Rocks expanded garden and renewed shed

[GoDawgs]

Ah! Great pics! It sure looks a lot better now. Lots of hard work but it paid off. Time for some fun. All work and no play.... well, you know the rest. LOL!

Thanks, aah I would love to go play but time is moving along and it won't be long before it is too hot and humid to work out there, then it will be months of no hard work, just maintaining the garden which is really hard in the heat, lol.

I hear you loud and clear on that! July and August are the pits!

I am definitely going to avoid planting anything I have to manage during the hot July through September time frame.

Field peas (cowpeas, etc) are about the only thing that I mess with other than the tomatoes which are in buckets up by the house and get a little shade there. All the peas need is watering although I do mulch them which helps with the watering thing.

Easy t-post pounding... oh, that's gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion when I go to pull the posts at the end of the season and realize they went in farther than I wanted them. I really try now to pound them in no deeper than the top of the plate but sometimes attention wanders..... LOL!

[Rockporter]

Ah! Great pics! It sure looks a lot better now. Lots of hard work but it paid off. Time for some fun. All work and no play.... well, you know the rest. LOL!

Thanks, aah I would love to go play but time is moving along and it won't be long before it is too hot and humid to work out there, then it will be months of no hard work, just maintaining the garden which is really hard in the heat, lol.

I hear you loud and clear on that! July and August are the pits!

I am definitely going to avoid planting anything I have to manage during the hot July through September time frame.

Field peas (cowpeas, etc) are about the only thing that I mess with other than the tomatoes which are in buckets up by the house and get a little shade there. All the peas need is watering although I do mulch them which helps with the watering thing.

Easy t-post pounding... oh, that's gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion when I go to pull the posts at the end of the season and realize they went in farther than I wanted them. I really try now to pound them in no deeper than the top of the plate but sometimes attention wanders..... LOL!

Yeah, it's way too hot for me in the heat to mess with anything. I have tried before and failed because I had no shade. Now that we have the trellis in I will find out how long the tomatoes actually last during the hot months. However I might try some slow bolt lettuces inside the trellis with a shade cloth to cool them off. I don't know, this year is a huge experiment I am willing to try.

Our t-posts are in about 2' with no intention of ever bringing them out. Hubby does have the just one more syndrome for pounding and sent a couple a little further than we wanted, lol. Hopefully those trellises will stay during a big storm and I don't want to say the name of those storms, lol.

We were talking this morning and I told him that we don't have to do the screening on the covered trellis yet. We just need to finish it out with the other door, and all the plastic that is permanent, and then make the roll down sides and ends so it is ready for winter time when I want to have a small garden in there. We can order the shade cloth and install that too when it is needed. So, making it easier on us before the heat really kicks in and we can pick back up on the work in the fall when things cool down.

We picked up a pool noodle yesterday and it works perfectly on the t-posts to protect the plastic. I just cut it down the side and we can zip tie them to the t-posts. This will make it easier to tightly secure the plastic when needed. So, need to buy 17 more pool noodles, lol.

[Rockporter]

[quoteI've never grown longbeans before either. But I'm trying them this year on a cattle panel trellis very similar to yours. We'll have to compare photos later this spring.quote]

Good luck and yes, photos and notes to boot. Mine are on the big wood trellis hubby built on the 4x4 posts a few years ago so I could grow indeterminate tomatoes there. I am looking forward to seeing how things go and boy with a 6" separation of those seeds I wonder if I planted too many for two people, lol. But I could can them as well.

[Rockporter]

I went out to harvest the container with the red potatoes but they are really small 1 and two bite sized on top. Do I just leave them in the container to get larger down below? Who knows they could be good sized below though. This is my first successful grow so I don't know what I am doing anyway, lol.

[PlainJane]

I’d try to gently feel around down there to see what’s going on … or just wait another couple of weeks.

[Whwoz]

@Rockporter are the tops on your potatoes starting to dry off? If so you might have bigger potatoes underneath them, if not, I would wait until they start drying off to check them

[Rockporter]

@Rockporter are the tops on your potatoes starting to dry off? If so you might have bigger potatoes underneath them, if not, I would wait until they start drying off to check them

Thanks, the one container seems to be totally dry except for one stem, I would say it is about 2/3 dry. The other two containers are starting to dry out. The one I checked is the one that is mostly dry so I think I will do some digging tomorrow and see what I find in there.

[GoDawgs]

Our t-posts are in about 2' with no intention of ever bringing them out. Hubby does have the just one more syndrome for pounding and sent a couple a little further than we wanted, lol. Hopefully those trellises will stay during a big storm and I don't want to say the name of those storms, lol...

Oh, I hear ya about the "just one more pound... syndrome".

We picked up a pool noodle yesterday and it works perfectly on the t-posts to protect the plastic. I just cut it down the side and we can zip tie them to the t-posts. This will make it easier to tightly secure the plastic when needed. So, need to buy 17 more pool noodles, lol.

I found a pool noodle to be handy for the few times I try to grow rambunctious vining things in a bucket. When they go over the edge of the pot and start trailing on the ground, sometimes they'll break or bend real hard on that pot edge. A pool noodle sliced and slipped over that edge keeps that from happening.

