November 2017

November is here already.  The weather hasn't turned bitterly cold yet but killing frost happens almost every night now.  Upper to middle 20s are the norm. Gardening is definitely done expect working on fences and cleaning up the weedy beds.  The garden got completely out of control again this year.  It's not an easy thing to keep up with all the other things I do and tend to a garden that's as big as I have.  I've started planning for next year and have three empty beds that I don't know what to do with.  I might be downsizing a bit and just use those beds for building up the soil for the following year.

November 3

 

Yes this is bed three that had green beans in it.  I had planned to harvest the bean pods but it was such a weed mess that it wasn't worth the effort. I weed whacked down the whole mess and covered the bare ground with the leaves I picked up off my front yard.

I'm not sure how that creepy reflection of me got into this picture.  It really freaked me out when I saw the picture.

Kids had a good time breaking into my garden this year and messing around with all the stuff inside. This is the second section of fence that I had to replace because they just ripped it open and went inside.  The old chicken wire fence needed to be replace anyway so it just stepped up the schedule.  Now I need to work on the wooden part of the fence that they damaged. It too was starting to look crappy so this Winter I'll be making a new sign for to cover up the damaged area.  In the mean time I'm putting steel fence over that section as well to keep them out as well as wild life.  It's not that wild life have any thing to eat inside right now but I don't want them to get into the habit of being inside the garden.

This is a closer look at the fence replaced. I still have to shore up the bottom of the fence to keep critters from digging under the fence.  I should have just bent the bottom two sections of fence to a right angle when I installed it but I didn't so now another way will have to do. I'm amazed at how much the Rugosa Rose bushes have grown in the last couple years.  Four years ago they were just little sticks that came in the mail.  They are really starting to do what I hoped they would do.

Here's a look at the cleaned up section. One more bed was cleaned up after fixing the fence today. This year I don't have any time to do Fall digging of the beds.  I just get rid of the weeds down to the bare dirt and cover the bed with yard waste.  Next Spring I'll bury the yard waste and prepare the beds for planting.  I've discovered that bare beds in the Spring are a good thing. As the weeds sprout, cultivation can be done easily and quickly.  It takes about three or four times of  cultivation before mulching and planting.

This is the last bed to be cleaned up in the formal part of the garden.  Eventually the pathways of this part of the garden will be all poor man's brick and with rock around the beds.  There's still much to do but each year I've accomplish quite a bit.  It will be exciting to see what will happen next year. I never know what I'll have time to do when the season begins.

This is pretty sad isn't it? All the work and effort that went into the design and building of these sections of the fence are now falling apart.  I suspect the demolition kids of the neighborhood helped this along some. I've put a steel welded fence over the sections to keep the critters from getting used to making their way in and out of the garden.  Then as time permits the sections will be covered with plywood that's been primed and painted.  I hope that lasts longer than the pallet sections did.

This is the haul of squash for this year.  Seventy five in total.  It's a bit more than I really expected.  I'm cutting back next year to half the plants.  I'm not sure what I'll be doing with this stash.  Hopefully, I can give much of it away. 

Monday November 7

Bed 4 where the Eggplant, Zucchini, and Chard was planted has been cleaned and dug. It will get a cover of yard waste when I pickup a couple loads this Thursday from the neighborhood.

So, this is it for the Formal part of the garden.  I've started on the inner garden by removing the slanted wire fence that had squash but was supposed to have cucumbers. All the steel posts have been removed. It's a real mess back there.  Two of the beds have been cleaned and dug but the others are going to be tough.  

The mulch laid down last Fall before the inner steel welded fence went up has pretty much composted down to dirt.  I'm going to remove that and just leave the carpet bare.  That seems to be a better way of pathway weed control.

I've decided to burn the garden debris.  I'm not sure just how I'll be doing it but it seems to be the best way to deal with the pile of debris that comes from the garden every year. It takes too long to compost down and that leaves big piles of weeds and grass laying around. I've thought of a burn barrel but have decided that maybe a permanent burn pit would be better.  I have enough rocks to build one. I will have to find out what the requirements are for burning inside the city limits. After research, burning weeds, grass clippings, and leaves is illegal any where in Nebraska. Bummer.

