Who is going to get their hands dirty this weekend?

Okay, newbie gardeners and everyone else... The weather this weekend is supposed to be wonderful where I'm at. And I've had Mondays off for the last month or so, too...

So who is getting their hands dirty this weekend?

What is your project?

I've got a guy dumping a couple square yards of topsoil today and I'll be working on my herb spiral. I've got a good base built up, it got some rain on it and I think I can stick some hugel in there to get it even taller for more microclimate on the north side. I'm really excited.

I'm tempted to strip down to my skivvies and roll around in that load of topsoil. Dirt bath anyone? Mycobacterium vaccae, here I come! My serotonin will be off the charts for a week! (kidding of course...)

oh I sure stinking hope I get dirty this weekend!!!
it has been raining nonstop for 10 days at least and my garden is out of control. The rabbits desperately need the weeds to eat, for no other reason.
I have plenty of brush to chip (post-rabbit chewing), but it will be wet for quite  a while, so that's not likely.
No matter what the weather is, I need to put up more wire in my front yard for dog containment, and i need to pick the green beans.

The long range forecast is not encouraging, however: rain every day for the foreseeable future....

I’ve been off work for a long time for a bad car wreck. So I pretty much get my hands dirty everyday. Though definitely slower by a mile than I was before. I’ll be cleaning up around two swales where the front edge is not smooth (rain was coming so it got delayed) and picking up all the rocks that came out for all of them. Which on my property was an incredibly small amount as compared to literally every other spot lol.

I may go get seed as well. I have 2acres in a cover crop that need to keep growing but down below my swales is getting a forb mix that can go in any time. No cover crop there so that could be a good project this weekend.

I usually do everything raised beds but I’m adding two in ground. That’s probably today. Im actually a bit late on those but it will be okay. I debated too long on spending the funds for beds and finally decided to hold off till next year and just go direct in ground.

So far that’s my plans for the next few days!

I probably will not get my hands dirty as I will probably be doing laundry.

When we went to the store, the parking lot was full of fruit trees and transplants.

Just seems a little early though with the temperature up in the 80s maybe not.

This weekend?

We have a critical problem.

There are baby chicks available at my local farm store and I have to go pick up chicken feed.

I don't know if I am strong enough.

In other news, I plan on taking some pictures of my yard as everything is thawing and water is pooling in low spots. I have 10 yards of topsoil on order and besides topping off raised beds I'm planning on filling in ruts/divits to direct water to where I want it to be. Ideally not in my walking path to get to my backyard!

Be strong! Be corageous!

I've mapped my yard for water movement. At 3/4 acre with a slope, it isn't hard to find. Your feet squish in the grass until the middle of June. That's why I'm contemplating a small pond. Especially for the bees, because...

I ordered a hive yesterday.

I'm in too deep, someone needs to pull me out or help me dig, I don't know which. With that and the purple martin house that's also coming, I have a lot of work to do.


j

Timothy Norton wrote:This weekend?

We have a critical problem.

There are baby chicks available at my local farm store and I have to go pick up chicken feed.

I don't know if I am strong enough.

In other news, I plan on taking some pictures of my yard as everything is thawing and water is pooling in low spots. I have 10 yards of topsoil on order and besides topping off raised beds I'm planning on filling in ruts/divits to direct water to where I want it to be. Ideally not in my walking path to get to my backyard!

Family heath issue have been eating up my time, but the weekend looks free.   I have a long list of tasks that have been shoved aside.   I have lots of weed control to do….. Fences to be repaired…a new chicken coop and run….a high tunnel to get repaired…

I've been playing with dark matters and getting my hands dirty...

No guilt Timothy….

I've got 1,100 bare root trees coming in about a month, so just like last weekend (and the weekends going back for a few months) this coming weekend I will be working on getting things ready for the trees. Mice and other critters like to live in the brush piles I made while clearing out the land, so once again I'll be having some rocking camp fires to chew through the wood.

Fellow Hoosier, right off the dunes. Is your soil sandy? I've camped near there, up at Warren State Park by Benton Harbor and the terminus of the Kal-Haven trail. I remember the campgrounds being grassy and forested, and always wondered if there were pockets of sandier soil or if it was pretty much contained to near the lake...

In any case, looks like you've got your work cut out for you.

j

John Wolfram wrote:I've got 1,100 bare root trees coming in about a month, so just like last weekend (and the weekends going back for a few months) this coming weekend I will be working on getting things ready for the trees. Mice and other critters like to live in the brush piles I made while clearing out the land, so once again I'll be having some rocking camp fires to chew through the wood.

