Friday, May 20, 2016

a little garden work today. tomorrow rain moves in to soak todays plantings.



Plans for Today

 move your feet lose your seat 
 
     One of the projects I expect to complete today is to make a new bed for rhubarb I intend to plant, just another item to get out of the greenhouse that I have been watering and taking care of. I have over 15 rhubarb plants and should make a pretty good bed of rhubarb. I am, putting in full sun and in an area where I can add water if necessary. I wasn’t going to put in a garden and instead just plant some tomato plants maybe in a tomato tower. My latest plans call for adding tilled strips to the garden and about 2 ft. wide and spacing rows out 5 feet wide( I have a big garden space and can do this . this allows me to mow with the riding mower between the rows eliminating weeding and tilling) . I will plant tomato plants in towers, and beans in tilled rows 2foot wide with a grass strip in between.
     What I am looking for is reducing the weeding as much as possible and concentrating my fertilization efforts in a certain much smaller area. I will till with the tiller and then add compost in those areas where only the plants will go. Under the tomato tower I will till just that area and space under the towers so that I can also mow in  the opposite direction reducing the weed eating also. I need to plan how to do this so I have plenty of space to turn the mower around and be able to basically mow on all side of the towers. A small amount of hand weeding may be needed and  could be reduced by using straw or hay to mulch plants after installing the towers. 

 last years tomato and potato towers after planting.(plus big finger)

     I do have some potatoes also for my potato tower also, and will try that concept once again this year. I was able to get over fifty pounds of  potatoes from that one five pound bag of seed potatoes by using the potato tower. I still have the wood and will reuse it again this year. There was hardly any weeding involved. As far as cultivating or doing anything besides planting, there was no extra effort involved. I guess in effect this was what I was looking for. I am trying to get veggies with as much yield as possible with as little work as possible . I want to do this by mulching or mowing and weed eating, as I can do this in a much shorter time.



this is last years straw bale garden and for the most part worked well except the bales rotted this year and would require one to buy new bales yearly. at 5dollars per bale, i doubt one would save much by gardening for themselves. this year i just plan on tilling a 2foot wide strip and installing the arbor to allow the beans to grow vertically. grass strips on both sides will allow me to mow in between with the riding lawnmower eliminating some of the work in weeding and tilling. 


      Another plant I intend to plant this year is pumpkins and this I will do after I see how much garden space I have left after doing the other plants. These I will plant in rather large hills away from everything else, and  mow and weed eat as long as I can then I just plan on letting the vines go and hopefully have them close enough together to matt the ground with their large leaves  and hopefully slowing down weed growth till harvesting. I also have a couple of areas for mass plantings of flowers. This should round out my gardening needs for this year. 

 the pumpkin vines will take over and cover most of everything. planting them alone is best and just letting the vines go is probably the best way to cultivate them. 
 
      I need to balance out my work schedule and be able to spend some time on working on my house. I have done some work but I seem to get side tracked doing other things. It is that time of year to plant and if I don’t concentrate some effort on planting garden  and getting yard into shape. Then I will have missed the opportunity for the year. The house will be there. But you need to planting he spring if you expect to have any harvest at all in the fall. I plan on doing some canning this fall as well fill a freezer full of veggies.

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