Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
ALMOST BEEKEEPING - RELATED TOPICS => FARMING & COUNTRY LIFE => Topic started by: jdesq on December 28, 2006, 03:04:40 pm
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I want to add a 30 foot by 70 foot garden to my yard and I'm looking for suggestions on how to bust up the sod for the first time. I have a Troy rototiller but it is no good at breaking sod. This is too small of an area to bring in a tractor but too big to do by hand with a shovel. What would be the best way to do it? if I had to rent some equipment what would you reccomend? I appreciate all suggestions.
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Gee my Troy built does a great job on sod. I set the depth control at 2 inches for the first pass over the garden plot. I set the depth control at 4 inches for the second pass over the entire plot and finish up with the depth control set to max on the third time over the plot. It takes awhile with a fresh piece of ground but I end up a great soil mix.
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So to do it, or back to old times hard work :-)
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You can do it the lazy way if you like. Kill off the grass with Glysophate, cover it with an inch of newspaper, water it really well, then straw over the top. Cover the straw with a sprinkling of manure, water in well, more straw, more manure,more water,repeat till you have a good pile three feet high, atch it shrink down, keep it moist, wait a couple of weeks or so, then plant through the straw.
Its called no till gardening and really works.
The days of turning over the soil to a depth of a couple of feet are long gone. The idea is to leave the nutrients, bacteria and microbes that live in the top 6 inches of soil where they are.
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I use the no til method in raised beds. Just build the beds, layer in the compost and plant.
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a turning plow would be the right tool but then you would have to follow with a disk before you rotary till.
if you've got a neighbor with a tractor and a plow and a disk i'm sure he wouldn't mind doing it for you for a nominal fee especially if he's looking for some seat time. i have a 50x100 area i want to plant in strawberries and will be plowing tomorrow.
if that is not available then strip the sod off with a square shovel and then have at it with the tiller.
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When breaking sod,you will have to make a few light passes with the troy bilt.Set it for shallow depth and increase it with each pass.I have a 50 x 50 garden in some of the hardest earth you can get.
Every time it gets easier except for the rocks I need to harvest every year!
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You can do the no-till garden thing without the use of glysophate with layers of newspaper and layers of compost. No need for chemicals whatsoever.
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You can do the no-till garden thing without the use of glysophate with layers of newspaper and layers of compost. No need for chemicals whatsoever.
have you been thinking of the cemicals in the newspaper! I think of glue and printing ink, If you go Organnic ???
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You can do the no-till garden thing without the use of glysophate with layers of newspaper and layers of compost. No need for chemicals whatsoever.
have you been thinking of the cemicals in the newspaper! I think of glue and printing ink, If you go Organnic ???
The ink used in most newspapers here in the US is soy based and totally bio friendly. I have no idea what kind of glue you're thinking of, it isn't used here.
The newspaper method is mentioned in many organic publications, I wouldn't recommend it if it weren't.
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I don't till anymore, just brings the weed seeds up to the surface. Put some thick pads of newspaper where you want your beds, then water heavily, then do what mick said, or get the book "lasagna gardening" Cheap and easy and your beds are ready to plant.
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I do not agree with this newspaper thing. So many say it is a great thing. But, I must surely wonder if it is like adding too much sawdust. Newspaper comes from wood and, correct me if I am wrong, but does not wood use up lots of nitrogen in the soil? Making acidic soil? I may be on the wrong path.
I would sooner just plain and simply use other stuff like (if you don't have an enormous area), bagged mushroom/steer manures and products. Great day. Cindi
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any mulch that is going to decompose uses nitrogen from the soil.
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That's right, any mulch that decomposes will use nitrogen from the soil. What the newspaper does is smother the grass, and no amount of mulch will do this. This isn't something I dreamed up, it's advice given my any number of gardening books and organic gardening information I've read over the years. It works. I've done it myself several times with great success (and I'm no newbie to gardening, I've been gardening here in this yard since 1978, had a successful gardening business over the years, and started gardening when I was a little girl - we won't discuss how long ago that was! 8-)
I would never recommend the use of chemicals to kill turf, which was the other alternative.
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Ann, OK, great, thank you very much for the information. I do have some rather stubborn places where I would love to deaden the wild stuff. I refuse to use any herbicides, so it has always been tilling and hand pulling. So, now I shall employ the newspaper on some spots. Awesome.
I have a small rototiller that is called a "Mantis". It has the power of nothing that you could ever believe on this earth. It weighs about 20 pounds no more. I have tilled heaven and earth with this little machine. It bumps rocks out of the ground that are twice the size of a softball, it just unearths them and they go bumping off to the side. You could never believe it unless you have seen it. I have spent hundreds of hours, along with my sister using it too, to cultivate areas around here.
