Jeff Peter

Christopher Weeks wrote:I can’t run out of storage because I store it outside. This has been out under the snow, pre-conditioning all winter and is now ready to use. Sometimes I just stack it up and put a couple concrete blocks on top of it to fight the wind.

Yep, just stack it up somewhere out of sight of neighbors, but still close enough to where you'll be using it. Letting it get wet has the big plus of making all the tape pull off easier.

A great source of big sheets of clean cardboard is your local appliance store. Most have a cardboard only dumpster and do not mind dumpster divers.

Appreciate the replies. I will leave the entire plants including the peas right in my fallow bed.

I had intended to harvest the peas to use as dry beans, and as seed for next season, but seed is cheap.

I also have fava beans and vetch in that plot, which is intended for corn and pole beans next year.  I left it fallow due to having a total knee replacement which forced me to cut back.

Howdy~
Thanks to y'all, I have a grasp on how legumes use nodules on their roots to work with soil life to convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen available in the soil that other plants can use.

Read something intriguing, though that leads to my question. What I read, in a description of fieldpeas, stated that harvesting the peas, for eating or planting later, removes much of the nitrogen produced by the plant.

Are they differentiating between the nitrogen fixed in the soil by the roots, and nitrogen carried in the above ground plant?

In other words, where is the greatest benefit in available nitrogen from legumes coming from? The roots, or the above ground biomass? Both?

If you ever find yourself stripping off sod to clear grass out, the sod is great in a compost pile. Put a few layers in between your greens and browns, and top with a layer of sod.

The sod always goes grass side down, unless you want more grass.

Nowdays, I'm too smart (aka: old) to strip sod when cardboard can do it for me. But when we bought our place about 40 years ago, I wanted to plant wildflowers in the front ditch, and the best way I knew to create some kind of seed bed was to rent a sodstripper. That mountain of sod created many compost piles.

All that said, the best compost I've ever made was by piling dead sticks (picked up before mowing) inside a six foot diameter circle of fencing, then layers of alternating woodchips and horsemanure. Over several years, it became the place for plant stems that were too coarse for my regular piles.

After several years, and after pulling off the creeping charlie that mounded over it, it is just pure, black, fine grained goodness full of fungal strands.

Most insects breathe through their bodies.
Because of the surface tension in plain water, they will not drown in it.
A little bit of soap, because it is a surfactant, asphyxiates them.

A few drops of dish soap in a spray bottle of H2O is all it takes.

Or one can use a little neem oil in that sprayer.
Neem oil is an organic plant extract from India.
It is edible for us, and does no harm to our plants.

~ separate the cloves, trying to leave the papery layers which protect them.
~ I stab my trowel in to open the soil, and push them in. About four inches deep.
~ shoot for planting about a month before first frost, and they'll get a head start.
~ to get big bulbs, they need room. I plant mine about ten inches apart, in rows about a foot and a half apart. You will be glad for wider rows when you go in to cut scapes, and later to harvest.
~ sort them by size. I save the biggest for the next crop, which over several seasons, increases the size of your stock.
~ don't be in a rush to dig them out. They're still bulking up even after the tops have dried. Just do it before winter sets in.
~ to avoid having to get in there and weed, I lay cardboard between the rows leaving an inch for the garlic to grow through. Bury the cardboard with mulch - grass clippings, leaves, old straw, etc.

What's happening is that when your top cut gets to a certain point, the limb splits. The cut portion then straightens out, actually lifts back up, pinching your bar. The uncut portion bends down with the weight of the limb, leaving the chain spinning in air with the bar pinched.

You really need to start with that undercut, no matter how difficult, or angled. Then it will break away clean when the top cut gets deep enough.

Pole chain saws are quite a bit safer in my mind since that spinning chain is well away from your body parts. Something I would never do is get up on a ladder with a regular chainsaw. But it is quite safe with a pole chainsaw. As long as your legs are strong enough to be safe on a stepladder, of course. Getting up higher ~ careful not to be in line with where the limb will fall! ~ will allow you to make your two cuts closer to horizontal which will make the limb fall straight down and not twist on you.

Bare root is all I do anymore, except for a granny smith apple I bought in a pot.

My tree tree planting is simply moving squirrel planted seedlings. Black walnut trees that I grew from seed 40 years ago now produce wagon loads of nuts that the tree rats love to plant in my vegetable gardens.

I also developed the habit of heading out in the fall to collect Shagbark Hickory nuts and Red and White Oak acorns. I long ago gave up the time consuming work of actually planting them one by one in favor of simply throwing handfulls where I'd like them to be. The tree rats eat some, plant a lot for winter food, and the ones they cannot find under the snow will sprout in the spring.
Birds also "help" by sitting on my garden fences pooping out mulberry, gray dogwood, and black raspbery seeds under the fence. I try to get at those mulberry seedlngs in the first year, because they send deep taproots that are a bear to get rid of. With all of my existing trees, I need to keep sunlight for my garden beds.