What did you do in the garden today?

[Beekissed]

Planted a bunch of zinnia seedlings, marigold seedlings, a lavender plant, a squash seedling. Put down more slug bait...we are having optimum slug weather, with rain nearly every day for weeks, warm and moist. Need to get me some beer and put out there...the slug bait isn't working.

Seeded a tray of lettuce and asian greens.

Picked bloom and tiny peppers off pepper plants.

My hay bales are slowly but surely melting into the ground...by the end of the season I can just push them into the beds and surround them with fresh bales.

BB, see how puny my onions are compared to yours? Pitiful.

This bed has sweet Candy onions, purple top beets, carrots inside the bed. Planted directly into the rotten bales are hot peppers, petunias, a pink Brandywine tomato, a butternut squash....see that below...it has all kinds of tiny squash on it.

This is the Brandywine tomato in the bale...by far the healthiest looking tomato in the garden! I may be doing more veggies in rotten bales next spring, as all the peppers, cukes, squash and tomatoes planted directly into the bales look better than the plants that are planted directly into the soils and hay mulch.

A fella on TEG sent me some seeds of a tomato called a New Yorker to try this year, so I have two of those in the garden this season. One of them has the first tiny tomato of the season growing on it....

Yellow squash that I didn't know was yellow squash when I set the seedling out...I have two like that. After not having a single yellow squash harvested from all the plants I had last year, I planted 7 yellow squash plants this year....a few by mistake...but I'll likely either have no squash or have them coming out our ears. These are crook neck and straight neck, I think.

My lemon balm, which is three times the size it was last year...if I had known it would get so big, I wouldn't have planted it on the corner of that bench! Keep in mind, the only fertilizer any of these plants got this year was epsom salts and a dusting of sulfur powder on the leaves of the peppers, tomatoes, and cukes. The lemon balm didn't get any fertilizer at all.

The hay has done wonders for my BTE garden...I'll never go back to wood chips.

 

[Mini Horses]

Some people do plant entire gardens in straw bales...could use hay. Most report little to no weeds (sometimes grass from seed in hay) few bugs & excellent plant growth.

 

[BarredBuff]

Thanks, @Beekissed It is a work in progress. I'm hoping to have a decent harvest this year, and really amend the soil this fall and winter. Your garden looks good too!

Didn't get anything done in the garden today. However, the bean bugs are working my white cornfield beans. AND the chickens are digging my mulch out from around my cukes. I used to have a temporary fence, but in the last four years it has disappeared.

I think I have a winter squash sprouted too. My tomatoes look great. My summer squash has doubled since the picture above was taken. I expect to have yellow squash by the buckets.

I want to get my sweet potatoes, late cucumbers, and tomatoes mulched tomorrow if I can get it all done. I want to finish my bean trellis tomorrow too. I need baler twine to finish it. I also need to track down some horse manure and make some manure tea to fertilize with (the only time I miss having rabbits).

 

[Mini Horses]

Kentucky should have plenty of horse manure!

two days ago I put some seeds into plant pots -- for planting in the garden as some had not germinated yet & I felt may not. Watered thepots again this AM, went to work. Home in afternoon and the darned chickens had not only knocked over all the little pots but had eaten the seed!! Squash seeds are easy to find in dirt and they did!!

Tomorrow I will do them again and this time will set them in a cage. Take THAT!

 

[sumi]

I spent some time this afternoon in the garden… Weeding! I swear all the weeds in the neighbouring yards saw a nice clear space out there and decided to move in. And about half of them have vicious thorns... And a quarter are nettles... And I have such nice soft skin. I'm winning though. Sloooooowly, but surely.

Someone or something took the first ripe strawberry! I suspect DS as I know he had his eye on it. To my surprise the raspberry cane has a few berries on it. I wasn't expecting anything until next summer. I must get some pics for you all of the weeds garden.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I hope it was DS that got the strawberry as opposed to a bug or a critter!

Weeds - they just don't give up. I don't like 'em...

 

[milkmansdaughter]

Sumi, those nettles make great compost tea for your garden. I'll try to find a link, but I know someone just recently was commentating on it.

 

[milkmansdaughter]

Nettle tea fertilizer for your garden...

https://www.gardenstew.com/threads/use-stinging-nettles-to-make-a-liquid-fertilizer.19288/

 

[sumi]

Nettle tea fertilizer for your garden...

https://www.gardenstew.com/threads/use-stinging-nettles-to-make-a-liquid-fertilizer.19288/

Thanks!

 

[Beekissed]

This morning's garden walk revealed my first glimpse of this season's squash bugs...and they were mating. It was their last bit o' love on this earth....

I'm happy to report that soapy water works to kill squash bugs, though not in the time frame reported of 20 min....try 2 min. Dropped, wings spread, dying a glorious death.

Seeing some cuke beetles showing up too...will see how fast the soapy water works on them. Pretty soon the Jap beetles will be emerging in full force, so it will be interesting to see if the soapy water will work on those nasty things.

Suckered tomatoes and peppers, pinching off bloom and peppers off the latter. This is the strongest looking tomatoes I've had in the past 4 yrs and I'm quite pleased thus far with how they are progressing. The NYer tomato plant with the first tomato now has a competitor with a pink Brandywine showing a first tomato.

Spud vines are huge and healthy...hoping that doesn't mean all tops and no bottoms.

Peppers all look very healthy...first time I've had healthy peppers since I started no till, heavy mulch gardening. Before they would just turn yellow and leaves drop off, the plant withered. Over and over. No matter which part of the garden in which they were planted. The peppers planted in the rotten hay bales around the raised beds are some of the healthiest looking of all...loving the warmth around their roots, I guess. Hot in the middle of those hay bales.

Picked one of the pak choi to put into our weekly salad mix, along with a handful of sugar snap peas. Very fresh and crisp, that pak choi...can't wait to have it in my salad bowl!