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#16
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Saturday in the garden
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
[snipped again] Was going to start amending the last raised bed today, got another !@#$% cold front moving in and it might freeze by the end of the week. Drat! my pear tree is currently in full bloom, might mean another year with no pears. Have to go to town and buy some dirt. Never thought I would be buying dirt but we live on six inches of river sand atop five feet of Houston gumbo clay so we have to amend everything we plant. We *finally* have some rain forecast for the next few days after not having rain to speak of since just before Christmas. I hope the forecasters have it right this time. It annoys me how the forecasters think that 'hot and dry' is a good forecast and rain is a bad one - even when most of the country's experiencing extra-dry conditions and large parts are in drought! The soil here is rich - but only 4" deep. Below that it's a hard clay pan that takes a crowbar to break up (I know from when I mistakenly planted trees in the ground). My using raised beds isn't so much because there's no soil, rather because there's not enough of it. (I used to wonder why I'd always get blossom end rot on my tomatoes, despite regular watering before I put the raised beds in.) I made my own 'dirt' originally, with the first raised bed (peat and my own compost mixed with pumice sand and vermiculite). However that got very expensive and it was at a time that my back got worse so that now I no longer have significant amounts of compost coming on. These days I buy 'compost' when it's cheap. In early spring the big chains usually compete with each other and I can get four 40l bags of it for under $20. It's largely pine bark from our forestry industry and hardly composted at all so isn't high-grade. However I try to leave it in the (perforated) bags in contact with the soil in a cool and shady part of the section for a year before I use it. Then it's a much better product, black. rich and crawling with critters. I also add used (cheap) potting mix - which I tend to have lots of due to my growing dwarf trees in containers and having to pot them up regularly and my constant experiments with cuttings put into pot mix, only a small fraction of which have taken this year. -- Shaun. "Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a cozy little classification in the DSM." David Melville (in r.a.s.f1) |
#17
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Saturday in the garden
On 3/4/2015 5:24 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote: [snipped again] Was going to start amending the last raised bed today, got another !@#$% cold front moving in and it might freeze by the end of the week. Drat! my pear tree is currently in full bloom, might mean another year with no pears. Have to go to town and buy some dirt. Never thought I would be buying dirt but we live on six inches of river sand atop five feet of Houston gumbo clay so we have to amend everything we plant. We *finally* have some rain forecast for the next few days after not having rain to speak of since just before Christmas. I hope the forecasters have it right this time. It annoys me how the forecasters think that 'hot and dry' is a good forecast and rain is a bad one - even when most of the country's experiencing extra-dry conditions and large parts are in drought! The soil here is rich - but only 4" deep. Below that it's a hard clay pan that takes a crowbar to break up (I know from when I mistakenly planted trees in the ground). My using raised beds isn't so much because there's no soil, rather because there's not enough of it. (I used to wonder why I'd always get blossom end rot on my tomatoes, despite regular watering before I put the raised beds in.) Sounds just like our "dirt" here but nothing rich about it as the builders put sand on top of the hard clay pan. I wondered why my first blueberry plants weren't doing well. Turned out they were drowning in their pot holes. I made my own 'dirt' originally, with the first raised bed (peat and my own compost mixed with pumice sand and vermiculite). However that got very expensive and it was at a time that my back got worse so that now I no longer have significant amounts of compost coming on. These days I buy 'compost' when it's cheap. In early spring the big chains usually compete with each other and I can get four 40l bags of it for under $20. It's largely pine bark from our forestry industry and hardly composted at all so isn't high-grade. However I try to leave it in the (perforated) bags in contact with the soil in a cool and shady part of the section for a year before I use it. Then it's a much better product, black. rich and crawling with critters. We used the "Square Foot Gardening" soil mix, one third rich compost, one third peat moss, and one third vermiculite. Lots of fun putting five-gallon buckets of each on a ten by ten foot tarp and then tossing the stuff around. We both developed nice biceps doing that. The high dollar stuff here is the vermiculite followed