My garden is basically a huge PIB !!!

[clemsonfor]

I put a few pics from last years garden. Mine dosent look this good this year as i only have about 4 suash and zuks togeather. I didnt put the sevin like i did in the past out. Im fairly sparse this year.

If you look close in the pic of the squash or zuk cant tell you can see the white on the stems.

The pic of the beans on the fence you can see a green patch of crabgrass in the hay. It is only one clump that shows up, but thats all thats there. And honestly i think i had pulled it up and just left it there to dry up before i took this pic?

This year i changed it up, i jsut cleared holes in the hay and planted in it. This is far easyer and faster than cutting holes in the landscape fabric. This year im all hay and really have fewer weeds than last year since they grow through the fabric as its kind of transparent.

 

[troybilt]

No offense but it seems like most of you just don't know how to garden cheaply or correctly. If you start your own seeds you get plants for pennies or free. Mulch can be had for free and not only prevents weeds but also enriches the soil and keeps it moist when it doesn't rain. Use heavy layers of straw,non shiny newspaper,compost,etc. Raised beds help when the ground is wet. Electric fence set up correctly will keep out most large critters and is a one time purchase. Lead spray(think firearms)does wonders. I have an active "relocation" program for wildlife(the freezer). My motto is if I can see it by my house it's gotta go. I didn't have time to read every post but there is a solution for every problem. I'll be glad to help.

i agree.

Didn't notice your response earlier, as i was writing mine. And thank you for encouraging people to use free mulch, this does a lot to combat the $64 tomato issues. Perhaps these 64 tomatoes come from them slick gardening magazines, wow if i did everything like that, then i would have been bank rupt years ago.

i always laugh when they show a $30,000 tractor picking up a bail of hay. We have two arms, born with them and so does my wife and children. Not against a tractor if you have the money, give it to John Deere to keep the jobs here.

 

[5030]

I envy those who do not have a weed problem and do not need a fence. So how do you keep deer from raiding your garden? We do not permit our cats outdoors except supervised.

No deer problem here. Deer might not be too intellegent but they know I have guns. Cats need to be outside. They are hunters and mousers. They keep the wabbits out of the garden and the mice out of the hay (in the barn). I regularly eliminate racoons, woodchucks and skunks. Coons are live trapped and moved to the other side of town, chucks the same and skunks are mothballed though I do want a pet skunk.

i have an old collection of garden books collected over the years; the best and more interesting of them are organic. Most of the problems cited in this thread are just retreads of problems people always have had.

Hay and mulch are very simple things and solve most of your garden issues. Weed seed is brought in by everything, your soil contains hundreds of thousands of weed seeds.

Hay is the short cut.

Hay is basically a mulch; we have tons of it as we don't mow all of our rural property. So easy to make too, but don't let our way of doing it shock you too much. Um, we make hay by just pulling the long grass with our hands and stacking it in a mulch pile.

that's it, and free!

That's the difference between the $64 tomato and free. i note that many resort to dumping a truck load of money on a problem hoping it will go away. Sometimes it does.

Hay is free and grows every where in the Rural areas. Same for leaves and other materials. We get truck loads of compost from the Dairys around, just pay for trucking. Compost (composted manure) solves most of your other issues. Almost free too, sorry don't know where i can get a free dump truck with free gas.

Try putting hay or mulch around your tomatoes. When the heat comes the tomatoes are able to resist it. The weeds don't like growing through the mulch, so they don't. The worms love eating mulch, so they do and then feed the tomatoes, much better fertilizer than the junk in the bag.

Soil is a living medium and does better if not treated like a chemistry set. Read Edward Faulkner's book 'Soil Development', he took a worn out farm and added nothing to it, the soil has everything it needs to rejuvenate itself if properly cared for. Even the bugs go away when the plants are healthy, they like to chump on $64 tomatoes instead. Free tomatoes are not as tastey to pests, so tend not to bother them.

Edward Faulkner is an extreme organic gardener, but he wanted to prove a point that God created the world right in the first place, so he worked with the worst and produced the best crops around. His book 'Plowmans Folly' was a best seller. In this book he opposed deep moldboard plowing because the plow would take the deep subsoil and put it on top of the soil, burying the top soil and destroying organic matter in the process.

And then we got the dust bowls in the thirties.

Faulkner is a hero of American agriculture, a County extension agent that thought outside the box and was not afraid of the naysayers and gloomers. Today i note these moldboard plows are not used much where i live, we used to get dust bowls in the spring, but now the disc is what the farmers use to prep the soil, nice move. Faulkner also approved of the chisel plow for breaking up hard pan and any lite plowing that did not bring the subsoil up.

My Rototiller saves me from the weeds, it seems best to grow 2-3 rows of vegies close together and have 3 feet of space between them for the roto tiller to cultivate the weeds. Even better is to have a mulch between rows and this happens as we pull more hay.

We don't use fencing either. Living in a rural area there are thousands of acres of corn and beans growing, my little garden of corn and beans is hardly noticed by the criters. We grow extra any way, stuff happens to anyone.

