Beauty day on our Home on the Range
Good Afternoon, Evening, or Morning Steemit family.
I mentioned in my post yesterday about asparagus that I had more to share about yesterday, so here it is.
We were super blessed with a gorgeous day to work in yesterday. I'll note again: that all the photos here were either taken by myself, or my darling and wife @elfmyselfandi
Our primary goal yesterday was to plug the rest of our seedlings into the ground. I feel shame as I state that, because I'm writing that here, while there's about eight acorn squash sitting here needing to be planted yet... I'm still going to write this rather than go plant them.
Earlier my bride posted about us putting together our no-dig garden and some about the woodchips and all that.
I wanted to share something I saw with you yesterday, because I felt that it did a pretty great job of illustrating the why and how of woodchips in the garden. Or part of it at least. There's also great benefit of not getting your feet/boots/shoes all muddy when you go garden robbing in the rain.
You see in this picture how the chips retain moisture for the garden more throughout the day, than just dirt:
I'll note that this picture is taken around noon, and the sun had been up since 5:15 am - we had light rain early the day before, and steady rain the day before that. These types of tweaks in the garden bring us closer to sustainability.. and allow me to be lazier when it comes to watering. (victory!)
So I fully feel that the wood chips in the garden has been a huge success, with little regret (we got a tad too close to the asparagus plant at one spot).
In our last home we had a neighbor who's attitude towards people and their dandelions was like that of the attitude of the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. He was absolutely indignant to people who didn't spend every moment of their summer spraying their lawn with napalm to rid the world of the dreaded dandelion.
We often joked about this - wife, friends and I.
help me :(
SETH(neighbors name)! I get it. You win. The dandelion, aka: the METH FLOWER are the worst of the worst. I want to burn them all. So here's my question readers: what can I do about these things? I would love your feedback on how you go about killing these terrible edible flowers. I'm not interested in hearing about roundup or any spray of the sort, we're doing our best to stay close to or better than organic. I already am aware of the benefits of goats, and will *one day have them, but cannot at this moment. Any other options? Recently we heard that DUCKS eat them, but I would like to hear that from the mouths of people rather than the google..
I spent the first day of them showing up on our home on my hands and knees digging them up by the roots. They've beat me. There's not enough time in the day for me to treat them in this manner I'm afraid.
If you have a solution, I'd be indebted to you forever. Please?
On another note: a bit more success in the grocery st... garden:
Chocolate beauties: the chocolate colour is really starting to show up in these tomatoes, and we're super pumped to give them a try!
Follow my dear wife! There's a couple things I want to show you out front before I let you go!
That's one of my mini pear trees that's to the right of Elin there. I'm doing my best to nurse it back to health this year, as last year a fungus made most all the fruit inedible.
Just outside the door we have our kitchen garden, where most people would plant annual flowers and stuff like that, we have Kale, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Cherry Tomatoes, Parsley, Lettuce, and Radishes. Takes away any excuse we may have had to not have a salad with our food, or some extra greens with breakfast, or anytime you step outside really. Radishes, being a quick crop have started to provide some tasty treats for us.
@elfmyselfandi doesn't really love them, but I eat them right in the face! They have such great flavor and spice. If you've got some other suggestions on how I might use them, please let me know!
Thanks for reading Steemit folks. As always I encourage your comments, questions and feedback.
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
Sick beard!
The woodchips look like they're working super well, that's exciting!
As for the killing of dandelions, there's no hope. Good luck eating them fast enough to make them die. Good luck pulling them fast enough to erradicate. The only thing I've found that works is gas, which I don't recommend under any circumstances. This year, I scattered every seed poof I saw, and maybe I'll have salad next year. I'm taking a reverse approach. If I WANT them, maybe they'll all die. If they don't die, guess I'll start eating salad.
Under your tomatoes, is that a wood-chips-fence-wire burrito? What does it do?
Have you guys done hat bale gardens? Thinking I'm gonna try it out.
Thanks for the beard love! Ive gotten so many more compliments on it since i stopped having the barber cut it and Elf does it for me now instead. Its more cost efficient, people like it more, and she smells waay better than the guy who was cutting it before haha
It's an interesting approach, to just will them into longevity so they die haha ive considered that also. I used to be able to let it go, but now they get to me. Perhaps it comes with age??
I had to check what you meant by the burrito wire thing! - i guess its just the angle it was shot where the wire supporting the tomatoes looks like its wrapped around the chips bellow! I totally see what you were seeing too though!
We havent done the bale gardens, im leery..wifes friend is doing it this year, we'll see how hers turn out before we do it. I know theres conditioning that needs to be done to the bale, i haven't researched it much. Saw someone had a post about it not too far back?
I think you just pee on em. Seeing as how that's like half my compost, I figured it would be cool to try with a few bales. Then they're automatic compost for a lasagna bed or to throw wood chips on top of after the harvest. Idk. Brainstorming as always. I've read about it before, and resteemed a post the other day about it. That brought it to the front of my mind.
I've given up giving a damn about dandelions. Johnson grass is way worse, and even harder to kill. Gas kills it kinda for a bit, but it comes back as a damn bush after that. It has a satanic lust for life that makes me want to move to the Sahara.