My main goal is to plant under the 5 gallon cloches I've been building.
They are 5 gallon buckets, with a ~7" diameter hole on the bottom,  covered by a clear lid of various kinds.
White buckets are ideal, but I'm even trying various nursery pots.

In the spots that will hold tomatoes and peppers, I will plant lima beans as a cover crop.
At my mom's house, the tops of turnips, to jumpstart turnip greens.
At the yarden, cuttings from pear trees.

Welp, Mother Nature decided to have a bit of a fit last night, so my plans to get my hands dirty today are on hold, but it's supposed to be back up in the 50's again on Monday, so we'll see!



j

That is just how it is sometimes!

Maybe an opportunity for some inside projects?

I didn't wait for the weekend. Since my potting shed is on indefinite stall, I've been starting peppers, trees and peas on my kitchen floor in paper pots and thankfully one group cluttering up the hall bathroom germinated overnight, so hopefully I'll have more room for the next lot soon.

I do have to watch... as Jim noticed, Mother Nature has her own plans, and the forecast is stubbornly sure she's going to snow on us Tues night.

So far, I have drank half a pot of coffee, cleaned the kitchen (still needs more work), binged YouTube for a bit, ate a breakfast smoothie, put my beehive together that came today, fed my sourdough starter, fed my bokashi composter, played with my carving knives wishing I had time to carve a spoon for a BB, replaced the window shade on the side door that everyone comes in instead of the front door, and some other things I've probably forgotten. Oh, I bought a pound of organic broccoli sprout seeds and a four mason jar sprouting setup, and ordered a set of better screens because reviews on the bigger setup I bought said they're supposed to be stainless steel but rust out in the first week. Now I'm waiting for sprout seeds. Because I watched a video Paul recommended about cancer and it said cruciferous sprouts cause cancer cell apoptosis.

That and I love eating sprouts and I'd rather grow them fresh instead of buying plastic containers of them at the grocery store.

So, I haven't gotten much done today, and it's already almost 3 p.m.  

j

Timothy Norton wrote:That is just how it is sometimes!

Maybe an opportunity for some inside projects?

I did a lot already! Weather was beautiful, finally sunny after many rainy, cloudy days. It also rained a lot last night. I was planning to fix the pond edge but couldn't, because of overflow. So I chopped some dry wood and as I walked around the garden I saw young plants sprouting here and there, I could swear they weren't there yesterday!
I will also try a new experiment: to have a monstera grow in my aquarium. The internet says it should, but it also said so about bamboo and mine died. So far, the perfect plant for growing in water (in soil or without) is willow. Fish and other critters love it too.
I do have a lot of computer work and stuff, but I just couldn't resist the beautiful weather...

Jim Garlits wrote:Now I'm waiting for sprout seeds. Because I watched a video Paul recommended about cancer and it said cruciferous sprouts cause cancer cell apoptosis. That and I love eating sprouts and I'd rather grow them fresh instead of buying plastic containers of them at the grocery store.

That family can produce generous quantities of seeds, so maybe your garden plan could even include growing the seeds in the future. Also the flowers are great pollinator feeders.

Sprouting is one of those "home grown" foods that don't take much land!

Jim Garlits wrote:Fellow Hoosier, right off the dunes. Is your soil sandy? I've camped near there, up at Warren State Park by Benton Harbor and the terminus of the Kal-Haven trail. I remember the campgrounds being grassy and forested, and always wondered if there were pockets of sandier soil or if it was pretty much contained to near the lake...In any case,

The place where the trees are going is about five miles south of the lake, and it has heavy clay soil. I certainly wish it had a bit more sand in it. At one point, the land was part of a hog farm, so that may be part of the reason for the current soil conditions.

I did plant into the cloches over at the yarden, but I used what was on hand.
I had a bunch of veg and cuttings in half barrels and buckets full of compost.

I put sunchokes near the bottom each cloche and filled the rest with compost.
I dug up some onions, split them up and planted them around the top.
Then I moved a bunch of raspberry cuttings into the center of each bucket.

In my backyard I planted a bucket full of some jujube that had been rotting in the fridge.
I'm not sure if they will do anything.
I pruned the pear tree, and filled a second bucket with compost and cuttings.
I also hard pruned a box elder I has previously pollarded.
Those branches will be used to make hoops.

