| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Jen |
Posted - May 16 2007 : 5:54:45 PM
This is our fledgling garden & orchard. We've got all sorts of goodies coming up, and our trees are happy. We've already had to spray a garlic/chili pepper spray on several leaves to ward off voracious yellow & black striped beetles. It worked!
Have a garden too? Share pictures!
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| 16 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Jen |
Posted - Aug 31 2007 : 1:50:23 PM
Jo, your lupine scattering reminds me of a kids' book called Ms. Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. It's about a woman who's contribution to the world's beauty is planting lupines everywhere! Love the garden salmon. Hope we get a bunch of rain soon to bring on the October color...
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| blueberries in alaska |
Posted - Aug 31 2007 : 10:15:21 AM
Jen, I can't imagine, I thought the coolness was more of a problem, now I don't know. I have a little garden of lupine that I have outside my front door, I take handfuls of seeds and just fling them in there and see what survives. I have carrots and lettuce in there! don't know if you can see from the photo below. I also like my salmon to climb my pansy ladder. First frost isn't far away now and my dahlia's might, I say might! bloom today. The variety is called "Summer's End", it couldn't be more true. I'm going to chronicle fall moving down the mountain here in an every other day blog. It's so dramatic to watch the color creep down the hillside.... jo
there's no place like home....
http://web.mac.com/thomja
http://homepage.mac.com/thomja/PhotoAlbum22.html |
| Jen |
Posted - Aug 29 2007 : 4:02:15 PM
Well, I don't know.....I was looking at it as a weed barrier, and by wetting it, I think it would be soft enough to let garden roots grow through by springtime. I'll look it up in the book again & see what I can find.
I've got a maddening diversity of weeds - I think the worst are bermuda grass, which is wildly prolific & roots all over the place (horrid to try & pull out); and horse nettle (I think), which is thorny & attracts potato bugs.
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Elizaray |
Posted - Aug 29 2007 : 12:40:47 PM
I am not sure if cardboard would compost in just one winter would it? I haven't read the Lasagna Gardening book yet.
I am trying to combat common mallow and burdock. Burdock can have a root up to 3 foot deep and creates horrible burrs that carry seeds far and wide. And the common mallow can live through a nuclear explosion I think.... ;)
Elizaray |
| Jen |
Posted - Aug 29 2007 : 12:16:53 PM
I promise you, it'll work. Try it out! Not sure how big an area you're planning, but just sprinkle it around generously & watch them shrivel. Also, I read the Lasagna Gardening book (have you read it?), and she says that the newspapers will do the trick all by themselves. I was thinking I'd go a step further & use cardboard boxes (I've become a pro at scavenging them from dumpsters & stores). They're free, big, and heavy-duty.
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Elizaray |
Posted - Aug 28 2007 : 9:20:29 PM
Oh yes- I will certainly try the vinegar. I am just afraid that it won't be strong enough. I have some pernicious weeds that are going to be a bear to get out of the soil!
Elizaray |
| Jen |
Posted - Aug 27 2007 : 11:51:02 AM
Me too!! Only, I've got a weed-killing solution you'll like better: vinegar! It's a known weed killer, but I didn't discover it till I was using it to bathe my old dog a few years ago & noticed the grass was dying where I bathed him. Voila! So, now I use it around the porch & in the rock-scaping, etc. I wonder if it would affect the acidity of the soil enough to hurt your garden plants next year, though? You could compensate with lime maybe. Hmmmm....any thoughts from the forum??
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Elizaray |
Posted - Aug 27 2007 : 04:36:23 AM
Jen-
I am going to lasagna garden over the winter. I am going to put down about 10 full newspapers and then cover with a heavy layer of mulch to keep the newspaper down. I am hoping the decomp heat will kill off some of my weeds. I know it is horrible- but I am thinking of soaking the first layer in bleach. I am having a horrible time with the weeds and if I could just get them killed off...my life would be SOOO much better!!
Elizaray |
| Mountain Girl |
Posted - Aug 25 2007 : 4:21:27 PM
It was hot and very dry here as well and the garden is having it's problems. A gopher got most of the garlic in the spring when Jim harvested the remaining few they were so small. His comment was I have to water the garlic more, duh. We are still getting use to how dry it is here in the summer, hot in the sun during the day and cool nights. There's always next year. JoAnn |
| Jen |
Posted - Aug 25 2007 : 2:36:04 PM
Well, after about 6 straight weeks of high heat, no rain, and little irrigation from our struggling spring, we surrendered to the bugs & raccoons! Got a few nice melons first, though. On toward fall & new & improved garden plans with time to prepare beds, etc.
