so aside from improper, who must have everything short of a skid steer to work on his farm.... what do y'all use for trellis? My first instinct is to just to tie the plants as they grow to stakes and straight sticks using some cooking twine? Buying those individual metal cages would be the easiest route, though also the most expensive... but also the easiest. Or I could build some kind of redneck contraption with scrap 1X1s and hardware cloth from the old duck house? Storms in the last week have prevented me from putting the plants in the ground, looks like the first bit of good weather I'm gonna have for planting is on Monday. By no means near the point of needing trellis, just wanting to get everything together so I have it when I do.
I’m in the process of welding together some aluminum racks to act as trellises and a hollow watering framework. Previous years i just used cheap 1x1 pine frame I built myself and some vinyl coated chicken wire.
thats a really good idea on welding the framework to work as watering as well. Might do that next year. I got a soaker hose I’m gonna run among everything once I plant it. Set the timer to go off twice a day and keep it nice and moist. Drainage isn’t an issue, but keeping the soil wet in this heat will be.
Yeah, 1.5” aluminum square tube with a bunch of holes and a hose connector in a header. Run the automatic hose for 2 minutes a day and it should drip water the plants well enough. We’ll see how it goes.
Veggie pimp. I'm planting tomorrow. Just picked up a dozen wire tomato cages, figure I'll build something out for the peppers and okra if I need to.
Yeah despite having all this space, I realized it’s still not conducive to spreading things out. Having to get creative and planting the vertical growing stuff like bell peppers among the horizontal cucumbers. Worst case I can always build trellis for the cucumbers and make them climb to increase the square footage of the garden. But I’m going to have a ton of produce per square yard or whatever y’all measure it by.
They will climb... mine go straight up into a wire fence and I have huge yeilds. The only thing that goes horizontal for me right now are squash and melons.
yeah I’m just gonna build the trellis now and be done with it. Got some hardware cloth and 1x1 on hand, just knock it all out in a day I figure
Over 100 plants not counting 3 rows of okra. Soaker hose on a timer. I think with the heat I’ll run it for 10 minutes twice a day. Building trellis for cucumbers tomorrow.
Lowe’s had a good deal on some trellis so just got it there. Wifey wanted squash and zucchini so planted some on either side of that triangle one, had the extra space. Changed the timer on the soaker hose to go off twice a day for 30 minutes each since it’s so hot out, beds drain well and I know I’ll lose a lot to evaporation. Hit 95 today. We’ll see what comes up now.
While I won't claim that chem fertilizers have negatively affected the taste of any of my veggies... I will say that the winter indoor ones I grew using Morgan Composting's 'Dairy Doo' Veggie Blend seemed to taste extra phenomenal. Those people know a shit ton about dirt and put as much effort into their blends as the pot soil guys.
From a single application it's pretty difficult to cause problems with a properly dosed mix of the water soluble. Indoors problems typically arise from feeding because of a tendency to not water through from time to time and let the salts wash out. We feed everything from finishing crops to seedlings off a single injector utilizing the same rate.
Once I transplanted everything into bigger pots and reduced the watering, everything is much healthier. I think I was really just watering too much.
I got the raised beds weeded out and some stuff planted today. Naturally the weatherman predicted a slight chance of frost tonight. For years I’ve wanted an elevated raised bed just outside the back door for an herb garden. This year I finally got one and filled it up yesterday. It’s in arms reach of the grill and a few feet from the kitchen. I like cooking with fresh herbs.
We have no idea how it happened but the ducks managed to get out of their enclosure twice and wreck havoc on the garden. Most of it will either recover or I have backup peppers I can replace them with. Tomatoes were fine. They ate the shit out of the zuchinni and squash they could reach. One is not salvageable because they ate the terminal growth node off the plant. What's funny is that I have 3 pots of basil started in that area, which I grow because the leaves are tasty, and they are completely untouched. I have plenty of things in small pots that need a home so I can replace the really badly eaten plants but still. Everything was looking so good! The peppers all still have their buds but many lost a lot of leaves so actual pepper production might be slowed up considerably. Last year I bought these plastic blue tubs with handles from the bimart for $5. I keep waiting for them to come in stock again. I used a couple for composting buckets and the others were flipped upside down to act as a pedestal for the big plant bags I have the zuchinni in. Of course the ducks couldn't get to the raised up zuchinni but ate the ones still on the ground. Argh.
Hah! Little bastards. They sensed my weakened state. Due to events, I am not using (or doing my best to avoid) taking stairs, and we have a 2 story house. So hubs has been totally taking care of all animals, garden, chores, etc. He thinks maybe he didn't shut the gate properly or something, allowing them to squeeze out. Both the gates appeared to be shut properly at the end of the day though, but the ducks were in the garden and trapped outside away from their area. It was totally an accident, whatever it was. He officially hates the ducks at this point. Whenever referencing the ducks, they are usually referred to as "those fucking ducks." They yell at him, the babies are scared shitless of him ("I feed the stupid things 3 times a day, what the fuck!"), they poop a lot, and now they have destroyed part of the garden that he knows I worked really hard at. He says when it is time to cull, he will have no problem.