Ahmet Oguz Akyuz

Thank you very much for the detailed replies. Part of the problem is that this garden is located miles away from where we normally live (8 hour drive by car). So I can't always be on top of the weeding chores. Also the garden was rototilled several times by a nearby farmer, and later on by myself. This definitely made the problem worse. The soil is quite sandy, which easily compacts and gets very hard in the dry season. The region has Mediterranean climate, which means no rain roughly between May through October. So the garden is irrigated with drip irrigation.

I really think that deep garden beds is going to be the answer. I am thinking of stacking three 2x4's along the length of the beds as border (about 25 meters = 75 feet). This is not going to be cheap for sure, but maybe I can think of a cheaper border alternative. Please let me know if you have better ideas to make the borders for the deep bed. Could borderless be an option? Then of course I need to add good quality soil and mulch. I also thought that if I had softer soil pulling this weed could be much easier.

Unfortunately my garden is infested with this pesky weed (please see the video https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Do_c4A1-4NWuU-B3MJdi1L7O13GvV8Xz/view?usp=drive_link). I think it could be called witch grass or couch grass -- not exactly sure but it is some kind of nasty grass. You can see the video of me attacking it with a hoe. I want to get rid of this weed or reduce its impact on the garden by natural means. I am trying to grow vegetables on that spot and the presence of this weed makes it a pain. Some people say that it can only be killed by spraying with a chemical but I do not want to do that. Any advice is most welcome.

I do have a frame related question. Standart Langstroth frames have a bulge on the sides toward the top, which allows the frames to touch each other towards the top but not at the bottom. This allows bees to move from one frame to another easily. Now I want to build my own frames but I do not want to deal with making this bulge toward the top. I thought that instead I can make the top bars wider than the side bars. This way the top of the frames will touch each other but there will be gaps between the sides. Do you foresee any problem with this design? Is there any reason for some of the top portion of the side bars of a frame to touch each other?

Thanks for any clarifications. I can share a drawing if my question is not clear.

Hi There!

Today I've finally gotten down to planting my pepper seeds for the spring. I've used the micro soil blocker from https://www.soilblockers.co.uk/products/micro-20. I plan to transplant them to larger soil blocks or to pots once they germinate and grow some. We'll see what percentage of the seeds will germinate. Here are some pictures.

Just an update on this post. Today I've planted 100 more pea seeds to plant a seed every 4 inches (10 cm). The farmer from whom I got the seeds suggested that the closer they are the stronger they grow. The weather has been very cold since I've done my first planting so no activity on the seeds yet.

I just measured them and the spacing between the hoops is 4 feet (120cm). They extend over a bed 4 feet wide. The hoops are made of PVC pipe that is 6.5 feet (200 cm) long. To prevent them from flying off in the wind, it is a good idea to use elastic ropes as shown in the picture below.

Thanks! I've grown several other things there before, primarily tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. But this is the first time I am trying to grow peas there. It is on the south side of the house where it starts to get good sunlight March onwards.

I made over my garden bed and planted 100 pea seeds today. Pictures document the process. It is the 2nd of February and I will keep this post updated about the progress. By the way, our climate zone according to USDA hardiness map is Zone 7b (I live in Ankara, Turkey). Fingers crossed.

Hopefully this is the right forum to ask this. I'm lucky to have a nice little tiny house, a picture of which from the inside is shown in the attachments. I wanted to share this picture because my question is about the glass door that you see in the picture. The wooden frame of the door is somewhat bent inside in its bottom-left corner. So when I close the door, about an inch of gap remains in the bottom-left corner. Assuming that I do not want to replace/rebuild this door just because of this small problem, what can be my options about fixing it. Is there a way to unbend and it make it straight?

Thanks for any opinion.

Hi There,

I have a small DC pump (12 V with 2 ampere max current). Its spec says the maximum height it can pump the water is 3 meters (10 feet). The flow rate is 900 liters per hour which is roughly 4 gallons per minute (I tested it and it seems to fulfill its specs). The pump output has a 3/4 inch fitting, which is the hose thickness that I plan to use.

Now, I do not need to lift the water 3 meters from the source (which is a small creek). But I need to water my fruit trees which are distributed in my garden. My question is, how long a 3/4 inch hose with a pump with aforementioned specs can push push the water through assuming that the water needs to be lifted about a meter from the source.

Thanks for any insights.