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momofsteelex3

Is this a test?

momofsteelex3
10 years ago

Is there some form of Gardener's Club with a gardener initiation test no one told me about? Do one of you know where I live and you keep sneaking over here at night giving me tests to see if I can hack it? Bc if there is, do I pass yet? 1st the beets, then the broc., now..Well I walked outside last night to cover my tomato plants in case we got hail, and my whole beet/onion plot was covered in mushrooms! I have never seen so many mushrooms in one place. Ones that weren't there just hours before! They are all dead this morning of course, but that doesn't mean I don't have to pull them and get their nastiness out of my onion and beet patch.

My husband just laughed at me when I said that if I had to keep being tested on how badly I want to garden, I may just quit yet, or buy my way into the club.

Of course the mushrooms came after the neighbors stray dog they took in and don't care for or feed, left a pile of worms in my front lawn, dug up the front corner so that I am going to have to bring in dirt and grass seed, oh and he tore up and destroyed my 7 year old's fairy garden and her plants, so I was already in a fowl mood.

So now I am just waiting for mother nature to drop baseball sized hail..it only seems fitting right? We spent so much time covering our plants from old man winter, it has to be mother nature's turn.

Really, I am just laughing, bc its all one can do. I find some humor in the fact that the 1st time I decide to get all gun-ho, and do it the right way, I keep meeting these trials. Here I was thinking my biggest thing to deal with would be could I keep it alive in 100+ degrees, or how big would my water bill be. You can tell I am a total newbie, and am learning to expect the unexpected, bc its just not as easy as some make it look. I tip my hat to the farmers of America.

Comments (10)

  • luvabasil
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Amen, Sista!!!!!!!!
    First, if you find where to send the payment for the buy in, please let me know.
    Second, dogs. Totally understand. I am personally a dog person. BUT, if you take responsibility for the dog, take responsibility. Our neighbors at least had an electric fence (not a fan), but it was buried way into my garden area. Dogs aren't my problem, Gophers. Yesterday, I am digging planting holes in the beds, and the holes were being filled back in before I could plant. I thought I was nuts until I caught him! Cute, or not, I was headed for the 22. Until I relaized I couldn't reach the bullets. I mean, heck, I am just now getting the tomatoes in the ground! I am so so late!
    So, I got the Makers Mark, a chair, and a big shovel. And waited. I was going to play bop a gopher, All I needed was a Checy Chase hat (I actually got my husband one - we even do the gopher dance) Then I got so tickled, I had to potty. When I got back, the little sucker was coming up under the bottle of Makers Mark!.....I should have let him have it.Maybe he would be a happy goher and go away.
    Sorry about your mushrooms. I had that issue last year when I dug in a bunch of mulch into the soil and water it a BUNCH. When the extension office quite laughing (I was in a panic and called them), I decided to join this blog. The extension office told me to reduce water, reduce fertilizer and they will eventually go away.
    Good luck, my friend. And don't forget me when you find the payment office.

  • wbonesteel
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ah, if it were easy, anyone could play!

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Bre, The only way to get into the club is via hard work, pain, misery, total dejection, mind-numbingly repetitive chores like digging out Johnson grass and bermuda grass, etc. You can't just dip your finger in green paint and join the Green Thumb Club. You have to earn it, woman, earn it! (giggle) About the time the garden has driven you to either drinking, overindulging in chocolate (as a painkiller, of course) or tears, you'l l have earned your way into the club. You could be there right now.

    In return, you will experience glorious moments of joy, peace and happiness when your faith in a tiny seed is repaid in spades, or at least in oodles of fresh produce, the incredible fragrance of delightful flowers, and even the sight of tiny dew drops resting on a delicate flower petal.

    One day, and probably sooner than you think, you will grumpily find yourself standing in the kitchen surrounded by mounds of produce you cannot possibly deal with in the time available to you, and you'll realize that something went bizarrely wrong and somehow you got a great harvest....even the OK winds, thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes, high winds, neighbor's dogs, gophers, grasshoppers, cottontail rabbits, deer and flash floods pouring through your garden did not deny you your harvest. As you wearily try to decide "what am I going to do with all this stuff?", a smile will dance across your face because you'll know right then that you truly belong to the club and you earned your membership in the club.