If you ever get a chance go back and look at my post about my rock pile. All the rocks that are smaller than a basketball were bounced out of the earthy by this mightly rototiller. I can go on about things. But if one ever wants a very simple, but EXTREMELY powerful little lightweight rototiller, with a lifetime guarantee on the tynes, this one is for you. It was about $500 CDN, but honestly over the past 3 seasons of tilling, it has paid for itself over and over. My husband has the big one. It is a husqvarna, rear driven big daddy. It does a good job too, but it is alittle large for me to operate, mine is woman size (or even man sized). My grandson who is 12 can run it too. Simple.
Does anyone else have this Mantis cultivator? The site is below. I highly recommend this piece of machinery, never regretted a penny spent with it. Great day. Cindi
http://mantis.com/ttrack.asp
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I LOVE my Mantis! :) It's a great little machine. I had the two-stroke for years and never had any trouble with it. Two years ago a tree fell on my house (a bit of damage) and shed (squashed it!), and the Mantis got smushed, too. The insurance company gave me enough money that I bought the four stroke Honda engine. It's much quieter and more powerful.
As for the newspaper, you really only need five sheets or so, it doesn't have to be very thick.
I spent yesterday afternoon out in the garden spreading manure on my asparagus patch and weeding. I can't imagine weeding in January, in unfrozen earth, but I did it! What a strange winter. It is supposed to cool off this weekend, and snow by Monday, I'll believe it when I see it. High temp today is predicted to be 70!!
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Ann, I could not actually believe that anything could be more quieter than the Mantis, I can hardly hear mine running when it is. And something more powerful? Don't get that either. Maybe bigger, but more power? LOL. I guess of course there are more powerful ones of course. But this Mantis is a miracle worker.
We have had the wierdest weather the past two days, and I mean weird. Thursday morning very high winds, blew all clouds away, clear skies all day. Friday the wind came again and the heavy heavy rain all day long. Last night (Friday still) incredible rainstorm and very high high wind, gusts that you could hear howling and the cedars near the ravine just as loud. Now, wind scares me. It is one of the forces of nature that I do not like one little bit. I could never picture living with a hurricane or tornados, I probably would have a heart attack and die for sure. so the wind and rain blew long into the night, I know, I don't sleep well. The wind must have stopped sometime before 4:00 A.M. I woke up about 3:45, wide awake and got up, went to my front porch and looked outside at the skies. Not a single cloud, nor wind. The full moon glaring down on my yard, casting that eerie ghostly shine on the now frozen ground. The moon in the winter is high, like the sun on a summer noonday. The shadows are short. Very beautiful and cold. Thank goodness the rain (of course no freeze when we have rain, it is quite warm then) had stopped and the wind has gone by the wayside.
I am sitting here listening to all the wind chimes still ringing a little bit, so there must still be wind, but light. It does not take much to get the chimes making their beautiful sound. I have 3 sets of large ones hanging off my front porch, all with different tones, it is pretty.
Last year I spent a couple of months cultivating an amazing amount of area infront of the apiary with the Mantis rototiller so I could begin the process of planting flowers for the bees, with the intent of gathering seed to spread around the rest of my property, which we had cleared last summer (about 4 acres). The burn pile that resulted is unimaginable. When this burn occurs, it will be a 72-hour burn, manned for these hours, the "burner guy" using his industrial fans to blow the fire so that it burns down as quickly as possible, so that it is not a long burning issue. I have issues with the environment and fire smoke.
The two men involved in the land clear were friends of my son-in-laws, a tree faller and a young man who owns an excavator. Between both of them, about 95% of the hardwood trees were removed. Dangerous trees, these being the alders, and most of the cottonwoods. All of the coniferous trees were left in groves, untouched -- and it has turned out to be very pretty and will be still forested, but to a more workable degree. We are planting pastures and required all the vegetation that was not necessary to be removed. Knowing well that the grasses, clovers and all will grow with much more content without the deep shade that was present with all the deciduous trees.
This was a hard decision on my part because I am a tree hugger, but there are certain things that one must give up for progress, and we needed the land cleared.
I am putting on two pictures, first taken February 2.06 and the second May 5 06. The first one was when I began the land cultivation with the Mantis, the second one was taken when the spot had been levelled out more, ready for planting. It was a fun project. This land cultivation was only a small part of the work that I did with the rototiller in other areas.
I planted several species of bee plants in this particular area. They were borage officinalis, phacelia tanacetifolia (blue tansy), California poppy, Mediterranean sage, cosmos (several cultivars), catnips, lemonbalms, anise hyssop, many cultivars of sunflowers, lots of tomatillos and ground cherries (Cape Gooseberry) (for pollen), pumpkins, squashes (butternut, acorn, spaghetti, zucchini). That is what I focused on for bee forage. There are lots of other fruits and vegetables that I grow that is awesome for their uses as well. It was a sight for the eyes last summer when I would go out to watch the beneficial insects on all these nectar and pollen producing plants. I never realized there were so many species of bumblebees in particular.
All these plants that I planted last year all are self-seeders. I gathered pounds of seeds throughout the course of the late summer and deal with them accordingly, so I could spread their progeny over the rest of my property in groves of course. So, I anticipate enormous nectar and pollen yields next summer.
