Why in the name of **** are all of those things that ridiculously expensive?
Extremely well made tools are usually not cheap. These tools look like they'll last long enough to pass down to the next generation of gardeners.
I asked a friend of mine in the Chico, CA area who lives near this toolmaker, and she says that they're very well made tools, and the people who own the business are quite friendly.
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Extremely well made tools are usually not cheap. These tools look like they'll last long enough to pass down to the next generation of gardeners.
I asked a friend of mine in the Chico, CA area who lives near this toolmaker, and she says that they're very well made tools, and the people who own the business are quite friendly.
I'd rather buy some cheap Chinese tool that looks and functions the same about ten times over before paying more than I did for my tiller for a pair of overgrown pitchforks.
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I'd rather buy some cheap Chinese tool that looks and functions the same about ten times over before paying more than I did for my tiller for a pair of overgrown pitchforks.
Difference of opinion. I'd prefer to buy something manufactured domestically, and that I don't have to replace every other year because of shoddy workmanship and materials.
Besides, I haven't seen any other forged broadforks that are really any less expensive, and I got a deal by ordering a combination package. Comparisons within the spoiler tags:
Oh, holy crap do I hurt. Me and my 2 helpers (boyfriend and my mom) just spent the entire weekend outdoors doing everything from pruning the cherry tree, visiting three different nurseries to find some plants suited to our site, and finally planting the veggie garden. We still have a lot to do, including reseeding parts of the lawn that got torn up by the excavation machines.
Sweat gnats are a major PITA, gonna have to find something that eats/kills/discourages them.
I was going to get stuff planted in the vegetable garden and my sunflower garden, but it rained like crazy Friday night and there's no way I was going to work in the mud. Gonna go get tomato plants and maybe Miracle Grow and Manure fertilizer stuff to till into the vegetable garden today.
Just got back from the nursery, not gonna mess with manure fertilizer or miracle grow to save money, got nine tomato plants: three San Marzano (the sauce I make calls for them and they are a bitch to find around here, only like one place consistently carries them, a Whole Foods...) which I didn't see at all last year otherwise I would have got them, one Lemon Boy, one Beefsteak, one Super Beefsteak (I think thats what its name was), one Better Boy, and two Big Boys. Bought a Tabasco plant, mostly for fun since I dunno what Im gonna do with it or the Habanero seeds I got since I don't like peppers by themselves, and another purslane thats a different colour and variety than what they had the last time we were there. Gonna have to work tomorrow on getting this stuff planted.
Just got back from the nursery, not gonna mess with manure fertilizer or miracle grow to save money
Check with your local municipality or county, they may have composted leaf/grass mulch for free/low cost that will do a better job amending your soil with organic matter and nutrients than Miracle Grow will ever do. Miracle Grow will contaminate your soil over the years with salts - works great first few years, and then you get diminishing returns. Composted manure is great (note you need composted, not fresh), and sometimes you can get it cheap if you know somewhere that keeps horses, goats, sheep, or cows.
Who would I call to check on such a thing? Mom called a nursery here to check on what the city does and they said they have some deal with some farms, but the nursery had 40lb bags of manure+compost for ~$4. She then called some bulk place that we've got normal mulch from before and they have 40lb bags manure+compost for ~$2, so we're gonna go get some from there later.
my plants aren't doing well at all. Bought a bunch of new seeds, some started to grow and died, others didn't start at all. I know its been a horribly cold spring, but this is ridiculous!
Cold? Where do you live? Here it's been hot as balls, hotter than I ever remember any spring being, so much so that its broken records. Only a few day have been any kind of cold snaps.
Cold? Where do you live? Here it's been hot as balls, hotter than I ever remember any spring being, so much so that its broken records. Only a few day have been any kind of cold snaps.
Mid Michigan, just two hours south is DTW, and its been 20 degrees warmer there...so messed up. Our high's have bounced every other day from upper 40's to low 60's, today is mid 50's...lows have been 30's to 40's, night I got back from FL it was 28...
Who would I call to check on such a thing? Mom called a nursery here to check on what the city does and they said they have some deal with some farms, but the nursery had 40lb bags of manure+compost for ~$4. She then called some bulk place that we've got normal mulch from before and they have 40lb bags manure+compost for ~$2, so we're gonna go get some from there later.
I'd say your local trash/recycling or parks & recreation department would know if they have free mulch around.
Just about have everything planted in the back gardens now, need to go buy Dill and Oregano seeds still. Mom just saw a tree rat in the back digging up some of the corn we planted, hope the bastard likes the critter ridder stuff we bought and the cinnamon oil, peppermint extract, and Blair's After death concoction I sprayed on stuff.
