Kreestuh's Garden Progress 2021

Redwood garden bed I’ve been working on. I have to reinforce the bottom a little because it sags, but should be fine.

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Saw the Potatoes. I use the same felt bags.

Been really digging purple Peruvian cultivars. They are tasty and normally impress. They just aren’t great for mashed potatoes.

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I really like the design of this with the tall posts! Those will make it a lot easier to install things like shade cloth or bug protection.

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Also built this today for the strawberries. Hopefully they come out.

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Yeah, that is exactly what I had in mind with that. I have some shade cloth that I’ll throw over the top and maybe staple to the posts for the summer. Hopefully they won’t get destroyed by the sun or eaten by ants and other critters.

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Need to do an update for May/June, but saw this meme and felt seen.

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This is my hoard. Rainwater is long gone. These are the ~1.5gal it takes to get hot water to the kitchen and the Spring surplus is now also gone.

Back to the hose water. I guess I need to do more dishes to create another surplus.

These are my plants. 3 chiles and 2 toms.
Theyre healthy. Tom #1 is a late bloomer. Its tall and full but did not flower straight through and it has some blossom drop on top of it.
#2 is shorter and blossomed from the begining w full hands of green toms all through it.

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Devils Lettuce??

Tomato
Nightshade family.
Solanaceae: most are toxic to deadly w side of bad trip.

Working on a June garden tour, but I just had to share this because this is peak gardening…

I planted tons of wildflower pollinator seed mixes in a few areas of my garden, and got only a handful of scraggly sunflowers so far. Meanwhile, I was trimming back some plants along the edges of the yard and found this milkweed THRIVING in a blackberry patch. C’mon man, lol.

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Some new previews for June (garden is looking a bit messy because I ran out of woodchips to supress weeds, but EH, it’s a work in progress):

Onions + Lettuce in the shaded bed:

Wide shot of the main garden space:

Corn!

Peppers, Cucumbers & a single Butternut Squash plant that will likely try to smother all this soon:

The mega-tomato bed:

Potatoes, Ruth Stout method. Growing Russets, Yukon Gold, and Huckleberry Gold (which is actually purple):

Not pictured: blueberries, blackberries, grape vines slowly coming up, beans and pumpkin starts.

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I little bonemeal will make those potatoes grow quickly! Just watch out for the poisoned ones.

If only it were that easy…

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A lot of them have flowered recently! The purple ones had purple flowers which was neat. I may add some more compost soonish, I amended the area when I planted but they could likely use some more.

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I do a thing that I like to call Fertilizer Fridays. Basically amend the soil before planting. Once they start sprouting true leaves, I will do some bone meal and/or garden tone. Then once they put on a little growth, I liquid fertilize with a mixture of fish fertilizer and a dash of miracle grow. It works on moat of our plants from acidic loving to alkaline loving.

**Edits
Lots of phone typos.

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Anyone try using ash with their gardens? Thinking I may try after my next camp fire. Will add some to my potatoes.

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I had an elderly neighbor that was a botanist and who had spent nearly 70yrs of his life trucking up n down CA running a plant nursery in SoCal. He had the stories re CA history. Wed have a sit on the porch and hed tell stories while drinking Louis XIV and smokin MMJ -he had terminal cancer and was in hospice.
He gave me his dirt recipe one day and I keep it as his legacy.

10# charcoal burned to ash in a chimney starter (no fluid)
1 bag of garden or amendment sand(not beach)
1 bag (yard) of peat moss
1 bag (yard) of potting soil (or local dirt if its good loam)

In a mixer add the sand and get it damp. Add the ash so it sticks to the damp sand. Add the peat moss then add the soil.
Mix it all well.

This isnt a recipe for apartment dwelling but w a patch of land and a corner for your dirt its feasible.

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I’ve mixed in some ash with my compost bin before. I assume it helps but it could just be the rest of the stuff in it that makes the plants grow. :woman_shrugging:

We mix in some ash from our fire pit into our “compost pile”. If nothing else, it’s a good way to get rid of the ash.

The “compost pile” is a large pile of old wood that was on piled up on the property when we bought it. My guess is that was left over from taking trees down/trimming. It is too rotten to burn, but it was still too hard to mash up into the soil.

We put up some snow fence in a square and piled the wood up. It’s been composting for several years now and it’s getting to the point where we can start to use it as soil. The pile is much flatter now.

We might get a “smaller” barrel for table food scraps/coffee grounds for real composting. The wife has some landscaping plans so we might have a need for rich, cheap soil.

Damn, those turtles eyes are RED!

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You think he knows where the good stuff is? j/k