    And, by the way, everyone who tries, who pours their heart and soul and very being into creating their garden is an automatic member of the club from the first day they start, even if they feel like it is a club that they don't yet belong to. This is a club where we all earn our membership in the club each and every day.

    As for the mushrooms, try to view them as a positive thing. To get mushrooms, you need soil with some good biological activity occurring in it, so congratulate yourself on that. When the soil has adequate organic matter and you have enough moisture and sometimes excess fertility or not enough wind flow, mushrooms just happen. Gardens with soil low in organic matter don't grow mushrooms as often as those with adequate organic matter. Remember that the first time you encounter slime mold (google it!) in your garden. Sometimes Ma Nature just sends us all kinds of surprises.

    I never get hail when I expect it. Baseball sized hail will not fall when you are at home and have covered up all your plants with every available bucket, trash can, deer netting, cardboard boxes, quilts etc. Baseball sized hail will fall when you head off to the store or the park or out of town with a "nothing will happen here" attitude in your head and leave the garden naked and exposed to the elements. For what it is worth, we've lived here 15 years and had hail in our forecast about 3,000 times and only once have we had severe damage. Even then, since it occurred in May, all the plants regrew from the ground and produced. They produced late, but they still produced. (Well, corn won't, but most everything else will.) Last year we had hail 11 times, but never larger than nickles and damage was minimal. I wish I had a nickle for every day I worried endlessly about big hail that never came.

    My dad's garden was destroyed once by baseball to softball sized hail when I was about 19 or 20 years old, and he never said a word about it, but that likely was because he was too busy getting the house and cars fixed. If your place ever gets hit by baseball-sized hail, I can guarantee you that your garden won't even rate high on the list of things you have to think about and deal with.

    Luvabasil, I hate gophers. Usually the cats keep them under control, but sometimes they cannot because the gophers (and voles, which we have here more so than gophers) are more active at night when the cats are inside for their own safety since our property is full of predators that prowl at night. I've had good luck spraying the garden with a mole/gopher repellent that contains castor oil. It coats everything in the soil and makes the plant roots and soil-borne insects unpalatable to the rodents that like them. We only had moles the first year, and the cats wiped them out, but the voles and gophers try to move back into the garden every year and the cats and I have to work at removing them for a while.

    Both of y'all already belong to the club, by the way, or you wouldn't be posting on this forum.

    Dawn

  • wbonesteel
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Exactly what Dawn said!

    I've been playing with plants of one kind or another for the best part of thirty years. About once a week -or a few days after I've started the latest project- I ask myself just wth I was thinking. Then, when I'm finished, I see the results of the work I've done, and that's very satisfying. Very satisfying. ...or... I think about fresh peas, straight from the garden or those wonderful spring potatoes or the burst in your mouth flavor of a fresh strawberry...and the chocolate mint or the fresh asparagus? OMG.

    ...and when I see a beautiful little vignette in the garden, like this...

    Having people gawk and/or stop by to ask about the garden? Yeah. Just icing on the cake. Not really necessary, but nice. Real nice.

  • luvabasil
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sooooo. Please share exactly how you have your grass behave so well.........
    It is awesome. I would stop and stare, too. In total admiration............
    Luvabasil

  • wbonesteel
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We have a bare minumum of amendments in the sod. We keep it mowed pretty short and water it about once a week. Then, I use a line trimmer to 'sculpt' the edges of the grass after we mow it..

    About three times per year, in the summer, we use water soluble all-purpose miracle grow on everything in the front garden, including the sod.

    The sod in the front garden isn't as perfect as it looks in the pic. We do have moles at one end of the garden. That part of the garden is a sprained ankle waiting to happen. In fact, the pic above shows that part of the garden. I think you can see the lumpiness, if you look close.

    In many places there are a number of weeds, as well. If I weren't planning on replacing the sod with edible groundcovers, we'd use weed and feed on it and then use poison to kill all of the moles, today. In a few weeks, that would make it 'pop', for sure and certain.

