Author Topic: What did you do in the garden today? 2 (Read 17863 times)

duh · « **on:** Apr 09, 2013, 06:09:53 PM »

Ah, today I sat out on the deck this morning with my beverage.

I replaced two edging timbers.

I took a load of pictures and uploaded them to photobucket.

bestofour · « **Reply #1 on:** Apr 09, 2013, 09:50:17 PM »

The squash is coming up in my straw bales. I've got some seeds started in the green house in case the straw bales don't work out. I also put out the tomato plants. I'm not sure that they're big enough but I'm gonna find out. I bought some egg plants and planted them and planted a row and half of beets. The carrots ARE coming up but no sign of the peas so far. I also put some beets in a big flower pot. I've decided that instead of planting a bunch of flower pots I'm going to plant food pots with a flower stuck in here and there. I planted the parsley seeds and tomorrow I'm planting thyme seeds. Every year I planted bell peppers and every year I give most of them away. Johnny won't eat them so I don't cook with them and I don't often eat raw bell peppers so I give them away or let them rot on the plant. So this year I'm not planting any. I also didn't plant any potatoes. We do eat potatoes but they're too hard to keep for long in this heat. I'll tell you a secret. I didn't even harvest most of the potatoes I planted last year. It got too hot and then it rained too much and the weeds took over and I was just too lazy to do it. I'm hoping one or two of those potatoes will sprout and we'll have a few potatoes to go with the squash. While at Lowe's today I came really close to buying an artichoke plant but didn't. I've never cooked an artichoke but would really like to plant one anyway. May go back and get one.

Who plants asparagus? Johnny loves asparagus but from what I've read it's temperamental.

duh · « **Reply #2 on:** Apr 10, 2013, 05:31:05 PM »

asparagus is an ongoing patch once it is started isn't it? Don't get me to lying I really don't know.

I'm trying to stick to those veggies that either aren't available at all or those that are to expensive for me to afford. So right now it is the tomatoes and the kolrabi. Who knows what I'll see next that I can't live without. I'm thinking cilantro because of the roasted corn and black bean salad that was so go last year. It requires some cilantro in it and fresh would be best and then I could harvest the rest at the end of the growing season and dry it. So pretty much a win-win. Maybe I'll do that next week when I go back into town.

bestofour · « **Reply #3 on:** Apr 10, 2013, 09:54:19 PM »

This afternoon I went out and watered the straw bales, tomato plants, and egg plants, planted a row of dill, row of basil, 2 rows of sun flowers, 1 row of marigolds. I'm tired.

duh · « **Reply #4 on:** Apr 11, 2013, 10:30:27 AM »

wow I'm tired just reading all of that.

I think I posted the gardening in the blog. I'm so easily confused.

Well I used up all the pine bark mulch. So I'm left with 3 bags of regular mulch that needs to wait until I weed before I put it down. At least I'm pretty much sure that's the way it's suppose to go.

I finally got all of the unfinished compost in the same pile Yea me! Now I can start grass cutting and raking the stuff from the yard. That should keep me busy.

duh · « **Reply #5 on:** Apr 12, 2013, 10:39:50 AM »

Got another bucket of compost dug up. Raked up 99 gallons of leaves and put them in the upper compost pile. At this rate I might be done taking in about 2 weeks. I really need to move faster.

I'm going out and taking pictures. I just needed to come in and cool off. That only took 20 minutes. At least I've finally stopped sweating.

bayou girl · « **Reply #6 on:** Apr 12, 2013, 10:05:45 PM »

i just made sure that my plants didn't wash away. they are still there

duh · « **Reply #7 on:** Apr 13, 2013, 11:36:39 AM »

You must have gotten a heavy rain when we got the sprinkle here. Today I did good, there was the compost stuff and the veggie stuff and then I finally weeded the rest of the sidewalk and I put down 2 bags of play sand. I figured out that once I get to maintenance level I'll need 7 bags of sand every spring. I'm going to have to put that on my annual garden schedule. I should be prepared to do it every may after the april showers.

bestofour · « **Reply #8 on:** Apr 13, 2013, 09:53:27 PM »

Today I planted a row of bush beans and a row of cucumbers. We went and bought a really cool bird bath and an arbor with a gate, so cute. I also got some really long, like maybe 36 inch, garden forks that I'm using as garden stakes. We got our stuff from Royal Gardens in Charlotte. It's a speciality garden place that has the greatest stuff.

Tina · « **Reply #9 on:** Apr 13, 2013, 09:56:07 PM »

That sounds lovely, Sheri. Show pictures when you can. Do you still have half a barn out there?

bestofour · « **Reply #10 on:** Apr 13, 2013, 10:37:16 PM »

Yes we do have part of the barn. Jesus is taking it down a little at a time. We have people who want the wood to recycle for furniture.

duh · « **Reply #11 on:** Apr 14, 2013, 09:05:47 AM »

Well it was another good day for everything except my back which is killing me. I moved the bronze mums to the birdbath flower bed and realized that the bed isn't really large enough for everything I want in it. But that's ok. I can always make it bigger. Now they only thing left for that bed is the portulaca. I'm not sure if I want to try putting them in pots to start them early or if I want to just seed the bed and see what happens. I haven't decided yet.

I weeded the sidewalk bed and put down another bag of mulch, that leaves two bags of mulch to go.

I cut up one of the small dead trees. It didn't net me much wood considering the amount of work involved. I have to cut down the saplings that were in the way and clear a path through the left mold to make sure I had a clear way out incase something fell the wrong way. Then do the actual cutting and stacking of the wood. The nice thing was that this small tree won't need to be split. It's less than 10 inches through the center.

