vinegar and disk soap weed killer is not working

We haven't seen any rabbits yet. Wouldn't mind seeing one in the evening, break out the air rifle with the suppressor and the scope, runs at about 1250 fps and should take out a rabbit for dinner.

A flock of white Muscovy ducks landed on the retention pond this afternoon. They're not native so they're free game. Unfortunately there were people walking around the pond. Dang!

We got a truck load of spoiled alfalfa many years ago for free and another truck load of spoiled plain grass hay. Big storm east of us and caught some truckers without cover. Friend of mine who was dealing with them had them come over to our old place with 10 acres and the unloaded on us. Stacked the bales around the big garden up to about eight feet tall and the tomatoes and peppers made fruit all winter. Gradually it all rotted away, pulled out the strings and scattered over a place we wanted to turn into a bean field. Had lots of beans and other veggies for several years.

Haven't seen any hay truck but once since then. Don't think we had any droughts for a long time either.

No rain today, maybe tomorrow. Gardens and other plants got so much water this past week we're having to fertilize again.

George

Reply to
George Shirley
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Thank you!

The dandelions I recognize as I have been trying to kill them for years. Vinegar might not kill them, but it sure screws them something terrible, so it may only be an emotional thing for me.

Cow poop it is! I will see what I can find in a bag. Hope getting it home doesn't stick up my car.

-T

Reply to
T

Thank you!

No pickup truck and no lawn mover.

Just out of curiosity, how deep do you have to go to keep the little buzzards seeds/root from coming back up?

I am planning on planting two more Ponderosa Pines to kep my other one company. Their needles will eventually acidify the soil and provide some ground cover.

Reply to
T

Texas rains can be something to behold!

I can grow carp. Well except weeds. Maybe I can coax my purslane to choke out the weeds. It hasn't come up yet this year.

Reply to
T

Nut grass actually has a nut at the bottom, that has to come out or another weed grows. Dandelions is a shot at getting it all, we usually stick a finger into the ground and feel for roots then push it out. Every weed has some sort of problem with wanting to live and procreate. Get rough with them.

I grew up in the piney woods of SE Texas, takes many moons to actually acidify soil that way. It is a cheap way though if you're patient.

Not raining at the moment, more tomorrow is what the weather folk are saying. Lots of folks in Houston proper and the other cities and towns on the drainage plain are under several feet of water for the second year. So far we're just getting lots of water on the gardens and they are doing well. Sun came out this afternoon and everything growing perked up. I took a lot of "rain" limbs off the pear tree. Blasted thing grow faster the more water they get.

George

Reply to
George Shirley

To be a decent gardener you have to understand your climate, the rain patterns, what the soil is made of, and, even then, you can lose. Think of it as something fun to do and you won't go completely bonkers.

Reply to
George Shirley

T wrote: ...

i like dandelions, Ma just mows them down when they start flowering and then about every three to four days, not many make it to seed stage.

it is composted already, doesn't stink like much of anything that i recall, it's very low nutrient organic material, that is why i use wood chips instead, can get them much cheaper/free.

can you grow alfalfa anywhere on your property? that's a good source of N to add to a heap for growing zukes. or get a few bags of alfalfa pellets to mix in your piles. for the money i think they're better than composted cow poo.

we have another landscaper guy we talked to this morning who will drop off wood chips when he's out this way and has tree work as it saves him from having to haul them somewhere else to dump. for the cost of gas it will be a bargain.

i see you mention being able to grow ponderosa pines. the needles from those would be good humus eventually too. they do not acidify nearly as much as some people think. humus itself is mildly acidic. just be happy to scrounge any free organics you can and then let nature do the rest. you'll get some good topsoil eventually.

have i shown you this picture before?

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the light colored soil is our native clay mixed with some sand (if we can get it) and then the dark is what happens when i take some of that native soil and recondition it for a year in the worm buckets.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

T wrote: ...

put a few carp in your zuke mounds! at the bottom. best fertilizer ever. :)

purslane grows well here too. starts too late to be a good ground cover (grows here as an annual). mixed with other things it's ok. see if you can get some alfalfa going.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

George Shirley wrote: ...

i agree, some crops you may not succeed with some years, but it helps to pay attention and read what you can on soils/plants/biology/botany/etc.

what i've noticed here is that planting diversity helps keep me more interested too. that even if some patches don't make it some others might.

i really don't mind weeds and untidyness in the gardens. i'd much rather have something growing in a spot than having bare dirt. to me weeds are free energy collectors and free worm food. when i do need a space i dig a hole and bury the weeds and then plant over them. by the time the seedlings get their roots down very far the worst of the fermentation has happened and the worms are in there doing their thing.

only a few select weeds survive this kind of treatment and their roots need to be dried out before they get buried (sow thistle, thistles in general, dandelions, queen anne's lace, chickory, potatoes).

songbird

Reply to
songbird

If you are less patient, see if you can find baled "pine straw." I have some reservations about the fact that folks seem to be happy to strip their forests of organic material to sell it, but given that they do, it would help your (T's) yard a little faster than not. And of course, try to get as many leaves as possible in leaf season, when folks are throwing them away...spoiled hay is likewise highly useful (unspoiled hay is also useful, but much more expensive.) Even shredded paper helps, though it ties up nitrogen while it decomposes.

