ducks4you
Garden Master
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2009
- Messages
- 11,247
- Reaction score
- 14,055
- Points
- 417
I'm concerned about buying insects. The first year I grew in what is now my 55' x 65' horse training area, now fenced in as of 2008, so my garden moved 25' SW. I grew squashes, melons, TONS of cucumbers and zucchini. I had 40 cucumber plants and was throwing huge cucumbers to the horses just to get rid of the excess.
NOW, every year I fight squash bugs and squash vine borers and have to start my squashes and melons in July, just to avoid them. I understand that you can bring them home by buying plants from gardening centers, like the ones attached to grocery stores, where they hire just anybody to care for them. I'm sure that I infected my garden. sigh..........
I'm starting everything this year from seed to try and clean things up--THAT is my big 2017 garden plan. I also understand that I can spray diluted Dawn (1 teaspoon/gallon of water) to the leaves to help eradicate them. I have heard that it dries out the exoskeleton and doesn't have the gross effects of chemical poisons.
ALSO, I'm reveling over the warm up and rain this week, bc I will dig out my "salad garden" tomorrow when I'm home, and will cover and start building up my cold frame so that I can start things a good month early outside. I have always wanted a good cold frame. The salad garden cold frame will have level windows instead of sloped, but that won't matter, since it is a crude first attempt for me AND the wood on this raised bed is starting to rot out and needs to be replaced next year anyway.
If this works I'm going to start on the south side of my garage to build a permanent, small green house There. That bed used to have 8 yews. They were overgrown and I chopped them down and dug out the roots some 7 years ago. It has had no good purpose since. The two black raspberry bushes are overgrown and I never seem to get a good crop from them, so they gotta go. Burning
is our country pastime!!!
I found clearance 36-cell starter "greenhouses" at WM for $1.00/each w/starter soil, so I bought 7 of them yesterday and 6 pretty red heavy plastic pots for $.10/each. Good winter finds! I have an indoor, metal frame "greenhouse" with a plastic cover and 4 shelves to set up by the weekend in my office on the 2nd floor. We have dormers in our 100yo home with what we dubbed "suicide windows", bc they start at floor level, great for houseplants and for cold weather starts. I'm going to try my hand at micro-greens. I was going to start some herbs, but not everything. I had a great basil harvest and put up about 8 quarts of dehydrated basil, so I don't need to grow that. I just bought a rosemary--jealous of @ninnymary bc she can keep that as a perennial, but it's too cold here, so houseplant to garden for me. If I find some thyme I'll keep that going this winter, too. I need to find a better outside place for thyme. All of my efforts failed for thyme in the past.
IF I have time (thyme...pun
), I would love to fix my herb garden. I can use the sage which spreads slowly and certainly it is overrun with oregano, but I need to get more useable herbs planted. I'm thinking about using bricks and subdividing it, since I have a brick border surrounding it and I've been buying and collecting clearance bricks from the hardstore over the years--no new purchases. It's a low priority, but I am encouraged by the BIG job I did to fix the pond in front of my horse shelter. You can get great confidence solving a problem where NOBODY has published plans or can give you ANY advice.
NOW, every year I fight squash bugs and squash vine borers and have to start my squashes and melons in July, just to avoid them. I understand that you can bring them home by buying plants from gardening centers, like the ones attached to grocery stores, where they hire just anybody to care for them. I'm sure that I infected my garden. sigh..........
I'm starting everything this year from seed to try and clean things up--THAT is my big 2017 garden plan. I also understand that I can spray diluted Dawn (1 teaspoon/gallon of water) to the leaves to help eradicate them. I have heard that it dries out the exoskeleton and doesn't have the gross effects of chemical poisons.
ALSO, I'm reveling over the warm up and rain this week, bc I will dig out my "salad garden" tomorrow when I'm home, and will cover and start building up my cold frame so that I can start things a good month early outside. I have always wanted a good cold frame. The salad garden cold frame will have level windows instead of sloped, but that won't matter, since it is a crude first attempt for me AND the wood on this raised bed is starting to rot out and needs to be replaced next year anyway.
If this works I'm going to start on the south side of my garage to build a permanent, small green house There. That bed used to have 8 yews. They were overgrown and I chopped them down and dug out the roots some 7 years ago. It has had no good purpose since. The two black raspberry bushes are overgrown and I never seem to get a good crop from them, so they gotta go. Burning
is our country pastime!!!I found clearance 36-cell starter "greenhouses" at WM for $1.00/each w/starter soil, so I bought 7 of them yesterday and 6 pretty red heavy plastic pots for $.10/each. Good winter finds! I have an indoor, metal frame "greenhouse" with a plastic cover and 4 shelves to set up by the weekend in my office on the 2nd floor. We have dormers in our 100yo home with what we dubbed "suicide windows", bc they start at floor level, great for houseplants and for cold weather starts. I'm going to try my hand at micro-greens. I was going to start some herbs, but not everything. I had a great basil harvest and put up about 8 quarts of dehydrated basil, so I don't need to grow that. I just bought a rosemary--jealous of @ninnymary bc she can keep that as a perennial, but it's too cold here, so houseplant to garden for me. If I find some thyme I'll keep that going this winter, too. I need to find a better outside place for thyme. All of my efforts failed for thyme in the past.
IF I have time (thyme...pun
), I would love to fix my herb garden. I can use the sage which spreads slowly and certainly it is overrun with oregano, but I need to get more useable herbs planted. I'm thinking about using bricks and subdividing it, since I have a brick border surrounding it and I've been buying and collecting clearance bricks from the hardstore over the years--no new purchases. It's a low priority, but I am encouraged by the BIG job I did to fix the pond in front of my horse shelter. You can get great confidence solving a problem where NOBODY has published plans or can give you ANY advice.
.