closely by the peat moss. Lots of beef lots here in Texas and the droppings get composted with grass cuttings, hay, and whatever dry stuff is available. We buy the "Black Cow" brand as it seems to have more good stuff in it. This year we bought some earthworms to put in the beds, hoping they will help. When we gardened in another state we lived on an ancient sand dune that had a rich loam topping about three feet deep, toss a seed in the ground and jump back. I miss that but it is a challenge to see your garden produce food from that which was nothing but bags of "stuff." I also add used (cheap) potting mix - which I tend to have lots of due to my growing dwarf trees in containers and having to pot them up regularly and my constant experiments with cuttings put into pot mix, only a small fraction of which have taken this year. I wish I had the room to do that again. Very small property with a big house on it, lots of concrete sidewalks,driveways, etc. We do have a composter barrel and it takes a good bit of time to make a decent compost as we're not allowed to have heaps. Tut, tut, neighbors might not like the earthy smell of a compost heap. Nothing here gets wasted, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, whatever comes our way gets composted or dug into a virgin bed for later use. |
#18
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Saturday in the garden
On 3/4/2015 6:00 PM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote: Was going to start amending the last raised bed today, got another !@#$% cold front moving in and it might freeze by the end of the week. Drat! my pear tree is currently in full bloom, might mean another year with no pears. Have to go to town and buy some dirt. The last actual freeze took out a neighbor's peaches, blossoms and leaves; again. I examined the little tree today and, although it has new leaves, none of the fruit and only eight of the differentiated buds survived and the flowers from three of those are deformed. I don't fool with them. I'm conflicted every year as we approach spring: I'd like for weather to remain cool enough—but not cold—for carrots, broccoli or cauliflower (as examples) but am eager for the first _fresh_ zipper cream crowders with okra in them or fresh snap beans. The fall mustard greens that get most-of-the-day sun are beginning to bloom but those in the magnolia shade still hold their own. I'm thinking the weather's already too warm for planting more to be worthwhile but still may scattet a few more seeds under the tree. Never thought I would be buying dirt but we live on six inches of river sand atop five feet of Houston gumbo clay so we have to amend everything we plant. IMO, mushroom compost's the thing to use until you save up enough money to buy a truck and schmooz local dairymen or auction barn operators (it's the cattlemen's association, here) out of their gold. This is Texas partner, someone already has the franchise to get everything. No mushroom farms nearby, got some once from a peddler coming through with a bunch bagged up. Seems they raised the mushrooms on pristine horse manure that was clean of all the drugs people feed their critters. Was good stuff, but none of the small or large garden centers here carry mushroom compost and it is expensive to ship. Dunno whether you've been here, but Florida is sand or swamp. Yup, used to fly into Naval Air Stations all over Florida and, in later years had friends on both coasts of Florida so got to see a lot of it. I think if I ever moved there it would about where you are as most of southern Florida is liable to develop sink holes with nothing but a little layer of dirt over fossilized coral. The nearest similitude to topsoil or humus is in hardwood hammocks and the little remaining native forest, which never was exactly monumental. Concentrating on each bed singularly until it was "right", in spring '09, I began rejuvenating raised beds installed by my wife in May, 1997. Had no home-brew compost on hand and relied almost exclusively, on mushroom compost to provide what we OFs used to call "tilth" for the first few seasons. The nearest independent seed-feed-hay-etc. woman was more than willing to make a deal on a larger than average purchase at a price which approached those of handy homeowner (Lowe's, Home Desperate) within a few pennies. The drive was a bit further (NIF) but the transaction much pleasanter and I was going there, anyway, to pick up alfalfa pellets and wheat straw. Of course, YMMV. I can't even find alfalfa pellets or rice straw around here. Years ago they had a place down on the Neches River where the rice mills dropped their hulls off to rot and it would catch on fire occasionally. Rice hull ash seemed to concentrate all the minerals so I would go by there every day on my way home from work and get a pickup load. That was good stuff! Used to be Texas was number 2 in rice farming behind California, not so much nowadays. California, Arkansas, Louisiana, and one of the Carolina's are growing more. We live on what used to be a big wooded area that was wrapped around a farm. Now it is all subdivisions with big houses on small lots and lots of concrete. Last time we lived in Houston area they had about 2 million folks here, now its over five million and more are moving in daily. I don't get on the roads until after nine am and before 3 pm because of the traffic. |
