What did you do in the garden today?

[TJAnonymous]

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I repainted mine yesterday.
This was from last year.

I really wanted to repaint my strawberry barrels with a nautical stripe pattern like below but I never got time to do it... Maybe since the rain will slow down next week, I can do it with the mineral tubs instead.... Probably setting myself up for more hair pulling....

 

[agarnp]

Picked zuchini & green beans & a few pickling cukes...and of course weeded.

 

[WthrLady]

Across the road is spraying again. This time the winds are at 15mph and blowing right towards my place. Grrrrrr. We are a no drift listed property for bees and specialized crops.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Ya tree farm behind our property is real bad that way.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

My go to hand tiller is my old garden weasel. I’ve had this for 15 years. It works really well on shallow roots and small stones. Also gives you a good upper body workout. Mine is green and a solid piece of steel.

But I got this at Home Depot, not Walmart.

 

[CNJ]

I sprayed my tomato plants with soapy water (1TBS to 1 gallon water), I am not sure if it can kill the insect that is biting a round ring around the top stems.

I also figured out why I was still getting bite from mosquitoes after I changed the bait and uv light. The mosquitoes were driving me nuts, so I went to clean my mosquito trap and found out that the fan that suck the mosquito in was not working.

I replaced it with a bigger spare 1 acre mosquito trap

 

[CNJ]

I just took apart my broken mosquito trap and had a good look at the fan connection socket and snapped it back in and it came on, it must have gotten loose when I periodically clean it.

 

[BeefQuesoritto]

Working on getting my dripline set up. I've got a venturi siphon coming in so I can try fertigation too.


I got approved to do directed study with my agriculture prof to compare commercial fertilizers to aquaponics fed through the venturi.

Well I've been so busy with college that I haven't done anything else...

 

[CNJ]

I got approved to do directed study with my agriculture prof to compare commercial fertilizers to aquaponics fed through the venturi.

I had to add chelated iron and magnesium to my aquaponic filtered water for my vegetables to thrive and I have been flushing the fish poop out to my tropical fruit trees, but I still need high phosphate and high potassium fertilizer to induce fruiting.

 

[Swiss]

Congrats on your strawberries!

I used cardboard last year with wood chip mulch (instead of straw I'm using this year...). I didn't have any problems with rain penetrating through it and it did a great job of holding moisture in the soil while blocking weeds.

This year I'm using the cardboard again (with straw mulch) but I've added dripline irrigation below the cardboard. This is how I'm hedging the inevitability that Mother Nature shuts off the sky spigot through July and August every year. So I expect to have no issues with soil moisture except to monitor it for potentially too much.

Oops, I meant that the original wild strawberries already have flower buds. The ones I'm growing from seed are no where near to that.

Good to know about the cardboard!

I got my tiller back, then found it was doing the same thing. Honestly, two times off to two different repair people...

I think it just needs a belt. It works for a little while, then gets weaker and I smell a belt burning.

Yesterday, I just HAD to get in my tomatoes. They were a foot high and still in the 72-cell starter trays.

So I killed myself using a broadfork to break up this soil. I was able to till it a little after that. Enough to get the tomatoes in before they died.

I was really glad I invested in this broadfork. I'd wanted one ever since I'd seen Elliot Coleman on TV in the 1980s use one.

Here's mine:
https://meadowcreature.com/collections/broadforks/products/peoples-broadfork-12

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That's frustrating! I hope you are able to get it actually fixed soon!

We use cardboard around our tomato plants. My husband runs a soaker hose down the row after planting and before laying down the cardboard (often cereal boxes). We usually put them between 2 cattle panels -- expensive at first, but we've been using them for over 10 years.

I will have to get a bunch of cardboard for around my plants this year!

I had my mom send me a picture of the garden I cleaned up yesterday:

Today, I dug a couple of clumps of the overgrown lilies that I don't really like out of my main "flower" garden, weeded about 2/3 of it, and planted the flowers I brought home from my mom's garden. I'm not sure I will keep them there, but that's where they are for now. There are more I need to plant, and I have to figure out where I'm going to plant all the rest I'm getting from my mom. And what on earth I'm doing with these lilies... I would hate to waste them, but I really don't like them. I'll offer them to family, but I doubt that will get rid of them all.