Pulling hay with your hands? Must be work? Everything is work, we ride our bicycles, fish, and play; can never understand that argument.

Maybe they mean it is harder than watching TV? :confused2:

My garden credo as well. All my spuds are carryover and I buy organic seed in bulk and start indoors.

Our garden is a saver, not an expense and it's an enjoyment, not a chore. I have a great following for my cellar made kraut. I'm the kraut king around here and I never run out of spuds or onions. The leftover onions go right back in the ground next spring. You can actually overwinter onions if you plant too many. Done it many times.

 

[Car Doc]

This is a tractor forum you guys realize that right?

 

[Yellowhair42]

5030, would you be willing to share your kraut recipe? I am going to try to make some for the first time this year.

 

[troybilt]

This is a tractor forum you guys realize that right?

huh?

Yeah, yur right. i came here to learn about the Rototillers in that forum, but really like the rest of these forums too. Lot's of wisdom from the Farming class.

Did you know the Federalist Papers written in the 1700's were written to Farmers to help them understand the Constitution?

Know what? Now it is considered 'college literature' too tough to give it to the High School kids.

i hang out at other forums where Urban folk chime, and wow what a difference. One thread over here 'How do You feel about the economy' would not have a chance on these other forums. Probably would have been locked down, flamed out, etc.

Nice to live in God's country, and many of the people do reflect it.

 

[Car Doc]

Ok huh is right whatever all that was about? :thumbsup:

The point being troybilt the one I was getting at is simply I and lots of others here in a tractor forum are not going to feel bad when we go get the tractor to wrestle an 800lb round bale to spread around our food plots. :laughing:

Some of us are also not as physically able to work like we used to and that doesn't make us feel bad either when we work outside we use tools if we have them available which apparently is overlooked by some others.

 

[troybilt]

Ok huh is right whatever all that was about? :thumbsup:

The point being troybilt the one I was getting at is simply I and lots of others here in a tractor forum are not going to feel bad when we go get the tractor to wrestle an 800lb round bale to spread around our food plots. :laughing:

Some of us are also not as physically able to work like we used to and that doesn't make us feel bad either when we work outside we use tools if we have them available which apparently is overlooked by some others.

The spirit of my post was that stuff can be free if you want it to be.

At one time i had a JD Tractor with front end loader and miss it a bunch. My son went into the hospital, so first things first.

Nope, not against tractors, roto tiller, planters, manure spreaders, but if that keeps you from gardening, then some need to know that hands and free stuff still works. (also rakes, shovels, push planters, forks, hoes, did i miss any LOL)

Just got done spreading Free Hay my son pulled yesterday with his hands. He is in college now and a math major, so he can figure it out. Actually it was his idea to do it that way.

For now i have a roto tiller and a wheel barrow and that accomplishes a lot around here. This forces me to come up with simple solutions to problems others may pour a ton of money onto.

>>>Some of us are also not as physically able to work like we used to and that

i appreciate that.

And the bigger an operation gets the more tools you Really need anyway. i am not able to farm all of my land because of a lack of really useful tools like a tractor. However my two roto tillers pretend to be tractors, so we get a lot done any way.

>>>get the tractor to wrestle an 800lb round bale to spread around our food plots.

hmmm wish i had that problem. Not sure how to handle one that big by hand. Probably just let a sleeping dog lay and take the chain saw to it.

Really though, if the economy was right, we all could have some kind of tractor helping us get things done. Subject of another thread.

i am really Pro Tool having worked in Industries where this matters. If i had my way, i would have the biggest and most modern of everything. Four or five JD tractors with front end loaders is about right for starters.

 

[Car Doc]

"i always laugh when they show a $30,000 tractor picking up a bail of hay. We have two arms, born with them and so does my wife and children."

They must be awful strong is all I can say! :laughing:

I probably shouldn't admit to this but I have been known to dump my 4 - 30 gallon trash cans from my shop into my tractor bucket and make one trip out to the dumpster! What a waste of fuel some would say I should have just walked them out one at a time or wait if I didn't have a tractor thats just what I would have done humm interesting.

 

[troybilt]

"i always laugh when they show a $30,000 tractor picking up a bail of hay. We have two arms, born with them and so does my wife and children."

They must be awful strong is all I can say! :laughing:

LOL, i was referring to those Artsy ads with the little bails of hay. The little suburban house wife has this really fine tractor with a loader and million dollar barn to put it in.

i thought one of you would catch me on the hay bail thing, but put that in just for fun. Back when i had time to study law, the prof said: "if your not having fun, your not doing it right".

Are we having fun yet? :laughing:

 

[clemsonfor]

YOu can run your bushhog over tall grass and rake the windrows that it makes too. This is easier than pulling with your hands. We do have tractors afterall.

 

[Car Doc]

LOL, i was referring to those Artsy ads with the little bails of hay. The little suburban house wife has this really fine tractor with a loader and million dollar barn to put it in.

i thought one of you would catch me on the hay bail thing, but put that in just for fun. Back when i had time to study law, the prof said: "if your not having fun, your not doing it right".