I think that I am DONE planting new stuff. Now to go back and start weeding the stuff that's come up within the last 3 weeks, including a metric **** ton of maple seedlings.
Damn, beans come up fast once they get started. Almost all of them in the two rows that got planted first are coming up and they seem to sprout with leaves already started.
Blackberry bush has a fully ripened berry on it, gonna let it stay for a few more days since there's a number of them that are getting close to fully ripe. Bush has a ton of berries on it too, more than it did last year it seems. There's at least seven canes of new growth coming up on it too. The two thornless ones aren't growing new canes though, they've had a few flowers come up which have turned into berries.
4.25 lbs in the past few days, still got a bunch of unripe ones on it. Dunno what it is, but so damn many of them getting ripe at the same time. Last year it was only a couple handfuls a day, enough to have with breakfast each morning.
Our blackberries have been producing between 1 and 2 cups a day for a couple of weeks now. We haven't done any preserves with them, just eaten a ton of fresh berries...well and More made a giant blackberry pie, which was delicious.
Our blackberries have been producing between 1 and 2 cups a day for a couple of weeks now. We haven't done any preserves with them, just eaten a ton of fresh berries...well and More made a giant blackberry pie, which was delicious.
Thats what mine did last year, the weather or something has caused it to have a crapton of ripe ones all at the same time this year. I really didn't want to do something like this till I had multiple bushes going since I like eating the fruit, but I would have to have eaten a hell of a lot of berries with what we've got this year.
Just about everything I planted in the vegetable garden has come up except for horseradish and one asparagus (out of 20 planted).
Got some nice white Kinnebec potatoes in there and I'm hilling them to increase yield. Ebenezer onions are going like gangbusters. Sweet Hungarian peppers are blooming and some fruits are starting. Ramapo tomatoes are blooming, need to set up fences because it's obvious that the deer like the baby green tomatoes and have bitten them off already.
I still want to get some carrots, cukes, and cauliflower in - probably will do cukes now, wait until late summer to put in carrots and cauliflower as they like cooler weather.
Yesterday I went out with a spray of pulvarized habaneros and garlic to keep the deer from eating the baby tomatoes. The hostas got a similar treatment except those got a puree of spearmint that was going a bit wild in one of the ornamental beds.
Potatoes are mutants, I swear - they need to have more soil piled up on them already, and I just did it Sunday!!
Goddamn gladiolus don't last at all, first one to open only opened a few days again and the bottom flowers are already wilted and about to fall off and the top ones aren't even open yet. Six of them have flower stalks in my boxed in garden, while only two of them in the side garden have them right now. All the opened / opening ones are purple. The ones that we bought and planted a few weeks ago because they were all on sale at Wal-Mart are coming up, like 32/40 of them in the back, I planted another 60 out in front a couple days ago so they havent started coming up yet. Really need to take pictures of all my stuff.
Goddamn gladiolus don't last at all, first one to open only opened a few days again and the bottom flowers are already wilted and about to fall off and the top ones aren't even open yet.
The trick I've heard with gladiolus is not to plant them all at the same time. You stagger the planting so that you always have some in bloom.
I didn't do that, considering I don't even know if what I planted is still truly viable, having sat neglected in my basement for an entire year.
Tomato plant growing in a Topsy Turvy we bought for ***** and giggles
Four sunflowers came up as volunteers by my back porch, there were four others on the other side of the fence in the cracks b/w the slabs of concrete making up the driveway, we tried moving them but they all died.
This little bastard and house sparrows aren't even waiting for these to really turn to seeds this year.
Tried to catch it to kill it, but it got away. Havent seen as many of them so far as I did last year.
Red, white, and blue (purple) Gladiolus we bought since they were on sale, to the left of them are lupin seeds, I don't think any of them are coming up yet, and to the left of those are some marigolds grown from seed to try and keep squirrels away. The thing on the far right was some orange flower we saw out on Memorial Day that we dug up and brought home, didn't go too well.
Eight tomato plants of various types.
Beans in the front, peas in the back. To the left of them is supposed to be basil, only a few of them have come up and I don't think Im gonna get any more than whats come up already.
Dill for the...
pickling type Cucumbers.
Corn
All of the sunflowers you can actually see in this pic and the next few are all volunteers, what seeds I did plant this year aren't coming up fast / getting enough sun now because of all of these. Im disappointed the seeds I planted aren't coming up because I wanted some red sunflowers this year.
cockscomb, coral type, all volunteer and more plants than we had last year. The seeds we collected and planted out in front aren't doing ****.