It is an interesting event with the self-seeding annuals because when the seeds are good and ready to germinate, they will. I can carry on the season for a very long time with the later sowing of the seed that I have gathered. The bees (and all the other pollinators that will be present) should have foraging material right from the get go of spring right until the killing frost in October. It should be a really happy year for the girls.
Great day. Cindi
(http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/9202/fe26workwl2.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
(http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7614/my56workxr9.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
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Cindi, I'm sorry I didn't make myself clearer - it's a four stroke Honda engine Mantis :-D I love it.
I've lived on this property since 1978. It's not big by any means, just over half an acre, but I'm very happy with it. The house is a nice size, built in 1953, I added a garage and a kitchen addition. The gardens have been fun, because as I laid them out I discovered older borders that the first woman who lived here installed. Unfortunately there aren't many plants left of hers, but it's been interesting to see we followed basically the same lines.
My main gardens are in front, because up til just a while ago there wasn't much sun in my backyard. I did have woodland wildflowers out there, though, and rhododendron plantings, along with a gorgeous halesia I planted back in 1980 that's stunning when it blooms. I've already posted some pictures of the front, someday I'll get the rest posted on my webpage.
Two years ago my cesspool failed. Due to what's called Title 5 here in Massachusetts, it had to be totally replaced with a septic system and a leach field (it was bound to happen). This is what my backyard looked like before the septic install (if I were better with photoshop I could combine these two!):
(http://annzoid.com/Gardens/trees2.jpg)(http://annzoid.com/Gardens/trees1.jpg)
Then the trees came down and the septic install happened:
(http://annzoid.com/Gardens/septic1.jpg)
Once it was finished, only my halesia and the triple-trunk red oak remained:
(http://annzoid.com/Gardens/finished1.jpg)
The bees went down back, and I put in a 30x35' veggie garden (sorry the picture isn't better, I need to take another one next spring):
(http://annzoid.com/Gardens/finished2.jpg)
So on a mini scale I know what you mean. I hated to lose the trees, but it's opened up so many possibilities. We haven't put in a lawn yet because we're still deciding on a few things. It will come. Unfortunately the triple-trunk oak, the only shade left for the house, was blown down in the horrible winds we had back in October '05. The arborist I had look at it back when we first took down the pines told me it was healthy - what an idiot. It was rotted at the base and full of carpenter ants, it should have come down with the rest. Oh well! Within the next month the tree service is coming back to take down around 11 or 12 trees around the perimeter of the property to give both the gardens and the bees more sunlight.
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I use the Ruth Stout no weed no work method lots of horse manure and straw and newspaper plant through the compost works great saves water
kirko
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First get a goat to chew down the vegetation,
Next get a couple of pigs to rotovate and manure it
Then some chichens rake to it about and munure it some more
Then plant potatoes,
JOB DONE! :-D
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Good for you guys i planted some radishes and broccoli,flowers,strayberrys,a potato,a sweet potato and i think i did a good job! :)
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Ann, beautiful pictures. I know what you mean about the trees coming down, it almost breaks your heart, but then, some things need to be done, that cannot be changed. You will make the area where the septic was installed into something even more beautiful I am sure, but it surely did look nice with that walkway and all you had. The trees being thinned out will certainly help with vegetative growth that will be so helpful to your bees.
When I look back at the pictures of devastation of property when we had the faller and the excavator come in they almost make me cry, I will miss the dense undergrowth, but there again, the beauty that will be forthcoming with pastures and flowers surpasses the dense undergrowth by no stretch of the imagination. Our property was very wet and swampy because of all the undergrowth and tall deciduous trees that never allowed a speck of sunlight to reach certain parts. But the sun shines and dries the soil and this will all be good. It is hard to put a picture to words, even using pictures to define the scope of ones area, I am going to pick a couple of pictures to try and show the before and afterness of what was done here in our back acreage last spring. It may be shocking, so hold your breath. Great day. Cindi
P.S. I have about 10 pictures that I would like to put on the forum, but I have to find out if that is OK to do, so I probably won't do it until tomorrow morning, after I get approval from John. Great day. C.
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I look forward to seeing your pictures, Cindi, but I have to ask - does John mind us posting pictures? I host them myself on my own space, but if he doesn't like it I need to know, I'll tone it down. It's fun posting here and sharing, but I don't want to be a forum hog or anything! :shock:
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Ann, I sent a personal mail to John this morning after I put the post on about the pictures. He basically said to "bring it on", he loves the pictures and (I bet everyone enjoys looking at pictures of how others do things on their own land, homes, families, pets). It is a wonderful tool to be able to share our lives with others. He said to post as many as we would like, and he anticipates looking at all his members "stuff". So Ann, bring on the pics......I love to see pics too..
John did say that he thought that maybe it woud be wise to only put a few pictures into each post because he wasn't sure how many could basically be put into a post before they were shall we say "full". So he suggested no more than say 5, so I would keep it to 4 and see what happens.