Are we having fun yet? :laughing:

Ok man I will lighten up yes its all in fun I knew what you was talking about I have seen them too! :laughing:

And I did catch that I just preferred to use my 800lb bale as my reference meaning if I had a hay bale whether its 60 or 800lbs to move I would still get my tractor and I bet 90% of the rest of us would too!

With that said actually the last few bales I moved blew out on the middle so having one sitting in a bucket would actually be better than wagging over the shoulder!!

 

[RobertBrown]

Meaning any and all bare soil in planters, flowerbeds, GARDENS, etc quickly becomes full of quackgrass sprouts and roots, and it's next to impossible to keep them free of the stuff. The only way I can possibly have a garden free of weeds and quackgrass is to use that black landscape fabric to cover EVERYTHING EXCEPT MY VEGGIES. I so envy those who can plant seeds and sets in their soil and not have them quickly and permanently overgrown with the unwanted vegetation. I have tried using weed and grass killer, it works for two weeks,and then yet ANOTHER new crop of seeds begins sprouting.

The solution is academic.
you just need to find recipes for quack grass.


How about ptting some cheese on it, call it....."CHEESE AND QUACKERS"

 

[Bartcephus]

RobertBrown:

Seems like you are using my image as your icon in your posts.... I should be getting royalty payments for your use.... LOL :laughing:

Sounds like hay is a real option here. I know this winter I will be piling the leaves into the garden and tilling them under. Guess I will have to get a roll of "free hay" to mulch the garden for next year. I would much rather stop the weeds from growing than cultivate to take them out.

Regards,

Bart

 

[5030]

It's hay 'BALE" by the way and you 'BAIL' the hay bale.

I have unlimited amounts of bailed hay both round bales and squares and I've never put any in the garden. I just weed regularly.

 

[Chuck52]

I've got a partial roll of hay from when the neighbor who cuts my hay had a problem with his baler. I've thought of using that in my garden, but my hay got cut last year long after the fescue (and weeds) had gone to seed, so we're talking high seed concentrations in that stuff. I also have access to unlimited horse manure, both fresh and aged but not composted. I should just mix that seedy hay and some fresh manure and let it compost, after which it will be a great addition to my garden. However, if I were to mulch with that hay as it is I'd have really nice rich high quality fescue in my planting beds. Fescue is edible, but not one of my personal favorites.

Chuck

 

[JDgreen227]

RobertBrown:

Seems like you are using my image as your icon in your posts.... I should be getting royalty payments for your use.... LOL :laughing:

Sounds like hay is a real option here. I know this winter I will be piling the leaves into the garden and tilling them under. Guess I will have to get a roll of "free hay" to mulch the garden for next year. I would much rather stop the weeds from growing than cultivate to take them out.

Regards,

Bart

I have been tilling leaves into my garden plot for 15 years now, it amazes me how much the soil has improved in the older part. For what it is worth, the book I ordered on Ebay..."The $64 Tomato" arrived in today's mail. Looking forward to reading it tonite.

 

[RobertBrown]

Quackgrass, like most weeds has several different names depending on where you live. I just learned that quackgrass is another name for "topedo grass". Thats what its called in these parts. Its considered an aquatic invasive as well as a turfgrass pest here. That means it can grow underwater. The only way to get it out of your pond efficiently is to employ the help of a fish. The grass carp will eat it. This fish is also an invasive pest so the fish must be sterilized before releasing.
I realize that this information is of little use to you, but you can take solice in the fact that you are dealing with a plant that grows just about anywhere, under almost any conditions, "one tough weed" if you will.
Some information you may be able to use is: torpedo grass can be controlled with "Fusilade", a post emergent selective herbicide that works on the roots or rhizomes.
I personally have no experience with this product.

 

[JDgreen227]

Quackgrass, like most weeds has several different names depending on where you live. I just learned that quackgrass is another name for "topedo grass". Thats what its called in these parts. Its considered an aquatic invasive as well as a turfgrass pest here. That means it can grow underwater. The only way to get it out of your pond efficiently is to employ the help of a fish. The grass carp will eat it. This fish is also an invasive pest so the fish must be sterilized before releasing.
I realize that this information is of little use to you, but you can take solice in the fact that you are dealing with a plant that grows just about anywhere, under almost any conditions, "one tough weed" if you will.
Some information you may be able to use is: torpedo grass can be controlled with "Fusilade", a post emergent selective herbicide that works on the roots or rhizomes.
I personally have no experience with this product.

Thanks for your input and information. Back about May 12 I decided to dig out an area of my garden plot that was about 5 by 5 feet, it was heavily infested with quackgrass and I had never cleared it out properly, because it was infesting an asparagus patch. Look at the wheelbarrow in the background, perhaps a quarter of the contents is asparagus roots, but the remainder is quackgrass and roots...from a 25 square foot area !!!

 

[ShenandoahJoe]

So much reassurance in this thread! Troybilt, 5030, you guys give me confidence I'm doing it right. That, and the soup my wife made out of my yellow crookneck squash this evening.

Hey, Chuck, if you have access to an unlimited amount of horse manure, does that mean you work for the same company I do?