Early Retirement Extreme Forums

My FIL has had a hell of a time keeping woodchucks out of his garden. I guess they even climb over 7 foot deer fencing. Thank god I have only ever had to deal with one.

I did have a rabbit and a raccoon both move into a large pile of brush on my property this year and start litters. Both have been...removed..since the pile was inside my newly fenced in area.

I would have used that critter for target practice except she had a baby with her. Sigh ... I couldn't do it. A family of rabbits living in my yard are well fed for the same reason.

I managed to steal a few peas from them. The golden ones are from cmonkey seeds.

jennypenny wrote:The golden ones are from cmonkey seeds.

LOL, the Oregon brush bunnies like peas, too! I really need to finish that anti-rabbit fence...

In the mean time, I've managed to plant all my potatoes. The prior plantings have all had their first & second moundings and are pretty much on cruise control now. Of course then my wife pointed to a bag of leftover potatoes from last year and I'm quickly working on a space for them, sigh.

In the greenhouse, I will be harvesting the first couple of peppers soon, on an as-needed basis. The struggling pepper plant will need replacing as it's not going to make it and that will give me an opportunity to do a post-mortem. Tomato plants are already near 3' tall and the fruits are filling out. Cucumber plants have a half dozen blossoms. Watermelon vines are beginning to look like vines instead of seedlings.

Outdoors, the squash are once again showing how they dislike cold nights, like below 45F. I'm now using hotcaps made from 2 liter soda bottles to fend off the cold. I think I'll be starting them in pots in the greenhouse next year and plan on transplanting mid-June. The 3 transplanted watermelon vines are doing well.

Onions are salad material these days for thinning purposes. Likely I won't be buying even large dry onions in the near future until they're thinned down.

Moles suddenly became very active in the past week or so. Spotted one tunneling under the potato bed yesterday, but it went too fast for me to do anything about it. As far as I can tell, they're just exploring old tunnels and tidying up after my gardening.

To keep squash vine borer from getting our squash last year, we covered them with mesh shade clothe suspended on rebar/pvc pipe hoops. It worked perfectly! We didn't lose any plants unlike previous years where practically everything was lost.

The only caveat is that bees cannot pollinate your flowers, so you either have to do it by hand or remove the cover. We ended up removing the cover after the first few flowers had formed which happened to be July 4th weekend. It is said that the squash vine moth is done laying eggs around early to mid July in our area and that was the case last year.


This also works to keep the little white butterfly off your brassicas.



We secure them to the hoops with sections of old leaky hosepipe that we cut a slit in.




I also mentioned in my journal about putting up deer fence last week. I measured tonight and it is between 7.5 and 8 feet all the way around. Our fenced in area is 220 feet by 85 feet, which comes out to 18,700 square feet of protected space. Not all of this is veggie garden, most is the orchard, some is the chicken coop. We also have a bunch of unprotected flower/herbaceous gardens by the house. Deer pressure was low to moderate in the orchard, and non-existent by the house so I am hoping we are good. We are planting hedging all along the fence as well that will grow 10+ feet so the deer won't even know what they are missing.

Took a more careful accounting of tomatoes this morning. Early Girls each have 6 fruit set, easily the most. German Queen has only set 1 fruit so far. The two Big Beefy have a pair of fruit each & the lone Juliet has 3 fruit. Total fruit set is 20 for 6 plants, thanks to the pair of Early Girls.

Planted sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes). Got 3 rhizomes from an amazon seller and they were shipped in a bag of dirt. Hopefully they are viable. I just love sunchokes! Fortunately it is a very prolific and hard to kill plant. It does not have any issues with pests or diseases. A Life-hacker's way to get free food for years without any efforts. I planted them away from everything in a sunny spot where they won't shade anything. Can't wait to eat them!

Harvested some radishes. Life is good

Question: is that okay to add bird poop in my compost pile? Sparrows are nesting in my shed and poop everywhere. I don't mind, but I wonder if their poop is good as a fertilizer?

I suspect its not much different than chicken poop in that it would need to ripen for at least 6 months. Also would be full of weed seeds.

