What Did You Do In The Garden?

[canesisters]

Preparation ONLY yesterday !!! I had to dig down and cut saplings on the fenceline and cut and saw, saw saw on a maple TREE, not sapling, growing along my garden fenceline!!! It took up my whole afternoon, and THEN the stupid weed sprayer applicator wasn't working right!!!! I took the container and poured it directly, full strength on the maple tree since it was growing RIGHT NEXT to my fence post. I tilled the compost that I had placed on the drip line and the cardboard is waiting to be placed down and covered with compost.
On a good note, all tomatoes look good, but I had to super soak them yesterday. Today is for planting bc we are expecting on and off rain through Monday. DH wants: tomatoes and okra this year. 2017 was kind of a washout on both.
I got a great deal last week on reciprocating saw blades, which ended up being about 50 cents each. I bought 3 six packs, so 18 brand new blades.
If you don't own a reciprocating saw, get one. I used my chain saw a month ago and SURE ENOUGH, as usual, the chain came off. I can use my r. saw on practically anything and just change the blades when necessary. Even one of the panelists on Mid American gardener finally discovered how easy it is to prune with one.
Off to garden...before the rain. Report and PICTURES later...

Sorry you had such a frustrating day.

A few weeks ago I managed to cut down a 15+foot pine tree - limb it & section it into pieces I could toss over the fence ... using a battery powered reciprocating saw with a 3" blade.
Those things will (eventually) get ANY job done!

 

[flowerbug]

Sorry you had such a frustrating day.

A few weeks ago I managed to cut down a 15+foot pine tree - limb it & section it into pieces I could toss over the fence ... using a battery powered reciprocating saw with a 3" blade.
Those things will (eventually) get ANY job done!

i've taken down a fairly good sized tree with a chisel and a hammer (it was a very calm day ). if we had a bigger chunk of property i'd just girdle trees i'd want to remove and let them stand to provide food and habitat for woodpeckers, owls, etc. as long as it wasn't a hazard of falling on me...

with newly fallen green wood you can take advantage of it, if it hasn't been infected by fungus and is in good condition you can innoculate it with various mushroom spores and put it in a nice shady/damp spot and then have mushrooms of known type to eat. a few years ago a friend was removing a bunch of apple trees and i thought we had a deal done so that he would bring me chunks of that to use for mushrooms, but it never happened.

now i'm hungry for fried mushrooms and onions...

 

[flowerbug]

i really need to pick strawberries, it's raining, we do need a good rain so this is ok, but i'd really like those strawberries... inside projects today for a while. Mom cleaned out the entire garage yesterday. it's the first time since it was built that it was that empty. i should have taken pictures. a lot of her fabric stuff has been moved to the shed which used to be the garden shed, but we decided to not put up shelves in there and instead put garden things along the wall of the garage. so today i get to put those hangers up and perhaps some shelves too. my arm feels much better now, but i'm pretty sure that as soon as i try to put up those hangers and shelves it's going to remind me i should be letting it heal.

the last garden to be planted inside the fence is weeded (yesterday) and i just ran out of oomph to get it planted. it's a bonus garden in that i expected it to be full of strawberry plants, but i transplanted the strawberries so late and the winter was so vicious that about 4 out of 60 plants survived. so instead of keeping the space bare and replanting strawberries early i'm going to use it for more beans and then later this summer start the strawberries again. the few plants in there are starting to bloom. they're abount a month too late. what a funny year it has been so far.

 

[Collector]

Friday night I got home with enough daylight left to plant a package of bush beans in all the empty spaces in the bean rows. I could have planted a whole package more but I decided to save it for later planting. It rained most of Saturday so we stayed out of the garden, most of the day was spent at nephews graduation and after party anyways so no time. Tomorrow we are going down to see my mom and go to church with her. Maybe we will get home with enough time left to start placing mulch in the garden. After this rain the weeds will take over, so perfect time to get the mulch down.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Yesterday weeded and today watched it rain.

