What did you do in the garden today?

[fuzzi]

My mom had 4 of these big rain barrels around her house. I sold 2 in the estate auction and kept 2. I installed them this past weekend. Today it's rained lightly for about 2 hours and they are already full!

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I would love to collect rainwater, but we don't have gutters on the house.

 

[igorsMistress]

Very nice variety of raised beds. I am assuming they are metal and came in kits?

As to the old wheelbarrow... I would suggest looking into getting a four wheeled Gorilla type cart instead of a wheelbarrow.

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Gorilla is a big name brand, but other companies also sell these carts. You can get them in various sizes. You can easily move a much heavier load with these four-wheeled carts. It's also much safer as you don't have to wrench your back trying not to tip over the one-wheeled wheelbarrow. My four-wheeled carts all have the handle that switches between manual pull mode to hitch mode for towing behind the riding lawn mower. That makes it super easy to move really heavy loads anywhere on my property.

The four-wheeled carts cost a bit more than a typical wheelbarrow, but IMHO, they are worth it. You can just do so much more with the carts than a wheelbarrow.

Having said that, when I was younger, I only had a wheelbarrow and that worked fine for most of my needs. You can get a parts kits for wheelbarrow rebuilds at Menards. They have different sized kits depending on the size of your wheelbarrow. That would probably be the least expensive route to get you back up and running.

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Although I now have a number of four-wheeled carts that I use all the time, I also repaired my good old wheelbarrow as well. I got one of those parts kits on sale for about $20.00 a couple years ago. I don't use my wheelbarrow much anymore, but sometimes it is the better option for a particular job.

I’ve mentioned the gorilla to hubs. Yes the beds are metal and were a kit. Wood and plastic do not last long here, these should.

 

[fuzzi]

My project for today was the overgrown slope in front of the house.

In the foreground you can see the carpet I laid down to smother the honeysuckle, poison ivy, and other weeds that will not die.

I used my cordless hedge clippers, and my reciprocating saw for anything too big for the clippers to handle.

In progress:

The flags mark where I found some surviving junipers!

Finished for the day, mostly finished overall:

About three hours of work.

I still need to hand weed the juniper area, and there's some piles of clippings at the bottom of the slope to put on the burn pile.

But I am satisfied with the progress.

 

[igorsMistress]

Beds are level, gate is up. I also painted the rest of the lumber for the picket fence. Will get that up by tomorrow if not later today. Currently deciding whether to fix the old wheelbarrow or just get a new one.
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Got a solid tire for the wheelbarrow, and the front end is higher so when I accidentally go through a chicken bathing area it won’t bottom out. I’m satisfied, didn’t need a new one yet. Also was going to put fairy lights on the wire for the garden. There are some places that are bowing a little bit though, so I’m using long bamboo stakes to provide support at the top. Works quite well! Hubs is going to trim bamboo for me tomorrow and we’ll line it all up with the top but here’s the general idea

 

[Sally PB]

I'm taking some redbud tree seedlings home from FIL's house. We're going to take some loblolly pine seedlings home too; I don't know if they'll survive in our zone 5 climate. They were growing in the gutter on the second story, so they were going to get tossed into the leaf pile. This is there chance to try a new home.

 

[WthrLady]

I suspect a wooden barrel would have less give in it than a plastic barrel. I can see where freezing water would blow apart a wooden barrel pretty fast.

yep

 

[TJAnonymous]

I think I must be a closet sadist or something...

I decided to work on clearing out the tire beds in the area where I'm going to put new raised, self-watering beds. Since GOOD dirt is hard to come by in this area (heavy red clay & rock) and I've spent years amending this soil to make it really good, I was loathe to lose it under the raised bed which will be layered with heavy cardboard, visqueen, rock, and more weed barrier. So I grabbed some mineral tubs and started shoveling dirt into them with the intention of re-using it in the raised beds.

Around this area there is some kind of invasive grass weed that is the bane of my existence. It spreads underground from some thick white root but it also grows tall, falls over, and roots itself wherever it touches soil. It can bust through the thickest weed barrier like tissue paper. It is really hard to yank out of the ground once it's established. It is the number one cause of 90% of my weeding every year.

The area where the raised bed is going to go abuts my hoop house. Because the old tire beds aren't flush against the side of the hoop house, I would always be CONSTANTLY battling that stupid grass weed. This year it completely took over the tire beds which is one reason why I'm replacing them.

Anyway, as I was clearing out the dirt I wanted to reuse, I realized it was full of chopped up grass root. Don't want THAT in my new bed (dear God...). So I made myself a homemade screening panel to manually sift the dirt. After several hours, I've hardly cleared a 4 ft x 2 ft area. My DH thinks I've lost my mind.. And my back is killing me now, but hey... I've got clean dirt!

 

[FrannyNZooey]

We added a whole mess of poopy coop pine shavings to the compost bin. We were trying to hold off on the change-out, but I think with all the rain recently we realized we needed some dry matter in there. Changed the coop bedding out today. We got about 2/3 into the compost bin 1. And scattered about 1/3 into the run. Bin 1 is full and should be ready by spring. Currently filling up bin 2 for anything after next summer.

Our municipality has a compost pick up ( conceivably for natural gas production) , but since we built out bins last spring we have had to put out the compost bin for pick-up.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

i had to buy a new wheelbarrow I put the old one ( with a flat tire) under a leaky pipe to catch the rainwater, a maple sprouted, and at first, I thought I can just twist it away, then, when I finally needed it, I felt sorry for the tree and thought, just leave it be, now, it has gotten so big I can’t pull it up or twist it away, so I got a new wheelbarrow

Did I mention I bought a solid wheel for the old wheelbarrow ages ago, and never got around to changing it? I did try a few years ago, but the screws were rusted so badly, they had united with the metal, and so that’s why I let the wheelbarrow serve as a water reservoir

 

[MotherofOrpies]

You can sprout your lentils in jars all winder and the chickens go NUTS for them.
I cook the split peas and feed them those.

Beware of choosy chickens! Mine always threw out the peas in their food, so I sorted out the peas in the rest of the feed bag and sprouted them ( every day I sprouted a new patch) guess what my chickens did?! Yeah, still hated them, I felt sorry for all those sprouted peas and read they are healthy for humans too, so cooked them up. Did I mention I sprouted a lot of peas?! After 3 days of sprouted pea soup, my family went on strike, and haven’t be crazy about pea soup either