We had to hit the reset button on my "Mema's Memorial flower bed" this year. This flower bed was my grandma's pride and joy. I've really enjoyed it too - she had a really nice selection and there was always some kind of flower growing in there all spring and summer. Unfortunately, the rose of Sharon's were growing right on top of the distribution box for my septic. They had a banner year last year in spite of the drought, but we started having problems with the septic not leaching as it should. We knew the distribution box must be underneath there somewhere, but didn't know precisely where. Thinking about the worst case scenario, I'd possibly have to dig up the entire back yard to redo the leach field. So this spring we started transplanting what we could - we doubled and tripled the size of a couple flower beds out front, and I've got rose of Sharon growing all over the place now. Amy finally found the box under one of the rose of Sharon, so I dug that up and pulled about 15lbs of roots out of there. I wasn't sure if that did the trick at first, but we haven't had any gurgling drains or sewer smells since then. By this time we had already dug up 3/4 of the bed and it was looking pretty ragged. And I've been promising Amy a vegetable garden for a couple years now. So instead of replanting with flowers we decided to just finish it off and plant the garden there. Also expanded the bed a bit out to 20' x 15'. We've got around 40 tomatoes, 20 peppers, sweet and hot, 20 strawberries, some lettuce, cabbage, onions, garlic, green beans, peas, carrots, and a few herbs.
Tilled last week and it was like mixing mud! Gotta go over the gardens again today before we get more rain! Then maybe get some early stuff in after the holiday weekend!
I am finally in on this thread. I was talking to my neighbor a few weeks ago about gardening. He has a nice small set up, and grows his plants from seed. We were talking about home spaghetti sauce, and that was all I needed to hear. Last week he planted his garden and had trays of plants left over to give away. I ended up with six plants ready to go. I ended up pulling out my raspberry patch since squirrels, birds and beetles get to them. I made a small 4' x 8' garden today, amended the soil and planted. Half the area was the leaf compost pile, so the soil was pretty good. So we have tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, pickling cukes and carrots. I need a few cages and more fencing. The box store and small garden store were out. This should be pretty productive space and get more use than the berries. I can make a larger area next year if this turns out ok.
Only thing I found that keeps out rabbits is chicken wire. Knee high seems to be good enough for the little ones and the fat ones. I swear though, you leave a gate open just once and they find good stuff, good luck keeping them out.
I'll be using the 1" x 3" green coated wire fence. Do you think they would get through that? Maybe I need to go the chicken wire route. That was in stock. We have a few cats around here that keeps the rabbits out. The woodchucks are my main concern.
1x3 is what I fenced in with to keep the rabbits out. I've chased some good sized rabbits right thru that. It's what I had and I had to tack chicken wire up against it. During the Winter I'd follow their footprints in the snow and they'd hop right on thru the one wire that was broken and was 2"x3" instead of 1" x 3". 2 feet off the ground. The footprints made it look like it was easy=peasy and an old trick. Who knows what they were finding inJanuary. Maybe some carrot tops. Woodchucks will dig if they know there is good stuff on the other side. I've had a young one find a hole in the fence where I didn't nail a section back on and it dug a hole. I stabbed the ground with a pointy metal bar where the hole was a LOT and never saw signs of it again.
This is a sick season. Tilled during a dry spell about 6 weeks ago. Got onions and peas in and that's it. Going to get chard and kale in tomorrow at a minimum. This might be one of those summers without a summer. I'll be keeping some seed back to plant again just in case.
Hi all, I thought I had fruit flies in the house from fruit. Well, they are more numerous now and I noticed when I water my house plants they fly from the soil. Any idea what they are or how to get rid of them?
if they are hanging around in your plants and come popping up out of the soil when you water they are probably fungus gnats get some 3% hydrogen peroxide. Often near the toothpaste and deodorant in the grocery store. Mix it 4 parts water to one part HP. Let your plants get pretty dry and water them with the mix. The soil will sizzle. This will kill the larvae but not the adults so you'll probably have to do it once a week or however often you have to water your plants. For several weeks. I've tried the BT dunks for mosquitos which are supposed to kill them too ( crumble them and spread the crumbles on the soil surface ) but they didn't work. Or at least not fast enough. I got some in a bag of Miracle-gro organic potting mix . I didn't notice them until I opened up the bag again the next day and then I had them in all the pots of plants I had potted up the night before. They are attracted to light and CO2 so you might find them flying up your nose.
THANKS!! They showed up about a year ago, at first I thought they were fruit flies from bananas, nope, they get stirred up when I water my plants just like you said, and I have added a few more house plants since then and now they seem to be in ALL of my plants. And I happen to have that grade of H2O2 on hand (We are out of town so I keep a pint or two for the skunked dog solution that happens here more often than I'd like), perfect I'm fine with only larvae, the adult flying ones can die or find a fly strip, I'll keep up with the diluted h2o2
I finally started it, I kept miscommunicating with my cleaning lady, she very fast and always multitasks and I kept missing watering the plants so they have been very wet til now. Yep, the philodendron had the most buggers and the soil sizzled away! Other plants not as much and the repotted ones not at all. Very interesting, thank you.
