What Did You Do In Your Garden Today?

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Dad talked about burning manure for fertilizer use.



I remember catching manure on fire when we were burning an old corral - stink!! Still, I bet it is pretty good fertilizer for the minerals that remain. The nitrogen is lost as N2 or N2O, no doubt.

Steve

I read about this. Something about China and land never wears out and they burn manure and spread the ash for fertilizer and the person who wrote the article was making manure bricks and burning in their stove and then putting the ash on the garden.

 

[897tgigvib]

Right now I'm on a short break. Got the bed ready for the Peas. Wire tomato cages, each with a stake next to it, taped to the stake with green vineyard tape. The bed has the white plastic neatly tucked down both sides.

Purpose of this break...

COFFEE UP

Find Red Seeded Golden Pod Pea seeds.
Find Alaska Pea seeds.
Get on internet for SHORT time only, check email, type this here.
Rest up the ole musklz.
Play with cats. I may need to make Peeper a protective coat. When they wrassle around, Clevland starts pulling Peeper's fur out, Peeper thinks it's funny...I don't.

Isn't there some kind of thing they have for chickens that get their feathers pecked off by the other chickens?

Ya see, Clevland is Abyssinian, Peeper's British Shorthair...Abyssinians=mighty little hunters, British Shorthairs=big friendly mellow too charismatic to do any serious fighting back...peace lovin hippy cat.

guzzlin coffee down, got magic marker, getting seeds...

be back in a few hours

Peas...March 16, one day earlier even than 1968 almost 2,000 lower and 100 miles south

 

[canesisters]

Well Marshal... for chickens that pick other chickens feathers there's peepers. Little sunglasses looking things that fit on their beak and messes with their depth perseption (I think that's what they're supposed to do..). I don't think you're cats would appreciate having little sunglasses fitted onto their noses though.

I just let my cats go at it - until it gets TOO bad. Then I break out the squirt bottle.


In my garden today - nothing garden-y. I spend the entire day working on the chicken tractor. Have a few more hours of work tomorrow (I hope) and then I can go pick up those big'ol Jersey Girls!
I did set the corn and sun flowers out on the back porch for a good while... so I guess that counts.

 

[so lucky]

Maybe Marshall is talking about chicken aprons. It looks like an apron put on backwards, to protect the chicken's back.

 

[897tgigvib]

I think I'll call these purple instead of red. These are Peas. One plant among the golden poddeds made these. Only got 17 seeds. I planted 10 of them today.

 

[897tgigvib]

The bed of peas.

 

[897tgigvib]

So far this morning I got 2 more berry plants in. Coffeeing up to get some more loads of clay soil.

Our water system was charged with chlorine 3 weeks ago for the season, and I just tested it, and I'm not yet using any of it to water the peas. I'll be watering them with my bottled water for a few weeks. Luckily it is still cool and they won't be needing much, right now just for their slow germination in the soil. They are covered with the plastic, X's cut over each spot, and tucked in slightly with good fluff compost over.

10 berry plants in the north bed now. I plan on digging up one from the secret forest patch I know about...oh yes, it's near that strangely naturally grafted couple of trees, so I have to remember to take my camera. That one I mentioned some months back that BobM said the bigfoots did

I still want to get hold of a true Dewberry. I already have one of our Pacific Coast Salmon Dewberry plants which I am not sure yet is male or female. These make small button like red berries. The true Dewberry I want to get makes very large black to purple berries.

Ahhh, got a Ventures tune going! Coffee's kicking in! BEATNIK MUSIC!

 

[thistlebloom]

Marshall, you're garden looks good!

What's the purpose of the plastic in the pea bed? Extra warmth or weeds?

 

[897tgigvib]

Thistle, It's for extra warmth being as I'm planting them so early. The extra bonus of that is it is also reflective for more light. That bathouse to the right is to the south, and is still adding to shade on that south most bed this time of year. Light. Every lumen I can get

As it gets closer to the solstice the light is fine on the whole garden. Most of the garden is already in good light.

I'm hoping to have all the peas harvested and out around mid June. Then, more BEANS naturally!

Last year's Peas were planted 25 April, and were finished 10 July.

This year the Peas are sown more than a month sooner. Growth may be slower at first, but still hope to harvest almost a month earlier. Which one is the fingers crossed smiley?

 

[RidgebackRanch]

Today I gave all the beds a good stirring, added a little organic fertilizer with good microbes and finished them off with some water. It was good to get out and work outside, and boy were there a lot of worms in the beds. Nice to see an encouraging sign of healthy soil.

Dug up about 10 gallons of Sun Chokes for a friend and it turns out the horses like them.

Planted some peas and transplanted some chives from another bed and put in some shallots in the same area.

It was just really nice to be in the sun working, listening to the birds and give a little scratch to that spring gardening itch.

And today it looks like this...