My sister in NY has about a foot right now. Again, why do people live up there......
What have you done for garden prep so far?
- Thread starter Brent S
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the problem last year was it was so wet here that no one in the area had much luck with their gardens and so far it is looking a lot like last year,,,to much rain
No doubt it’s a crap shoot each year, and seems to be getting wilder swings with each passing year. If it keeps getting weirder then we will all need greenhouses to produce.
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Garden preps? I looked at some garden catalogs, then looked at our garden area today. I can see the top of the posts now. Only a few more months until planting.
Lol, just now seeing the tops of posts sounds like a long time before you see a tomato!
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I did some more tilling then started planting some onion sets and some different types of squashes. . . Spaghetti, Straight Neck, Zucchini, Acorn, Banana, & Patty. Got 2 trellis ready to plant but time ran out for working out there today. Hoping to get back out there tomorrow before it starts raining again, but we need to make a feed run before the rain too.
Still have snow...
Hate it for ya.
It’s gonna rain a lot here and end with flurries.... everything is starting to bloom, and lows into the 20’s next week.
I’m down to 15deg at night warms up to about 34-36 during the day, it rained fairly hard today but I’m hoping for more sun not rain, damn rain on the snow makes for crappy walk on top of that can’t take our quads out without tearing up the ground :-/
Heading over to the garden tomorrow, have to pay the plot fee, and take a look at cages and stuff.
All my fruit trees thought it was spring and bloomed. Oh well, maybe next year. I’m almost tempted to try covering a couple to save the blooms but don’t think I will actually go that far.
I drove past a peach orchard today. Bet this’ll get pretty bloody next week....
I’m just glad I don’t rely on growing crops for my living. They say all the way thru middle ga is taking a bad hit.
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I went down south to the feed store today. A 9 hour round trip. It was 57 degrees and was even starting to green up. Got home to 36 degs and butt deep snow.
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I went down south to the feed store today. A 9 hour round trip. It was 57 degrees and was even starting to green up. Got home to 36 degs and butt deep snow.
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More trench digging, adding in old manure with a little hay and finally did a little more planting. Got 36 different pepper plants going and 30 tomatoes. For the tomatoes, I added in egg shells and Epson salt to the holes first. Got my trellises for cucumbers ready, but about to start Shrimp Etoufee. BIL & MIL coming g for dinner tonight.
I did an estimate for a guy that wants to make a polo field arena. We are biding the lights and wiring for the project. First off, I’m not even sure what a polo field is.... guess I wasn’t rich enough in life. People chasing a ball with mallets on horseback was just out of my league. But back to the prepping thing, the location is on a corner of his 45acre property, which is mostly pasture. I laughingly told him I needed my head checked for buying bags of manure as we were walking around the piles of it all over the place. He said I was welcome to as much as I wanted as long as I brought the shovel. Time is tight for me right now but I may take him up on it before long! Not two miles from my house either. Guess I’m going to have to find some time over the weekend?
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I don't recommend using horse manure for your garden. Any kind of weed seed that the horse ate will be passed on to your garden. Cow, chicken or rabbit manure is far better.
Wouldn’t composting get rid of most of that?
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Today my Sweet Pea came for a visit. She wanted to come see her baby goats 
. Of coarse we had to go see all the little critters though. Since I've been working in the garden, she came out to help me plant. . . butternut squash, patty squash, and a few cucumbers but at only 2 1/2 her attention span is not long. We had gone inside to powder the dehydrated eggs in the blender. She likes pushing the buttons to make it go then stop. Even helps with pouring out. She is just too cute with her hair up in a ponytail, her pink rubber booties carrying my 1/2 gallon glass jar down to the stockroom to put on the shelf. Then we came back out to scramble more eggs for the dehydrator. She is almost a pro at cracking those eggs! I always try to encourage her to help out, even at this young age. It may take me 10 times longer to do a project, but its totally worth the extra time & you can never start too early.
. Of coarse we had to go see all the little critters though. Since I've been working in the garden, she came out to help me plant. . . butternut squash, patty squash, and a few cucumbers but at only 2 1/2 her attention span is not long. We had gone inside to powder the dehydrated eggs in the blender. She likes pushing the buttons to make it go then stop. Even helps with pouring out. She is just too cute with her hair up in a ponytail, her pink rubber booties carrying my 1/2 gallon glass jar down to the stockroom to put on the shelf. Then we came back out to scramble more eggs for the dehydrator. She is almost a pro at cracking those eggs! I always try to encourage her to help out, even at this young age. It may take me 10 times longer to do a project, but its totally worth the extra time & you can never start too early.