One more apple, two bush cherry, three heartnut, and one almond planted today !!! Finally got a decent amount of rain and everything is looking much better. I am really excited about my new cold hardy fig, but I can't quite decide where to place it. I also bought a borderline hardy olive to grow in a pot and move in and out of my greenhouse. I realized that I was going to need some more high fat/calorie crops in order to reach my goal.

I decided to start a lasagna bed today, which is supposed to be fully ready next spring. It is my first time doing it and it is an experiment. The only material that was purchased for it was peat moss. I did not want to buy any manure or pot soil because the ones that are being sold here have too many weed seeds. I have a friend who offered me to come and get rotten organic sheep manure from her farm, but she's sick now and I don't want to bother her.

So what I've done is just layered things I had access to: paper, cardboard, peat moss, grass clippings, straw, dry leaves, compost, food scraps, some dirt. It is not ready to be planted, but I threw some random seeds in it to see what is going to happen. (Sunflower, peas, rainbow chard, beets, basil, oregano, lettuce, brussel sprouts, lupins). The seeds will probably germinate and die at some point, but that will add more organic matter to the bed and hopefully the roots will provide some reinforcement to it's structure.







Oh, and big day today, my peas finally discovered the trellis


And also my corn has germinated and growing vigorously! And some bean seeds germinated as well. One of the seedlings formed 2 leaves literally in 5 hours! Love to see my plants grow!

It's hard for me to tell for sure from your picture, but I predict that your seeds will germinate and grow. If I were you, based on my own sad experience, I would either dig a trench or put a much larger border of ugly cardboard around the bed, or it is likely that some of the species in your grass will invade. Gardening is all about deciding what will die and what will grow. Some gardeners focus more on the killing, and some gardeners focus more on the growing, but you have to do both.

Thanks 7Wannabe5, great, will add some ugly cardboard.

As expected, I've got a pest infestation. Now we're salvaging radishes by eating them while they are small. They are delicious, actually, I can totally understand why the larvae like them

Today I'll go and buy seeds, and will sow marigolds, mint, sage and garlic chives everywhere, and we'll see next year. Also next year I'll have enough compost for better soil.

Greenhouse tomatoes on the vine are numbering 28 now. Cucumbers are likely setting on now, but I haven't bothered looking yet.

"Mammoth melting" pea pods are indeed very tasty and tender. Despite my complaints about the size of the plants, I suppose I'll grow them again next year because the taste is totally worth it. Just need to plan on a 6' high trellis!

We picked 4 pints of strawberries on Wed (last dry day) and another 4 pints today (in between rain showers). This should continue for another week, picking 3-4 pints every couple of days and then taper off for another week. Due to the dampness, we're picking slightly greener than we usually would.

The iceberg style lettuce is making nice heads.

Those last potato plantings are sprouting now.

Green beans sprouted in a week and look incredibly uniform.

Here's how the "no till" experiment is doing: the grass remains dead, with some crab grass still being alive. Alfalfa survived (good!). Beans and corn germinated and looking quite vigorous. Better than some seedlings planted into a tilled bed. This is interesting!

Approaching mid-June and the nights here still dip into the 30s F. Last night was 39F. That's one of the reasons it is hard to grow corn, tomatoes, etc. without a greenhouse.

I was eating some of the early raspberries yesterday. Most are not ripe yet. They're small this year, weird. Most of ours are everbearing, where they have a spring and fall crop if I prune them right. Which I do, but it sure is tempting to mow them all to the ground every winter and just have the fall crop.

My cat has been on a rabbit-killing spree. I should rent him out. But he'll still want his kibble, the little chunk-muffin.

After PedalToPetal's potato post, I grew antsy enough to take a peek today at the Early Red Norlands. Result of half a plant was double handful of golfball-sized new potatoes, currently boiling on the stove for an afternoon snack, so they're right on schedule to begin regular harvest in about 2 weeks.

In the greenhouse: staked up the tomato plants with taller stakes (quickly made from the red huckleberry bushes wife is hacking down) as they're quickly going to be over 4' tall and noted that the smaller variety of watermelon plants are making buds of some sort.

One year a team mate of mine in the Hood to Coast relay brought some cold boiled baby potatoes, lightly salted. Man those were good after running. Of course I always forgot to bring some in subsequent years.