TheEasyGarden - Gardening Forum

My winter preparations are similarly a lot of things. I have cut a lot of pecker poles to both frame my beds and to enclose my garden and the extensions of it. Right now I'm kind of tired taking a break from the tedious netting I've been doing. Have not had to remove any stumps, knock on wood, but I have had to chop a few roots from one that keeps getting in the way. I'll post more when i have some coffee in my system!

Alright, here's some of it. I needed to enlarge my garden from 20 by 40 to 25 by 50, and also create another enlargement at the front, odd shaped, but calculates to about 325 square feet that part. My garden must be entirely enclosed, sides, top and even the bottom with netting that yes, gophers could get through, but I'm using other means also, all natural and zero poisons. Hide the goodies from them. These are gourmet gophers. they wait until thge fruit is ripe, and spit it out if not.    So I'm also using white plastic on the lower parts of the perimeter, also, anything that they may see I made wire cages that i can wrap to hide the fruit. Also, I'm not planting much of their favorite goodies again this year. No cantaloupes, durn it. my gophers don't like beans. heavy on lots of unique beans again. other things they won't enjoy, amaranth, quyinoa, flint corn, peas, etc. there are 12 species of gopher in the U.S., and here in north lake county ca. we have 2 unusual species, both are very picky gourmet gophers. I looked it up. deer are easy to stop long as you don't use plastic netting on the lower 4 and a half feet. That's where the chicken wire goes. I have to keep the chicken wire out of the soil except for incidental contact. regulatiopns. towhees and junco birdies have to be stopped, so the garden has to be covered. the netting is fine, long as there are no gaps. Ravens never seem to bother, strange huh? As a last effort, if the gophers do decide to come in, i have a good sized portadog modified to be a comfy cat house for Clevland the gophergitter cat. but i prefer him to be an indoor cat. He is good about staying in the garden when out though. this is the woods. mountain lions, bears, golden eagles, bald eagles. my other cat was an outdoor cat who had a close call with probably a golden eagle. he survived, and is fine, but it was a 383 dollar vet bill, and a ton of worry. they are indoor, but the garden would be safe if necessary. probably.

My garden is framed with pecker poles, thin mostly fir trees that are supp-osed to be thinned out of the local area to let the better trees grow. 2 to 8 inch thick. the uprights are the thicker ones. Last years enlargement was major, from 12 by 12 to 20 by 40, and meant a lot of grading, by hand. I bought a 10 cubic foot wheelbarrow. that's over a third of a yard. ooph, it took 100 loads of moving compost an eighth of a mile each way. This years enlargement also included doubling the soil depth. So far i'm over 120 loads. Have not yet made the beds on the front enlargement. That'll be another 60 or so, but I may put some of that off to next winter. I'm getting kind of sick. Hyperthyroid.

I also had to use clay soil from behind my cabin to grade the level back there. I used that on the front extension, netted the base, then layered it with partially burned wood and leaves from the burn pile. I sank hose in a complex way so that each row has its own hose. need one more 50 footer to finish that.

Today i put up 2 23 foot 7 foot wide pieces of netting, basically tied in, one corner to finish tomorrow when it warms up. need to get more netting for the front extension top. My first roll of chicken wire knotted up, but I think i can figure it out. i don't know, last 30 feet or so won't open right. my 2nd roll is almost gone, so not sure if i need to buy more.

That's just the stuff i can think of right now

In September I started a small (5'x10') lasagna garden near the house for herbs. I put down a layer of cardboard, 3 inches of dirt, and then 3 inches of chicken litter. In Febuary I added 6 more inches of dirt and then started planting.  That was the easy garden.
The big garden took a bit more work. First we tilled an 80'x80' area next to the chicken run that used to be part of a hay field. Then we tilled it again, and again, and again. After 4 passes we had finally broke it up deep enough to start making raised beds. We shoveled the loose soil from the paths into the 18 4'x8' beds and the 3 4'x18' beds. Then we used a garden fork to dig more of the topsoil out of the paths into the beds. Next we made 3 18' long raised  rows for potatoes. Last weekend we made 30 hills for melons and pumpkins and 2 18' long raised rows for tomatoes (we have 2 more to do this weekend) and planted 8 18' long rows of sweet corn.
This weekend we'll do more raised rows for tomatoes make trellises for the cucumbers, zucchini, and yellow squash out of the cedar branches the goats kindly stripped of foliage for us and a couple of bean teepees. We'll prep an area for the kids to plant sunflowers down by the creek where they will be hunting dove this fall and my husband will plant some artichokes to attract deer. We're also going to start working on the fence to keep the dogs out. We still need to figure out where to put the dewberries I sprouted from cuttings last month and prep that area.
Now I'm tired...

Oh, now that's Texas style gardening. Our family when I was a kid had some friends from Texas. He was the one who taught me to rototill that way, used to say, not done yet to me. He used to grow Okra. I remember him saying things about the okra plants that grew from the seeds he got in california. he said things like I guess these'll do, but I sure miss my cowhorn okra.

The beds in my garden that are not yet framed to the end are rowed up that way I learned from the Texan neighbor. I'll finish framing them next year. Wow! 80 by 80!