What did you do in the garden today?

[igorsMistress]

I’m here! Doing well. Did a 17 minute quarter mile on the treadmill today. Then slept for 3 hours.

You go! Lol

 

[Ascholten]

I use to have lava and blue rock in my aquaponic growing beds, but every time I grow something with a lot of roots like long squash etc., the bed gets filled with muck, even if the water going into the beds are filtered clear.

Its a pain to clean, so now I use grow bags in my beds and just water them with the pond water return once a day. The grow bags wick water up and moisten the potting mix from the bottom up.

After I harvest, I pour all the potting mix in a separate tub with holes on the bottom. Earth worms find their way into the tub and multiply in my potting mix. I use small size 50/50 lava rock and peat moss, so the mix is loose and doesn't compact.

yah, isn't it amazing how the worms find their ways into the filters ! you'd think they would drown in there but nope, they do just fine.

aaron

 

[gtaus]

DH came up with the great idea of using hardware cloth tents over the stands I have the pots on.

Sounds like a good idea.

FWIW, Dear Wife grew some eggplants on our back deck a few years ago. Everything was looking pretty good with little eggplants a plenty. Then, one morning, we noticed that a squirrel had taken all the eggplants and eaten them. No eggplants that year. Anyways, I made chicken wire tents to put over the pots of eggplants and we have had lots of back porch eggplants since. Word got around to Dear Wife's friends. She took pictures of the chicken wire tents on our pots of eggplants and her friends are now successful growing food for their families, and not just feeding the squirrels.

 

[gtaus]

For fast greens, sprouts work well for me.

I went to Food Co-op this afternoon and bought a couple scoops of sprout seeds. One was a 5 Bean Salad Sprouting mix and the other was Red Clover spouting seeds. Now I just have to find my sprouting trays and/or my sprouting jars which I am sure I put away somewhere safe. Hope I find them.

I don't know how much anybody pays for sprouting seeds. The bean mix cost me $1.80 per oz., and the Red Clover was 0.85 per oz. I only got 2 little scoops of seeds and paid just over $3.00. Just wondering what other people pay for sprouting seeds and if there are some deals out there that are better than others? If I start sprouting seeds again, I don't want to spend $3.00 each time for the small amount of seeds I got. The Co-op sells only "organic" food, and I wonder if the cost of those seeds would be less money if non-organic and bought in a bigger quantity.

 

[chickengr]

Sally, I sell mostly green coffee beans that people roast themselves. I do sell roasted coffee however it's more word of mouth. The greens keep me plenty busy, to be honest i would not have the time to do roasted on a full time basis. I wish I could but as it is i typically ship 400 Lbs a week or so of greens, .. so roasting and mass selling roasted over that, id never have time to pet the paco or choke the chickens (at his request)

At one time I was thinking of hiring some help but not even sure how to even go about that anymore with today's sorry generation. Too many times ive seen some lousy people ruin a good business by being.. well... typical entitled POS's. A person can take years to build up a business and their reputation, and that can be wiped out in a few weeks by crappy employees. These worthless kids nowadays, none of them want to work, they want you to pay them 20 dollars an hour to play on their phones all day and bitch because they have poor wi fi reception. I pay commission, the more you work, the more I pay. NONE want that, because, the magic word, or I should say forbidden word in Gen Z's vocab,.. Work. Reeee Reeeee Reee!!!!! I did the math, I could raise my prices maybe 10 cents/ lb which is minimal to hire someone to bag coffee, which not even cracking a whip, just, working a normal pace, being safe, taking a swig of coffee, water, smoking a cig or 2 during the hour and you could still make 20 -30 bucks an hour ! Bagging Coffee FFS !! an epileptic retarded monkey can do this job, it's NOT HARD. Very little brains needed, even a stoner should be able to do this right??? yet had a bunch turn it down because it was 'too much like work'. 'so called -Normal' people think it's demeaning work. Im not bagging coffee, that's pissant work. For 30 bucks an hour ill scrub your crappers for you buddy! The 3 who did 'try' the job, couldn't even do that, ship 100 lbs of coffee, i'll give you 3 days, well uhh, well this came up, and then I had to do this and I wasn't sure you bla bla bla. Rather than deal with that, I just keep to my green coffee and do it all myself.

Ill Dm you my site if you want to look at it, you can post me a message there and i can basically sell you roasted, of any green that is there. I don't want to post the site here because it IS a business and that'd probably not go over well here doing that.

Aaron

I found on internet that in germany they don't employ young people any more as they come to the job interview with "a wish list", like they cannot work on certain days as they have yoga lessons starting at 17 pm.

 

[NewBoots]

I thawed and made fritters from a couple bags of the zucchini I froze this summer and they worked great! This was the first time I've tried freezing zucchini so I was so happy they didn't turn to mush. I did have to drain them once they had thawed but still made great fritters. I let the girls out from an hour or so today while I worked on one of the raised beds. They were so happy I have to do that more. We lost one of our outside cats, Trouble. He had a tumor under his tongue poor boy. DP is thinking of switching from rabbits to Cornish Cross chickens for freezing meat. We still have a lot in the freezer, I feel pretty secure for now so no hurry.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Hard to loose them @NewBoots

 

[jerryse]

I went to Food Co-op this afternoon and bought a couple scoops of sprout seeds. One was a 5 Bean Salad Sprouting mix and the other was Red Clover spouting seeds. Now I just have to find my sprouting trays and/or my sprouting jars which I am sure I put away somewhere safe. Hope I find them.

I don't know how much anybody pays for sprouting seeds. The bean mix cost me $1.80 per oz., and the Red Clover was 0.85 per oz. I only got 2 little scoops of seeds and paid just over $3.00. Just wondering what other people pay for sprouting seeds and if there are some deals out there that are better than others? If I start sprouting seeds again, I don't want to spend $3.00 each time for the small amount of seeds I got. The Co-op sells only "organic" food, and I wonder if the cost of those seeds would be less money if non-organic and bought in a bigger quantity.

FYI I used to work at a seed and hardware store . The sprouting seeds came out of the farm seed bags , Red clover , alfalfa and such. Seed was not treated. You could also buy 5 bean dry bean mix at the grocery store.

 

[WthrLady]

I buy my stuff in bulk and snatch it from the bags as well. I have a local seed dealer I can pop into.
Clover, alfalfa, flax, barley
sprouts for lentils I grab at the grocery by the one pound bag (by the dried beans) as that is not a common thing to grow here, and thus, seed co-op doesn't have it.

 

[CNJ]

I bent the tips of my tomato cage so it wouldn't make a hole in my grow bags and it became twice as study. It made a big difference.