What did you do in the garden today?

Good morning gardeners. The San Marzano tomato plants are definitely dead. The brandywines and one sweet 100's are doing fine. I'll just reseed another sweet 100 or two if they don't have individual plants at the nursery I'm going to later. The potatoes still look a bit rough but they will bounce back. It really could have been worse. I'm going to work on the new garden bed later this morning. The weather folks are promising a big rain tomorrow so I want to fill in some spots along the fence line to keep the rain from gushing down hill through the garden bed. Hopefully we get enough rain to test my fixes out. As for squirrels in the peach tree @Sueby and @BReeder! Never had a problem really. There a few that were munched on laying on the ground, but nothing apparent in the tree itself. However, there is a lilac shrub growing close to the peach tree so perhaps that was a deterrent. Nothing really bothers the blueberry bushes on the other side of shrub either. Occasional birds maybe. It took a lot longer to finish up the weed whacking in the front yard yesterday so I only got the weed whacking finished in the backyard. I still need to mow, however the grass is so uneven I thought I would wait to mow that after the rain on Saturday. I really need to mow the chicken yard so hopefully I can knock that out tomorrow morning before the rain starts. I think going to the expense of raising the height on your garden beds is a great idea @Sueby. Go for it.
 
I had to move my black caps as my mother was upset they were taking over her peonies. I replanted them in a walkway in my garden. I've lost my short cut to the chicken coop, but I'm excited to have a formal black cap garden. I'll be staking them and digging up the sod and mulching as time allows. It was more important to just get them back in the ground for now. I'm using this web page for my staking and pruning plan (the second staking plan with a "V" shape). Pruning black raspberries
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That so stinks IM! I've been thinking the squirrels will eat my peaches & what can be done about it. I wonder if those little bag covers would help or if they'd just tear through them.

Another nice day, which I enjoy - but boy do we need rain bad! Supposedly tomorrow, I sure do hope so. I'm already sick of watering. :lau I left my soaker hose out last winter on the strawberries knowing that I wouldn't be able to get it out this spring, I was hoping it would survive the winter but it didn't. Turned it on last night & split bad & is unusable. Oh well.

I'd love to put in irrigation but I'm wondering if I'll ever be able to bend/garden again so then I think about building really raised beds, like waist height & then I wonder if it would be worth the money it would cost. I go round & round with that. :he:lau Has anyone seen a good design of really high, large, raised beds?
Yes actually, I have seen a great design. The worm farm here has one that’s probably 3 feet high, maybe a little more. It’s a hugel bed shaped like a keyhole garden so they can reach everything either from the keyhole or from the sides. They use a soaker hose on a timer to water it.
 
@Sueby almost all of my raised beds are hip high. Otherwise I don’t see the point of it. Lol. I built most of mine out of used pallet boards. I do have one that my husband built that has corrugated steel for the sides but the pallet board ones cost next to nothing to build.
I say go for it!
Agree. I'm seeing a lot of companies making hip high, wheelchair friendly planters lately. Certainly there are free plans online.
 
I've been looking, but I can't spend a ton of money on it. Wood is super expensive here & it seems like a waste - my cedar beds are falling apart after a few years & my galvanized steel beds are rusting. I need something more long lasting. I was thinking maybe cinder blocks. But I don't know how much it would cost. DH refuses to work with pallets, lol. He gets so annoyed with anything I want to do with them & he'll be the one doing the work so I need him. :lau But even my pallet compost bins are falling apart already after only a couple years. Cinder blocks seem like a lot of back breaking work. See, round & round I go. :gig:gig
 
I'm a little behind on reading everyone's news.
This is the first morning I've felt well enough to try to get something done in the garden.

I've planted a Cascade Delight raspberry, 5 Caroline raspberries, 5 Tulameen raspberries, and a Prime Ark Freedom blackberry so far today. I hope to get in a few more things but it may not happen.

I thought I'd share this, though. I took a screenshot of my property so I could create a map of where I have planted things. When all papers and notes and plant markers get lost, I'll still have this.

I try to add every perennial that I plant, right after it goes in the ground. This is especially helpful to me today as I seem to have misplaced my aluminum plant markers! Hmph!

I'm wondering if I already shared this... Oh, well. If I did, this one has more added to it now.

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Last year I bought a bunch of heavy wire tomato cages that looked really good. Unfortunately, they are breaking off at the welds/solder points and just falling apart. I'm very disappointed with them. So, this year, I think I will try and build some tomato cages out of scrap wood and see how that goes.

Here is a picture of what I currently have in mind...

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:idunno If anyone has already made tomato cages out of new wood, pallet wood, or reclaimed wood, and has any lessons learned, I'm asking for your experience in what works and what does not. Thanks.

The only lesson I learned was that trying to save money by building one giant tomato cage instead of individual ones made it really difficult to pick tomatoes.
 

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