I raked up 165 gallons of leaves out of the front yard. That came from the area between the foundation bed and the shade bed. I still have the largest area to do but I'll have to weed wack it before I rake that. It has tall grasses throughout the entire thing where I didn't cut the grass at the end of the season last year. So progress is being made.

bestofour · « **Reply #12 on:** Apr 14, 2013, 10:55:50 PM »

We didn't do anything in the garden or yard today and now it's raining. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Why not just try direct seeding portulaca. I think I remember doing that before and it worked out pretty well.

Are you going to have all these leaves again in the fall?

duh · « **Reply #13 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 07:02:02 AM »

Yeppers every fall. It comes from 2/3rds of my yard being trees. But I don't mind the leaves at all. They make all the compost.

It's been raining here too, so not much I can do except dig the hole for the crape myrtle. That's if I can figure out where I want it.

bestofour · « **Reply #14 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 07:43:50 PM »

We have tons of leaves too. I'm not as happy about raking them up as you are.

Today I put out bales and bales and bales of pine needles and I'm not finished. Sometimes I regret decisions I make and this has turned into more work than I visualized

I put out more squash and basil. I must have been holding my mouth just right because every single seed Colby and I planted has sprouted and now I don't know where I'm going to put it all.

bestofour · « **Reply #15 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 08:24:16 PM »

This is where we put a lot of our leaves. This ditch was here when we moved in and it's so deep we couldn't see the bottom and if we threw something in it we never heard it hit bottom. When we first looked at the house the real estate agent had told us it was used as a watering trough and we didn't pay that much attention but there's no way that could be correct because it never filled up with water. After we moved in and thought about it a while we realized something was strange and called the city and were told that we're in the county, which we knew, and they said they couldn't help us. I called every county office I could find a number for because there is definitely something weird about a gigantic ditch that never fills with rain water but never could get anyone to come take a look. We put a little wire fence around it for a while and had 2 tandem truck loads of dirt dumped in but it was gone in a second so what we have done over the past 15 years is throw everything we can find in it. When we gutted the kitchen everything went in the hole, when Johnny breaks out concrete it goes in the hole, if we cut down a tree it goes in the hole, and most of our leaves go in the hole. The majority of the stuff in the hole is not biodegradable but we didn't know what else to do. That ditch still never gets wet. Where does the water go? We haven't thrown anything heavy in it lately but I've seen the cats walk across it and the leaves sink down only a bit. I'm not walking across it though. I just hope that one day a massive sink hole doesn't suck us in. Seriously. I'm thinking of starting my calling again. Johnny talked to the inspector who came to check everything out when we dug the well a few months back but he wasn't interested.

bestofour · « **Reply #16 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 08:32:53 PM »

The new arbor. I love it. It looks like its leaning but it's not.

And the new bird bath that I also love. The other one cracked and we fixed it once and it cracked again.

bestofour · « **Reply #17 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 08:33:18 PM »

I guess I'm leaning because in real life neither of those things are.

Tina · « **Reply #18 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 10:23:42 PM »

Really sweet items you have there. That sink hole would bother me too.

bayou girl · « **Reply #19 on:** Apr 15, 2013, 10:27:18 PM »

LOVE the arbor! the sink hole/ditch/whatever it is, would bother me as well.

bestofour · « **Reply #20 on:** Apr 16, 2013, 07:22:35 AM »

Johnny and I talked about the hole again last night and we're going to bring in some more dirt and see if we can tamp it down and see what happens. Even with that it bothers me that water drains so quickly out of there.

duh · « **Reply #21 on:** Apr 16, 2013, 08:19:30 PM »

You may have an underground creek down there. Way down there. I'm be scared too.

duh · « **Reply #22 on:** Apr 17, 2013, 08:44:51 AM »

I didn't think I would get anything done but I got out there at 7a.m. and didn't come back in until 8:30a.m. so I did really good.

The ditch is cut and raked into the upper compost pile.

The front is cut and raked back to the electric pole.

The dip is filled in with leaves and detrius.

The spirea bed is widened so that there is room for it to grow to twice it's size this year.

The guard on the weed wacker is fixed.

The cartridge on the weed wacker is full of line again.

The 150 ft electrical cord is wound up and put away.

So I'm feeling like I did a lot. Of course my arms are sore but not as sore as in past years and I stayed out there working longer so I'm very satisfied with myself.

bayou girl · « **Reply #23 on:** Apr 17, 2013, 06:01:05 PM »

yesterday, i got 10 plants repotted, as follows:

the 2 blueberries went into 5 gallon buckets from their 1 gallon pots. they weren't root bound, so i should be able to spend the year getting their bed ready and then put them out next year. i'm excited, they have blueberries on them already

the fig tree went from a 1 gallon into a 5 gallon, but that is just for a while, it was very root bound, and as fast as they grow, it will have to go in the ground before the summer is out.

i got 2 or 3 buckets of veggies planted out, including squash, beans, etc. and some plants moved from small pots into the 1 gallon buckets that were vacated by the trees.

i also splurged and got seeds from the sale rack (25% off) and some of them were things i did not already have. i'm happy.

duh · « **Reply #24 on:** Apr 17, 2013, 06:23:44 PM »

I love seeing the blueberries starting. One of my plants has the berries starting. The other is green and the third is probably dead. Why can't a grow a third plant in that bed? I have no idea. I may actually invest next year in a deck compact blueberry bush just so I can taunt the rabbits with it.

I'm tempted by squash I just haven't done it yet. Which seeds did you get?

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Author Topic: What did you do in the garden today? 2 (Read 17863 times)