Most Excellant Garden Day....On Topic

The temp today reached 75F! Yeehaw!!

Went out and picked up a half-ton each of mushroom compost and composted cow poo...for 35 bucks. On the way home, I scored a bale of old straw that someone set out for the trash guys.

Got the first round of green onion sets in. Crushed a pound of charcoal and screened it to 1/8 in and smaller and applied to half the garlic and half of the onions. Spread bullshit over the garlic and onions, over the top of the fall/winter mulch, and then spread mushroom compost over that. Shredded a barrel of dry leaves and mulched the garlic. Turned one compost pile that had set all winter and got a couple bushels of good out of it and added stuff to the turnings...ground alfalfa, kitchen scraps, some old potting mix from pots I was cleaning out, some leaves and some activator saved from last night.

The highlight of the garden day happened when younger son was here and got a call from a friend. I remembered that his friend's folks raised and traded horses and I had Josh ask about getting some horse poo. Curt said, "What's he need, a semi-load?" "Nah, tell him I'll just come out and scoop a pickup load." Curts says, "Nah, that's work...we'll just load him up with the skidloader....all he wants!!!" I only have to drive 10 miles, that's a little over one gallon of fuel roundtrip, for as much horse poo as I can get on the truck. As often as I want.

I'm tired. This old creaky body ain't used to this much exertion after a winter of being a layabout.

Care Charlie

"When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden."-- Minnie Aumonier

Reply to
Charlie
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I feel the same way but I was digging virgin clay, expanding the garden patch.

Reply to
Billy

Charlie expounded:

I hear ya. Yet we keep on keeping on, don't we? :o)

I haven't been in my veggie garden yet, I've been too busy teaching, but this w4eekend I'll get things started. I'm moving the whole shebang out back (I'd always had my veggie garden out front, due to that's where I had full sun, but since the septic install and complete wiping out of the trees in my backyard, I've got the room and the sun to go to town out there). The area out front that was veggies will now be a more formal herb garden.

The other thing occupying my time is the building of the chicken Taj Mahal. Hubby has been hard at work building my coop before the arrival of the chickies on May 7. I'm looking forward to fresh eggs and the byproduct of chickens for my gardens

Plus we installed three packages of bees over the weekend. The whole season is in full swing, and it's a busy one!

Reply to
Ann

Thanks Charlie, wish I could have been there...

I can start doing some clean up in the garden, but not much in the way of digging. I'm hoping to start tomorrow because it just isn't happening today. C

Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

Cheryl Isaak expounded:

Are you melted yet? We're going up this weekend, I hope most of it is gone, but I fear some of the piles will be there until May!

Reply to
Ann

99.9% - you still some piles parking lots and some very shaded areas (think my neighbor has a tiny bit in her back yard that never sees sun).
Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

I spent my afternoon working on a new foundation bed on the north side of the house. The soil is classic builder garbage. Rocks, nails, wood debris, plastic trash, you name it, I dug it up. Two tractor bucketfulls removed, probably one or two more to go. Saturday I hope to add about a ton of coarse sand, 20 or so bags of pine fines, and some leafgro. Six mountain laurel & 3 pieres japonica are awaiting their new home.

Man, ain't it great to feel springtime again ;0

Reply to
newsreader

Of yes - the ground is still very cold but you can weed.

C
Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

Ann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

mostly. i have piles in shady areas & the woods, of course. the worst of the mud by the new barn is drying, so most of the garden, except the lower end where the melons & pumpkins go should be dry enough to get the peas, greens & radishes in. i put the carrots in raised beds with sifted soil, so as not to get the typical New England contortions ;) & those beds tend to warm before the ground, allowing earlier sowing buds on the daffs & hyacinths. oh, & the hellebores. lee

Reply to
enigma

innews: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

GRRRRR

The 40 days and 40 nights in the Ozarks are just over and I just got out of the Hospital with an extra hole in the femoral artery.

Good news: my cardiac arteries are as clean as new PVC pipe

Bad news: I can't strain for a while No tiller, no spade, no lugging bags of fertilizer. Can't even clear the mower deck and change oil on the engine.