I function the best in the morning when I have my quiet time before all blinking craziness breaks loose with all the kids around here. So, my time to myself is anywhere from 4:00 AM (depends on when I arise) to 7:00 A.M. That's it. The the kiddy world begins, grandchildren, foster children, nieces and nephews. We have about 18 persons living on our property, in 3 residences, each owning a little of the property in their own way. It is fun, busy and a loving place to be.
I do have time to put on a picture of my 2 grandsons and my 3 nephews that all go to the same school. They are the Bennett boys (2) grandsons and the Zumaeta boys (3) nephews, Chilean father, so they look very dark skinned.
If you want to look at the picture, head off to the family picture forum. Good day Ann, Talk to you soon. Cindi
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I use the Ruth Stout no weed no work method lots of horse manure and straw and newspaper plant through the compost works great saves water
kirko
I'm with you Kirk-o. No till. 30x70 is a lot of space, but if you cover mow it close and cover it with 6-8 inches of compost or sawdust or dead leaves, you can plant right in it. We gave up rototilling because it pack the soil underneath the tines. Plus there's all the maintenance and expense of a gasoline engine. You can plan the 30x70 space so that you have 4' wide beds and leave grass in between to walk on. It's much easier to control weeds in 4'ft beds than in a flatland garden.
Kev
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Thats right Kev keep it easy
kirk-o
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Thanks for all the suggestions. Alot of great ideas!
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How long before you can plant?
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Here in WI- we don't get around to planting before at the earliest middle of May.
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Here in WI- we don't get around to planting before at the earliest middle of May.
Here in the southwestern part of British Columbia the old standby "planting date is the 24th May". I have through my years of gardening here always have my gardens in by May 1, some things that are prefer the cold like spinach and broccoli go in sooner, probably about the 1 of April.
With the annuals that I plant in my flower gardens, they are safely set in by the 1st of May also. Interesting how so many areas are pretty similar in planting dates. Great day. Cindi
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I meant after you begin this no till process when can you plant. How long does it take in other words.
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Right, I am anxiously awaiting a reply too. I have an area of grass behind my apiary that I would love to turn to soil to plant another garden. That is where I would like to plant the squashes, melons and pumpkins, they take up so much room that I would love to have an area devoted to these beauties only. Great day. Cindi
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Konasdad, are you asking how long before you can plant in ground that's been 'smothered' with newspapers and leaves? The paper needs to be rotted, you can plant as soon as you can till the area and incorporate all the organic matter you used to smother, and the smothered :) I guess that would depend on your climate.
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Ann, not good enough answer for me. If you can you you please elaborate on it a bit more?. Are we looking at a couple of weeks or a couple of months, I have no clue about this method and would love to learn more about it. We don't plant our squash plants (I raise them in my greenhouse as transplants) until probably the beginning of June. They are too tender to be set out before that time, the nights can get pretty chilly here still for those curcurbits. Great day. Cindi
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If I were going to prepare ground this way I'd do it in the fall and plan on tilling in the spring. So, around here, smothered in October and tilled the first of April or so. I have no experience in a warmer, wetter climate, where things rot faster than they do around here.
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Ann, I think that our climates are somewhat similar. If I were to do a garden in this manner, I would probably use about the same dates. For some strange reason I thought that maybe this could be forced much quicker, but upon thinking about it, I doubt it.
It would indeed take the fall and winter to smother and decompose enough to work the ground well.
Starting to think about getting some of the seedlings started for the bees. Most of the plants are sown directly outside the middle of March, but some I start indoors. For instance, the Canary Creeper vine.
If you have room anywhere and can let vines just go, get this plant. It is available to probably any seed companies easily. I could not believe the bees on this vine, right until frost kill. It was amazing. It provides an intensely deep forage for the bees in the late fall when many are done and not producing nectar nor pollen. It is a member of nasturtium family and the seeds can be eaten as well. The seeds if pickled, are somewhat like capers and they are a little spicy and very yummy. Get some seed. YOu will not be disappointed. In one season this plant grew probably about 15 feet or so. I did not measure it, but it grew almost up to the top of our house. I plan on planting it in many places where it can be grown as a ground cover plant. I don't think that it really cares if it goes up or sprawls. It is pretty as well.
If you can't get seed, contact me PM, I have some I could send to you. Great day Cindi.
This is the kind of polllen this bee was still collecting in the beginning of October. Upon observing this picture this bee looks Italian now doesn't it? The three yellow rings. Hmm.
(http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/1272/canarycr1zd6.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
This does not show the entire magnitude of the plant (three seeds set to get this group), but it was big.
(http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/6011/canarycr2ks6.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
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Tropaeolum peregrinum, the Canary Creeper. I actually looked at that this past week when I was doing up my seed orders. Thanx for the affirmation! :-D Now that I've got so much sun in my backyard I need to rethink how I garden.
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So this Canary Creeper gives nectar also? Does it need much water? I have places I can place them but a lot of those places are a couple of hundred yards from water sources.
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So this Canary Creeper gives nectar also? Does it need much water? I have places I can place them but a lot of those places are a couple of hundred yards from water sources.