Today I was diverted from gardening to heavy scrounging.
I came away with a trio of extension ladders, a bunch of ~30 gallon tubs, rakes, hoes, shovels, 4 propane burners, 4 propane bottles, a 20" black iron skilllet, and more.
It was exhausting but very worthwhile.

Unfortunately my world is still frozen solid. But all is not lost.

I fired up the chainsaw a few days ago and have been working ever since. I broke up the big brush pile so I can burn it in a controlled way for biochar. It's been sitting there for 9 months -- not safe to burn this year. But we're in line for some snow so away she goes!

I dug one if our garden paths out. This helps prevent a far too soggy garden. many more paths to go.

We cut down a line of willows last week that the neighbors wanted gone. I pulled some dead trunks from the piles to make trellises from in a few days.

I used a Chop saw to cut a bunch of willow stakes for erosion control and drove 25 or so into the ground. The rest are now soaking in a tub to be planted later.

The kid turned the compost pile. That's an event that happens every couple of years.

And some general cleanup so we don't kill the mower on a hidden jumble of sticks or salvaged fencing.

we were expecting rain both days, but it turned out to only rain on Saturday. Before it did, we put up the new electric fence, I thinned out the sick tomato leaves and picked all the cherry tomatoes, picked all the beans, took out the "done" bokashi from the worm barrel and mixed up a new worm barrel.... then the skies opened and we called it a day, went out for supper and bought seedlings.....

Sunday we went out for a long dog training, I found chestnuts at that park and gathered a few kg (i'll be searching the forums for ideas for what to do with them...), came back and planted the new seedlings, fixed up the long beans that have overpowered their trellises, took the machete to some of the things that are getting a bit too wild in the yard, and did some weeding. Then cooked for about 5 hours straight!

I harvested the last of the parsnips this weekend! And replanted with potato onions. Also did some weeding and shared some oregano plantlings that got evicted. We had our local Seedy Sunday yesterday which is always fun. I found a Flax variety that I've been looking for for years, at the swap table no less.

Today I planted lima beans in the cloches, and moved compost and pear cuttings to the yarden.
I measured a leg for my table version of a "kiddie pool"watering system, but when I went to cut it, I found I had left my sawzall at home.
I did have a bow saw, but it was loose and couldn't be tensioned,so it worked poorly.
I disassembled it and overbent the frame a few times, till I got it right  and finished my cut in the dusk.
I planned on more but family obligations come first.

I ended up having a pretty awesome weekend even though the topsoil didn't get delivered Friday. I have another source coming next Friday and it looks like it's going to be almost in the 70s then. I spent Saturday working mostly on the house, as I said somewhere earlier. Sunday I had a meetup with the NE Indiana Beekeeper's group, at their apiary. There were only four of us but I learned so much. I'm the newbie with new equipment and they answered all of my questions, and they're really great guys. One guy gave me a brood box full of already started frames. It was his first brood box from when he first got into beekeeping. I was floored. Another guy said he'd give me a nuc if I didn't catch a wild colony when they swarm in a few weeks. (A nuc - short for nuclear colony - is a small hive of bees, usually five frames, in all stages of development, as well as food, a laying queen, and worker bees.) One of them is going to come to my house and check my setup to make sure everything is good to go.

I was floored. They're so nice.

Monday, my purple martin house arrived and I put that together, chose a spot to place it,  set the post with QuicKrete and leveled it. Then I finished the fence on the east side of my property and set the t-posts on the west side. All I need is 200 more feet of 4' garden fence, and the place will be enclosed and the dogs can have the run of the place. Also, my seeds came in the mail on Monday, and though I'm direct seeding everything and won't be dealing with starts, I'm still so excited they're here.

I did get my hands dirty, just not with garden soil! It was a great weekend and I slept like the dead last night.

j

I have had my first cuppa (7 AM) and it is gray out there. I expect to be in it. This weekend is First Sunday, and as a member of the Oregon Country Fair Vegmanec (VEGetation MANagement and ECology crew I will be working on First Sunday. We had a heavy snow/ice event a week+ ago, and rumor is the ashes got thrashed, it's pure chaos. I'll have my big saw. (not petrol powered- Powered by Breakfast and a field lunch.) After that I will drive up to Ferguson Road and find the Long Tom Grange where a Watershed Council fearless leader will be talking, with substantial hor dervishes he says. I'ma ask him if he is aware that the oldest hard-date archaeology in the Willamette Valley was found at Fair: a Camas Oven of basalt hunks, buried over 5 feet down in the silt. Since then the river took it, but the PHD's got a thermoluminescence date of over 5K BP. Then back to Eugene and a warm welcome from Lily Graycat who will be wondering if I forgot her because supper is LATE ALREADY!!!

