What a cool idea!

Larry, You're gonna be busy!

My redneck rebar is limbs cut from cedar trees, of which we have an endless supply.

Every year I threaten to plant bamboo and grow my own for garden use, but we only have 14.4 acres and I don't know if there's room on it for us and bamboo too. I'd hate to see the bamboo get out of control and start crowding out the cedar trees and Johnson grass......and, see there, maybe I should plant some bamboo right next to a cedar grove and just let them slug it out and see who wins.

All kidding aside, we bought a bundle of 40 pieces of rebar last week, and I was shocked at how much it has gone up in price since the last time we purchased some.

Dawn

Dawn, I have never used bamboo before, "Fishing Cane" as we called it when I was a kid. I hope to use the larger pieces for trellis, smaller ones for a "Shade cloth", and grind the tops and limbs for mulch. I tried to get another load of it today but the wind was so strong that it kept blowing it off the truck.

The treated fence boards I like to use have gone up 50% from last year. I bought 100' of #4 rebar last year and decided that there had to be a cheaper way. I still have 4 cattle panels, but if this bamboo works like I hope it will I wont be buying any more cattle panels either.

Larry

Us rednecks will use anything that gets the job done, am i right. LOL

I was re potting some cane begonias and needed a stake. Well we had just winter pruned the apple trees and the branches were straight as they could be. It would be funny if the branches rooted.

mike

Mike, I dont know about an apple tree, but the first garden I made in town, after growing up the sticks. I cut some small limbs off of a white blooming bush and stuck them in the soil to mark where I had planted what, and they all rooted.

Larry

I might be a little careful about letting that fresh bamboo touch the ground.

Carol, thanks. I had not planned on it coming into contact with the ground. I still plan on all the supports being "T" post or treated lumber.

I am hoping to go to a no till garden. But if I cant make that happen I will still have sturdy trellises that I can mow and till between

Larry

Larry, I think it will work great for a trellis.

I can't work out in this wind and I really need to be out there. It seems that every nice day I have to be somewhere else.

Larry, your truck top looks like our curb on every bulky trash day. :) I didn't have my stuff together enough to make any trellises from our bamboo grove last summer... maybe this will be the year!

Mia, that truck looks like the end of a hard winter, but it has served my well for 16 years. It has been from above the Arctic Circle to the Tropic of Cancer, and if I can find enough junk to fill in the hole in the drivers seat I might just drive it for another 16 years.

Larry

Mike, I love the way we all reuse and recycle what we can. Sticks, limbs, prunings, etc. can be very useful in a garden!

Carol, I was thinking that about the bamboo and hoping it wouldn't root into Larry's wet ground. I've heard of people cutting willow for garden stakes and having it root into the ground.

I have tried (and wished and hoped) every day to work in the garden but instead have spent a significant portion of every day this week at a wild fire that now is over 3000 acres and has burned on both sides of the Red River here. It has been our most frustrating fire in years because it is burning in places you cannot take a firetruck of any size, even with 4-wheel drive. If I don't get to work in my garden all day long tomorrow, I might start getting a little bit cranky.Wading around in wet bottom land sand with firefighters saying "watch out for the quicksand" has given me a whole new appreciation for my compacted clay. I would gladly work out in my garden in the cold wind tomorrow if it means I don't have to be working in smoke and ash and too close to flames for my own good. Actually, our wind is supposed to be low here tomorrow, so maybe I'll get to stay home and play in the dirt.

Larry, Our truck is about the same age as yours and has about 300,000 miles on it. When we bought it, I never would have imagined how much we'd use it and how long it would last. Now that we've finally got it all broken in, I hope it lasts another couple of decades. If there is anything that can be hauled in a pickup, it has been hauled in this truck.

Mia, I always intend to make wattle fences from willow tree trimmings and cedar arbors from rough cedar limbs, and never get around to it. There's just not enough hours in the day.

Dawn

I bought an old truck just for the purpose of being a garden truck, compost hauler, trash hauler, lumber carrier, etc. I always told Al that his Avalanche was a beautiful vehicle to drive or take on a trip, but as a work vehicle it was a "truckette". I needed, and bought, a real work truck and still had my SUV for everything else.

For all of the years we have been married, we each had a good vehicle, and if we went somewhere together, the owner of that vehicle was always the driver. It was almost like, you have a toothbrush, I have a toothbrush, LOL The only exception was if we were on a long trip and needed to share the driving.

Somehow, after I no longer worked, Al decided he liked to drive my car. There was always a reason, like better gas mileage, keeping the miles off of his because mine was cheaper to replace, etc. While true, I think he just liked this car (better than I do, actually) and he was always driving it.

Over a year ago, he got one of those letters from a dealer who wanted him to buy a new truck. He went down to look and I thought he would probably buy a new one. He decided not to buy one, but they offered to buy his truck anyway. He thought about it for a week, and called them and told them he would sell. They told him the check would be waiting by the time he could get there, and it was.

I keep reminding him that I have two vehicles and he has none, but somehow that doesn't seem to bother him. LOL

My truck is not a small truck and has not learned to pass a gas station. It is just fine for local trips, and probably others too, but it drinks too much gas for long trips. I drove a small truck for years while Al drove a Corvette. Guess I was just born to farm, because I always need to haul something.

Dawn, I have heard of fence post taking root, and always wondered if they were willow. I'm not fighting fires like you are, but I feel I'm a little too close to the quicksand lots of days. I seem to have far to much to do. I tried to work outdoors for awhile today but our wind was making the 45 feel like 39 and I just couldn't stay with it. I can't plant anything anyway because we are to be a clear 21 tonight. Next week is looking a little better.