Jerry, I have to speak honestly here, I would not want any kind of plant failure by telling a lie.
I do not actually know if the creeper provides nectar, I would certainly imagine so, without a doubt, but I cannot tell you for sure. I know for a fact that the plants provides LOTS of pollen, it was covered with bees in the late summer. I actually didn't even know for a long time that there were bees on it until I was walking by it one day and I heard the bees. It made my head turn to see where the humming bees sounds were coming from. In that part of the garden I always plant the Heliotrope, calendula and sedum, among others. The bees here love these plants too, so I thought that was where the bee sounds were coming from. WRONG. Canary creeper surely.
Now about the water source. I cannot speak for what water table occurs in your area, how hot it is during summer, I am stuck there.
I will tell you about my climate in summertime, maybe this may help you ascertain if you can plant the creeper a couple of hundred yards from a water source. You may need to tell me what types of plants thrive in the area away from the water source, I could probably make a fairly accurate answer.
This summer was considered a drought situation in our normaly fairly wet climate. We did not have rain for the month of July and August, and well into September. That is a long time. I watered my gardens probably only about 3 times during this drought. I am of the belief that the water table is reasonably high. But I don't think that this creeper requires an extremely high amount of water. It is considered a succulent in my eyes, and they actually PREFER to have the drier conditions.
I grew the creeper on the west side of my house. It receives sun from 12:00 PM to sundown, hot, hot, hot. The creeper grew up the side of a white house, hot, hot, hot. The garden slopes to the south, dry, dry, dry.
Our summertime temperatures are probably about 25-28 degrees celsius, sometimes we can go up into the low 30s, but rarely. But on the west side of the house in that garden it is smoking hot, let me tell you.
I think it can be grown anywhere, with conditions dry, not to say that it would probably love some water now and then.
You will have to make the decision from the information that I have provided if the plant would work there or not. Define your climate to me please. Great day. Cindi
P.S. Ann, anyone. This plant provides thousands of seeds, each one encased in a pod that has 3 seeds inside (if memory serves me). It is easy to save the seed and the plant can be yours forever more.
Oh ya, it is an annual, but I guess you figured it out.
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Tropaeolum peregrinum, the Canary Creeper. I actually looked at that this past week when I was doing up my seed orders. Thanx for the affirmation! :-D Now that I've got so much sun in my backyard I need to rethink how I garden.
Isn't the latin name for plants a strange one? I use the latin word many times when I refer to plants, other times simply use the plain old laymans terms. Sounds like your yard will be so much better for planting all kinds of new stuff, and yes, have fun. YOu will have to rethink alot of things out in the yard, but what a blast!!!! Great day. Cindi
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I meant after you begin this no till process when can you plant. How long does it take in other words.
Sorry I didn't follow up on this earlier.
The quick answer: you can plant the same season. The method doesn't work well for grain crops. But for gardens it's great.
Cover the area you want to plant early in the season with 6" or more of mulch hay, then you can plant when the time is right. Just figure out where you want plants, get a garden fork -- the digging type -- dig up a spot, clear the grass out and plant. Don't cover over your seeds with hay, just scoot the hay back, dig a hole and plant. You may need to add hay during the summer to keep it deep enough to discourage weeds. As the summer progresses, what grass was underneath will die; the earthworms will be very happy under the hay, and by the next season you'll have almost all bare earth underneath. That earth will be moist and you should be able to use a trowel to turn it over. Successive years will be much easier to plant because there won't be any grass left.
My wife and I successfully cleared several of our beds this way.
One warning -- if you have problems with slugs in your area be wary of the hay method. Slugs love to live in they hay and then sneak out at night to eat your veggies.
What's great about the hay is that it rots right into the garden. If you continue to add hay to the garden each year, you build the soil's fertility. (Have you ever seen a flatland garden that's been in the same place for 20 years. It's usually several inches below the grass nearby. This happens to farmland too because nutrients come out of the soil and wind and rain erode it and very little is going back in.)
The main reasons for tilling: to make the soil looser and to eliminate competition from weeds. Loose soil is important for young plants, but you can loosen the soil enough in a spot by hand for the seedling to get a good start and the hay will retain moisture and kill the weeds much better than a rototilled garden. Some researchers believe that tilling mixes the natural layers in the soil and harms beneficial microbes.
Folks might want to start small, though, just to see if it's the right method for them. The garden looks a little unruly, and when we first started I longed for the neat rows of freshly turned earth.
There are lots of No-Till methods. We've tried several. The deep mulch is commonly called the Ruth Stout Method. Her book is available at the library. I'm sure if you hunt through the gardening section in your local library you can find others.
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Kev, that was great information. We are in an area where slugs, banana slugs, (big, yellow, most with black spots and about 6-8 inches long) and snails abode. I don't think that the hay method would work. Too bad though. I find the littler slugs goes everywhere, the big old bananas live mostly around the perimeter of my ravine, where it is dark and really moist. They sometimes venture into my yard, but mostly not, they stay in the bushy parts.