I didn't get to get my hands dirty on the weekend because I ended up in bed with a sore throat and headache but as soon as I felt better on Monday I got my hands pretty dirty getting these fig cuttings ready to hand out to my church group at a gardening class.

How nice of you. And strategic… World domination one plant at a time.

j

Jenny Wright wrote:I didn't get to get my hands dirty on the weekend because I ended up in bed with a sore throat and headache but as soon as I felt better on Monday I got my hands pretty dirty getting these fig cuttings ready to hand out to my church group at a gardening class.

Jim Garlits wrote:How nice of you. And strategic… World domination one plant at a time.

Jenny Wright wrote:I didn't get to get my hands dirty on the weekend because I ended up in bed with a sore throat and headache but as soon as I felt better on Monday I got my hands pretty dirty getting these fig cuttings ready to hand out to my church group at a gardening class.

Hee-hee! Yes and it's working. I handed them out last night and a bunch of people who haven't ever grown anything food-wise took some. These figs are so easy to grow too so they are kind of a gateway drug. 😜

Today I harvested my two wintertime experiments, not a whole lot to show for it, but what I learnt is that its not really worth it trying to grow things slowly overwibnter in zone 8b if there's tons of rain, aka where I live.  I planted raddishes in early Oct. to overwinter to see if they'd grow, result = yes but not enough to really make it worth it.  And the lettuce I overwintered, it hasn't really grown since Nov. and I've had to baby it, so today I harvested both and we're eating it all tonight as part of dinner.  Which means planting more raddishes to start over with and planting potatoes this weekend!  Its finally spring here, it flirted with us all month and finally outwitted winter, even though winter is still trying to not get kicked to the curb of the year.

Riona Abhainn wrote:Today I harvested my two wintertime experiments, not a whole lot to show for it, but what I learnt is that its not really worth it trying to grow things slowly overwibnter in zone 8b if there's tons of rain, aka where I live.  I planted raddishes in early Oct. to overwinter to see if they'd grow, result = yes but not enough to really make it worth it.  

If you want to experiment with some more things next year...
I find that kale grows nicely overwintered in my zone 8 with lots of rain. It only stops growing when it snows. And it tastes better in the winter- more tender and no pests.

Leeks do really nicely too. They don't grow but if they are full size by the fall, I can leave them to take care of themselves until I want them rather than having to keep them inside where they will end up rotting in the back of my fridge before I can use them all.

I also have broccoli make baby sprigs all winter if I leave the main plant after harvesting the big head. I do plant it near the south side of the house.

I’m making two more raised beds this weekend. Basically got one constructed last  night. Will get them set up on cardboard then logs in the bottom. Surround in wood chips. One will be all potatoes I think depending on spacing but I think they take a whole bed. Then beets onions carrots lettuces etc getting dropped in. Actually probably not the greens. I put them in starters so I’ll continue to grow them there for a bit longer as they just popped up.

Then I will set up the drip lines for the new beds and connect it all together. And last I will stare at the thermometer in the compost multiple times per day. Finally got it hot enough with the flush of green material that’s popping up everywhere. Likely to build another one also.

Busy busy time of the year.

Joe Hallmark wrote:Busy busy time of the year.

You said it, Joe!
I've been finishing off my coppicing this week (all but a few trees that I've marked for my husband's chainsaw) I still have to tidy the debris.

making a mess ithe woods

It actually looks much worse than this at present! The larger branches and trunks are our firewood. The smaller stuff needs sorting into pea and bean sticks, and kindling. I'm also using some of the brash to bury in mini hugels for planting more Aronia bushes.

This weekend is the start of indoor seed starting of this year's veg.


I'm only starting twenty four cells of tomatoes instead of fifty. I'm learning!

Timothy Norton wrote:This weekend is the start of indoor seed starting of this year's veg.


I'm only starting twenty four cells of tomatoes instead of fifty. I'm learning!

Me too! But I don't know if I have enough restraint to keep to 24 cells of tomatoes... I only have room for about 12 tomatoes if I'm creative and want to plant other things too. But something about starting tomatoes is so addictive and I have so many seeds.