Garden 2011
 

we are trying some thing New this year , the youtube vid is still up loading , ill be back later to post it

very ingenious Best of luck to the new planting year!


I sure would like to plant lettuce, heirloom carrots and a blood orange. I think I will, try.

Cool idea! Gets you outa that clay.

cool!

I have a container potted cherry tree this year!
I'll have to photo-document her progress.

And also growing a hanging basket of strawberries.
I am the soft fruit Queen this year. At least in this garden, where no other soft fruit is grown!

ETA it was so good to hear you, Zip!
So many funny furrin words :)
Meant in fun of course, but when reading I rarely hear an American prounciation, so things like tom-AY-toes still surprise me.

I also cheered when I saw the lettuce.
Tell it is has worldwide support.

Over the weekend, I planted 10 geraniums in the window boxes, 8 tomato plants in the back yard, 4 blueberry bushes near the tomatoes, and two red bell pepper plants.

It was a tremendous amount of work. I moved the garden back to the area where we used to have it in the back yard. I'm hoping the tomatoes will do better back there, since they have done well there in the past. Last year's diseased tomatoes were a huge disappointment. The garden plot had been completely taken over by crabgrass, which had grown through the weed blocking fabric I had used back there years ago. So I had to pull up the old fabric and crab grass, and then work some misc stuff into the bad clay soil back there.

Hope it goes well.

Hey, Zip. How're the hay-bales doing?

I planted August beauty sunflowers. First time!

I will have sunflowers for Halloween as they are now just a morsel in the chickadee's eye.

My original strawberries simply didn't happen.
My fault for buying discounted stock from Aldi.
Still, I bought some plugs from eBay and have planted three in the hanging basket and the others around Penny (my baby cherry tree).

She's doing beautifully -- I really should have taken photos. She's gone from a single stick into a little sapling.
No fruit from her this year of course - and perhaps not next year.
But it's supposed to be a bumper year for strawberries, thanks to the conditions.
I don't mind feeding the birds with my produce, but if they look like becoming edible, I'll be buying nets.

A vid to show the tiny extent of my personal gardening.
I might attempt to cut the grass this weekend (usually Dad’s job). Part of me feels bad that he will come back to a jungle otherwise.
But on the flip side, Mum has forbidden me, thinking I am likely to go over the power cord or sever my own toes…

This time it's personal...
 

Before I get into (again) I want to tell zippy that looks like an awesome alternative plan for wet, heavy clay. Maybe get out the back how and set the bales just below ground level so you don't have to water them?

There was a farmer I knew in Vermont who would stand up a 100# bag of dehydrated manure/compost then punch a bunch of holes in the sides of the bag, stick a hose into it and fill it until it was rehydrated, then he'd plant lettuce seeds into the holes he'd punched. When it was rocking it looked like a giant potato that had sprouted.


Anyway, onto Arctic Gardening 2011: This Time, It's Personal

So, the woodchuck is back and despite last season's numerous head and body shots with my buddy's pellet gun and some Gamo teflon tipped destroyer pellets (That ripped right through steel cans and 1" pine-- WTF are woodchucks made out of, the same shit that the Nemean lion was made of?

So today I finally went and picked up a Marlin 60 and snuck it into the house. (There is growing warm sentiment for the woodchuck and his friend the bunny among the family so this will have to be an entirely clandestine operation) I had to do some creative bookkeeping as well, to bring the purchase under the account of "Food budget" but I think many of you may be able to follow my logic here:
Marlin 60 comes under removing garden pests
Removing garden pests comes under garden supplies
Garden supplies comes under garden
Garden comes under food budget

The plan is to use a subsonic round fired from within the house in the unfinished addition. The muzzle will be about ten feet from the window opening. The window opens onto the backyard where the neighboring house is vacant, the other houses are not in a direct sightline of the window.

I have a neighbor who uses this technique all the time and he says it makes no more noise than someone slapping a ruler on a desk. Nevertheless I will have to wait a week until the family are visiting grandma and I will have the house to myself.

I also need to go to my buddy's house and sight in the scope.


OF course I wouldn't actually do any of this, right? IT's just a joke. I have grown fond of feeding that woodchuck and consider him part of the fragile ecosystem or something.

Does this neighbor have a direct sight line on the wood chuck from his house? Because that would be a whole lot easier for you. You could offer him a case of beer. That's cheaper too.

No, I spoke with him about it and he would have done it for a cup of coffee, sadly, he only has a direct sight line on his own woodchucks...

Wow, that's sophisticated! They paint the house numbers on the woodchucks where you live?

I've been told the best way to kill a wood chuck, but have never tried it, so I pass this along untested. You want to shoot it in the belly so it can limp off to its burrow and die in there. Saves you the effort of getting rid of the body. Although, you've got to hope its burrow isn't under your new addition, or it might be a ripe summer for a while.