I had a real problem adjusting to this Alabama rock and clay they call soil here. When everyone else's gardens up north are going gangbusters it gets too damn hot down here. But we can have two gardens and harvest something year round.
Today I am weeding----my gutters. Anybody need maple saplings? I have a thousand started Normally I compost them, but this year I think I am going to scatter them along a lot line to see if I can get a maple hedge going---on their side. I am not giving up square footage for no stinking trees. They consume way too much carbon and I don't have any to spare.
Why don't you mulch them? (Just trying to throw around some real gardener talk there.) I find such saplings in my fruit tree pots. Squirrels, I reckon.
Here's a question. What would you do to allow light to shine through a solid wood fence? The fence limits this important spot in my garden to 6 hours/day of sunlight, but I need 8. My thought is to just cut some rectangular holes in the vertical slats and install a grill of some kind in the holes, maybe even decorative. It's odd that I have thought of something that, according to Google, doesnt exist. I can't be the first person who needs to let light through a wood fence!
Just harvested my first picking of green peas.....yummy!!! The goats will eat the pods. And when the harvest is done...the vines too.
Yes, peas are a good crop for a fall garden. And you may find that a fall garden has fewer problems than a summer garden in the south. My wife says my goats are spoiled.
Peas also put nitrogen into the soil. Mine are not ready yet, but we have had too much rain the last month..
Remove every other slat and make it a picket fence I suppose you could also install solar collecting lights to mount on the fence but not sure how they are with the heat.
It is because the little seeds helicopter around anywhere near a maple tree. I did compost them---I just tossed them over the hill where nature will take its course.
You are the chef but you can eat them raw in salads, boiled with butter and salt, or make pea soup. We are freezing ours for later.
Finally fully finished planting the last spot in the garden and walking around randomly planting odd assortments of seeds. I have my seed box down to one plastic box now at least instead of three--the fall garden box. There are a couple rows that are going to be Darwinian--I planted ornamental corn, cucumbers, and yellow-eyed peas in the same rows. If the corn makes it up, something should climb up the useless bastards. If even half the crook necked squash makes it, I have way too much squash a coming, but I needed to get rid of the seeds before they got too old.
I planted my early peas around a trellis that I plan to surround with pole beans later, and after that start up a couple of vines of a Hmong cucumber plant I got seeds for over the internet. Something will be growing up that trellis by the end of summer...I hope... Meanwhile, a waif -like Venus Flytrap I bought in a local grocery store is about twice the size it was when I bought it and is starting to look sort of menacing.. So far it has been sitting under the lamp next to my computer desk, but sometime soon I am going to have to re-pot it. It came in a little soft clear plastic tube with a plastic cover about 2 inches in diameter by about 5 inches tall with just a bit of growing medium in the bottom. I am hoping it will help control fruit flies brought in with garden produce later this summer. Or maybe catch a mosquito or two...they get in around our screens somehow.
So I went to pull some stray and excess of what I thought were "green onions," this to make room for my news raspberry plant, and look what came up! I had gotten tired back in February of separating the sets, and just took what I still had and stuck them, still all in a bunch, in a corner of the ground. Aren't they beautiful? And so ROUND. https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3l9f1wi25q6fo3/IMG_20170507_133121682_HDR.jpg?dl=0
Got 12 fig trees planted and I bought some cherry tomato plants. My garden is all planted except the cherry tomatoes. I am still planting my flower beds and just got another pickup load of pine straw. Some of it will go to mulch the fig trees.
What will you do with all the figs? They are selling Chicago fig trees around here--I have been considering buying one. We're in zone 6.
If I get figs I will probably make fig jam or preserves. I have been looking at different recipe suggestions. But I ain't got no figs yet. I am in zone 8 but they sometimes die back in colder winters.
I grew up in Louisiana and am now in North Texas, where 20 degrees is very common. We've had common figs, which to me look just like Brown Turkeys, and Calamata. We chopped the Calamata all the way down last year as it was threatening the foundation. And it came back! Anyway nothing kills figs around here.
I harvested my green peas and replaced them with cherry tomatoes. Will start cutting broccoli heads in the morning. I have bell peppers coming on and green tomatoes. So far it is a good year. My corn is also going gangbusters. I am going to have to put down more mulch for weeds. I have built another raised bed for flowers and have five hardy hibiscus planted. I am also going to plant some coneflowers and butterfly weed. Busy...busy...busy. My watermelon and aisian mellon are up.
I thought I had mice digging up my bean seeds at night. I set 5 traps and got zero mice, but there was evidence of more digging and wrecked sprouts. Something is walking around the traps. I'm starting to think it's a nocturnal bird of some kind. Tonight I am covering the sprouts with cups and pots and weighing them down. Hope they don't suffocate!
Could be slugs. Look very carefully for slime trails. Or find something lying on the ground and look under it for them.
Hmm.... These things move fast whatever they are, and they dig out and upend my plants, but only the seeds and sprouting seeds. Once the roots are developed, they leave them alone.