#19
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Saturday in the garden
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 3/4/2015 5:24 PM, ~misfit~ wrote: Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote: [snipped again] Was going to start amending the last raised bed today, got another !@#$% cold front moving in and it might freeze by the end of the week. Drat! my pear tree is currently in full bloom, might mean another year with no pears. Have to go to town and buy some dirt. Never thought I would be buying dirt but we live on six inches of river sand atop five feet of Houston gumbo clay so we have to amend everything we plant. We *finally* have some rain forecast for the next few days after not having rain to speak of since just before Christmas. I hope the forecasters have it right this time. It annoys me how the forecasters think that 'hot and dry' is a good forecast and rain is a bad one - even when most of the country's experiencing extra-dry conditions and large parts are in drought! The soil here is rich - but only 4" deep. Below that it's a hard clay pan that takes a crowbar to break up (I know from when I mistakenly planted trees in the ground). My using raised beds isn't so much because there's no soil, rather because there's not enough of it. (I used to wonder why I'd always get blossom end rot on my tomatoes, despite regular watering before I put the raised beds in.) Sounds just like our "dirt" here but nothing rich about it as the builders put sand on top of the hard clay pan. I wondered why my first blueberry plants weren't doing well. Turned out they were drowning in their pot holes. I made my own 'dirt' originally, with the first raised bed (peat and my own compost mixed with pumice sand and vermiculite). However that got very expensive and it was at a time that my back got worse so that now I no longer have significant amounts of compost coming on. These days I buy 'compost' when it's cheap. In early spring the big chains usually compete with each other and I can get four 40l bags of it for under $20. It's largely pine bark from our forestry industry and hardly composted at all so isn't high-grade. However I try to leave it in the (perforated) bags in contact with the soil in a cool and shady part of the section for a year before I use it. Then it's a much better product, black. rich and crawling with critters. We used the "Square Foot Gardening" soil mix, one third rich compost, one third peat moss, and one third vermiculite. Lots of fun putting five-gallon buckets of each on a ten by ten foot tarp and then tossing the stuff around. We both developed nice biceps doing that. The high dollar stuff here is the vermiculite followed closely by the peat moss. I did a similar thing. Yes, the vermiculite is also the most expensive part here too, hence swapping it out for pumice sand (on the advice of a commercial grower) after the first bed. The peat moss is also hugely expensive - at least relative to my income (welfare, an Invalid's Benefit) so I couldn't continue using that method. With the last couple of rasied beds I used soil that had been removed from ground at my neighbours place when he had a large four-car garage built. It's very poor soil though, a high clay content with a lot of gravel too. I amend it in spring with the cheap composted pine bark I mentioned earlier, further composted and mixed with the small amount of composted household waste that I still produce. My raised beds are only 4" high and I've been thinking about adding another 4" board to them one by one, as I can afford it. I wish that I'd coated the existing (lower) boards with pitch or asphalt now though, I'm not sure how long they'll last. Originally I had weedmatting bottoms on the beds as most of the lawn here is a very invasive strain of grass, kikuyu. It can run several metres undergound before coming up again and can establish from an inch of 'runner' left in soil. However for the second season I removed the bottoms as they were a very effective moisture barrier which stopped the plants from tapping into moisture below. (In my youth I worked for a year as a contract groundsman and gardener for absentee landownwers on Norfolk Island. Kikuyu grows even more vigourously and invasively there than it does here. There we'd use and old wire-woven double bed base as a giant sieve and process all the soil in flower borders and gardens though that to remove Kikuyu, then not only raise them 4" but put another 4 to 6" of boards underground surrounding them to stop subterranean runners from getting in. These days you'd buy materials and make a purpose-built sieve but back then we often re-purposed things.) Lots of beef lots here in Texas and the droppings get composted with grass cuttings, hay, and whatever dry stuff is available. We buy the "Black Cow" brand as it seems to have more good stuff in it. This year we bought some