Gardening ..again
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Cannon
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- Louisiana & My camp in Mississippi
That would be tasty!
I forgot my worms in the car..
There cooked.
There cooked.
Finally dried out enough to "garden" today. Management & I put up fence panels for tomatoes, pole beans, and Lima beans. Critters are raiding of a night. Read articles about "clover lawns", supposedly give bunnies alternative to cabbage, strawberries, etc. Percussion 12 bore is my solution. Turnips almost big enough to eat. Life's good today.
Every so often I buy a container of "fishing" worms and dump them in the garden. I am trying to get Earthworms re-established. For some reason my garden plot is totally lacking earthworms. I need to put a piece of plywood on the "dumping" spot or the chickens would have a feast.
Worms are a sign of healthy soil. Lack of worms ...several things harm them - over tilling, lack of vegetable matter, pesticides, overly dry, etc. They can be bought over the internet in bulk, caught at night with a flashlight, electrocuted, picked up on sidewalk after a rain, etc. I used to pile up leaves, let 'em sit and also till in yard leaves in the fall. You want organic matter to sweeten the dirt.
man this is some beautiful looking soil you have down there in Texas, where my mind imagines boulders, thin, grey soil, and lots of rocks and cactii. you should be able to grow anything there
Planted a few things in my rinky dink container garden we shall see what comes of it
I'm not terribly worried about it but I do wonder occasionally. The guy I bought me place from almost 30 years ago said he brought in a "truckload" of dirt where my garden is now. This guy was known to be "thrifty" (cheap). I wonder where he got this truckload of dirt. The county used to give it away when they cleaned out the ditches. There are spots on this dirt that puddles like it had oil on it at one time. I have found pieces of broken glass, not alot maybe 5 or 6. No Earthworms whatsoever . If I were younger and thought I'd be gardening for another 10 years I'd bring in a truckload or two of good topsoil. Oh well, you can't help but wonder sometimes.
Do you live near any good lakes or rivers Louis? I have found carp to be great fertilizer. You can chunk it up and freeze it for next year, of compost it. I tried composting it once. Couldn't keep the racoons out of it. I just freeze it in ice cream buckets now. Works pretty good
Oh my garden is quite fertile with plenty of organic matter. I have been tilling in "tons" (alot) of leaves, manure, table scraps, wood ashes, etc. through the years. I don't use chemical fertilizer, insecticides , or herbicides. I dont know something about is just different.Some parts seem like they have like an oily film. But yet no oil is noticeable or present. Water more or less puddles instead of soaking in.
Have you had the county test it? I think most will do it at no charge.
Fascinating. And yeeeee. Hope there is nothing toxic hiding in that beautiful dirt. For what it is worth, a related story: My sister lived in central upstate NY for a long time, in an old small town for part of that period. She had a lovely garden in the back yard where the spring and summer sun hit it just right, and the soil there was dark and yielded abundant crops of anything she planted. Every spring she would till, as we all do, and every spring in the tillage she would encounter bits and pieces of past cultural flotsam, as you have. Broken glass, deeply rusted or corroded bits of metal, coal ash, a plastic toy soldier from the 1950s, and suddenly she became suspicious. She took several soil samples from different parts of her garden area and drove them to the ag lab at Cornell. The results were ugly: A lot of heavy metals in her soil, not just in name but also in concentration. Fortunately, she had been growing garden plant species that did not take up the heavy metals, and so she and my small nieces dodged a bullet. It could have been bad, especially for her little children. She departed that house for her first organic farm the next year, and so she did not rely on that patch of dirt to feed her family ever again. When she arrived not too far away on her farm property, she again had the soils tested, and learned that while they were environmentally pristine, they were sorely lacking in certain necessary nutrients, because the local farmers who had worked it probably lacked the funds or the interest to add lime and manure over the years. Anyhow. Long story about watching our garden soil. Maybe your idea about trucking in some clean topsoil is a good one.
Garden update. I have tomatoes! Of my 11 plants all but 1 have maters on them. Peppers all doing good too. Have 2 heads of butter crunch that are so so.
For the guys asking about the weed barrier. I wish I had done it sooner. A few easy pickers in a few of the holes where I burned the holes for the plants. And they don't have strong roots at all.
For the guys asking about the weed barrier. I wish I had done it sooner. A few easy pickers in a few of the holes where I burned the holes for the plants. And they don't have strong roots at all.
Will be "going to town" sometimes tomorrow. I just may stop by and have a chat with the County Agent.
Thank you, but I have a number of zucchini bread recipes, and she is burned out on that also.... 
we now put our extra zucchini through a food processor, bag it, freeze it, and use it all year long as soup base or ratatouille base
