Garden 2021

[Neb]

I have been fighting the white butterflys and the little green caterpillars, I have decided that I want to make hoops for netting to keep them off my plants completely, the the hoops seem to be a little expensive..... Then I got to thinking about brake line, cost about $17 for 25 feet, can be bent easily and cut to my needed length. has a hole so you could stick it on pins (nails with the heads cut off) I figure if I went with 8'4" lengths I could get 3 tall hoops which would cover about an 8'X3' raised bed. I know I must be missing something... so I'm throwing this out so you can rain on my parade.... hopefully before I order another roll of brake line (I think I have half a roll left from when I put the engine in my truck, I know what do brakes have to do with the engine... don't get me started).

I tried to find a good video but the best i culd do was fine this update from Alotment Diary on Youtube.



About 2 minutes into that video the fine netting over hoop supports can be seen in the top left corner. The netting keeps the butterflies of the plants like cabbage etc.

The owner of that channel has won vegetable shows for 3' long carrots and many other large crops. Onions approaching 10 lbs each is what got me suscribing to him.

Sko a fine netting should help prevent them. Ince infected DE and lady bugs.

Ben

 

[joel]

We are in raspberry, blackberry picking season & soon be blueberry season.

 

[elkhound]

Boy i tell ya..second planting of corn just got hammered again..this time not only the crows pulling it up...i can see where a squirrel or chipmunk has went down row digging up the corn i planted. little holes exactly as corn spacing. it was just starting to sprout and a few came up. this didnt happen last year..not even a little bit.... we need a cussing emoji thingy !!

 

[SheepDog]

elkhound,
Cover your corn (and other crops) with a tent of netting or wire fencing. That will keep the birds and four legged pests out. When the plants get too big for the tent remove the tent. We do that with all our planting because the birds and rabbits were getting our food before we got any.

 

[joel]

Something like this.
https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/help-plants-keep-cool/7367.html

 

[Peanut]

Crows are easy to deal with, as odd as it sounds fishing line works wonders. The colored lines, like neon green, seem to work even better. Crows hate anything bumping or touching their wings. Especially string or fishing line. I string it around the garden. If corn is surrounded by larger plants, I’ll use stakes and hang the fishing line directly above a row, leaving slack. Slack lets it sway in a breeze, easier for the crow to see. They won’t land anywhere near a line. I use the same technique when crows start raiding my nest boxes in the chicken pen. I just droop a few strands of line in front of the boxes, no more crows.

I string the fishing line between tree limbs, stakes or brown olive barrels in the garden. I keep a few at the end of the garden just for this purpose. I get olive barrels from the farmers co-op (good for storing animal feed). Putting a little water in the barrel helps it stay upright, sometimes I forget the water.

For other critters I buy a roll of yellow caution tape from l o w-e s. Again, hang it loosely so it moves in the breeze. It does a fair job. Crows aren’t intimidated by it, it’s the little line that freaks them out.

Then there is my trusty owl. It has a small solar strip on its head that feeds a large capacitor. Every few minutes, depending of sun and clouds, the cap discharges and moves a gear causing the owl to turn its head. Crows are to smart for this but other critters aren’t. It’ helps if you move the owl to new locations a couple of times a day, again, the olive barrels come in handy.

At the end of the day fishing line is my tried and true method for dealing with crows, they hate the stuff. It's cheap, easy to sting out and roll back up. Minimal expenditure of time and money.

 

[elkhound]

elkhound,
Cover your corn (and other crops) with a tent of netting or wire fencing. That will keep the birds and four legged pests out. When the plants get too big for the tent remove the tent. We do that with all our planting because the birds and rabbits were getting our food before we got any.

yep..its just to much to cover..multiple rows 50-60ft long...this has not been issue in over 20 years. this is a new garden area and it was NOT issue in this new garden last year and i had over 1,000 stalks of corn growing in it.
@Peanut thanks for fishing line tip.give it a try and i have a plastic owl i will try too.

 

[Peanut]

Yep, netting and such is fine for a couple of rows at the edge of a yard but not practical for large gardens. We don't do it anymore but when we had the big peach orchard we'd plant several acres of veggies between the rows of trees. For crows you only have to keep them away for about 10 days. Crows are smart enough to know that by then the planted seed has given it's nutrition to the plant and started to rot. They only go after a seed when a plant just appears.

 

[winds-of-change]

Not laughing. Plant a clove and get a bulb of garlic. It can also seed which are little pea sized things that are sorta attached to the bulbs of garlic. If you leave those or plant them, they will grow garlic also.

But will it be the large, elephant garlic if that’s what the Clove is from?

 

[Neb]

But will it be the large, elephant garlic if that’s what the Clove is from?

That is what works for me but I do plant my garlic in late September so they can start to grow before winter comes. It is the cold weather that gets them to split into multiple cloves.

Ben

 

[UrbanHunter]

Yesterday I was able to clean and prep the last of my old large raised beds (it was covered with black plastic and had bags of lawn trimmings stacked on top of it. Some of the older lawn trimmings had become big brick hard cow patties. When I removed the black plastic I discovered a reptile nest with eggs... Anyway, I now have a new raised bed ready to plant, but I think it is too late to plant anything besides corn (and the wife said no corn) or bush beans and I already have enough of them.... I may cover it and wait for Late Summer/ Fall planting time. Unless anyone has any suggestions on what I could do at the last moment....

 

[Amish Heart]

Throw some summer squash seed in there, right in the ground, like yellow crookneck.
Reptile eggs. Yuck.