Q: It has been so wet, none of my spring bulbs are in. Is it too late?

cheers, anyway

oz, who will probably go fishing as a way to ignore the problems

Reply to
MajorOz

MajorOz expounded:

That sounds like a good idea. Take care of yourself!

Reply to
Ann

Ha! Just your luck if this were the time you hooked the World Record BallBuster Monster! ;-)

Take Care Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

It sure is good.

Builder garbage is a PITA! Every time I plant a tree or try and dig a hole deeper than two feet, I find brick, rock, nails, you know the story. Cover the fill with a foot or so of clean soil. It was a real problem when I dug the postholes for the fence. This place was built on on fill 25 years ago.

Care Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

Indeed we do. Fortunately it gets a *little* better after a few weeks. THough I am going to raise my beds another six inches before next season. Even raised six inches, the ground seems further away this year.

Are you going to share pictures this year? Hope so.

I miss chickens greatly, living in a town that has the "laws" against poultry. We had Rhode Island Reds when we lived in the country and just loved those big peaceful old gals, more like pets that gave us food. I've been to the local farm store this week just to look at the little ones and enjoy the sound. Wondering what my chances are of gettin' busted if I had several to live in the garden and fix a small coop in the shed.

The beekeeping thing didn't go over, given the situation in which we live. Unfounded concern about the folks we support being stung. Durrhh, like I don't attract bees with the garden and flowers anyway.

Screw 'em (this wasn't me lovely that nixed the idea). I have mason bee houses and am building more, guess they don't understand.

Busy is kind of nice after the long cold spell, but I'll likely be whining about the heat in August. ;-)

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

Go fishing and feel better fast. Better not hook any big ones though! C

Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

Our house is not 25 years old, but it is 8 and finally, for the first year the soil is friable. I can now use ordinary free mulch from the recycle center. I bought high quality mulch for several years. It's called Sylvan and is a mulch which is very finely ground containing both bacterial and fungal properties.

Mulches Sylvan Formula?

The Sylvan Formula? is a pro-active approach to establishing and keeping your trees and shrubs healthy. The formula has been developed to replicate the forest floor. In nature, the forest floor feeds and tends to the needs of the trees and plants without the help of humans. The Sylvan Formula is a blend of Composts, Hardwood Mulch, Basalt, Greensand, Molasses, Cornmeal and inoculated with Aerobic Compost Tea. The blend of compost used in the formula offers both beneficial bacterial and especially fungal microbes and contains no bio-solids (sewer sludge). The compost will percolate down, feeding the plant and providing fungal microorganisms for the soil and plants. The hardwood mulch will protect the soil and root zone from drying out and other extreme conditions. Top-dress your trees and shrubs with a three-inch layer of the Sylvan Formula?. It also works great on perennial beds.

I buy it here, but it may be sold elsewhere:

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Reply to
Jangchub

MajorOz wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@m44g2000hsc.googlegr oups.com:

my advice is to do what the docs say & don't exert yourself. my dad had a bypass a few years ago & decided he was fine to pack & move house. we had to put him back in the hospital to make him behave until the move was over... of course, it was winter & he couldn't go fishing.

maybe to get blooms this year, but not to get them going for next year, but are you allowed to bend & dig? can you get someone else to plant them for you?

that sounds like a good plan. don't go catching any monsters though... lee

Reply to
enigma

You are lucky. My junk begins in the first 2 inches. If it weren't so wet & soft right now, I'd need a pick. As it is, the tiller will buck up the rocks pretty well.

David

Reply to
newsreader

Hmmm...this triggered a thought! I wonder what would be the results and would there be benefits, to inoculating a new compost pile with aerobic compost tea? Compost tea is on my list to use this year, after learning of it last year, thanks to cat daddy.

Would this hasten the process? Would it significantly boost the level of bacterial and fungal microbes? Would the addition of dried molasses to the pile be beneficial? Seems to me that regardless of anticipated benefits, it couldn't be a "bad thing". That is often one of my criteria for gardening experiments....as long as it does no harm, what is the harm. ;-)

I'm going to start a new thread on this.

Thanks.

Care Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

Sugar in any form will feed the critters and inspire them to greater productivity. Microbes do well with the carrot form of management method. Sadly, larger organisms seem to accept the stick form of management.

Reply to
Billy

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