I am going to try to use some newspaper methods though, covering it with soil, hopefully the slugs won't get under the earth, that would be unlikely. We'll see. Some good informations. Great day. Cindi
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We are in an area where slugs, banana slugs, (big, yellow, most with black spots and about 6-8 inches long) and snails abode.
That's one big slug. We have little slugs here, but millions of them. (I am not exaggerating, my wife has killed well over 1,000 in a single day.)
Cindi, even if you use newspaper and sawdust, you can still plant the same year.
Some additional things I didn't mention about going no-till.
1) divide your garden into beds so you don't ever walk where you intend to plant.
2) the hay is just a form of mulch, you can use whatever mulch (paper, manure, sawdust, leaves) you please with the same outcome. We convinced the power company tree trimmers to dump their truck on our land and used that one year.
3) pay attention to the soil. If it's clay, consider adding some sand, if sandy, add clay etc.
4) keep adding mulch, organic material holds water and provides nutrients, if you add lots of mulch each year, you'll never need to fertilize.
Happy gardening
kev
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Kev, excellent information. Thank you. About your slugs. I am rather odd about things I like to know about, but I am curious about many many things in life. I want to know how big your slugs are. You must have quite a time if they are quite small and there can be 1,000 present during a day. Now that is scary business. I could not imagine that many, yikes, your poor wife.
Ours are the big banana, like I said, but the others we have are probably quite large too, they would be black ones, brown ones with a black stripe down their back and they are about 2-1/2 to 3 inches long. It is insipid the damage that these little critters do. I step on them when I see them, I do not gather them and I have no mercy. If I am outside and I see one in the shade somewhere, I pick it up and throw it into the sun, with the intention of going over right away and squishing it, if I don't get to it, well it dries up within a few minutes. I don't care, sounds mean, but I don't like the little buggers.
If you get slug slime on your hands or knees or anything, vinegar removes the slimy junk, quickly.
Anyways, I am going to create some new beds (and resurrect some) that I unintentionally let the grasses and weeds get control over. The weeds grow so fast here sometimes you turn around and they are 2 feet tall within a week. EEEKS!!!!
Once upon a time years and years and years ago I used Roundup to combat weeds. Very successful stuff and evidently becomes inert once it touches soil (I find that hard to believe). I don't use any herbicides or pesticides here. Just not something that I want in my soils, and it is good, clean farm land, enchanced with animal and green manures. Great day. Cindi
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The biggest ones are probably about 3 inches long. The infants can be 1/4 inch or less. We have quite a range of them here: tan ones with stripes, dark ones with leopard spots, some extremely light colored ones, too.
We have declared total war on slugs around here. (I have no compassion for the varmints. They have few natural predators here.) We have so many that during the growing season my wife does slug patrol in the early morning and the late evening when they come out to feed. (I help when I'm not at work.) She is sort of mathmatically compulsive and so keeps a running total of how many she kills.
Her method for controlling slugs is pretty simple. Around all of our raised beds we have 2x6 or 2x8 lumber scraps. These make great places for slugs to hide. Twice a day, we patrol the beds and lift up each board. If we find a slug we cut it in half with a pair of old scissors. Remarkable, they're cannibals, so the next day we'll find three eating the carcass of one.
We tried just about every method known except the super toxic Ortho slug poison. This includes: escar-go an organic iron-based poison, copper strips on board and collars around plants, beer traps, etc. At this point, only slicing every one we find in half has worked. I think we've reduced the overall slug population so that last year, we had fewer to kill.
Supposedly ducks will devour slugs, but ducks are pretty messy and we don't have a pond. (I know that you can keep them without a pond, but that doesn't seem very nice since they like to swim.)
good luck with clearing the beds. We have 4" of snow cover still and last night it was -4 with a windchill in the neighborhood of -15.
I am so ready for spring and bees. In april, I hope to be grabbing my first feral colony with a more experienced beekeeper friend.
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Ha, your method of slug kill is similar to mine. If I have my pruners in hand, which I do very often in the outside world, I cut them in half too. I love to watch the guts ooze out with greatest of pleasure, knowing that I have saved many of my young tender plants from the slug invasion devastation.
Good for your wife. Tell her to keep counting. You will be surprised that one day you may get a very good control on the numbers of slugs prevalent at your place. I know that I certainly have.
I still cannot bring myself to kill a banana slug. I consider them the king of slugs and they are majestic. I don't generally find them in my yard part where I find the smaller ones. They are generally around the permimeter where the bush is, they don't seem to like to cross the gravel driveway that separates the deep, dark, busy ravine area from my "yard". If I find one of them that should not be where it is supposed to be, I just pick it up and throw it as far as I can down into the ravine. It can live there and enjoy the skunk cabbage that seems to me they should go hand in hand with. OOOOh, that skunk cabbage, the smell will be coming in a couple of months. They yellow flowers stink...well...like skunk. The bees love the flowers, so the skunk cabbage can just simply grow on down the bottom near the creek.