 

[UrbanHunter]

Throw some summer squash seed in there, right in the ground, like yellow crookneck.
Reptile eggs. Yuck.

Thanks, good idea.
I might pick up an extra Zucchini or melon plant if they have any at HD. Need to go there anyway to exchange propane tanks.

 

[Amish Heart]

I saw the prices on the Bonnie plants at Lowes and HD and had a fit. I'm too cheap to pay $4 to $5 for a little squash plant or a melon. Geesh you can buy 4lbs of zucchini for the price of a little plant.
I seed it.

 

[UrbanHunter]

Be thankful, when I visited ours today they had pickling cucumbers, yellow squash, a couple of hot peppers, and some tomatoes. That was it, and the sun had really done a number on the plants they had.... And the price was hotter than the plants.....

I got home, finished prepping the bed, planted a row of carrots, a row of beets, and a row of zucchini (all the seeds were from 2019). I spaced them all like they had been thinned and marked where seeds were (I just marked the row where the carrots were with a flag every foot). My thinking is it will make it easier to weed the right weeds......

As I finished it started raining... outdoor work done, like it or not...

 

[Newbri]

I got more trays for the new seeds I was gifted. Tomorrow I'll be getting soil for them.

 

[Amish Heart]

Yep, I saw some plants at Tractor S the other day, Bonnies, and they looked dead and droopy to me, still priced at $3.98 each. Ha. A lady was watering. Good luck bringing a dead one back to life.
Seeds worked super well for me this year, starting them in the little greenhouse. There were only a couple of veggies I bought as plants. I did buy sweet potato slips this year, but they were cheap. And strawberries.
It's great you're growing something, Newbri. Just warning you, though, it an be addictive. Look at Urban.

 

[Bacpacker]

Waterd the upper garden with the drip system today. Pruned some of the tomato plants. They are horribly over grown, so I cut out limbs reaching to the ground, alots of limbs with no maters on them. I'm trying to get better air flow and put more growth into the maters that are on. The plants are determinate and I want them to get some size to them.
Picked a huge Flat Dutch cabbage and a few more onions.. Also got more blueberries, boysen berries.

 

[elkhound]

garlic is about done for the year

 

[elkhound]

well i decided to get on with it i could use the space garlic is using and about out of planting time for longer stuff. so i pulled fabric and went to digging today . only found 1 bad bulb out of all these.dewitt sunbelt weedcloth works great for garlic. i spent maybe 5 minutes tending weeds in this from last fall till now.eat,drink and stink !

 

[Bacpacker]

Your garlic looks great Elk. My dad dug his last week. For a small amount he got a great harvest from it.

Wife picked more blueberries today. Our smaller plants have done their thing. Big bushes are just getting started. She also picked a nice batch of green beans.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

well i decided to get on with it i could use the space garlic is using and about out of planting time for longer stuff. so i pulled fabric and went to digging today . only found 1 bad bulb out of all these.dewitt sunbelt weedcloth works great for garlic. i spent maybe 5 minutes tending weeds in this from last fall till now.eat,drink and stink !

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Oh my... the GARLIC! What kind is it??

I especially love growing the ‘Music’ garlic. It’s a nice hardneck with outrageously good flavor. But mine has a few more weeks to go yet.

This year the scapes got away from me and grew a bit too tough but that’s OK. I will try making a salad vinegar with half of them, and soak the other half in olive oil and maybe avocado oil too. Oil infused with delicate garlic-scape flavor is nice! I am determined not to let this once a year opportunity go to waste.

 

[elkhound]

Oh my... the GARLIC! What kind is it??

I really really love the ‘Music’ garlic. It’s a nice hardneck with outrageously good flavor.

you should know....martin heirloom ! been growing this since 2005 now. hands down the best year after year.tastes best too.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

you should know....martin heirloom ! been growing this since 2005 now. hands down the best year after year.tastes best too.

I wonder if he ever released any of his garlic stock to select seedsmen the way he does with his famous tomato varieties???? If so, I would love some Paquebot candy, lol

 

[elkhound]

I wonder if he ever released any of his garlic stock to select seedsmen the way he does with his famous tomato varieties???? If so, I would love some Paquebot candy, lol

theres only one place(filareefarms) grows martins heirloom garlic and they have a limit of amount a person can buy and it sells out in a couple days.i know one year..or more...they didnt even offer it for sale.guess they were expanding their stocks.

we grow garlic closed years ago now that grew it.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

theres only one place(filareefarms) grows martins heirloom garlic and they have a limit of amount a person can buy and it sells out in a couple days.

we grow garlic closed years ago now that grew it.

??? I’m not understanding the last sentence?

 

[elkhound]

??? I’m not understanding the last sentence?

there was a place called 'we grow garlic' in wisconsin that use to grow martin heirloom but they closed down years ago now.

 

[Grizzleyette___Adams]

I will try the farm you mentioned; I know anything created by Paquebot will be outstanding. What specifically makes his garlic shine? What do you love about it?

 

[elkhound]

I will try the farm you mentioned; I know anything created by Paquebot will be outstanding. What specifically makes his garlic shine? What do you love about it?

its taste,it produces large cloves, you can take bulbis from it and it will produce a small divided head first season to replant that fall so you can expand for cheap and fast that way.

a millineal said it tastes like butter roasted !her mother roasted some on grill and they used it like butter on baked potatoes. i have grown a few varieties but this is best. only thing i would try growing would be one thats much hotter tasting..but my taste buds are probably burnt out with the strong stuff i eat....lol

 

[joel]

Looks good,Elkhound.
My Elephant Garlic is a biennial, so it has died back, first time in a container, hope it will come back.