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Garden Geeks thread

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Re: Garden Geeks thread

FreshFish said:
I hope it works....once frost sets in for the winter here, it gets hard even to get a shovel into the ground....though I suppose the composting leaves will keep the ground softer.


For some reason it brings to mind a memory from childhood. During autumn, the street sweepers would pile all the fallen leaves into one huge mound, maybe six or seven feet high by nine or ten feet across. (later, a front-loader and dump truck would pick them up). We could build forts in them, burrow down and hide, etc. If a pile had sat there for several days, and you burrowed down far enough, you'd get to the moldering part, which would be steaming and warm. that was fun.
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The ground won't freeze under the leaves, they act as insulation. Last year I wouldn't have needed leaves as we had several feet of snow in garden, it didn't freeze as the snow insulated the ground
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Last yr I still had >1 ft of snow on the ground. This yr I have raked all the mulch off because stuff was bolting through it and the mulch was stiffling some plants.

Ordered seeds this past week.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

I usually grow about 24 tomato plants of 4 different types (6 of each). This year I'm going to try about 12 different types, 2 plants of each. I have always grown indeterminate plants, but adding some determinate and semi-determinate varieties this year. Some of the newbies to me include black krim, sweet tangerine hybrid, sweet seedless hybrid and honey bunch hybrid cherry tomatoes, along with my more traditional varieties. Should be fun tasting these odd colored fruits. Let's see how many actually make it to the kitchen table (I eat them like candy when I'm out in the yard and garden ;) ).

Doing the same with some direct sow seeds as well. Cucumbers, spinach, summer squash and radish will all have some old and new varieties to try.

Ordered 20 new asparagus crowns. 10 Jersey Giant Hybrid and 10 Sweet Purple asparagus. With just 4 crowns planted over the last 8 years, spears rarely made it to the dinner table as I'd eat them as I picked them. There's nothing quite like the flavor of garden fresh asparagus spears. With 24 crowns producing, I should be able to get some to the table. If you ever plan on planting asparagus, take the time and material to get the beds prepped right or you're wasting time and money. Well prepared asparagus beds will be good producers for 15-20 years. Do your homework and don't skimp.

I'm really looking forward to this year's growing season. With very nice weather this early in spring I'll be able to get the winter rye tilled in this weekend and get some of the cold weather seeds in the ground. We've had some significant rain recently but my raised beds dry out pretty quickly. Won't jump the gun on the warm weather plants no matter how nice and early the spring is. That early to mid-May killing frost always seems to appear when it seems it won't. Patience grasshopper, patience. :)
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Bluebells and daffodils starting to come up; hellebore blooming. Just in time for snow tomorrow night.

It'll be interesting to see which newly planted perennials actually make their return. I'm sure I killed at least 1 or 2.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Weirdest Spring!

Usually the grape hyacinths and the daffs bloom together. My daffs have blasted and quite a few have bloomed. The Grape hyacinths aren't even starting yet. Crocci are almost all by. Forsythia haven't even started to look like they are budding but the Vibernum, usually a May bloomer, is starting to leaf out and the buds are swelling. Mum Nature is saying U U TF
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Haven't started anything yet. Have the seeds. The whole FF thing and traveling in April is screwing me up.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

I sat up my portable fencing this weekend to keep my chickens all in so they can be out of the coop longer. However, a couple of them had figured out that if they hop up onto the straw bales I had set up to be a wind block for the coop, they can then hop on out and be loose all over the place. Particularly my last white hen I have. Mom tried clipping one of her wings this morning and she still hopped right on up on top of the bales again. Thankfully, I knew I had a little bit of 2 foot wide chicken wire that I was sure would be enough to block off the top of the bales with a few stakes to hold it on up there. However, Murphy's Law kicked in and it turned out that that wire wasn't long enough for what I needed. However, I did have some other stuff that I could use to finish covering the gap.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

bigmrg74 said:
I sat up my portable fencing this weekend to keep my chickens all in so they can be out of the coop longer. However, a couple of them had figured out that if they hop up onto the straw bales I had set up to be a wind block for the coop, they can then hop on out and be loose all over the place. Particularly my last white hen I have. Mom tried clipping one of her wings this morning and she still hopped right on up on top of the bales again. Thankfully, I knew I had a little bit of 2 foot wide chicken wire that I was sure would be enough to block off the top of the bales with a few stakes to hold it on up there. However, Murphy's Law kicked in and it turned out that that wire wasn't long enough for what I needed. However, I did have some other stuff that I could use to finish covering the gap.
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So if you drop a batch of live chickens from a helicopter over a mall parking lot in Cincinnati, will that be a different outcome than batch of live turkeys?
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

St. Clown said:
So if you drop a batch of live chickens from a helicopter over a mall parking lot in Cincinnati, will that be a different outcome than batch of live turkeys?
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Possibly. They're not really that great of flyers, and I doubt many of them could really figure out how to smoothly glide down for a landing. More of them flapping their wings to slow their fall and being successful with that.
 
bigmrg74 said:
Possibly. They're not really that great of flyers, and I doubt many of them could really figure out how to smoothly glide down for a landing. More of them flapping their wings to slow their fall and being successful with that.
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I'll let my chickens out of pen once it greens up. They come back at night no problems
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

The GD groundhog survived the winter and looks to be very plump. C'mon bobcat! Eat the bugger!
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

walrus said:
I'll let my chickens out of pen once it greens up. They come back at night no problems
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My main issues with them is keeping them out of the garden, and the fact that I'm not always home in the evenings to lock them up, and Mom doesn't want to hunt them down all the time. So keeping them in a portable pen around the tractor worked out pretty good for me last year. Just found another roll of the 5 foot deer netting that I've been using for that portable fencing, so I'm probably going be expending that portable pen soon.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

Dang it! Why is it still dipping down below freezing here yet. Needs to warm up so I can go and clean out my coop and get it moving again. Then set up my Buff chicks up in the little mini-coop so that I can go get my meat birds. Then go get started on the coop for the meat birds.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

bigmrg74 said:
Dang it! Why is it still dipping down below freezing here yet. Needs to warm up so I can go and clean out my coop and get it moving again. Then set up my Buff chicks up in the little mini-coop so that I can go get my meat birds. Then go get started on the coop for the meat birds.
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Snow again overnight here, south of Madison. Getting kind of old.
 
Re: Garden Geeks thread

The perennial beds I planted last year are looking pretty good so far. Not sure what comes in late or isn't going to come in at all (silver violets seem very slow). Lungwort is HUGE, along with Coral bells (which never died over the winter). Was worried about the blue mouse ears, but they're starting to come up now. I trimmed my lilacs too late last year, so I only have a few flowers this year. :( I planted a few bee balms last year, and they're coming up as a bunch of separate plants. Didn't know they did that - thought they were weeds at first.

I'm digging up my strawberries in favor of something that will actually grow. They're talking about adding community garden plots at a nearby park - might do that for some sunny space.

My 2 projects for the summer - edging the lawn around the sidewalk and driveway, and doing something about the bare patches in my lawn. (who wants to help? you're gonna have to move in, because the part where you water it every effing day is the part I always have trouble with :p)

Oh, and it wouldn't be a garden thread post from me without a stupid question - since I added bark last year, how do I add compost to the soil this year? Still put it around the plants? Do I even need to?
 
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