What did you do in the garden today?

[jerryse]

A few weeks ago I raked up a bunch of leaves and stuff around the chicken run fencing on the outside so I could mow up close to the fence. I tossed that stuff into a big muck bucket and forgot about it until today. I was just going to toss everything into my compost sifter but discovered that the muck bucket was heavier than I thought it would be. That meant it must have been wet from some rain last week and being a plastic muck bucket, it retained all the water from the rains.

Wet compost does not sift well, so I decided to just dump everything into the chicken run. When I turned over the bucket and everything came out, it was full of juicy worms. Boy, did the chickens go crazy!

My question, can I do the same thing, this time on purpose, and see if I can get enough worms growing to start a worm bin? Would the worms in leaf litter be red worms for composting or would they be earth worms? The biggest worms were about 3 inches long and not very fat. Just nice and juicy for the chickens.

Red worms like manure. Also called manure worms and sometimes sold as trout worms. Earth worms most likely. Also called angle worms up north.

 

[Sueby]

It was 30 when I got up this am, not sure how much lower it got than that but everything seems to be good. Not sure about the strawberries, some seem to be curled up a bit. They may have taken a little hit, but I don't think it was too bad.

 

[littledog]

Any prayers are welcomed Thank you.

Oh Karen. I'm so sorry. Nothing I can say can ...this is tragic.
I'm not usually a praying person, but I'm going to do my best.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Good morning gardeners. We definitely got a hard freeze overnight. The water in the birdbath was frozen. Most of the early plantings seem to have survived. The potatoes don't look real happy but they should be fine. The rosemary is fine. The tomatoes are not looking all that great. I think individual cold caps would have worked better than draping plastic sheeting over their cages. We'll see what survives. Not the end of the world. I have more seeds. The leaves on the butterfly bush next to the big garden are looking pretty sad. But the kale and the bok choy seemed to have enjoyed the dip into frosty temperatures. The flowers and the flowering shrubs look okay in the front yard. My orange azalea is getting ready to bloom, so hopefully it will continue. I need to work on the mowing and weed whacking today. I carried another half bag of garden dirt up to the hill garden earlier on my garden walk. Still need to get more dirt up there to mix with the "forest" compost. Then it will be planting time.

 

[Sueby]

@Wee Farmer Sarah how is your peach tree this year? Has it flowered? Just curious as I have no idea when they flower...(I assume mine is skipping flowers for it's first year)

 

[WthrLady]

Got up early and got moving quick to get chores done. We have dense smoke from Canada moving in soon, knocking down visibility down to half a mile.
I needed to pull that old tree and fill the hole, take care of livestock, and as long as I was out there I cut back the herbs, and washed them and tossed them into the dehydrator.
I also marked a bunch of ground squirrel holes so DH can set the traps and we can get control of this problem. It's getting ridiculous. I'm considering taking up falconry.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

@Wee Farmer Sarah how is your peach tree this year? Has it flowered? Just curious as I have no idea when they flower...(I assume mine is skipping flowers for it's first year)

My peach tree did not bloom but that’s okay. I had bumper crops 2 years in a row and apparently it’s not uncommon for trees to take a break after that. I also pruned it back more severely this year. It was getting unmanageably tall. My Empire apple tree bloomed so I’m hoping for a few apples this year.

 

[Smokerbill]

Got up early and got moving quick to get chores done. We have dense smoke from Canada moving in soon, knocking down visibility down to half a mile.
I needed to pull that old tree and fill the hole, take care of livestock, and as long as I was out there I cut back the herbs, and washed them and tossed them into the dehydrator.
I also marked a bunch of ground squirrel holes so DH can set the traps and we can get control of this problem. It's getting ridiculous. I'm considering taking up falconry.

Maybe a ferret would be better than a falcon. Don't they crawl down into the rodent holes to hunt their prey? But I don't know if that's something that's done, I mean, using ferrets for ground squirrel control. LOL

 

[TJAnonymous]

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.

Can you come do that at my house?

 

[TJAnonymous]

You know, I don't expect my pallet wood raised beds to last a lifetime. I think using untreated pine wood will normally last 3-5 years in a raised bed. I don't know if using the Hügelkultur system will cause the wood to rot out sooner than that. I have 3 hügelkultur raised beds out in my main garden with untreated wood and they are still intact for over 5 years. I have 2 hügelkultur raised beds in my backyard using pallet wood and they are going on their third summer with no signs of wood rot yet. I live in northern Minnesota, and half our year is under snow, so maybe my untreated raised beds just last longer than a raised bed in a more southern state.

I have thought about staining or sealing the pallet wood on the raised bed prior to filling it up. Another idea was to line the inside with empty "plasticy" feed bags and maybe that would add some life to the build because the barrier would keep the pallet wood separated from the soil.

However, I have just decided to leave everything as is for the pallet wood raised beds and actually see how long it lasts before it needs to be repaired, rebuilt, or replaced. A very big factor for me is knowing that I spent less than $1.00 on the hardware for the raised bed, the pallet wood was free, so I did not want to spend much time, money, or energy on trying to make it last a few years longer. It will be easier, and cheaper, for me to just rebuild if needed.

I liked your question, but I really don't know the real answer yet. Maybe someone else has had experience with this issue and could help us both?

Last year I started doing hugelkultur in my raised beds. I used wood chips at first because I had 2 giant piles of them from the local tree service. But they do compost down in a year. Not a bad thing but it does cause the soil level to drop a bit. So this year I began with more logs and large sticks, then wood chips. Similar to what you are doing. Can't wait to see how it goes!