Tuesday November 21

Garden clean up continues as long as the weather holds and the time is available.  This is the beginning of the cleanup for beds that are inside the electric fence. This is bed 11 and 12.  Bed 11 was the cucumbers and squash.  Bed 12 was the first sweet corn bed. I'm thinking that next year I'll only have two sweet corn beds.  I was so inundated with sweet corn this year that it buried me.  I didn't even harvest the fourth planting at all.

This is beds 9-12 after cleanup. The trimmer, rake, and hula hoe can work wonders on a bed and pathway.

So here's the next three beds that will be the last challenge.  It's a real mess. Hopefully, I can get it cleaned up before the snow flies.

October 2017

October is a month of mixed feelings.  It's a transitional month where the garden is waning and Winter is coming. This year the garden has been prolific up until the very end it seems.  I am finally just pulling out the tomatoes and green peppers because I have no where to store the continuing production of the plants.  I guess that's a good thing as the garden is totally over run with weeds.

 October 7

 Tired and wrong tomatoes were a great disappointment this year.  Over and over again I've said and written about the miss labeled package that wasn't Rutgers but cherry tomatoes. They look pret-tee sad don't they. Next year will be different.

October 9

The potato harvest was more than I expected. My guess is about 50 pounds from just a couple pounds of potatoes.  These were Walmart potatoes. 

This doesn't look very nice but under all that weed mess are the potatoes.  This year's weed control was a disaster.

Wow, this bed cleaned up good. The potato bed is done for the year.  It's all cleaned up and ready to be covered with yard waste.  The pathways are in terrible shape and I'm beginning to think it was a mistake to put down mulch over the carpet. Another year will tell if mulch was a good thing or not.

This is the potatoes that will be stored in the basement storage room. They will last until about February or March before starting to get squishy. I'd say there are about 15 pounds in each box. 

Those potatoes that were stuck by a fork while digging were canned in the pressure canner.  They will be used for soup during the Winter months.

The green peppers excelled at producing this year.  Last year I didn't get a single pepper from the plants.  This bed was not a good producer from the very beginning.  I did direct composting last fall and spread bags of manure and sprinkled lime on the this bed last Spring.  After digging it in, the bed was mulched with fresh grass clippings and a irrigation setup was built for the bed.  It was hooked up to be watered every day in June. I have so many green peppers stored away in the freezer that I'm wondering if I will be able to eat them all over the Winter. I finally just pulled them out because I didn't want any more peppers.

Yea, finally the green pepper is finished producing.  It's all cleaned up and ready for Winter. The garden beds look great when they are cleaned up.  Now if only I could keep them that way.  I just need more time but it seems that doesn't happen yet.

Saturday October 28
Not much happening in the garden today. The killing frost finally came last night with a vengeance. The low temperature was 15 degrees according to the weather channel. I'm hoping to get things wrapped up at Terra Nova Gardens and Urban Ranch soon.

August 2017

Tuesday August 15
Well, I've done it again.  Records just don't seem to be my forte.  It's been six weeks since I've put any thing into the Garden Journal.  Weeds have all but taken over; squash has inundated their section of the garden; sweet corn is coming out of my ears; green peppers are producing abundantly; cherry tomatoes are ripening by the bucket full; and life is good in the garden.

The cabbage has turn out amazing this year.  You can see that the cabbage fly has chewed on the leaves of the plant but the head of the cabbage has not been harmed.

It's surprising just how many heads of cabbage that one jar takes to fill it up when making sauerkraut.  This pickle jar has three heads of cabbage in it.  The kraut is in the garage fermenting for about at least three weeks before eating.  I think the pickles I made are almost ready to be tasted.  I used a brine for about a week to try to crisp them up before pickling them.  This year seems to be a year to test out preserving.  Perhaps next year will be the year of preserving in bigger amounts.

Tomatoes are producing well but look a little scraggly.  I haven't perfected the method of growing in buckets just yet.  They have been changing from looking good to a little anemic.  I think I've over watered at times and then under watered at times.  It's a bit difficult to get a good watering technique.  The trough really needs to be leveled up again next year.  The middle seems to be sagging so I'll have to deal with that some how next year. 

