Because my 2nd tent that has my flats of veggies in it, along with a Platinum Dosi herm (from Inbred Genetics), I had to keep the lights on
a 12 hour cycle to complete the the Platinum Dosi. I cut her/him down last night. I brought the timer back to 18s for better results on the flats of
veggies. I'm now up to 8 and a half flats. 408 starters. I even had a couple of the starter squash plants sending out flowers because of the 12 hour schedule. They
will adapt now that I've switched them back to 18s.
My compost pile will be getting a little smaller at the beginning of the season, as I plan on using a few wheel barrels full of it for the compost in the garden.
I have some left over bags of manure bought last year that worked well and did not seem to have the active ingredients in Grazon that screwed up so
many peoples gardens the last few years. My compost pile is a mix of grass clippings collected in my 3 bag system on my riding mower. Three and a
half acres is a lot of grass clippings for the compost pile. As well, in the fall with all of the trees, I collect a ton of leaves that get chopped and mulched
in the riding mower into the bags are added to the pile. I collect quite a bit of filamentous algae from our pond that gets layered between the grass
clippings. I recently started adding roasted peanut shells to the pile. We go through 2 to 3 25 lb boxes of Hampton farms roasted shelled peanuts over a
years time, and they've been added to the pile as well. The squirrels, birds, and I all love them.
The crushed egg shells and the used coffee grounds will get sprinkled around each of the starter plants. I have 2 full one gallon bags of the hand
crushed egg shells collected over the last year, and 7 one gallon bags of used coffee grounds. All of the melon plants love regular feedings of manure
where the stem comes out of the soil. The egg shells and coffee grounds are sparingly sprinkled around each of the plants.
To lower the weeding time in the garden even more, when I move the 3' wide strips garden fabric to expose new ground, I will put the garden fabric
strips closer together. I still need to leave room for the drip tape irrigation between the rows of the garden fabric. I had thought about covering the
drip tape completely and just have small cut outs for each of the plants, but the drip tape is prone to damage and occasionally needs a boo boo plug
and with the drip tape completely covered, I would not be able to see the leaks in the drip tape. I going to narrow down the the exposed ground in
each row to an inch and a half to two inches, which gives me an area for the drip tape and the plant and much less of an area to weed.
I started adding some cattails from the pond as well to the compost pile. It's a little over 3 foot tall, and around 8' wide x15' long. I have an order pending
from
Homepage , *Uncle Jim's Worm Farm, for a couple thousand leaf worms to add to the compost pile.
Peanut shells too
Cattails also
We save all of our milk jugs and I recently cut the bottoms off 50 of them and then made perforations near the top. I use these on all melon plants which seem to be the most prone to critters browsing them to the ground, but plan on using them as well on some of the weak stemmed starters like cabbages ,brussels sprouts, and broccoli. I leave the milk jugs on them for a few weeks as the plants are starting and then I'll remove them. I was surprised how well they worked on our melon plants the last couple of years.
I'll be narrowing the gap between each of the 3' wide strips of garden fabric to a couple of inches instead of the distance shown in this pic from a couple years ago.
Our Nanking Cherry bushes are in full blossom now.
We will be putting in another half a dozen blueberry bushes as well this spring. Can never have enough blueberries on hand. We eat them almost as fast as we pick them and
I'd like to have enough to make some jam from them.
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