Lupins from last year, this is the best we've ever had them do, usually they are small and only get a few leaves and end up dying. If they come back, they do the same thing. The big one by itself to the right of the middle has a ton of leaves on it, but they've all started curling up and acting funny. Dunno if its because Ive touched it too much or what, but its still getting more leaves. Christ I hope one gets a flower spike, we have had such shitty luck with lupins.
Carrots, can't really see any other than that large clump. Dunno why so few have come up, like 10 have come up from a seed strip we planted which was 300 seeds, the ones that are really coming up are some purple carrots that were just loose seeds, but they ain't doing much better. Bottom of the picture is where oregano and chives are supposed to be, but none are coming up.
Watermelon
Large zinnias left over from last year's plants
Gladiolus, that orange one is the only one that we have right now thats not some shade of purple. There's eight more with flower spikes showing now in the side garden, I don't know what they are going to do but some don't look like they are going to be purple. Too lazy to go get the fox glove pictures and resize them right now.
Large zinnias on the left, some we bought as plants since they were ringed two-toned colours we've not seen as seeds (they didn't do **** really, which was disappointing), small zinnias at the right.
Gladiolus and various odd looking zinnias.
edit:
What the **** is wrong with Facebook? For the past few weeks, on and off, nothing will load right and all the pages look more or less like this:
Got a bunch of cucumber flowers growing that I didn't see the other day since they are all buried down in a jungle of leaves (speaking of which, wtf is up with the leaves? They don't look like it, but the damn things felt fuzzy). Some of them even had tiny cucumbers already growing out of them, and I didn't know they grew from the butt end of the flower which is kinda funny looking.
edit: Yay, one that isn't purple:
SPOILER:
This one didn't bloom last year. Got a few in the side garden that are definitely yellow.
The vines are spreading like crazy, some are climbing up sunflowers while the other side is almost into my other garden, and they have a metric tonne of flowers on them.
edit:
went out for a second look, damn things are errywhere
SPOILER:
Gonna have to look into getting the stuff to pickle them soon, dunno if my dill is gonna be good enough for this yet. Im OK with using up one row of it since its now shaded by the corn and probably isn't gonna get much bigger. I also didn't know the damn bumps on cucumbers were that sharp.
edit 2: Weighed them up, roughly 11lbs.
Anyone got a recipe for lime dill pickles :o? My mom knew of one, but she doesn't have the recipe and the person that does is older and has Alzheimer's so it'd be kinda hard to get :o
With another 15 LB brought in today, the cucumbers have made at least 50 LBs of fruit. My mom has made 2 quarts of Bread and Butter pickles, 7 quarts of Lime Pickles (after cooking it only filled 5 though), two sets of 7 quarts of Dill Pickles made with the dill weve been growing. I dunno wtf we're gonna do with this latest batch, if she makes more pickles we'll probably need more jars.
Have several largeish watermelons going, found several more in the past few days that are starting up. Biggest one is roughly softball sized. Need to take pictures of them.
Have several largeish watermelons going, found several more in the past few days that are starting up. Biggest one is roughly softball sized. Need to take pictures of them.
A tip I read about growing melons is to cut milk jugs in half lengthwise, poke some drainage holes in the bottom, and use them like cradles for the melons to keep them off the ground - helps prevent rodent damage and rot from resting on the ground.
Lost a watermelon, was the first one we saw getting big too. It hadn't grown for the past few days, not like the softball sized one and the now baseball sized one thats suspended by the fence because the dumb vine didn't go back down to the ground after climbing it.
My mom likes the Lime Pickles she made, Im not a huge fan of them because I don't like sweet pickles. We opened a jar of the Dill ones early, only been ten days and it said they should be ready in 3-4 weeks, hoooooooooooly **** these things taste great. They're a bit soft, which I don't like pickles to be, but they are the best ones Ive ever tasted and crazy salty.
My only plant still growing is my cherry tomato one, has had flowers for weeks. I have 3 plants that are still green but haven't grown a mm, two that are half dead(one of those very sudden), and like 10 that have died since planting.
I think I'm going to organize my shed this weekend, my tools and pots and sacks of assorted soil amendments are all over the place and it's driving me nuts.
Maybe I'l also do some carpentry and build a potting bench from all the scraps I've accumulated over the years (got some ideas from http://tipnut.com/potting-bench-plans/), and fix the hole in the floor where my foot went through rotted-out plywood.
