Posted on 05/06/2016 1:48:07 PM PDT by greeneyes
Brilliant strategy. Bet you have very little that goes in the trash can. You are a true conservative!
The three longest rows are getting tomatoes. It will take six flats to do the row that’s matted. I’ve got to stake it and hang the trellis mesh then it will be time to start setting out plants. I’m hoping to get a get a few in the ground by the end of the day.
I’m going to run tape and matting on the short row today and plant that one with pumpkins.
Busy, busy...
Greenbriers are just about everywhere, although there are over 300 species worldwide.
The ones around here are the nice round-leafed ones mostly. In some places like Florida there several that have narrow leaves, some with a saw-tooth edge. Might be OK when very, very young as a salad green.
I dug up a couple pieces of greenbrier root/rhizome. Now I know why it’s hard as heck to get rid of. At the very base or just under the leaf litter, there are hundreds of wicked little thorns.
wow, what a great and inexpensive idea!
question - do the grass clippings, if they have weeds mixed in, cause weeds to grow? I may be shooting myself in the foot.
They might, next season. I just layer over season to season. You might have to ‘patch’ resistant areas if you have a long growing season too.
Usually we cut the grass before stuff goes to seed. And the hay clippings will sprout but usually not before winter.
As long as you have 4-6 layers of newspaper (overlapped at least 6” in my experience) or one layer of the corrugated (overlapped 6” too). I flat the big boxes all the way out and lay papers over the slits. The thinner cardboard I usually incorporate as part of the newspapers. It all breaks down.
I’ll see if I can find some pictues of what I do and post them.
I keep a large amazon box unflatted in my garage and fill it with the flatted shipping type boxes (corrugated stuff). I’ll usually end up with 3 or 4 of these between what we get over the course of a year and what hubby snags from work. I have smaller boxes I use to separate newspapers/salepapers/junk mail and that sort of smaller paper. And some more boxes for flatted household type cardboard (cereal boxes, pizza boxes, cake mix boxes, etc).
We buy round bales of hay, usually from the guy across the road or a farmer we know a few miles away. Hubby has a sweeper on the back of the four wheeler and we ‘helpfully’ offer to sweep neighbors leaves in the fall and keep them in piles in the shade/north side of our shop until we use them. We also let our yard (such that we still have after I’ve grown the garden plot so much lately) grow 10” or so and hubby will cut it in such a way to blow the clippings from several passes into one row to make it easier to rake. I’ve got a garden cart I use to ferry these back to the garden and use these to patch during the summer or just replenish spots that get beaten down by foot traffic.
YMMV.
I’d have never thought about doing this myself, my MIL clued me in.
thanks, I like the free idea too. I’ll start collecting leaves each fall.
I’m pleased with it, so far. Beau can’t get his mail through GMail for some reason, though. Of course, he can’t remember his password or any other important data either, LOL!
Do you know the cultivar/ species ?
Do you know whether they are 1 yr. or 2 yr. old roots ?
Generally the larger and older roots will yield a harvestable crop sooner , provided the soil has been adequately prepared (rich in organics,leaves, and long term release nitrogen).
Don’t know any of that stuff, other the it’s Martha Something. It was bought on a whim.
We will see if it even comes up!
It sounds like its probably the Martha Washington variety. It is known for its resistance to asparagus rust, and other issues.
It produces uniform size , thick green shoots with tightly folded purple tips , and is known for heavy yield.
It prefers a rich soil , preferably with good drainage.
Similar to other asparagus varieties , you can expect a good harvest from 3 year plants, with the harvest generally lasting three months from late April through June.
It sounds like your 'whim' was a good one !
great! I hope it makes it.
A few years ago I tried growing beauegard and puerto rico sweet potatoes. Supposedly, one grows like a vine, and one grows like a bush. Both of them ended up growing all over my garden and into my yard, and now pretty much grow wild. At this point, I’m not sure which is which.
I’ve seen sweet potatoes in the local store with small roots growing out of them. If you put one in a glass with just the root in water (changed every day or so) and exposure to sunlight, you’ll start to see purple shoots growing out of the potato. When the purple shoots get to about 4 inches, break them off and put them in another glass of water about 3/4” deep. After several days, you should see large amounts of roots, and you can move them to your garden.
Man , he talks fast, especially when he's frustrated or excited; he stated this was his 3rd attempt to put out this Saturday forecast.
Storm dropping down from Canada due to troughs in the midwest, west and S.E. east coasts, will result in abysmal weather in the Dakotas and Nebraska .
Also, Texas - mid Mississippi storms as well will develop.
It will be staying dry in the SE, developing heat
The Day 12 days out ,forecast a lot of heat in Carolinas and Georgia area, suggesting 'endless summer' heat for most of the summer season
and will continue staying dry in the SE, developing even more heat.
We are transitioning from El Nino to La Nina ; strongest La Nina is currently being forecasted .
Bastardi's favorite hobby of frequent arguments with the climate changers (who are selectively picking and choosing only the highest monthly temps ).
We are currently have 180 fewer tornadoes than average , but that one series of storms(5 days)in February really scued the statistics for the years total this year.
He highly recommended the 'Palmer Drought forecast' for its past historical accuracy and forecast.
Check out :
http://farm-fresh-produce.com/spvarieties.html from N. Carolina
and check out the pictures of sweet potatoes and compare coloration, tuber size, quantity, and tuber irregularities for proper identification
I believe the Puerto Rico yam/ sweet potato also has a bush variety.
I started a box of mulch items - junk mail and cereal boxes , torn into bits.
it’s fun ;)
I don’t tear them. I leave them flat so I can overlap them for a ‘barrier’. I put the leaves/hay/etc on top of that to keep the newspapers and boxes from blowing all over the yard :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Mc75MxR3M
I’d personally overlap the cardboard pieces a few more inches each way than these people did. But the idea is the same.
ok, that saves me the work!
Johnny Jump Up’s or Viola’s are going crazy in my front garden. Don’t know how they started but they are expanding their little selves everywhere.
Love it really as they are such a surprise and filling in a large part of the garden.
Read a little about them and they are edible, bloom from Spring to Fall and low maintenance.
We also keep a separate garbage container for paper towels, use kleenex, etc. When I start a new section or redo an old one I spread that out on the ground before I lay the cardboard. Extra organic matter never hurts.
I turned a gravel parking lot into a garden plot over the course of 5 or 6 years doing this. 3 years in to the transformation I was picking 5gal buckets of tomatoes from it.
The cheapest asparagus I’ve planted so far was from seed. I got the seeds from Kitchen Garden but I see Parks has some as well as Jungs. I got 90 seedlings from one $5 pack of seed. It takes one more year for them to produce than if you buy roots usually.
If I remember correctly I planted ‘Jersey Knight’ and ‘Purple Passion’ or something like that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.