For the last couple years I've been attempting to create an automatic watering system. Well, it's been longer than that.  Probably for about six or seven years.  The first attempt was with timers and big PVC pipes.  Then it was floating valves and gutters.  Now it's still gutters but a simple water tank with gravity. The water container is filled with water and air tight.  When the hose is below the water level and air can't enter the tank it stops flowing.  As the tomatoes wick up the water from the bottom of the bucket, water seal breaks and allows air to bubble up into the tank which allows the water to flow until the water level again seals off the air from entering the tank. Now that I've perfected this method, I'll make it better next year.  The nails in this picture have no purpose and were part of the last attempt to building this water seal method of keeping the trough full of water.

This tank is nothing more than a water dispenser from Walmart for about eight bucks and a short hose extension held on the spot by a little glue and a hose clamp. Next year I'm thinking that I'll not have the last bucket on the trough and maybe set up three on each side to keep the trough filled with water.  That would be about a weeks worth of water for the plants.  The float valve method worked great but had a tendency to plug with debris in the water.  Because of catching rain water from the roof, it's not totally free of leaf chunks and other small bits of things in the water.  This method has no small valve to go through so it works much better.  Each year the garden gets a little better than the year before.  

The water storage tank is down to about half full now. Last year it never got that low.  August has been dry with only a few light showers.  When I wanted to dig up a bed at Terra Nova Gardens it was dry the full length of the shovel.  Rock hard chunks were in the soil turned over. We could definitely use a good long soaking rain. 

Just received another light rain of hardly any substance.

Tuesday August 23
More rain has come our way.  The above water tank is at maximum level. It was about half empty couple weeks ago but two substantial rains have filled the tank and then some.  The new semi automatic watering system continues to work amazingly well.  

July 2017

Wednesday July 4
Well, Here it is July.  Things are moving along in the garden for this month.  Rains have come at intervals along with winds and hail.  It seems like this year the hail and extreme storms are more frequent than usual.  I'm hopeful to have a good harvest but others not so much.  That's a normal year of gardening.

This is my pride and garden joy.  Sweet corn has always been the main reason I wanted a bigger garden.  I knew that the wild life would be a problem when I first started Terra Nova Gardens.  I knew that fences would be the only deterrent for for saving the corn.  Even though I planted corn since the first year, last year was the first year that I harvested any corn.  Last year I even had electric fences and was able to harvest all the carn.  This year the chicken wire was replaced with steel welded five foot high fencing that's been pinned down to the carpet overlay.  So far that alone without the electric fence has kept the varmints out of the corn.

The squash and cucumbers are looking good and doing just what I wanted them to do.  The squash is crawling over into the sweet corn.  Being away for 10 days caused some issues with the vines not being trained to crawl in the right direction and the cucumbers to crawl up the leaning fence trellis.  I'm seeing squash being formed by the vines.  There still are no cucumbers yet.

Thursday day July 6

It doesn't take long for a garden to get out of control.  This is what happens when a little neglect in the garden is encouraged.  This is that nasty weed with a Velcro weed head that sticks to clothes, gloves, and especially shoe laces.  I had to take action before it became really nasty.

When I put the hardwood mulch down, I didn't know that it would grow weeds in the mulch and compost down so fast.  However the weeds are easy to pull and this path took less than an hour to clean up.  The path look like the left side of the bed with tall grass and weeds in the mulch.  I'm thinking that after each rain if a good raking about three days later would probably kill all the sprouting seeds and be a better way to control the weeds.  In another year I'm thinking just rake this mulch up and put it in the raised beds and put down another layer of fresh mulch.

The Rugosa Rose bushes are really starting to make a good looking hedge.  Every year they get thicker and bigger.  Before long they will have filled in the gaps and have a strong hedge.  This is really only the fourth year for them.  I'm really happy with the selection of tough rose bush for the front of the garden area.

The road frontage was a bit raggy and needed attention badly.  This section took about five hours and 9 wheel barrow loads of weeds to get in decent shape.  The section behind the bushes is still in bad shape and needs a good day to clean up.

I'm still amazed at how much different Terra Nova Gardens has changed since I took over the land almost six years ago.  The garden looked like the top portion of the picture over the entire garden.  Trash, cement chunks, and all sorts of car parts were cleared off the land.  It's always good to look back at the progress that's been done to get encouraged to keep going.

Ok the plants look great but there aren't many tomatoes on the vines.  I'm not sure what's up with that but I'm hearing that folks are having the same problem all across the land here.