What Did You Do In The Garden?

No rain here.

The paths are nearly all tilled and reasonably flat. A fairly easy weed kill but the seeds will be back and the beds all await a by-hand weeding. Will be allowed to wait until they are just a little bigger.

The soil was dry so an attempt to water was made - despite the 20+ mph wind gusts. Chasing the auxiliary sprinklers along the upwind west and south sides was no fun ... especially since the the big sprinklers were running at the same time as I'm dragging around hoses and turning valves on and off. Sure was nice to get home and have a hot shower for myself! Meanwhile, the property owner was giving the garden another shot of water after the wind died down.

Steve
 
Planted 33 more peppers, basil, more pole beans, bush beans, beets, radishes and did some weeding. I have a few tomatoes to plant tomorrow, I need to pick up some yellow squash seed, plant the onions and some lettuce, and a few cucumbers. My asparagus is coming up pretty good from last year. I have blackberries to transplant and give some to neighbor.
 
digitS' said:
No rain here.

The paths are nearly all tilled and reasonably flat. A fairly easy weed kill but the seeds will be back and the beds all await a by-hand weeding. Will be allowed to wait until they are just a little bigger.

The soil was dry so an attempt to water was made - despite the 20+ mph wind gusts. Chasing the auxiliary sprinklers along the upwind west and south sides was no fun ... especially since the the big sprinklers were running at the same time as I'm dragging around hoses and turning valves on and off. Sure was nice to get home and have a hot shower for myself! Meanwhile, the property owner was giving the garden another shot of water after the wind died down.

Steve
Click to expand...

sometimes the wind is strong enough here that i have to figure the angles and use it to help carry the water where i want it to land.

knocked down hornet/wasp/etc nests this morning from the eves of the house. they can be a bit too aggressive if left alone and at times i've had large nests of hundreds i had to deal with - so, much better to get them when just starting out. we have a variety of them. usually have not seen too many of the round enclosed nests, but this year so far there have been two of them.

i don't mind if they are off in the rocks around in various places, the raccoons will often hunt for them at night, so i don't get after those unless they are near someplace where i'll be working.
 
ah, another bargain today. we had to get another truck load of wood chips for the project Mom is working on at my brother's place. last time the guy charged us almost twice what the previous loads cost and so this time i talked to the guy up front and he said it depended upon who was loading and what they thought. so this time i made a point of talking to him at the office and the guy doing the loading asked me if i was set with the guy up front and i said i'd pay on the way out. this ways i get to see if i can talk him down on price (they've got huge hills of the stuff to get rid of).

i also told Mom to not sit there with a wad of cash in her hands, or if she does make sure it is only showing 1's. :) i think that was mistake last time she had 20s and guy saw her sitting there with those.

i go in the office with a few 1's showing and he said he was good with what i had there so i handed him a $20 and that's that.

told Mom i was buying next round of Chinese with that savings... haha... next time she knows the drill now. don't think we'll be doing any more hauling anyways. got the ladder, wood, fencing and poles we've needed. i want the truck gone so i can get on with selling the car.
 
Yesterday I planted a 24" wide bed of blue dent corn, red "popcorn" corn and sweet corn. Nature obliged with a t-storm, but we didn't get the soaking that they did 5 miles north of us. Still, with very high dew points my horses are hardly touching the water tank, which means that there is a lot of moisture available for the plants.
I dug up an 8 inch ditch on the other side of the fence, west border of the big garden and gave the dirt and weeds to the chickens, under their coop. It could use about 2 more wheelbarrow's worth of same, but they enjoyed it and scratched it flat.
I dug up and transplanted about 50 2yo onions (from starts in 2017) and transplanted them all just east of the fence. Since I had tilled and dug the area I scraped a ditch and planted lima beans and black garden beans. They were 2017 seeds, so I planted them very close to each other. If I don't get good germination in about a week, I will replant there.
I cut and laid down a 10-12" wide row of cardboard just to the west of the fencing where the beans are and dumped compost on top. VERY tired of mowing and weeding there, and I will make my way down the fence in this fashion as I go.
I have been using this 12' heavy pipe as a north border to the big garden and this time I did the same with the cardboard but I just laid the pipe down on top of it so the cardboard will show. AGAIN, no mowing and weeding there, too.
I also planted 3 ~12" rows of okra, with 2 adjacent. I used some raised bed wood to mark the paths. When I get germination I will cover those paths with cardboard, since there seems to be an unLIMITED supply of the stuff, thanks to Amazon and everybody ELSE that ships.
This morning I transplanted 30 wax begonias, 3 some? kind of annual with fuzzy lavender flowers? to my partly sunny/partly shady beds north of the garage.
I am going back to Lowe's today. They were clearancing a bunch of annuals and I could use a few more. I am saving the bubble gum pink 6-pack of impatiens for DD's yard.
I also transplanted 2 petunias into my large plastic pot (about 2' tall) until I want to move them. Been SOOOOO busy with yardword and regular work that I forgot what I planted in a small rectangular pot a few days ago, but the seeds are sprouting. All I can remember is that I want them for my flower bed, so it will be a nice surprise.
I also transplanted 6 tomato plants. I had two die on me, so there will need to be some replacemants.
BIG SURPRISE! While digging around the cistern (for DH's tomato plant bed) I found half a dozen gladiolas from 2017!! Holy cow! We had such a rotten, cold winter, I couldn't have imagined that they would survive in the ground. I transplanted them into the sunny spot next to a big cement "rock" that I dug out 7 years ago on the NE part of the bed north of the garage. I planted them 6 inches deep so that they wouldn't fall over.
I promise to get my camera out this weekend for pictures. Words don't seem to adequitely describe my "seat of the pants" gardening for this year.
 
I don't know if I ever sound like I've got it all figured out. But, at the same time that I'd like to have some idea of what I'm up to before I start, I also really like options and taking advantage of them! SEAT OF THE PANTS? @ducks4you , that is fine!

I learned a new term the other day: crystallized intelligence. Maybe I was asleep in psych class when it was covered. Anyway, it isn't the same as memory but memories of similar experiences give it structure, I suppose you could say.

And, they contrasted it with fluid intelligence ... maybe it helped to be dozing ... I don't understand how imagining a path forward can be too strongly contrasted from learned information. But, they both have to be different from being frozen into inactivity or just juvenile randomness.

Smile -- we are gettin' there!

Steve
 
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