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Yes, but it has to get pretty hot in order to kill the weed seeds. I'm not sure how hot or how long it takes to kill the weed seeds.
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Down here just the heat from decomposition is enough. But up there in Nanook of the North territory, that may not be enough.
I’ve read that horse manure has a lot more seeds than cows do. I guess 4 stomachs helps out some for the cows.
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it is that time of year,I still have not made up my mind if I will put one out or not,,the weather screwed me last year,I lost track of how much I spent last year but I can tell you this much,the few tomato's I got were not worth the cost
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I know I didn't even mess with potatoes this year due to all of the rain we have had. I will be doing sweet potatoes though when we hit our drier months. The first planting of regular potatoes did OK last year, but the fall all rotted in the ground due to flooding even with my raised beds. Last year a lot of people had a rough go of it.
Potatoes are a great crop to me. You get loads of produce for minimal work. That being said, you still need to know when and where to plant them. I also learned you need to rotate every year. I haven’t tried the sweet potatoes before, but think I will this time around.
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My fall crop went in right before our Great Flood where we got I think it was like 56 inches that one week, plus we got snow twice which really didn't help. As a kid I remember it snowing once in this area where it stuck. . . a few snow flurries in those years growing up, but it has snowed I think a total of 5 times in the last three or four years. We just seem to be getting a different weather pattern than we used to and I need to learn to adjust to them. Used to be we would just worry about frost.
Sweet potatoes did great for me last year. In fact we are going to hit the store so I can pick up a couple to start in the window will. Hunny told me this morning that he was going to make a run to the dump with the neighbor and not to get too dirty working out in the garden. Yeah right, I'm literally playing with old crap adding it to my rows to fertilize. . .. How dirty I get depends on how long he is gone. Planted Honey Dew and Cantaloupe on two trellises and finished the cucumbers on a couple more. I got the rows mulched that Sweet Pea and I planted yesterday and I got a couple more trenches dug for walkways adding that dirt to my rows to build them up. Still need to till that all in but, figured I better stop and at least get a little cleaned up before going out in public. . .
Sweet potatoes did great for me last year. In fact we are going to hit the store so I can pick up a couple to start in the window will. Hunny told me this morning that he was going to make a run to the dump with the neighbor and not to get too dirty working out in the garden. Yeah right, I'm literally playing with old crap adding it to my rows to fertilize. . .
. How dirty I get depends on how long he is gone. Planted Honey Dew and Cantaloupe on two trellises and finished the cucumbers on a couple more. I got the rows mulched that Sweet Pea and I planted yesterday and I got a couple more trenches dug for walkways adding that dirt to my rows to build them up. Still need to till that all in but, figured I better stop and at least get a little cleaned up before going out in public. . .
I am working on a tiny vegetable garden this weekend. I am just taking a break right now. I live in suburbia and have a postage stamp back yard. I wanted to do a small raised bed to see what would happen. I have read, until I am blue in the face, about different ways you can do raised beds. Just when you are reading something and it sounds like it is the way to go, you read something else and it doesn't sound like the way to go. I have been wanting to do this for years, so I finally just said, what the heck, and went for it. I am using cinder blocks as a border. I read they can release fly ash (or something like that) I have also read that is for only older cinder blocks. I am going to line the inside with cardboard. I just picked up 800 lbs of top soil from Lowes and 200 lbs of composted cow manure. I need to go get the cinder blocks, but my son wanted a lunch break ( husband had to work all day today). I got my plants ready put in. I got tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and a cantaloupe just for the heck of it. I am hoping to keep it organic as possible. If I do have to use pesticide, what kind do you all use?
cantaloupe requires a trellis?My fall crop went in right before our Great Flood where we got I think it was like 56 inches that one week, plus we got snow twice which really didn't help. As a kid I remember it snowing once in this area where it stuck. . . a few snow flurries in those years growing up, but it has snowed I think a total of 5 times in the last three or four years. We just seem to be getting a different weather pattern than we used to and I need to learn to adjust to them. Used to be we would just worry about frost.
Sweet potatoes did great for me last year. In fact we are going to hit the store so I can pick up a couple to start in the window will. Hunny told me this morning that he was going to make a run to the dump with the neighbor and not to get too dirty working out in the garden. Yeah right, I'm literally playing with old crap adding it to my rows to fertilize. . .
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