earthworms to put in the beds, hoping they will help. When we gardened in another state we lived on an ancient sand dune that had a rich loam topping about three feet deep, toss a seed in the ground and jump back. I miss that but it is a challenge to see your garden produce food from that which was nothing but bags of "stuff." The cattle manure based compost sounds like it would be better than the pine waste compost that's commercially available here. I also add used (cheap) potting mix - which I tend to have lots of due to my growing dwarf trees in containers and having to pot them up regularly and my constant experiments with cuttings put into pot mix, only a small fraction of which have taken this year. I wish I had the room to do that again. Very small property with a big house on it, lots of concrete sidewalks,driveways, etc. We do have a composter barrel and it takes a good bit of time to make a decent compost as we're not allowed to have heaps. Tut, tut, neighbors might not like the earthy smell of a compost heap. Nothing here gets wasted, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, whatever comes our way gets composted or dug into a virgin bed for later use. I grow my dwarf trees in ~100l tubs on my deck and by the side of my driveway. It's easier to give them good soil and to control their watering that way without 'wasting' water. Every three years or so in winter I remove them from the pots and prune the roots back. I then tease as much of the old soil as I can from the roots with my fingers and re-pot them, teasing the new soil back between the roots and spreading them evenly. They get about 60% new soil each time. If they're citrus, I also take the opportunity to prune the top - to shape the tree and also so the reduced root area doesn't struggle too much to support the foliage. After six months they're growing like crazy again. -- Shaun. "Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a cozy little classification in the DSM." David Melville (in r.a.s.f1) |
#20
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Saturday in the garden
On 3/6/2015 8:26 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote: On 3/4/2015 5:24 PM, ~misfit~ wrote: Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote: [snipped again] Was going to start amending the last raised bed today, got another !@#$% cold front moving in and it might freeze by the end of the week. Drat! my pear tree is currently in full bloom, might mean another year with no pears. Have to go to town and buy some dirt. Never thought I would be buying dirt but we live on six inches of river sand atop five feet of Houston gumbo clay so we have to amend everything we plant. We *finally* have some rain forecast for the next few days after not having rain to speak of since just before Christmas. I hope the forecasters have it right this time. It annoys me how the forecasters think that 'hot and dry' is a good forecast and rain is a bad one - even when most of the country's experiencing extra-dry conditions and large parts are in drought! The soil here is rich - but only 4" deep. Below that it's a hard clay pan that takes a crowbar to break up (I know from when I mistakenly planted trees in the ground). My using raised beds isn't so much because there's no soil, rather because there's not enough of it. (I used to wonder why I'd always get blossom end rot on my tomatoes, despite regular watering before I put the raised beds in.) Sounds just like our "dirt" here but nothing rich about it as the builders put sand on top of the hard clay pan. I wondered why my first blueberry plants weren't doing well. Turned out they were drowning in their pot holes. I made my own 'dirt' originally, with the first raised bed (peat and my own compost mixed with pumice sand and vermiculite). However that got very expensive and it was at a time that my back got worse so that now I no longer have significant amounts of compost coming on. These days I buy 'compost' when it's cheap. In early spring the big chains usually compete with each other and I can get four 40l bags of it for under $20. It's largely pine bark from our forestry industry and hardly composted at all so isn't high-grade. However I try to leave it in the (perforated) bags in contact with the soil in a cool and shady part of the section for a year before I use it. Then it's a much better product, black. rich and crawling with critters. We used the "Square Foot Gardening" soil mix, one third rich compost, one third peat moss, and one third vermiculite. Lots of fun putting five-gallon buckets of each on a ten by ten foot tarp and then tossing the stuff around. We both developed nice biceps doing that. The high dollar stuff here is the vermiculite followed closely by the peat moss. I did a similar thing. Yes, the vermiculite is also the most expensive part here too, hence swapping it out for pumice sand (on the advice of a commercial grower) after the first bed. The peat moss is also hugely expensive - at least relative to my income (welfare, an Invalid's Benefit) so I couldn't continue using that method. With the last couple of rasied beds I used soil that had