Finished transplanting the swiss chard and romaine today. The big test will be to see if the local rabbits figure it out. This is our next door neighbour's yard: This is their potential new salad bar: Luckily, my cat likes to hunt rabbits, and has a nice comfy chair overlooking the garden.
You also have a pellet gun. Although I would assume the law also makes provisions for pest control and defending your crops, right?
any pellet gun that fires over 499 fps is considered a fire arm and you need a licence and and there is no hunting or discharge of fire arms in city limits. not sure about under 499.
Update on some of my plants. The potatoes are going great so are my eggplants. Have peppers growing on a few plants.
June is when the bad bugs seem to arrive around here. Defending the yellow squash with a hearty coat of diatomaceous earth, both squash bugs and squash vine borers bringing it. I haven't had squash planted in at least 5 years, and it is about 200 yards to the next closest garden plot.....and they STILL found me! Meanwhile, many other veggies continue to ripen. It all evens out.
Bugs haven't been too bad so far... but I sprayed anyway. The wicking bed is doing amazing... I've been filling it every Friday night, and it seems to be taking about 3-4 minutes of a full-on hose to re-fill it. Whenever I dig into the soil an inch or more, it's moist. I do believe this fucking thing is working! Still waiting for a few plants to really catch on and grow, but the tomatoes are going nuts. Lush, dark green, lots of new leaves, and growing like crazy. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Harvesting some great yellow squash DESPITE the dirty, dirty SVBs. This is a clear win, and I will be drinking in celebration as I weed later.
This is the same point of view as my picture from June 6, green beans into okra over to tomatoes. Everything is moving fast.
My tomato seedlings were all killed by something the other night. Dead dead. It’s 9000 degrees out and working on getting it tilled killed my motivation last weekend. I’ll probably just plant shit tons of herbs and just stock up.
We just had some pretty heavy rains last night, and so I was pretty happy that things survived as well as they did. I'm also finding that the wicking action of the bed is working quite well for plants with established roots... as soon as they get about 2" below the surface, no more watering is required, except for the fertilizer (I tend to use water-soluble fertilizer to get better coverage and penetration). The garden is coming along fairly well, with the exception of the butter lettuce that did not seem to like the transplant... I think they are just way to fragile to replant, but we'll see... they're not dead yet. Tomatoes are growing really well... lots of pruning has resulted in thick, strong stems and tons of flowers that will hopefully start to bear fruit soon. The romaine took well and is coming up nice and healthy. My first set of peas died but I've now got 4 new pea plants that seem to be growing well, and the cucumbers are starting to take off not too badly. All in all it's a pretty good success so far, I'd say... especially since the squirrels, skunks, and rabbits haven't found them yet.
Sorry Kubla....it can be disheartening, no doubt. Nett, it's all looking great! I have always direct sown lettuces, fwiw. Carrots, lettuce, onions.....straight into the ground.
We had such a late start that if I did that they wouldn't show for weeks yet. As it was, those are probably 2 month old seedlings. We had frost/ice just a few weeks ago.
For those of you who compost on a daily basis, any comments on the turning drum composters? I currently am using a 3 bucket system and as it reduces down, I turn one bucket into the next until it is broken down and aged in the last container. It's pretty labor intensive because I am physically moving and dumping the buckets around and would like an easier system. I am not sure that I'll have space for the traditional compost pile area on the ground, plus you still have to turn those with a shovel. Thoughts? I always have lots of worms in my compost but I guess this system would just be more about the bacteria and heat as it is not in contact with the ground. I have a friend who loves her 50gal plastic drum composter from Lowes. I may even make one myself if it really is a good system and I can find a cheap barrel to repurpose.
We have one of those rotating compost bins. We like it although we have to use any of the compost from it. We just throw veggie scraps and egg shells in it as they become available. Coffee grounds too. It’s pretty easy to just give it a few spins when you add new stuff.
Yeah Ive been meaning to get into composting or vermicomposting. We just collect our scraps and throw them directly on the ground in the garden.
The thing about putting compost directly in the garden is that it is very acidic as it breaks down. There are a couple areas where I green composted directly into the garden and planted on top of it; the leaves on the beans are yellow and they didn't produce as well. I treated those areas with lime and it did help, they have healthier foliage, more Buds, and fruit better.. I actually like my 3 bucket system except for the fact that I'm having to stoop down to maneuver with them and my back is kind of permanently screwed, maybe there is some way I can have the best of both worlds. I imagine that a drum composter is going to be a lot less nutritious because you're not going to have any worm casings in there. The compost bins I have have holes all in the bottoms of the worms can go up and down and my compost is always full of big fat earth worms. Now that I've been composting everything from the house and have had time to age some of it, that shit is like gold. If you get a system going you can save a lot of money on fertilizer and additives. I think I just talked myself out of a drum composter.
My next upgrade to the wicking bed is a worm tower. Basically drill holes in a piece of 4-6" PVC pipe, drop it into the soil, drop compost and worms into it, then put a cap on the pipe to stop the rain from soaking it. In other news, the wicking bed is working quite well, and everything has survived the transplant and is going strong. Due to the high density of tomato plants I'm fertilizing them around twice a week, and they seem to be responding well. I will be having a shit-ton of tomatoes this year, it looks like.
Thats a really cool worm idea. I wonder if you could harvest the casting from around it to spread through out the garden or if they'd be too integrated with the soil?