roberta mccanse

Thanks. I will try to reach some arborists here. I don't think that there are many but worth a try.

In the meantime we scored two more bathtubs from a Restore yard sale. We will put them up on blocks and no nasty ground squirrel will be able to climb into them.

I have just signed up for the chip and drop program. It was a bit of a challenge because my address doesn't show up on goggle maps. Now I will wait, hopefully, for a "drop". Wind storms here brought down lots of trees and branches so there may be arborists working in the area. We flagged our smaller fruit trees so no big truck will run over them by mistake.

I have been laying cardboard on my garden paths, weight them with rocks because of the wind, and would love to be able to cover them with mulch. Because I garden on the roof everything has to be hauled uphill. I can do that a load at a time. Persistence wins! PQ is more important than IQ. Lots of pine needles here, never enough, good for things like asparagus and berries as our soil is alkaline. (Ground squirrels got the asparagus, so never mind that. Does anyone have a good rat terrier to spare?)

Thanks for the information about butternut trees. Planting trees here is a challenge because of all the rock. (Time to borrow a backhoe). Still, apple, cherry, and plum, walnut, and Bur Oak are doing well. At 78 I probably won't live to see acorns on the oaks, but as had been said, someone will.

Rain rain here. At least I don't have to water the garden.

I know that this thread is no longer contemporary but I wonder if anyone out there has successfully grown butternut. I have Carpathian walnut trees but grew up loving butternut. I understand that they are vulnerable to assorted diseases but I think that they would be fine in our northwest Montana climate.

Thanks. I will query them.

Which of these resist ground squirrels? They are even eating my sedum this year. I am in zone 4-5. Looking for a good, large, mean, barn cat!

How beautiful are all of these, rosemary, thyme... Which, if any will ground squirrels avoid? I can fence out the deer but the ground squirrels are even after my sedum.

Yes, wall oven (s), and turntables in corner cabinets, preferably ones that turn out so things are easy to reach. And drawers instead of shelves under cabinets, soft close so I can close them with my hip when hands are full. I put wire baskets in them to hold pot kids, etc. Sauce pans I use frequently go on a shelf over the stove, canning pots on higher shelves as they are for seasonal use. My mother was the first home agen for Green County, Wisconsin in 1930s. She always said that you work in the kitchen from refrigerator to sink to stove so configure things in this manner.

My underground garage stays between forty and fifty degrees so lots of shelves for canned goods, garden produce out there. But my favorite kitchen thing is my raised dishwasher, only eight inches higher than standard but makes things so much easier.

A sink attached to a hose in the garden makes harvesting easier. I just toss carrot tops and vegetable skins over my shoulder into the compost pile. A peg board over the sink holds baskets towels and knives... ) I found a little RV stove at a garage sale, now need to attach a propane tank so that I can do some canning in my garden kitchen. (I guess that this last is a little off topic.)

How beautiful are the gardens pictured here. And how fortunate we are to have one another for courage and inspiration.

Can you connect with other local gardeners? Everyone I know has seeds left over from last year and are probably willing to share, along with lots of advice.

Your own compost takes a long time to develop, and it's never enough no matter when you start. I have finally given up and I just toss it all into the beds, ready or not. We have chicken straw mixed with kitchen scraps that are both old and new. It all gets buried anyway. I call it guerrilla composting.

Depending on what your neighbors will tolerate you can easily plant in such things as bathtubs from recycle yards, like ReStore. I plant tomatoes in stacks of tires I removed from the landfill before the powers that be put a stop to it. I painted them green, which turned out to be wasted effort because we then had to circle them with metal sheeting to keep the ground squirrels out. All of this saves my aging back as well as money.

You do have to find reasonably good dirt to fill your tubs but I am also doing a little heugaculture by piling wood scraps (untreated) and broken limbs in the bottoms along with not so good dirt and then straw, chicken straw if you can find someone cleaning out a coop. So, less added dirt in the long run.

Starting a few tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, etc. indoors saves having to buy sets. Our challenge here is protecting them from the cats. Some years are better than others. And my last piece of money saving advice is to stay out of  commercial green houses for as long as you can stand it.