the open. Pretty much an instant-kill. You can usually find them out in their webs about dusk, and out all night. The hate the daylight though. Be glad you don't have them. We're planning mitigation efforts partly to protect my sanity. I hate ALL spiders (should have seen me this morning when a tarantula ran across the road), but venomous ones send me into hysterics practically.

 

[chickengr]

These hide during the day, but wthrlady is right. Once they lay eggs they WILL go after you with their little front legs raised up in the air ready to strike. These are all huge and fat by the time I find them too. DH likes to play with fire, so a map gas torch is his go-to for any spiders out in the open. Pretty much an instant-kill. You can usually find them out in their webs about dusk, and out all night. The hate the daylight though. Be glad you don't have them. We're planning mitigation efforts partly to protect my sanity. I hate ALL spiders (should have seen me this morning when a tarantula ran across the road), but venomous ones send me into hysterics practically.

I thought we had a lot of spiders here, lol.

 

[Sueby]

Yep, I'll take cold & snow over spiders any day! Holy cow, I don't know how I'd deal with that! We do have brown recluse spiders around here but I have never seen one, thankfully. I think most everything dies around here in the winter except ticks.

 

[Elyrian1]

Yep, I'll take cold & snow over spiders any day! Holy cow, I don't know how I'd deal with that! We do have brown recluse spiders around here but I have never seen one, thankfully. I think most everything dies around here in the winter except ticks.

My understanding of brown recluses is that they like hiding spots that we humans are extremely unlikely to encounter. Unless you're doing renovations... Then be careful.