[Rockporter]

@GoDawgs That's a good idea on those pool noodles. The question we had is how long do they last in the sun? At least they are cheap at the dollar store.

[Rockporter]

@Whwoz I went ahead and dug out those potatoes. I got a whopping big handful of small potatoes. It is strange too that I only found 1 seed potato in the whole thing. I am thinking maybe in that one I only put one seed potato because it was extra, I don't know but I sure hope I get a better harvest out of the other two. In the meantime we have a shared side of red potatoes from the garden I didn't have before.

[Rockporter]

We just added another project for the garden that really needs to be done. That section of sand in front of the garden entry wall is where the drainage is and we have been trying to decide what to plant there but have finally decided to use landscaping cloth and rock to keep the weeds out of there. I can't think of anything we can put there that won't interfere with the drainage pipe because it is higher than we would like it to be because of the available slope from the back to the front of the house. Now to find the right color rocks.

[Rockporter]

Deleted!

[GoDawgs]

@GoDawgs That's a good idea on those pool noodles. The question we had is how long do they last in the sun? At least they are cheap at the dollar store.

By end of summer they've hardened up and prone to crumbling. LOL! But they did their job and were only $1. I wonder how much they'll be this year at the dollar stores.

Oh, another use. There's a power pole with a transformer on top in the front yard, near where the cars are parked. The power line runs from it to the house. It's right where you could back a car into the guy wire or smack into it on the riding mower you're not paying attention. A dayglow yellow pool noodle to the rescue! Slit it and cover the guy wire with it. Of course it needed to be replaced every year until last spring when the power folks came by to do some kind of treatment around the base of the pole and swapped out the old pool noodle with one of their permanent wire protectors. Yay!

[Rockporter]

@GoDawgs That is funny to use them for a guy wire, then to have the company decide it wasn't good enough and to finally do their jobs, lol.

Okay, so I guess I will have to see if things are going to crumble after summer with the pool noodles. Those are $1.25 at the dollar tree now.

[Whwoz]

@Whwoz I went ahead and dug out those potatoes. I got a whopping big handful of small potatoes. It is strange too that I only found 1 seed potato in the whole thing. I am thinking maybe in that one I only put one seed potato because it was extra, I don't know but I sure hope I get a better harvest out of the other two. In the meantime we have a shared side of red potatoes from the garden I didn't have before.

@Rockporter, potatoes can be heavier feeders than what most people allow for, you may find it beneficial to apply a lot of animal manure to the soil/mix if you grow them in pots/bags again. One old gardening TV presenter here showed how he grew them in raised beds a number of years a ago and basically covered the top of the soil with a one to two inch thick layer of sheep manure. Got a fabulous haul from that bed.

[Rockporter]

@Whwoz I went ahead and dug out those potatoes. I got a whopping big handful of small potatoes. It is strange too that I only found 1 seed potato in the whole thing. I am thinking maybe in that one I only put one seed potato because it was extra, I don't know but I sure hope I get a better harvest out of the other two. In the meantime we have a shared side of red potatoes from the garden I didn't have before.

@Rockporter, potatoes can be heavier feeders than what most people allow for, you may find it beneficial to apply a lot of animal manure to the soil/mix if you grow them in pots/bags again. One old gardening TV presenter here showed how he grew them in raised beds a number of years a ago and basically covered the top of the soil with a one to two inch thick layer of sheep manure. Got a fabulous haul from that bed.

@Whwoz Yeah, I did add amendments when I seeded the potatoes but haven't added anything to the pot since. I think I seeded those last November sometime.

[Rockporter]

Yardlong beans are sprouting, there are a few things I planted in the RKN zone that are coming up too, zuchinni, butternut squash, and swiss chard. Other things have come up but I can't tell if they are just weeds or something I planted, lol. I am amazed that weed seeds actually survived being in a container so dry that it took forever to get the mix to take in water so I could plant in it. So, the test for RKN resistance is on.

[Rockporter]

Moved to RKN suppression thread. I am going to try and stay organized here, lol.

[Rockporter]

Woot! Woot! Woot!

Hahaha, I have peaches growing all over my patio tree, bonanza patio peach. We bought this tree only about three weeks ago and it had buds all over it. Within 3 days it was flowering big time, I just lost count on how many peaches have started on it. I am looking so forward to peaches this summer.
This is just one shot of one branch. This tree is loaded.

[Wildcat82]

Yardlong beans are sprouting, there are a few things I planted in the RKN zone that are coming up too, zuchinni, butternut squash, and swiss chard. Other things have come up but I can't tell if they are just weeds or something I planted, lol. I am amazed that weed seeds actually survived being in a container so dry that it took forever to get the mix to take in water so I could plant in it. So, the test for RKN resistance is on.

I got my Chinese Red Noodle Long Beans in the mail from Baker Creek today. I'm thinking of planting 2 seeds in each of three 8 gallon containers this weekend. I have no idea what the yield is on these beans nor do I know how big a container they need so I'm sorta guessing how to grow these.