  • wbonesteel
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The more I think about it, if we were to keep the grass in our garden, we'd have to use a liquid based weed killer and 'spot' spray the weeds. Time consuming, but...better than taking a chance on killing off the veggies. We'fdprobably use a 10-10-20, or 10-15-15 or something like ithat, anyway, on the grass as fertilizer.

    Using weed and feed on grass that close to beds full of veggies? Probably not a good idea, now that I think about it.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I think you're right about the weed and feed. I 'd be concerned about using it so close to broad leaved veggies.

    Have you decided which edible ground covers you are going to plant?

    Because our big garden out front is in clay, the pathways are only mulched because they get so compacted from foot traffic that I don't think any desirable ground cover type plant would survive the summers in them. It works out well because after the pathway mulch decomposes I scoop it up into the beds and then put in new mulch. In that sense, my garden pathways are sort of a sheet compost in place in the garden.

    With the brand new garden out back, I have a simple pathway mulched with grass clippings and old spoiled hay right now. In a couple of years, after doing some more soil improvement, I want to put in a flagstone path with some sort of creeping ground over in between the flagstones. I am thinking of maybe some forms of creeping thyme. I'd love to be able to use something like alpine strawberries as an edging in this area, but believe the abundant small wildlife critters would get all the strawberries. I want to leave a good bit of space between the stones specifically for the ground covers. I love the way stone pathways filled with creeping ground covers look.

    This garden plot has sandy-silty soil devoid of organic matter, so for the next few years I will be doing a lot of soil improvement there to increase its fertility and tilth. I have never really had well-drained soil ever before, and cannot believe how much easier it is to work with than heavily-compacted clay. There always has been an area of sandy soil at the far end of the big garden, but it is too close to big trees for me to be able to grow much in it due to the heavy shade. In our early years here when the trees were smaller and provided less shade I could grow carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes there but as the trees grew I had to keep abandoning more and more of the west end. Now it has mostly shade-loving flowers outside the current garden fence, and inside the fence I use it for cool-season veggies that mostly finish up by the end of May. I replace them with shade tolerant herbs and flowers and in a couple of the sunniest spots I still can get a good harvest from peppers or tomatoes as long as they get full sun until 1 pm.

    Of course, the well-drained soil out back comes with a price--gophers and voles--but I am hoping our cats help control them out back as well as they do in the big garden out front. We also have a deer trail beside that garden, and every morning and every night there are cottontail rabbits everywhere outside the garden fence. I imagine eventually they'll find a way inside, under or thru the fence. We did a much better job fencing the new garden plot, using everything we learned over a decade or more with the old garden's fence. In the very beginning when we built our first garden here, we were slow to realize how relentlessly the wildlife would work to circumvent the fencing.

    The best thing I can say about this new area is that I didn't find any Bermuda grass in it when we rototilled it. It was just mixed native prairie grasses and forbs. After having to fight Bermuda in the big garden relentlessly, I am more excited about the new garden area than anyone possibly could believe.

    I love the look of grass pathways in gardens but the maintenance they require might make me crazy. We already mow and edge about two acres so I get my fill of grass maintenance without even stepping foot in the garden. Sometimes in the summer months, it seems like all we do is mow the yard and then use the string trimmer to tidy up all the 'edges'. By the time you're through with it all, it is time to do it all over again.

    Dawn

  • momofsteelex3
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    luvabasil- If I figure out who to send the buy-in to I will for sure let you know! Haha! I am a dog person too, I have 2 dogs, and would have more if my husband let me. However, this community dogging as I call it, doesn't suit me. I get people just dump strays out here, but our neighbors took it in, named it, fed it, gave it shelter, then he started getting out of their yard, and now they could care less about it. So I have seen the other neighbor feeding it, even though he was cussing to me about it..If he touches my other gardens that I have $100's of dollars invested into, I will lose it.

    Gophers- I feel your pain- we have moles, and if its possible, I think gophers too given then varying sizes of holes. But man, Makers Mark, and Bop a Gopher sounds awesome! LOL! Seriously, the getting tickled that you had to potty! He wanted your Maker's Mark!! You should have shared! But I think he's be back for more! I killed a mole a few weeks back and now my husband won't let me forget it. In my defense I was raking and he came up under my rake...I can't help it that my natural reaction was to kill him. All I could think reading your reply was we would get along like peas!

    wbonesteel- I know if it were easy everyone would do it, but dang, where's the A for effort! LOL I know that it will be worth all the blood, sweat and tears in the end when I am eating that tomato sandwich. And I would stop and drool over your garden too! I hope someday that the grass around my house looks that good!