been removed from ground at my neighbours place when he had a large four-car garage built. It's very poor soil though, a high clay content with a lot of gravel too. I amend it in spring with the cheap composted pine bark I mentioned earlier, further composted and mixed with the small amount of composted household waste that I still produce. My raised beds are only 4" high and I've been thinking about adding another 4" board to them one by one, as I can afford it. I wish that I'd coated the existing (lower) boards with pitch or asphalt now though, I'm not sure how long they'll last. Originally I had weedmatting bottoms on the beds as most of the lawn here is a very invasive strain of grass, kikuyu. It can run several metres undergound before coming up again and can establish from an inch of 'runner' left in soil. However for the second season I removed the bottoms as they were a very effective moisture barrier which stopped the plants from tapping into moisture below. (In my youth I worked for a year as a contract groundsman and gardener for absentee landownwers on Norfolk Island. Kikuyu grows even more vigourously and invasively there than it does here. There we'd use and old wire-woven double bed base as a giant sieve and process all the soil in flower borders and gardens though that to remove Kikuyu, then not only raise them 4" but put another 4 to 6" of boards underground surrounding them to stop subterranean runners from getting in. These days you'd buy materials and make a purpose-built sieve but back then we often re-purposed things.) Lots of beef lots here in Texas and the droppings get composted with grass cuttings, hay, and whatever dry stuff is available. We buy the "Black Cow" brand as it seems to have more good stuff in it. This year we bought some earthworms to put in the beds, hoping they will help. When we gardened in another state we lived on an ancient sand dune that had a rich loam topping about three feet deep, toss a seed in the ground and jump back. I miss that but it is a challenge to see your garden produce food from that which was nothing but bags of "stuff." The cattle manure based compost sounds like it would be better than the pine waste compost that's commercially available here. I also add used (cheap) potting mix - which I tend to have lots of due to my growing dwarf trees in containers and having to pot them up regularly and my constant experiments with cuttings put into pot mix, only a small fraction of which have taken this year. I wish I had the room to do that again. Very small property with a big house on it, lots of concrete sidewalks,driveways, etc. We do have a composter barrel and it takes a good bit of time to make a decent compost as we're not allowed to have heaps. Tut, tut, neighbors might not like the earthy smell of a compost heap. Nothing here gets wasted, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, whatever comes our way gets composted or dug into a virgin bed for later use. I grow my dwarf trees in ~100l tubs on my deck and by the side of my driveway. It's easier to give them good soil and to control their watering that way without 'wasting' water. Every three years or so in winter I remove them from the pots and prune the roots back. I then tease as much of the old soil as I can from the roots with my fingers and re-pot them, teasing the new soil back between the roots and spreading them evenly. They get about 60% new soil each time. If they're citrus, I also take the opportunity to prune the top - to shape the tree and also so the reduced root area doesn't struggle too much to support the foliage. After six months they're growing like crazy again. Working with fruit trees is often a calming affect on me. I have several sizes of "limb spreaders." Found a place online that had them and they last longer than my old scrap wood ones. The pear tree in front of the house will get it's first open pruning this fall. Will open up the top to allow sunshine inside. Have already pruned the "rain limbs," those annoying branches that shoot up on limbs already trained. The late frost was not that bad so the blooms are opening now. There is the hope of fruit this year. Will pick the few kumquats left on that tree later today. Took a peak at the fig tree this morning and leaf buds are appearing. Ma Nature is doing her job well here. The bay tree cutting we brought with us from Louisiana is growing well in it's second year in the ground so we will always have bay available. I do miss my sassafras tree in Louisiana, now I have to buy gumbo file. We grow a lot of herbs and dehydrate them. All the members of our very large extended family and friends get containers of home grown, organic, dried herbs for Christmas every year and all seem happy to get them, so far. Was going to get another lemon tree but found out our ex-son-in-law has a Bears lemon in his yard and is willing to give me large bags of them. I may yet learn to like him after 35 years of being around him. G We freeze lemon juice in ice trays and bag them for fresh lemon juice year around. Back to work in the garden. |
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