Creeping buttercup is currently my least-favorite weed; it will find the surface from being buried 6" down and mulched over. I now aim for partially dry and (sealed, anerobic) compost on that stuff.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

I wish we had something other than live oaks in this subdivision. We have a young pear and a young fig that drop leaves but that's about a quarter bushel of useful leaves. The kumquat tree seldom sheds leaves and the pine woods behind us have been decimated for more houses. Off hand we have something between 3 and 5 thousand new homes going in within a square mile or so.

I am going to drive around the nearby subdivision that has oak and other leaf shedding trees this fall. I don't think those folks would mind if I stole their bags of leafs from the curb. Might have to slide around right after they have all gone to work. Being retired helps with that.

We have a barrel composter, no compost heaps in this subdivision, it is banned. Shredded paper of any kind takes a long time to compost that way. I help it along with a bit of water each time I open the barrel and have recently started soaking the scrap news and other papers. Will see if shredded cardboard rots quickly when it has been through the shredder. Looks like a good spot of "brown" stuff for the composter. I put the egg shells through an old food processor and turn the shells into very small bits, seems to compost much quicker that way and adds a goodly amount of calcium to the mix. Also saves those items from the recycling bin. Our trash output is very small, maybe three lbs worth on a busy week. We can most of our own food at home so not many cans and cartons to recycle.

I miss our huge cherry bark oak from our place in Louisiana. Seemed to drop about a ton of leaves each year that went directly into the gardens. Thing was a little over nine feet in diameter at three feet about grade. I even forgave the tree for dropping a six inch diameter limb through our roof during a hurricane.

George

Reply to
George Shirley

Ecnerwal wrote: ...

if you're willing to use shredded paper then plain cardboard or cardboard with some black ink on it is very good for smothering hard to get rid of weeds. a few layers overlapped so that water can get through will work just fine. then put your mulch on top. by the time the cardboard gets broken down by worms/pill bugs/fungi, etc. the weeds have usually run out of energy. i use this method on most of the spots that turn out to be a lot of trouble and i don't want to disturb them by digging up the entire area. much less work than digging and pulling weeds out too. especially considering you can usually get cardboard for free from almost any store.

i used this method last year along a fence that was being taken over by pennyroyal and also a low area that was collecting weed seeds that i wanted to cover. spent about 5 minutes the rest of the season getting a few stragglers along an edge. in the low spot eventually the bark pieces and stuff i put in there will be good humus to scrape up and use someplace else and i can put down another round for the worms to work on.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

A few of the local fishing pons have goldfish (ugly carp) in them from individuals that forgot to flush them. They mess up the pond pretty bad. Haven't figured out how to catch them yet.

I just found my purslane sprouts coming up yesterday!

There is a huge debate around these parts that zukes do better without mounds. So far the flat earth crown is winning with a higher yield. What are your thoughts?

Also, in my garage, I was going to pot my tomatillos and zukes next week. We will have freezing nights still till June. So I put my little pots over by my garage windows and take them out side during the warmth of the day (~65-75F), then take them back in a night. Your thoughts?

Thank you for helping me with this!

Reply to
T

It is raining here today. If yo listen hard, you can hear the weeds growing. Okay, I am exaggerating a bit. Only a bit. :'(

Reply to
T

Awesome!

I am told by someone to use "Canadian Peatmoss" to acidify the soil quickly.

Also, the "someone" said my alkaline sold is hurting my zuke production too. You thoughts?

-T

You do realize I think you know everything about gardening.

Picked all my pull-able weeds yesterday. Soon as the ground dries out a bit from today's rain, I am going to go at the ground huggers with my 20% vinegar and my pump bottle sprayer.

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Hope it works as well as pouring a cups of 6% straight on them. Man does that mess up a dandelion.

Then I make my ground pots.

Reply to
T

We've never planted any zukes, etc. on a mound and they always produced, some years heavy, some not.

We live where it's hot most of the year so have never had to do that. Sounds like it would work though. If taking the plants out for a walk kills them don't do it anymore. I am really glad we live where we do, even if we do get Biblical floods occasionally. I DO NOT like cold weather. Had a company in Alaska ask me to come visit and get a job with them. I was there in the winter of 1958 so just said no thank you for that one.

Reply to
George Shirley

If they start looking in the windows, RUN!

Reply to
George Shirley

Reply to
George Shirley

and say "you called me a what?" and/or "my parents are to married!".

Reply to
T

Hi George,

I can't help that I like the snow. Means trout fishing. It is pretty too.

I was stationed in Texas for about a year. You forgot to mention the Biblical sized c*ck roaches (Water bugs) and the chiggers (don't walk on the grass!).

I remember being on guard duty in the dead quiet of the night and one of those Texas sized c*ck roaches flying at me. Sounded like a helicopter! (Roaches do to fly!) Good thing they didn't give me a gun. :-)

I also remember the folks in Texas. Holy crap there are a lot of nice folks living in Texas. Great steak houses too. One or two ass holes, but they may have been military.

Tip: ask a Texan to pronounce Bexar, as in Bexar County, and can tell the military apart from the natives. My marriage license is from Bexar County. (For those who don't know what I am talking about, it is pronounced "Bear", as in "Smokey the Bear".)

Texans also talk r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w.

-T

Oh, and don't ever, never never never ever stomp a Texas cockroach with your boot. You will wake up in the morning with about 200 of the cannibalistic bastards all our your shoe! :'(

Reply to
T

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