What did you do in the garden today?

[jerryse]

Getting smoke from Canada. Did a lot outside yesterday due to cooler temps. I think I got all the poison hemlock this year. Now trying to get rid of all the button weed / velvet leaf. Mowed some more and pulled more weeds. Did some bud grafting.

 

[chicken opey]

I'm still jealous of each of you that even mentions rain being in the forecast.

I anticipate that our next rain will be in November. October if we're lucky.

However, it has been fairly mild here this summer. Our nighttime lows have only reached the 60's during that heat wave we had in May. And maybe a total of four 60°nights since then. It's currently 7:32am and it's 52° outside.

My garden is going extra wild. I need to take time out there to prune, train, and fertilize. I fertilized some things with the watering can and liquid fertilizer on Wednesday. But everything needs a dose of the dry stuff. Cottonmeal blend or the bio live meal blend.

Tomatoes are really starting to ripen in force now. I will be processing a bunch this weekend.

Got a load of peaches yesterday and started up the freeze dryer for peaches, raspberries and a tray of the volunteer tomatillos. We are keeping busy!

If I could figure out how to share the rain w you I would! I live in a desert for a few years and we only got rain in November. It flooded all roads too. Then no rain till next November

 

[chicken opey]

At the beginning of this year I bought 50, 6 foot bamboo stakes for I think it was $80 and thought it was a good deal. Well 2/3 of them are so badly cracked and split that it is basically unusable outside of potting soil or very loose raised bed soil. They will still get used eventually so it’s not like they are useless but it is still annoying when it decides to split in half while you are pushing it into the ground View attachment 4187957View attachment 4187958View attachment 4187960

We tried to harvest and cure our own. We made a trellis that lasted 2 seasons then fell apart. These people who claim bamboo is the strongest must have some hybrid type or something

 

[WilderSkye]

We are in monsoon now, ala New Mexico style, so 1/4 to near 1.5" this week. Which for us is phenominal. Can't believe I am wearing a jacket this morning, but next week we will hit 100 for a few days. We put a mister by the chicken run and they love that.

When I say my garden is a jungle, I mean, my garden is a jungle. We spent from Feb to June remodeling an old greenhouse for chicken run. Today we start on my next dream come true: a garden shed to store all the stuff that had been in the greenhouse. 12 x24 three sided shed.

This is most likely the last year we will garden in this spot as the trees we planted 8 years ago are taking off. Fennel and aspargus out of control. Have a Blue Dream auto near ready to chop. All the photos are looking good. Anyone else grow their own medicine? We have CBD and the good stuff.




The Peanut Gallery (their electric fence arrives next week so they get to start ranging.

 

[WilderSkye]

And I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but we have been growing our own for years. The big mama (2nd photo) was wild from our brush/whatever the chickens won't eat pile. It has been topped. It is always fun to get a God plant. We have a passel load of photos and a couple of autos ready for harvest.
Blue Dream


Wild Thang approx 9'

 

[chicken opey]

It’s about to rain so no weeding. Something (squash bugs) has about killed my cucumbers. They look horrible
We had to buy a new electric range bc I killed my other one. I hated it. It was super cheap- for rental house or something.
This is first sourdough bread baked in it. Need to lower the racks (elements on top only for this one). It has a proofing button too

 

[Sueby]

Beautiful 60 something degrees out there.

I have lost complete control of my spaghetti squash vines, at this point they are on their own & I guess I'll see what I have in the fall. I can't even get to the flowers to pollinate anymore.

My broody finally broke!

 

[OnlySympathy]

I’m working a horse show but when I get home some seeds should have shown up

 

[TJAnonymous]

Electricity here is 32¢ a kWh. 39¢ during peak hours. This is why I put in a 12kW solar array on the roof. Going to put up another one, with batteries and a generator and cut grid tie in a few years.

I have a 44 panel 22kW solar panel system that is grid-tied with net metering. It runs my house, barn, shop, and 2-story garden shed. I haven't paid an electric bill in 3 yrs now...and the electric company has to pay me, dollar for dollar what they charge customers, for any overage of electricity I make that they keep. On the flip side, I pay $300/month in a low interest loan (0.5%) that I used to buy the system. I figured paying a fixed $300/month for 10 years was a better deal than the ever-increasing rate charges coming from the electric company. I was already paying more than $300/month nearly half the year and that was 4 years ago. The loan also covered a whole house generator with automatic fail over. It runs off a 400 gallon propane tank that I haven't had to refill in 4 years.

If I build a new house, I will change my setup slightly. I'll store the energy I make to batteries and THEN sell the overflow to the electric company. I'd still keep the whole house generator too... But by storing my own electricity, I wouldn't be at the whim of the grid, if it goes down. Either way I'm still covered by the generator, but I'd have no vulnerability at all if I stored and used my own first.

Almost forgot... I also got $26k back in my taxes the 1st year from solar tax credits...

 

[Smokerbill]

A deer decided to prune a tomato plant and a couple butternut squash leaves and vines. I might do something to keep it from happening again, but I'm not too concerned.

The tomato is a plant that came up volunteer on the outside of my pallet chicken run compost enclosure, and the squash vines were hanging over the outside of the pallet, both in easy reach of the deer.

I picked a small mess of green beans. I decided to let about 4 feet of the row go unpicked so I can get seeds for next year. There were not other bean varieties blooming at the time these were, so they should be free of any cross pollination.