    Dawn- I wouldn't say I dipped my thumb into green paint...maybe more of an avocado color..and I am such a klutz it was my whole hand! I hope I am earning it..I have left so much sweat, blood and tears out there. Now I am waiting for the fruits of my labor. In the meantime, you are spot on, I will fill it with nice cold beers, and chocolate! I am waiting for the flower garden to look killer and not so freshly planted. And I did smile at the fact that the beans and corn I just planted last week are coming up beautifully. Now to get thin them and pull more weeds. I have decided that is the worst of the worst about gardening, the weed pulling. And just when you think your done, you find more. I just keep telling myself, one day, there will be no weeds...In 20 years.

    I think I can deal with the forces of nature, its part of it, its all trail and error...but the dog thing was just too much for me. Not only did it effect me, hurt my pocketbook, but it crushed my 7 year old..and we all know what happens when you mess with our kids. I think the only thing that saved me from marching over to the neighbors, was I just marched into the house instead and had a nice cold beer. But like I told luvabasil, heaven help us all if he digs up my flower garden by the house, or if he finds a way around the fence/gate into my veggie garden.

    I can't wait to reap what I have sown, in form of veggies coming out my ears. Then I will know all the work, all the posts I drove ya'll crazy with, all the reading, researching, learning I have done the past several months was worth it.

    Its funny, bc I don't think the soil was fit for beets, but apparently, I have done something right with it. I googled smile mold...that is just nasty! But now I have something to look forward to finding lol!

    I told my husband yesterday afternoon, let's just go cover the plants, bc if we do, we won't see a drop of rain, and I was right! So I totally agree about it will happen when you don't want it to.

    And I wouldn't consider posting on here belonging to the club, I call it fishing for knowledge, but thanks lady!

  • wbonesteel
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ok, Dawn, first (pun not intended): a list of the edible groundcovers we've been looking at: prostrate creeping rosemary, creeping thyme, golden creeping oregano and corsican mint as our first choices. Second choices: lingon berries, sweet woodruff, wintergreen, nodding onion, bunchberry. We looked at alpine strawberries, but I'm not certain they'd work in our 7b climate in Stephens County (We're almost a zone 8, here.). Mebbe in full or partial shade? Or like you say, as a border plant in certain locations. Might not work as a groundcover. I dunno either way about that one. It is an interesting thought, which is why I explored the idea. They are pretty little things.

    I wanted one variety of edible groundcover in each room of the front garden as part of a larger theme representing the four seasons of the year. I'm not sure if I can pull that off and make it fit with all of the other design elements, but I'd like to give it a go. Like I say, though. We're not gonna replace the sod for another year or two, at least.

    Creeping thyme, aka mother of thyme, would work between flagstones on a path, if everything else will let it grow.

    Currently, the paths in our front garden look pretty good with the bermuda...but, it is an ongoing maintenance issue. Especially until we get the boxes around the raised beds. More time consuming than I had originally envisioned for this garden, anyway. The idea, there, was to have every square inch in edible plants with as little ongoing maintenance as we could possibl\y achieve. Presently, we've been hoping that most of the weeds in those paths can be kept under control by keeping the grass short. otoh, there have been some beautiful little wildflowers growing in those paths, too. Short, itty-bitty things. The taller weeds in those paths have pretty much died off, at this point.

    Running a line trimmer around two acres? Yeah, that's a bit of a job. More time consuming than most people might think, depending on how many objects, trees and beds are in the acreage. otoh, once you're finished, it all looks wonderful. Until the next time. ;) ...and I wouldn't want to mow it with a push mower of any kind! That'd take a healthy man all day to accomplish. So, I just know you're using a riding mower for most of it. Even with a good riding mower w/ a 48" deck, and a line trimmer, you're looking -at least- at half a day's work, for one person.

    Having more space is nice, but if you want it to look half nice, it takes a bit more work and dedication. A lot of folks don't think about that before they buy such a property.

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