Jesus Christ cucumbers grow like crazy, mom brought in another 10 lb today. These things have made at least 85 pounds of fruit.
Brought in some corn to eat with dinner tonight, seems like the plants are only making one ear/plant this year for some reason. My corn plants sure as **** look better than any others Ive seen in gardens around town, ours are fairly tall and thick, while most of the other ones Ive seen are thin and short as hell.
I need to dig up a carrot or two and see wtf they are doing, the leaf parts on them look pretty big now and have been for a while.
Nothing, I've not fertilized any of my plants this year other than tomatoes a couple of times. Well, there's manure compost stuff in the dirt, but there wasn't that much of it in any one spot.
Nothing, I've not fertilized any of my plants this year other than tomatoes a couple of times. Well, there's manure compost stuff in the dirt, but there wasn't that much of it in any one spot.
Compost is excellent stuff. I have a CompostTumbler and basically any non-meat kitchen scraps and yard waste has been going in there. It's already broken down an entire 32 gallon garbage can's worth of grass clippings from our first mow of the year (we have a mulching mower so if it's kept at a reasonable length we don't have to bag it); a lot of weeds and prunings; and countless leftover white rice, bread, and other stuff that'd gone moldy in the fridge.
OK, I think I may need an intervention. Within the past month I ordered a crapton of plants, bulbs, and seeds for the fall and spring planting seasons.
Decided to pick the first red pepper off my Tabasco plant and try it, **** me running this **** is nothing like using Naga Jolokia hot sauce, this is the worse heat pain Ive ever felt from something like this. Feels bad mad I cannot even fathom eating a straight up naga jolokia pepper after this
Damn, this tomato soup I made from tomatoes and basil from the garden is some good stuff. Dunno what Im going to do with all this basil, more of it than I will ever use still out there.
Damn, this tomato soup I made from tomatoes and basil from the garden is some good stuff. Dunno what Im going to do with all this basil, more of it than I will ever use still out there.
Try making some basil pesto & slather it on everything - chops, pasta, you name it. Crushed basil leaves in water is a good fly repellent. You can also chop and freeze it with a bit of olive oil and have some on hand until next growing season.
My biggest tomato thus far weighed in at a hefty 15.6 oz. That's nearly a pound. We've had some seriously weird weather which is causing blossom end rot on some of the fruits (due to lack of calcium), but it seems that a foliar spray called Rot Stop is helping.
The biggest tomatoes we've had have weighed over a pound, but just off of the one plant thats supposed to make huge ones, dunno what all of them have weighed since I really only bothered weighing the few that were easily over a pound. Problem with them is that they grow all weird and aren't fully ripe on the inside.
I'm beginning to get sick of fresh tomatoes and peppers, but they keep producing and setting new flowers. I think it's time to start dumping produce on neighbors. We already gave away a few pounds of tomatoes to friends.
On Sunday I pulled up a few potato plants that had withered, quite disappointed with the yield. Only one plant had a really nice sized tuber, and it was rotten through - my thumb went right through its mushy center. Hoping I get better results from the other plants, which haven't started the autumn die back yet.
Thai and Italian basil plants are going like mad. We keep them pinched so they don't bolt.
I tried taking photos of my new wildflower garden, but my phone camera didn't save them properly, I have to get out with my point and shoot or boyfriend's DSLR and take some photos. Will post when I get some nice shots.
Our tomatoes have stopped making anything new, the pepper plant hasnt made new flowers in weeks and is completely full of peppers. Dug up carrots last week, none of the purple ones were purple, just orange, and all short, stubby things. Dunno what went wrong with them. Started cutting down sunflowers that are spent and have all the seeds eaten off of them yesterday.
So I knew cockscombs made a lot of seeds, but jesus they make a lot of seeds:
SPOILER:
Those are all from that single flower, that came off the tallest of the plants we had which was six feet tall which broke during a storm a few days ago, and it didn't even have many flowers on it compared to other ones which spread out instead of growing stupid tall. If we have weather like this again next year, I can only imagine the ridiculous amounts of plants were going to have. There's at least ten times over the amount of seeds from that one flower than what we bought and planted last year.
Pulled off another 2lb of fruit today, not too much left on it now 
I have a CompostTumbler and basically any non-meat kitchen scraps and yard waste has been going in there. It's already broken down an entire 32 gallon garbage can's worth of grass clippings from our first mow of the year (we have a mulching mower so if it's kept at a reasonable length we don't have to bag it); a lot of weeds and prunings; and countless leftover white rice, bread, and other stuff that'd gone moldy in the fridge.