 

[flowerbug]

Yesterday weeded and today watched it rain.

it was nice to have a bit of a break, but i still had stuff to do in the garage to put up some hangers and redo some shelves. the hangers were screws in the plastic plugs in the wallboard but when Mom went to hang stuff on them they pulled out so this morning i went out and moved them so the screws were aligned on studs. if they come out now it would likely be because the whole wall is down.

fed the worm buckets strawberry tops from Mom's cooking, she had to get store bought kind as mine are reserved for making jam, just not enough this year (she needed enough for eight fresh strawberry pies), i'm feeling glad that i have a second picking. it was looking grim out there last week...

this morning picked strawberries. will make some more freezer jam later.
rested up a bit.

made ground pickle and bologna for 40-60 ppl ($45 for the bologna alone, stuff is more expensive than some beef now, but it is worth it once a year). we put a few rounds in the freezer, if you freeze it without the mayo and add that after thawing it back out it keeps well that ways.

planted last space in the fenced gardens with beans and replanted a few bare spots in the earliest plantings where germination didn't happen or critters ate the seeds.

have some chairs to repair/glue/tighten up, i hope i can get a few of them done this evening.

 

[digitS']

Let's see ... need to put down something I did in the garden ... picked some kailaan for dinner and ate it!

Okay now:

ground pickle and bologna for 40-60 ppl ..? Lots of people! 8 fresh strawberry pies? What are you and your mother up to @flowerbug ?

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

Let's see ... need to put down something I did in the garden ... picked some kailaan for dinner and ate it!

Okay now:

ground pickle and bologna for 40-60 ppl ..? Lots of people! 8 fresh strawberry pies? What are you and your mother up to @flowerbug ?

Steve

once a month she cooks for two groups of people. sometimes i help cook too. today i got to crank the meat grinder and take the casings off the bologna and of course taste test. Mom doesn't remember how we do things like set up the meat grinder (it is a very old fashioned one that clamps on something, so we use one of the old wooden chairs because that is the only thing we have to clamp on) there's a small piece of wood that we need to use because the clamp on the bottom doesn't have a pressure foot any more so it has to have the wood there to protect the bottom of the chair from being chewed up. Mom doesn't remember we need to do this. i told her we should write on the bottom of the chair that we can't get rid of it (she's wanted to a few times already and i keep talking her out of it). she's not really that out of it that the past sentences imply, she just doesn't remember stuff if she doesn't have to do it herself and i always set it up for her... soo...

also have a small party this week of her friends coming over so she's trying to get everything done at once. which doesn't happen. i'll be trying to get a few gardens weeded and planted (outside the fence now finally) but likely will only be able to get part of one of them done. it's very wet out there and clay takes a bit more time to drain and recent rains are going to make it a mess. i'm just glad we got the shed done and the garage is much more useful now that i can actually get to the edges where boxes of things are at and tools are kept and shelves can be reached without having to move something else out of the way first. it's very strange...

 

[ducks4you]

Hooray! LATE Spring rains will enable me to finish my planting! We have had almost 4 inches of rain since Friday. In one of the breaks I added compost to the garden bed area, but it rained before I could put the seeds in. HowEVER, yesterday I tilled up 2 areas in the lawn, one where we used to have an opening to a leach field, and the other is where the plumber dug to put in new water lines 2 years ago, and it hasn't really been growing much there. I just bought rye grass seed so I seeded, raked and covered with straw RIGHT BEFORE we had buckets of rain. Perfect timing.
Tomorrow I will be home to plant cabbage, beets and pumpkins (and other squash) and transplant the rest of the tomatoes and peppers.

 

[ninnymary]

Planted marigolds and zinnias in my son's garden...just a few more zinnias over there and I'll be done. Need to plant more into trays and hope they get big enough, soon enough, to make a difference in the gardens.

For all intents and purposes his little front yard garden is now planted. He has Red Pontiac spuds planted in the middle, some sweet Candy onions, Crimson Sweet watermelons, hot peppers, sweet peppers, yellow squash, half runner beans, green onions, chives, strawberries, garlic, clematis, honeysuckle, D'Oro Lilys, marigolds, zinnias, and impatiens.

Can't wait to see it all leafing out and filling in all the spaces!

Would love to see a picture of it now and later.

Mary