What did you do in the garden today?

[Sally PB]

Getting ready to plant more daffodils and tulips for the spring - I dislike this chore, but it certainly pays off

I planted 100s of daffs when we first moved here. They have multiplied and filled in and it's daffodil land here in the spring. The tulips have been eaten by the critters. I gave up on those.

If you can get a helper, then planting bulbs is a snap. Use a shovel, not a trowel. One person steps on the shovel and wedges a slot open. The other person puts in the bulb. Shovel person removes shovel, bulb person steps on dirt to tamp it down. Move on and repeat.

I didn't have a helper and planted 100 bulbs in less than an hour.

 

[Birdsonghill]

I’ll be happy if I get even a 10th of the sweet potatoes that they did!
My leaves and vines are still green so I haven’t tried to dig them up yet.
Not sure when I’m supposed to dig them up for sure.

Armadillo's love to eat sweet potatoes and wiped out my last crop, finding every one of them in a short 15 ft. row, leaving me zero for my work! I discovered all these cone shaped holes circled around every plant, after ignoring the garden a few days! They dug directly down to each sweet potato and left nothing! I could hardly believe they got them all and I carefully dug the entire row and nothing was left! I must have some very fat and health Armadillo's around here! Armadillo's were not native in this state and migrated in, I guess, and have become numerous in recent years. No one hunts/eats them around here. I never saw one in West Tennessee when I was a kid or a younger man. They began to show up around here in the late 1970's and became common by about 1990 or so! I have commonly grown sweet potato about the size of a basketball and many soccer ball size with Georgia jets. That is undesirable for me! The "better" varieties have more uniformity and freakishly large ones are less common, setting potatoes of a more good baking size, more consistently. The only other animal that has eaten my sweet potato from out of the soil is wild hogs, but they are scarce around my place now days,( too suburbanized now) and easy to detect and make good eating , with no hunting season and can be harvested all year. Thank God! The hogs can destroy a large garden in one night! Don't get me wrong! The Georgia jet variety is a good producer and they say does well further north than many other varieties. They just have a high incidence of larger unmarketable tubers. This year the fresh sweet potato are commanding very high retail prices at the big grocery stores and it is a mystery as to why, to me. Harvested by many tons per acre. 99 cents per pound at the Walmart (I bet they paid no more than 20 cents per pound). I guess Walmart needs to gouge the public to pay for their social engineering works, online personal shopping programs and multi Million dollar bonuses paid to the CEO and etc.. All of us need to grow sweet potato more and shop less at the corporate grocery criminals stores !!! A dollar per large baker is something akin to extortion, pay it or starve. I pity the young families just starting out, with low salaries and no large gardens! They are living on the edge of starvation if these trends continue! We had beef stew or soup meat at very low cost and vegetable staples were similar when I was young. The percentage of my income needed for feeding my family was tiny compared to today! My average grocery/household supply bill has almost doubled in the last five years. I got a very tiny Social Security cost of living increase that would be a joke if it were not so devastating to many! Excuse my rant, please! I am just disgusted by where this country is going under corporate leadership and colluding corrupt government officials.

 

[Birdsonghill]

PSA: Anybody still needing garlic, the only place I've seen not sold out yet is Stark Bros.

My planted seeds and garlic cloves have not shown themselves yet, but we shall see what happens over the next several days.

Territorial seeds sent me a notice they still have some garlic varieties available! Better act fast!

 

[Offshoreorca]

I planted 100s of daffs when we first moved here. They have multiplied and filled in and it's daffodil land here in the spring. The tulips have been eaten by the critters. I gave up on those.

If you can get a helper, then planting bulbs is a snap. Use a shovel, not a trowel. One person steps on the shovel and wedges a slot open. The other person puts in the bulb. Shovel person removes shovel, bulb person steps on dirt to tamp it down. Move on and repeat.

I didn't have a helper and planted 100 bulbs in less than an hour.

Great advice. The problem is that I'm planting them in the lawn, so I have to dig out circles of sod - very time consuming

My father planted 10,000 bulbs one fall and I helped with much of that, but because they were in beds and prepared areas, it was much easier!

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

I live on edge of New Hampshire which is nicknamed the GraniteState. Digging to plant here is time consuming to get through all the granite stones and pulverized granite. Another reason I put in raised garden beds.

 

[Birdsonghill]

I think I’ll skip the Jerusalem artichokes @BReeder! I have enough GI issues now and having to control invasive rhizomes is not my idea of fun.

They grow wild along the roadsides but are less common "nowadays" with herbicides being used to control the roadside vegetation. Plant them along the right of ways or in unused corners of your property and they seldom spread too far, here.(that may vary in your local!)Their natural habit and insect pest or animals that consume them seem to keep the ones near my property to about the same size patches for decades. They do slowly creep or move the location naturally. Small city lots may be over whelmed by many plants if not contained by barriers . Driveways and concrete walks help confine them. They are a bit notorious for causing gas if eaten in large quantities and I share that problem. I seldom eat them but have occasionally. I enjoy the perennial flowers. Simply mowing the spreading plants seems to control the spread on my property, similar bamboo. If you mow the perimeter regularly, it stops the spreading. Stop mowing and it advances.

 

[Birdsonghill]

Great advice. The problem is that I'm planting them in the lawn, so I have to dig out circles of sod - very time consuming

My father planted 10,000 bulbs one fall and I helped with much of that, but because they were in beds and prepared areas, it was much easier!

A bulb planter that is designed to be used standing up, similar a shovel is a big help. I used to plant thousands of bulbs every year for large commercial buildings, apartment developments, etc. in the city decades ago. Myself and a helper or two, would plant thousands per day. The planters will pull out a plug of sod or soil and one would just make holes and the other(s )place the bulbs ,right side up and cover. Much easier on your muscles for making large plantings. Some would use a drill mounted bulb auger, but for me that was often slower/more work in the long run. We planted 3000 to 5000 tulips(usually tulips, but also daffodils and others) per day sometimes at our biggest clients properties. Often times interspersed with pansies and or ornamental kales, in the fall plantings. These days , the large clients are spending far less on mass flower plantings, except perhaps the first year or two of a new "high end" property development, even then, you likely see a smaller planting than from the older decades gone by!

 

[WthrLady]

Great advice. The problem is that I'm planting them in the lawn, so I have to dig out circles of sod - very time consuming

My father planted 10,000 bulbs one fall and I helped with much of that, but because they were in beds and prepared areas, it was much easier!

I use a square end drill auger.

 

[Sally PB]

I just walked around the gardens... still no frost. I have 3 pepper plants that I picked clean, and I'm using them to tell when it frosts.

 

[Happy hen lover]

Hey all what kind of squash are these . I was gifted them they are golden in color some are ribbed but they are not spaghetti. Pix is washed in color.