I feel sorry for the kids when they go down there to play in the creek and muck and the stink. One day I will post a picture of the amazing work they have done in the ravine, building little islands and diverting the stream in their tiny little ways, no harm done, I would not allow that, but they have the time of their life, digging, moving dirt, diverting the water way where they play. The stream carries on further down in its one big and happy pathway.
Greatest of days. Cindi
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It is wicked of me, but I've taken particular glee in salting a slug - around here they turn a delightful orange as they melt away. BWHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, I do have a slug problem, hopefully when the chickens are here they'll take care of them. My mother has snails, they came in on a plant at some time, she pays the kids a bounty if they collect them for her.
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OOOH, Ann, that is gross, the salt does do wonders though. I am not sure that chickens eat slugs or not. I do know for sure that ducks like them.
Our chickens are beginning to lay lots of eggs again. I love our eggs. I still can't bring myself to eating a duck egg though, and yikes!!! When the geese start to lay, I really could not imagine that, but then,one never knows.
I remember years and years ago I had chickens and the eggs were so strong tasting that I couldn't eat them. It turned me off the home grown eggs for years. When my sister got chickens last spring, I was still reluctant to eat them. But she coerced me into trying them. I have never looked back. I honestly do not know why these eggs are go darn good, compared to mine. The only difference I could possibly imagine would be that my sister pays a 50 cents a bag more and gets "organic" pellets. I imagine this is the difference, cause I crave the eggs. Oh, no, now I am getting hungry just thinking about them, but it is too early, not my breakfast time yet.
When I kept the chickens (say about 10 years ago), I allowed them out of their pen during the day. I had a dozen or so. My oldest grandson was just a toddler back then. I remember one day the watching the chickens buzzing around the corn patch, chewing and gobbling up bugs and such. Out of the bushy thicket came a damnable coyote. Broad daylight, I saw it grab the chicken and off into the bush it went with a bunch of feathers floating everywhere and dust flyin'. This freaked me right out, because my grandson was playing not that far away from this attack. That was it. I locked the chickens up and didn't let them free range again. It terrified me, because all I could see in my mind's eye was my precious little baby grandson being grabbed by this bugger. For a long time I would not let him play outside of our yard, unless he was right beside me. I did not keep the chickens for much longer. I did not like their eggs one little bit and now I was bringing the vermin into my life. I sold the chickens to a neighbour and that was that.
My poor husband though. He has made a beautiful chicken palace I shall call it. It was very elaborate, and I am sure that it really bugged him that he spent so much time building this hut and then I didn't want it. Oh well, he has built many things for me that eventually go by the wayside. Poor guy. He would move mountains for me, and has. Especially if I ask hiim nicely and not expect him to be my builder. It is amazing how far being nice can take ya. I am a lucky woman.
And I thought this would be a short post. Well, you should know me by now. I cannot stop my fingers from flyin'. Awesome day. Cindi
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Speaking of slugs...I had some of the big slugs(4-5inches) in my garden, and they would rear up and eat off beans halfway up. Because I only had a little garden at the time, I didn't care whether they were kings of slugs, queens, princes or princesses, all I cared was that they were dead.
I tried salting a couple, but it took about a whole can of salt to take care of one, they would slime and slime and then crawl from under the slime, a bit dehydrated but otherwise ok. Going out at night and cutting them up did better, although that kind of stuff makes me feel squeamish.
Not a problem any more since I moved.
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It is wicked of me, but I've taken particular glee in salting a slug - around here they turn a delightful orange as they melt away. BWHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, I do have a slug problem, hopefully when the chickens are here they'll take care of them. My mother has snails, they came in on a plant at some time, she pays the kids a bounty if they collect them for her.
Can't salt in the garden bed, though. And, when you got 1,000 to kill, you go for efficiency.
BTW, you'll probably be disappointed in your chickens. Ours do not eat slugs at all, ever. (we were bummed). They are pretty vicious predators, though. This summer I saw one grab a small frog and bash it's peeping, squealing brains out before eating it. It was a pretty traumatic scene.
All the books say ducks will eat slugs and snails.
Kev
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Kev, I love your sig line, Frost is one of my favorites, and Birches is one of his best!
I have several friends who have chickens, and they both said their birds ate the slugs we have around here. They're not huge, they're fairly small brown things, nothing like what grows up in the PNW! Banana slugs would be just too much around here!
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Ann, right on!!! Now you will be a happy gardener. I hope your chickens eat every little slug that happens upon their vision. I think the small ones are worse because they are not as visible.
I was cleaning up around our pool yesterday and moved a bunch of little rocks. Holy crow!! I couldn't believe how many little slugs were under these rocks, just waiting to come forth at dusk. Wouldn't you think that the blinking freeze would have killed them? Guess not.
Today I plan to plant the garlic that I should have planted last fall. I am not planting as much as last year, I had thousands of bulbs left overand we still have lots left. One can only give away so much and consume so much. will not have any more deep freezing that would cause heavy frost heaves. The garlic should have been planted last October, but something happened and I got too busy I guess. Not sure doing what, but that is my excuse and I am sticking to it.