What do you do with your garden in the fall, Elizaray - till it under, plant a cover crop???
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Elizaray |
Posted - Aug 23 2007 : 8:48:47 PM
I am glad the deer are leaving your trees alone! I hope your garden is coming along nicely!
Elizaray |
| Jen |
Posted - Jul 19 2007 : 12:09:46 PM
Thanks for the tip, Nikki (and my hub's a bowhunter too!). I'm pretty much a novice gardener myself - always moved around too much to give it my all - but I had a couple of good gardens in Washington, and now I'm overwhelmed by the waves of bugs we get here in Arkansas! Wow - squash bugs are HORRIBLE! The locals happily use Sevin pesticide dust & think we're nuts for our organic ways, but, like I tell my kids, free thinkers aren't always popular at first 
Somehow I missed your last post, Elizaray! The deer haven't returned & our trees are coming back with vigor. I still think I'll move the garden - probably into the yard by the house so that I can keep up with it better. Then, we'll plant more fruit trees down inside the deer fence, which may be decorated with old shoes & mothballs this winter!
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| countrychick |
Posted - Jul 18 2007 : 1:29:08 PM
Jen
Rabbits devour my trees in february. The snow was so deep they were able to eat off every branch to one tree overnight. I look outside right know and there is a stick of a tree with leaves on it. It's a sad sight. I just keep hoping they will recover.
Also.. I put a couple of old smelly shoes in the garden (a tip I read somewhere) and one day about 5:00 in the morning my husband (the bowhunter) woke me up and said listen "that's a buck snorting because he smelled something he doesn't recognize." So we peep out the window and there is a buck 20 feet from my garden snorting loudly and farther back are 3 does. He snorted for a long while in the direction of my garden and then took off and off went the other three. I don't know if it was the shoes or not but my garden lived to see another day LOL.
I also read from an old amish women that the amish use moth balls to keep deer away. I am a beginner gardener, so id on't know if it works but I am interested in trying it. |
| Elizaray |
Posted - Jun 27 2007 : 5:10:39 PM
I'm sorry to hear that you lost one of your chicks! Hopefully soon they will be too big for the snake to munch on. I guess you have decided to keep the garden where it is since you are building deer fencing? Your poor trees...are they going to make it?
I have started to harvest out of my garden. I thinned the carrots a little while ago. I am hoping the remaining carrots will get bigger :) I really like the taste better than the store bought carrots. These are much sweeter and more crisp. I am really looking forward to tomatoes coming in!
Elizaray |
| Jen |
Posted - Jun 27 2007 : 12:00:18 PM
I keep meaning to take some pictures of the little buggers, but I haven't done it! About 2 weeks ago, I got sick of them wading around in their own poopfood/poop in the dog kennel on the porch, so I transferred them down to the chicken coop with our hen -- oh, and we also got 2 pullets at the farmers market! So, we have (had) 20 chickens, all happy-as-can-be, and I just turned the chicks out to forage with the big girls last week. I guess they're about 4-5 weeks old, big & sassy. Anyway, lost our 1st chick 2 days ago to (I'm guessing) a medium-sized black rat snake who was hanging around the barn. Now I can't find it 'cause it's probably holed up someplace digesting our chick. If I can catch it sometime, I'm gonna take it over to the nat'l forest & bid it bye-bye. Don't want to kill it. Keeping fingers crossed for the remaining chicks, hoping they get bigger soon enough to beat the odds.
In the meantime, the garden is faring well against bugs on its own, but the deer have started having parties in there, so we started putting up a fence along the creekside where there was no fence before. The main trouble is that they browsed on our little fruit trees & left a couple in pretty sad shape.
And, the grass/weeds are going wild since we've had thunderstorms most every day for the past 2 weeks. It's turning into a jungle down here!
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Elizaray |
Posted - Jun 23 2007 : 4:23:28 PM
Hey Jen-
How are you and the chickens working out? Are they keeping your garden pest free or are they in the chicken yard? How did that work out?
Elizaray |
