What did you do in the garden today?

[Smokerbill]

Garden updates:

Installed some new solar lights neat each garden gate and at the end of each pathway - 8 lights in total and could use 1 more. These were a special buy on Menards' website last week and got delivered today.

More gravel is down, making the two major pathways done. No more muddy shoes from going to the greenhouse!

Pics:
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That's just Awesome!!! Looks like an amusement park!

 

[Smokerbill]

Do you start indoors? I like getting tomatoes as early as possible so I start indoors at the end of February. I up pot twice and end up with 2ft tall plants in 6 inch pots by the start of may. Up hand tomatoes in June this way. My neighbors will not have tomatoes until July and their plants will be a lot smaller than mine with fewer tomatoes set on them.

Yep, started seeds in February, and those didn't do well. I didn't have space to account for the growth. I planted more seeds the first week of April, and that seemed about right. I up potted them once into 4" pots, and as they started taking off growing, the weather got nice enough to plant. They were only about 4" tall, but they're doing great in the garden.

I'm impressed that you have 2' tall plants to put in the garden, but I think I'm ok planting little plants. LOL I've even considered just direct planting tomato seeds in the garden to make things easier.

I'm impressed that you get tomatoes so early! Hope you and your neighbors have wagers going on who'll get the first tomato.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I do it all the time, it works no problem. & Smokerbill is correct, it would be the seeds of them that would be a cross. I don't bother saving seeds for squashes so it doesn't matter to me. But it might be something yummy & intersting!

I do save seeds but not until the end of the season. Shouldn't be a problem in this case... But you're right! Might be a fun experiment to see what happens.

 

[TJAnonymous]

It's interesting. Pretty much all squash will cross, including the winter varieties and most pumpkins, but you won't know how till the next season of you save seeds.

Did that year before last, and had a bunch of weird c. Pepos last year from it. Some were incredibly tasty, like one that was half green and half yellow. Some went to the birds after the first taste. But they were pretty neat to look at!

I had different types of watermelon cross-pollinate 2 years ago. One was a yellow watermelon and the other was a traditional watermelon. The fruit itself was affected in the cross breeding which came out a pale blush color that was pretty flavorless. This year I am making sure the watermelon can't cross pollinate.

However I have a vertical trellis that's growing watermelon, cantaloupe, and pumpkins. Pollinators will do what they do best with these....

Separately, inside my hoop house, I have a vertical trellis growing a small watermelon and sugar pie pumpkins. Everything inside the hoop house must be hand pollinated.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I'm pooped. I spent part of the evening reseeding a bunch of flowers that never sprouted.

Then DH and I began working on the new pen for our buck, Black Peter. My youngest doe, Annie, just had 2 kids a week ago. I want to reintroduce her and the kids into their pen but I don't want Peter to try breeding her again right away. It took us over 2 hours to get the pen built and corral Peter into it. He is NOT a fan. By the time we got him in, it was after dark so I'm leaving Annie in the barn until morning. I will reintroduce her & the kids then.

Now I'm just filthy, hungry, and tired.

 

[BReeder!]

Anybody who grows chard, when should I harvest? And thoughts on how to prepare it?

Rainbow chard is one of my new plants this year, so it's my first time dealing with it. The plants arev about 8-10 inches tall right now and actually starting to look the the pictures I see online finally. Is this full grown though, or still small? How big do the leaves get? And then there is eating it - how should I prepare it: raw like lettuce, sauteed like spinach, boiled like collards, all of these, none of these?

 

[WthrLady]

steamed/saute i like it in dishes that have a little vinegar, which helps cut the bitterness a little
And yes, you can do it raw like spinach, but like I said, it can be bitter.

 

[Sueby]

Crap! I didn't cover the strawberries & they have little fruits & a lot of flowers. Oh well. Not going out there now, but it's already down to 38.

 

[gtaus]

Quick update on my compost sifting and setting up my new pallet wood raised bed I mentioned a few days ago. Again, this updated post was initially uploaded to the thread Show Me Your Pallet Projects! as it relates to my newly designed pallet wood raised beds. But I also want to share it here on the gardening thread because of the overlap...

Update on setting up my new pallet wood raised bed...

Last time I had finished the pallet wood 4X4 foot,16 inch high, raised bed with my new design. Using the hügelkultur method, I lined the bottom of the raised bed with logs...

Then I added a load of aged wood chips to fill in the gaps between the logs, and to fill the raised bed up to a level where I had about 6-8 inches remaining...

Today, I was working on making the final chicken run compost and topsoil 1:1 mix to fill that top 6-8 inches in the raised bed.

Last year I shifted my chicken run compost, dumped it into a garden cart, then mixed in the topsoil. This year I got a little smarter so I thought I would share my improved setup. So, first a picture of the setup...

On the left side of the picture, you can see the load of topsoil I bought at the nursery yesterday. It is high quality Red River Topsoil and that load cost me $60.00. On the right, you can see a load of my chicken run compost in the big Gorilla cart, then the wire cart is for rejects from sifting, then underneath the cement mixer compost sifter is my 6 cubic foot Gorilla cart that catches the sifted compost.

As you will notice, everything is setup up next to the chicken run in my backyard.

Anyways, the brilliant idea I got this year was to sift the compost and the topsoil at the same time, eliminating all the work of having to measure and mix the compost and topsoil 1:1 later in a cart. So, I would take 2 shovel scoops of topsoil, toss it into the compost sifter, and then take 2 scoops of chicken run compost and toss that into the sifter, repeat until the Gorilla cart under the sifting barrel was full. Everything came out sifted and premixed into that Gorilla cart under the sifting barrel. Beautiful! Saved a lot of work over last year where each step was done by itself.

Old dogs can learn new tricks! For those of you who think that solution was a no brainer, just let me celebrate my modest moment in improving my process efficiency.

Here is a picture of the new pallet wood raised bed completely set up and ready to plant. Our planting date is not until 29 May, but I'm ready to go this year!

If all goes well, I plan on building another one of these new designed pallet wood raised beds before the end of the month. If things go really well, I will build a total of 4 new raised beds. Can a person have too many raised beds to grow food? I think not.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Anybody who grows chard, when should I harvest? And thoughts on how to prepare it?

Rainbow chard is one of my new plants this year, so it's my first time dealing with it. The plants arev about 8-10 inches tall right now and actually starting to look the the pictures I see online finally. Is this full grown though, or still small? How big do the leaves get? And then there is eating it - how should I prepare it: raw like lettuce, sauteed like spinach, boiled like collards, all of these, none of these?

All of the above We cook them in bacon grease or butter and salads.