I have plans to feed the excess garlic to the turkeys periodically. There was a post defining the purpose of this feeding. Apparently it wards off a parasite the turkeys can get from the chickens. So, I will feed garlic. Awesome day. Cindi
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If chickens eat slugs you get good eggs
kirk-o
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I've got five different types of garlic out there, only around twelve or so plants per, so I'm looking forward to comparing them. I usually just grow german extra-hardy from Johnny's.
We've had some snow to sleet to rain today, nothing as bad as they predicted. Hopefully the trip to Georgia will be uneventful! I can't wait for spring!
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Ann, right on!!! I love garlic so much. I only grow three cultivars, red Russian, white Russian and one called Fish Lake #3. So easy to grow and a carefree crop surely.
I have even used garlic to clear up a cluster of plantars warts that were on my grandson's big toe. I crushed a small amount, put a bandaid on the big toe with the garlic inside, put a sock on overnight, took off the bandaid and reapplied at night for 4 nights. The plantars warts were gone. Remember, garlic is antifungal and it honestly worked. Warts gone, never came back. He had about 12 in a cluster on this daddy toe, it was hideous.
So, garlic for warts!!!! Enjoy your trip to Georgia!!! Awesome day. Cindi
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aaahhhh - garlic and escargot.
our local escargot
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/empilolo/Africansnail.jpg)
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Empilolo. You have gotta be kidding. That snail is enormous!!! Our snails that are indigenous to here are about 1/5 that size. I am envious, I love to eat escargot. As a matter of fact, my youngest daughter cooked us our anniversary dinner last night and she bought escargot, but they were about 1/3 size of yours. I wish we could get ones that big. Garlic, butter, escargot, lobster tails, and ribs, what a dinner.
I am not kidding. I wonder if slugs would be similar to snails, they are in same family. Our banana slugs would make a meal in itself. That would be an interesting fact to discover. Awesome day. Cindi
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That snail is enormous!!!
Actually, there are bigger ones around here.
Achatina achatina, commonly referred to as the Giant Tiger Snail is the largest land snail species in the world, with an average shell length of at least 18cm, they can get to around 30cm shell length, though a snail growing to that size in captivity would be very unlikely.
They are edible and much priced locally. They are "chewier" than escargot, but that may be as a result of cooking methods. I have never cooked them myself. I prefer Jumping Chicken drumsticks here.
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Kev, I love your sig line, Frost is one of my favorites, and Birches is one of his best!
I have several friends who have chickens, and they both said their birds ate the slugs we have around here. They're not huge, they're fairly small brown things, nothing like what grows up in the PNW! Banana slugs would be just too much around here!
Wow chickens that eat slugs. I see you are in Maine and Mass. Can you find out what breed those chooks are? We're planning to order a few more, so if there's a breed that likes em, we could turn dead slugs into eggs. We have RI reds. They don't seem to like escargot.
Glad you like the sig line. Birches is a great poem. I'm also partial to "Home Burial." He really captured the essence of what it means to be human like few other American poets.
I debated about putting another of my favorite Frostisms up but decided not to. It goes something like "half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't; the other half is composed of people who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."
That one was maybe a little ironic for an internet forum, though.
These slug comments have got me laughing out loud. Those Nigerian snails are huge. Probably have to use a shotgun to patrol your garden for snails with those out there. I wonder how he got the beer away from that one. :)
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Kev, as far as I know they're mutts, Rhode Island Red crosses, nothing special. I know of one person who has Buff Orpingtons and Golden Comets, they eat slugs, too. Maybe it's the type of slug? I dunno. I'll find out this spring when we get ours.
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I put in a garden about that size a few years ago. We have plenty of boulders here in Boulder County, so it can be tough on tillers. While I think the newspaper block can work too, we chose to go with tilling to break up the soil deeper so it wouldn't require quite as much new soil in the boxes. We used a big commercial grade Baretto rear tine as shown in this picture:
(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/162/402741767_e8fcf146b0.jpg)
These tillers are available at many local rental centers and can do a big job in a hurry.
You can see more pictures of the final garden on the Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbroberg/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbroberg/)
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Kev, as far as I know they're mutts, Rhode Island Red crosses, nothing special. I know of one person who has Buff Orpingtons and Golden Comets, they eat slugs, too. Maybe it's the type of slug? I dunno. I'll find out this spring when we get ours.
Wow, please let me know. I might be willing to drive your way to get chicks if they'll do slug patrol.
kev
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David, I had a good look at your garden and flower pictures. Man, have you done a nice job on the raised beds. It looks like some of the professional horticultural gardens that we see here in our big city. Excellent work. It is so nice to work in raised beds like that.
I do not have that luxury. My gardens are all over the place, helter skelter with kind of undefined edging. I have to do a lot of bending over and kneeling. consider yourself lucky to have these types of gardens.
I also looked at the flowers, some very pretty ones. I love dianthus. I think that you have a couple of pictures of this flower. Beautiful. Awesome day. Cindi