Float On: My "Happy Place" is on my little kayak in the coves of Table Rock Lake.
DH has helped me keep the weeds down in our garden. I'm the brain and he's the braun! haha We use a black and decker 20 volt cordless weed-eater and it works great......but uses 3 batteries to weed the whole garden.
My container beans are ready to pick. My butternut squash male and female blossoms are in-sync and making babies and are growing up my kids' old swingset. I'm growing cucumbers up a cattle panel arch and they are making lots of blossoms. I saw a couple really good You Tube videos on how to keep blight infections down in tomatoes (pruning, epsom salts), so I'll do that tomorrow. It's been really hot, but we got a really good rain yesterday, so that's good. Here's a couple pics of my garden.
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Beautiful, Cathy!! Looks like you are full throttle with your productivity. The garden is gorgeous.
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
www.silententry.wordpress.com
Finally I have an idea of what you were talking about when you mentioned large water troughs. Very effective and attractive!
As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
That's a great looking garden, CA. Some obvious effort and imagination. I'd think you will get a large harvest! I noticed the owl decoy in the lower left corner of the third photo. Does that help with anything? I have three of those B+D battery powered yard tools, including the weed-eater. A major simplification to not with deal with cords, plus the batteries are interchangeable.
Thanks everyone.
One of the problems I'm having is that before I had any experience with stock tanks, I drilled a lot of holes in their bottoms, thinking that was a good thing. Well, water drains out of them too quickly. I've plugged some of the holes, but not nearly enough.
I do have to add more compost/shredded leaves to them every year, in hopes of keeping their nutrition up. I'm trying to not use store-bought fertilizer.
Rogar........that owl has a motion sensor, plus a sound with it. It's a pretty stupid sound, not like an owl at all. I bought it initially because I had so many problems with chipmunks and mice, but I'm not sure it worked. Fortunately, they're not a problem this year (knock on wood). I think when it's dry out, the animals find water underneath the tanks that has drained out after watering.
A couple weeks ago, I came home from shopping and thought I heard a flock of sandhill cranes flying over......which was totally the wrong time of year. Well, I discovered it was the owl in the garden. It was having a seizure and making that weird noise over and over and over. haha I went out and turned it off and apologized to the wren and toad that live there. So....I'm not sure the owl does much, but I left it there anyhow........turned off.
I just went out to gather the laundry and discovered that the hyacinths in my little water garden are in bloom. Had to share as they are hear today and gone tomorrow but really lovely. I wonder how many different colours they are available. I think the bloom last year was somewhat bluer but not two together at once which is a treat for me.
Oh dear, IL, I did everything the same as before but this one is sideways oriented. Oh dear!
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As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
So beautiful, razz! What a beautiful water feature! And the colors of the hyacinths--wow!
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
www.silententry.wordpress.com
Very nice picture catherine! I wonder if the former owner had hung bird feeders on that structure?
Razz.......wow! those water hyacinths are gorgeous!
I meant to post this picture with the others. I've turned a cattle panel into an arch, then covered it with cement reinforcing wire. I discovered that some vining plants like the smaller wire to climb up, while the cattle panel is best for holding a lot of weight.
I tried growing butternut squash up it last year, but they didn't seem to like it, so I gave it to the cucumbers this year, which they seem to like. They adapt pretty easily. I planted cucumbers on both sides of the arch.
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I also wanted to mention that I have trouble with blight on my tomatoes. I've always heard it's from water/rain spashing the soil up to the lower leaves. The soil has the fungus in it. So I've used a lot of mulch under them. But they were still getting blight/leaf spot. I saw a great You Tube on ways to minimize blight and it was to cut the lower branches of the tomatoes off, so that air can circulate underneath them, and also remove a few branches that might be preventing air from flowing in-between plants. So I did that today. here's hoping I didn't ruin them! Tomorrow I'm going to spray them with epsom salt spray.
I picked my first beans and there were quite a few. The Romano beans I froze and we'll eat the haricot vert beans through the week. Yum! Thank you bean plants!
I have a couple volunteer milkweed plants in the garden. You can see in some of the photos I posted above of them bending over to the ground, from the heavy rains we had. I was going to pull them out, but saw several monarch caterpillars on them! So I put in a few posts and tied them upright.
It was much cooler today and sunny with a great breeze. It was a good day.
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