What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

Our UPS guy, Jeff, is awesome. He's sweet and we make sure he gets water, snacks, and anything he needs on his run. He is respectful, and treat all our packages as if they were his. He knows if he needs anything on his route to come here.
FedEx well, here they're careless, speed like flying out of hell being chased by the devil, and walk past our drop box another 40 feet to get to the front door where they TOSS stuff.

 

[Swiss]

Well, apparently we got our 10 free trees and 2 hydrangeas from the Arbor Day Foundation.... yesterday.... and we forgot to check the mail until about 20 minutes ago.... so, they were inside 2 plastic bags inside a dark, metal mailbox that gets no shade for 2 whole days...... you'd think live plants would get delivered to the house...

I remembered a while after we donated that a bunch of people on here had trouble with them not arriving or arriving dead... We were not expecting tiny little twigs, and we weren't expecting them to be put in the mailbox...

 

[WthrLady]

Well, apparently we got our 10 free trees and 2 hydrangeas from the Arbor Day Foundation.... yesterday.... and we forgot to check the mail until about 20 minutes ago.... so, they were inside 2 plastic bags inside a dark, metal mailbox that gets no shade for 2 whole days...... you'd think live plants would get delivered to the house...

I remembered a while after we donated that a bunch of people on here had trouble with them not arriving or arriving dead... We were not expecting tiny little twigs, and we weren't expecting them to be put in the mailbox...

I ordered a TON from ADF when we first moved into this house. ADF is centered here, just down the road from me. EVERYTHING I ordered was bareroot twigs, and tiny. After year ONE, everything was dead, they replaced nothing, and the ONLY thing that made it was a tiny smokebush twig. Shockingly, it's still alive, about 10 feet across and 8 feet tall. I think $250 was NOT well spent.

 

[Swiss]

I ordered a TON from ADF when we first moved into this house. ADF is centered here, just down the road from me. EVERYTHING I ordered was bareroot twigs, and tiny. After year ONE, everything was dead, they replaced nothing, and the ONLY thing that made it was a tiny smokebush twig. Shockingly, it's still alive, about 10 feet across and 8 feet tall. I think $250 was NOT well spent.

That's kind of how I'm feeling about these, but it was a "free gift" for donating, so, I guess we got what we paid for? Since we paid nothing? I've got them in water now, and we shall see, but I'm assuming they were literally steamed for two days.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I ended up spraying the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and more with spinosad. I didn't have enough neem mixed up and I didn't feel like pulling out the step stool to get the bottle down.

I also thoroughly watered everything that isn't on the irrigation system. It was desperately needed. Everything was wilted and dying.

Now I'm headed out to candle and mark eggs that the broodies are sitting on. Didn't want or need any chicks but since no one was collecting eggs while I was gone, they took advantage of the situation.

 

[Swiss]

Today was a long one:

First, I hand watered where seeds or baby seedlings are. My basils, borage, watermelon, and some dill sprouted last night! I really do love seeing the growth of things I have planted!

After breakfast, I forced myself to go down and dig out some of the untilled garden bed in order to prep it for my sprouting milkweed seeds. I got maybe 4'x4' before I said, "I am sick of digging out grass. This bed is being tilled by FIL's tiller in the fall." So, I moved what was left of the compost and topsoil I had delivered back in whatever-month-it-was on top of that whole garden bed. There was more than I needed, so I moved a cart and a half up the hill to what I am going to make into my herbal/medicinal/kitchen garden. Yes, I will need to dig up more grass, but this area is much easier to dig in! The bed I was digging in today was difficult to get the shovel in the ground because the grass was so thick. So, I got a ridiculous amount of exercise in simply from pulling that full cart-load up the hill. Then, I watered everything. Tonight, my husband and I were walking around with the dog, and he looked down at the freshly watered garden and said, "The garden is looking good!" which made my day! It was glorious to hear that all the hard work I have put into it is visible to others.

I NEED to get the tomato trellis(es) made and installed, and trellises for our berry patches, too. And control what I am 98% sure are grapevines (which would involve more trellising)... do grapevines get extensive enough to climb to the tops of trees and kill them? And cut down the vines trying to kill the apple trees in the meadow. And clean up the berry patches. And go fill up my truck once or twice or three times with pine needles for mulch. And spread those pine needles. And thin the carrots..... it's a lot of work, but I love it! I just don't love that I always seem to fall behind on everything.

Speaking of berries, I finally looked up a low-growing vine that grows behind my garden and in the meadow and likes to trip you if you don't pick your feet up. It's dewberry, and edible! I should see about cultivating a patch of it, but that's not a priority for this year. This property has so much abundance for us, I love it!

 

[karenerwin]

I watered my garden and cut part of the grass and weed eated another part of the yard and then stopped because the battery for the mower was dead and the battery for the weed eater was dead.
I did disturb a medium sized black snake while weed eating. It was probably 3 or 4 feet long. We’ve had them here that were 6 feet long before. Then went to the hospital to see my son and then drove out to his house to check his mail and check on his house then drove back to the hospital to see him again. Then went home after dark.

 

[pennyJo1960]

So the snake was your best fun today Karen. How is your son coming along ?

 

[saysfaa]

... do grapevines get extensive enough to climb to the tops of trees and kill them?

Yes.

 

[saysfaa]

Today (technically, yesterday), we shooed the chickens out of the strawberries that were planted this year, dug a trench in the compost pile to give them someting else to do. Then planted the last three tomato plants and the last cosmo, watered most things with the watering can. Shooed the chickens out of the onions.

Watered most things again. Alternating With shooing the chickens out of the strawberries, the four oclocks, the strawberries, the cosmos, the strawberries, the onions, the strawberries. Basically, everything outside the garden fence except the trees.

Good news is the chickens took their first interest in the tall grass of the field beyond the lawn in one of their drifts away from the garden. I keep telling them to prioritize ticks.

Then harvested one leaf from each of the two biggest lettuce plants, a half dozen chard plants, and three radishes to add to the salad for dinner and to thin the rows of chard and radishes.

And, lastly, transplanted the crab apple I started from seeds last year. It should have been done while it was dormant and preferably last fall but we couldn't decide where to put it. We lost another white spruce, the one on the end of the row this time, so we dug that up and put the apple there instead.