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ninnymary

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Bee, that is such an improvement in your garden. It is amazing. Unfortunately I had already put down wood chips earlier and now will have to wait till they decompose to use hay. Maybe it's our mild weather but they take a long time to do that. I suppose I could scrape them off but I already have enough nitrogen problems to do that. Maybe come fall I will do some areas.

I didn't realize you had used hay in the fall. I thought it was in the spring. That's why I thought it was very fast for it to be working.

Mary
 

bobm

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I have been fighting invasions of gophers and moles here since we moved here . We have feral cats here... I have counted up to 11 of them ( I am sure there are quite a few more) when our next door neighbors put out loaves of bread onto their lawn to feed the birds. This also attracts mice and rats .Those cats are a nuisense as they tear out the house vent screens to go under our house and our neighbors' houses for shelter. The gophers, moles, mice and rats are multiplying like crazy to a point that 2 of our neighbors have hired a pest control company to use poison baits and spraying their properties. I use warfarin bait for rat and mouse control. I also set traps for the gophers and moles with next to nothing for results. As for these particular feral cats ... they are hopeless for vermin control.
 

Nyboy

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Been there I once had a hole in my foundation repaired. 2 days later I started hearing cat crys from under the floor. Had to pay handy man to tear out his repair job so cat could get out $$$.
 

Beekissed

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Bee, that is such an improvement in your garden. It is amazing. Unfortunately I had already put down wood chips earlier and now will have to wait till they decompose to use hay. Maybe it's our mild weather but they take a long time to do that. I suppose I could scrape them off but I already have enough nitrogen problems to do that. Maybe come fall I will do some areas.

I didn't realize you had used hay in the fall. I thought it was in the spring. That's why I thought it was very fast for it to be working.

Mary

Those wood chips would compost much more quickly if you added hay on top of them this fall. Nice, rotten hay.
 

ninnymary

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Those wood chips would compost much more quickly if you added hay on top of them this fall. Nice, rotten hay.
I'll try to remember that but I think rotten hay would be hard to find. I just saw a post for 30 FREE straw bales that were used for a wedding. It was about 45 minutes from here.

Remind me then or else I'll forget. :rolleyes:

Mary
 
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Beekissed

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I'll try to remember that but I think rotten hay would be hard to find. I just saw a post for 30 FREE straw bales that were used for a wedding. It was about 45 minutes from here.

Remind me then or else I'll forget. :rolleyes:

Mary

It's pretty easy to get rotten hay by fall...just get your hay now, place it out by the garden and leave it in the weather. By fall it should be well in its way to rotting.

You should see those poor bales I placed in the fall and winter to act as the walls of my raised beds. They are sinking slowly but surely into the ground....they look like they are melting! Don't know if you can see it well in this pic but they are deteriorating at a very rapid rate with all the rain we have been getting.

I'll get a better, closer pic of that melting action tomorrow or the next day to show how they are rotting.

100_0716.JPG
 

Beekissed

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As promised....a pic or two of the garden, particularly the rapidly melting hay bales.

The hay bales this winter....

100_0321.JPG


The most melted hay bale bed today, after buckets of rain last night and rain nearly every day for the past several weeks.

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As you can see, there are things planted inside the bed but also things planted directly into the rotten bales. I must say, the plants planted directly into the bales are some of the healthiest in the whole garden, especially with all this rain causing blight on the lower leaves of some of my tomatoes.

Here are a few of the plants in the hay bale...one is a tomato, the other is a butternut squash...

100_0729.JPG


In the background you can see some pumpkins...also a petunia in the bale in the foreground.
 

Rhodie Ranch

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Rhubarb...I've tried twice to grow it. Once in Murphys, where it got several leaves and then one day it was gone. Simply gone. Down the hole of a gopher.

I bought a corn (??) last winter, and planted it. It developed one puny 3" tall leaf and then died.

Sigh...I LOVE rhubarb!
 

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