Gardening > Gardeners Chat

Ready... Set... GARDEN!

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Dianna:
Patty, I think the reason being for not using dog doo or cat poo in your garden is that it is not safe because they are meat eaters. On all composting topics I have read, it is mentioned that you are only supposed to use the "fertilizer" of plant and vegetable eaters. Something about the other "stuff" is supposed to be unhealthy.

With you amending the way you are doing, I would hope that the unmentionables would have leached out of the soil now and be replaced by all the good that you are putting into it! I wouldn't have even mentioned it, because I am still a new gardener myself, but I wanted to give you food for thought while you are feeding your garden. ;) I want to see a healthy garden and a healthy YOU all the time!  :-*

I am sure you will have a great looking garden with all the amending you are doing this year. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Maybe there will be hope for my gardens, too!

I am looking forward to reading more...

Patty S:
Patti, so what if telephone lines are under there?  Build up the soil & plant stuff in mounds, so you don't have to do much digging. The phone company should be able to tell you how deep those lines are, anyway... I don't know of any veggies that put out a root structure deep or strong enough to interfere with underground lines.  Sure wish your weather would straighten up!  It's just past mid-morning here, & it's already 60°!  Twenty minutes ago it was 58°, so I think we're headed into a great day for gardening! (My garden buddy will be here when school gets out at noon, so I have a feeling we'll be getting a lot done & will finish up that amending in our veggie garden!)

I've heard that "rule" too, Dianna, about not using carnivore waste as fertilizer, cuz it contains parasites that aren't friendly to plants. (That's probably why the grass dies!)  Other than that, I don't think it "infects" anything... at least I haven't had any problems with things growing in that area. (Must be doing something right out there!) It rains so darned much here & that garden plot is on a bit of a slope... (just enough for run-off), so I wouldn't think that anything (good OR bad) could stay in the soil for very long.  I have no idea how long the dog run was there before we got here, or how heavily it was used, but we didn't have to clear any dog dodo out of it... the only way we knew it was a dog run was because of the dog house that was in there!

We'll probably be putting in some peas, cukes, beets, green beans, watermelons, cants, bell peppers & tomatoes, like we've done every year.  (Funny, how I can get that all in such a small space, but I train most of the vine crops to do their growing on those shelves that I hook to the chain-link fence... saves a lot of space, keeps the slugs & snails off the food, & makes weeding a breeze!)

Patty S:
I'm not kidding one bit, when I tell you that not even half the things that need to be done in my yard would ever get accomplished without her help!  I took pics to show how hard we she works...

I already had the digging done*, so we were ready to roll.  After covering the bottom of the trenches with Bone Meal, BG set out laying the newspapers down...

(This looks like work to me, cuz I can't move down a row while maintaining a position like that!  Uggh!)

Then she soaked it down with the hose,


...and covered it all up with Peat Moss.

Patty S:
Then she distributed the "worm business".

(She wanted a close-up pic here, as the worms are her "buddies"!)

...And followed that up with salad scraps, smunched up egg shells,

                            (Uggh again!)

and shredded newspaper.

Patty S:
After soaking that down, we covered it all back up with the dirt we'd started with, & she planted peas along the end of the garden.  Later on, we'll put a piece of wire fence above the chain-link for the vines to climb on, when they get tall enough.


Since everything was so wet there was no need to presoak the peas, as we usually would.  By the time they swell up & get started, her buddies will already have started doing their job within our amendment.

Notice that she did all this without once putting her knee in the dirt! (Uggh!)

*I forgot to mention earlier that after I had done the digging-out the day before, I treated the area with insect control powder, because we've had a problem in the past with something destroying the roots of especially our peas, beans & cukes.  When BG & I had gone out to do the amending yesterday, we found quite a few dead things that would have been disastrous to our crops again this year.

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