Ha ha, Larry, I meant the bamboo, not the truck! That is a fine-looking vehicle... I often long to be able to haul some bigger things. When we began renovating properties in 2007/2008, the need to drag supplies and tools around increased beyond my little Nissan Altima's capabilities, so when it was time to get a new car, I got a 6 cyl. Toyota Rav4 (mini-SUV) which I love. It's capable of towing a small trailer - not that I ever have - but with the combination of folding down all the seats and removing headrests and what not, I have gotten long countertops, full-size pre-hung exterior doors, storm doors and a whole lot more in it. I hate strapping things to the roof (scares me when I drive, so I creep along like a granny), but I have even done that once.

We are slowly taking back the backyard from our bamboo grove, so we pile bamboo canes at the curb each bulk waste day, and most weekly garbage pick-ups have some jammed into the cans, too. Very rarely have I seen someone stop to take a few bamboo canes and I always have an urge to run screaming to the street "WAIT! COME BACK! I HAVE ALL YOU WANT IN THE BACK YARD!" It's BYOM (Bring Your Own Machete) at our house.

As big of a PITA as the bamboo is, I cannot deny that it looks beautiful and serves a very useful purpose as a two-story privacy screen around our backyard. I am always kind of shocked at how visitors react first time they see it. I see only hours of hard labor, crumbling retaining wall, tiles falling off the aged pool, etc., etc., but a friend came by yesterday and was like "WOW! I love your bamboo!" and I was surprised all over again.

I will need to post a follow-up to our house-hunt bamboo thread to chronicle how effective (or not) the reclaiming of the yard is going. Part of the major difficulty with our situation is that the bamboo had been let run wild for at least a year, maybe more, and it had spread unchecked into the yard and other flowerbeds. As we get it back into the bounds we want it to be within, I am hopeful we will be able to keep it there with minimal effort. I have discovered there are trees growing within the bamboo (an Asian pear and a redbud, at the least), which have grown tall enough that they stick out of the top. As we beat it back, I find a stone edging and those stone "tree rings" like the idea had been to have a nice thin strip of bamboo hedge with a bunch of ornamental trees in front. There is also a few big holly bushes in there, too, and a Yaupon holly.

OK, enough hijacking of Larry's thread with my ramblings. Sorry! Back to redneck rebar!

Carol, Your story about Al's truck just makes me giggle. I cannot believe he sold it without coming home with a replacement. It is a good thing he has a wife who owns two vehicles. : )

This morning when I went outside a little after sunrise to feed and water the animals and to open the greenhouse doors and vents, I discovered that before I left the house yesterday to go to our almost 3,000-acre fire, I forgot to drag the orange tree and lemon tree into the garage. I was so tired when I got home late last night thatI didn't even think of them, although I did make sure all the early tomato plants were inside. The citrus trees were around the corner from where the tomato plants were and I forgot about them. I don't think I'll replace them. Dragging them inside every night only works if you never forget to bring them in on a potentially freezing night. It wouldn't be cost effective to heat the greenhouse only for a couple of citrus trees, so I guess I am through growing them. Our forecast was for 27 degrees and the temperature was still in the upper 30s when I came home and went to bed. When Tim came home from the fire in the early hours this morning, he said the temperature in Love's Valley was at 24 degrees when he left the fire to head home. Even that didn't make a light bulb go off in my head and cause me to ask myself "are the citrus trees inside?" When I got up this morning and saw the Min-Max thermometer showed an early morning low of 24 degrees, I wasn't surprised but I sure was surprised when I saw those citrus trees sitting there with frost on them. Had I put them in the greenhouse before I left for the fire, I think they would have been fine there overnight because it only dropped to 31 degrees.

My gardening time has been so interrupted this week that I feel like I have accomplished virtually nothing. I'm going to leave now to go back to the fire scene to check the perimeters that are accessible without a boat and to ensure that the local residents near the fire don't have any hotspots flaring up near them. I hope to spend the afternoon in the garden though.

Our temperatures look great for the next few days, and I want to get some things done before it rains this weekend.

Dawn

Your citrus' death is exactly what I'm worried about happening one day to mine. I've gotten lucky and remembered so far but one day? ...

I only forget when I go to fires. I think it is just that by the time I come home, my brain is fried and I just want to take a shower and go to bed.

I usually keep citrus fruit trees in pots alive and producing foe 3 or 4 years before I have one of the dreaded freezing nights when I forget and leave them outside.

If I ever bother with citrus again, I'll probably put a reminder on my smartphone so it can beep and remind me around bedtime to go outside and carry the poor babies in.

And I'm trying the other way around- I've planted them in-ground in my greenhouse, so I just have to remember to close it up each night. We should touch base in a few years and see if the pots/smartphone reminders or the in-ground/closing up works better in the long run. I lived for three interminable years in Massachusetts and got several plants from a nursery in Connecticut which has a 100 year-old lemon tree in its greenhouse. I'm hoping to get, you know, a lemon from mine.

Larry, love your haul. I scrounge too. I have parts of a baby crib in my side yard, waiting for me to make an arbor with it. It was free on the curb on big trash pick up day.

Moni

Moni, thanks. I love the free stuff. I hauled 4 loads of bamboo and have it scattered all over the lawn. I am knocking the limbs off of it and grinding them with the lawn mower.

Larry

Ben, I got limes and oranges last year. It was nice while it lasted. Being small trees in containers, they didn't produce a lot, but it is a fun novelty to grow.

I love the scent of citrus blossoms, especially in winter when so little else is blooming and fragrant.

Moni, That's gonna be so cool! I love recycling things into the garden.

Dawn