It's Not Easy Staying Green
#16
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
Either way, a bit of a tight squeeze in the back of a Saab...but I'll have to have a look and see if more places sell the stuff as I hadn't really looked into it all that much. Mostly had a quick peak for Halloween time
#17
Banned
Joined: Apr 2009
Location: SW Ontario
Posts: 19,879
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
That's definitely cheaper than down my way, I think the local garden centre charges about $20 a bale mostly as a decoration and the local mill type place doesn't sell them individually....they must be in it together
Either way, a bit of a tight squeeze in the back of a Saab...but I'll have to have a look and see if more places sell the stuff as I hadn't really looked into it all that much. Mostly had a quick peak for Halloween time
Either way, a bit of a tight squeeze in the back of a Saab...but I'll have to have a look and see if more places sell the stuff as I hadn't really looked into it all that much. Mostly had a quick peak for Halloween time
#18
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
I had a quick search Bob and according to the gardenweb website, Craigslist is the cheapest place to find straw bales. I just looked and I saw some as low as $6 a bale (though others were around $10) in MA (I don't know where you are there) - most of the ones I saw said they will deliver. One guy was selling the excess from building a straw house!
#19
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
Straw bales....hmmm, interesting thought but probably not available so readily here. Our May 24 weekend project was the construction of some raised beds - out of 12 x 2" lumber for the garden and a couple for the greenhouse, plus filling in some craters in the lawn and topping up the potato patch with topsoil. That all involved two tandem dump truck loads of soil being delivered and requiring movement. That could be achieved with a wheelbarrow and manual labour but it's much easier to borrow your buddies tractor!
Raised beds and tractor porn pic especially for dbd33!
Raised beds and tractor porn pic especially for dbd33!
#21
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
Straw bales....hmmm, interesting thought but probably not available so readily here. Our May 24 weekend project was the construction of some raised beds - out of 12 x 2" lumber for the garden and a couple for the greenhouse, plus filling in some craters in the lawn and topping up the potato patch with topsoil. That all involved two tandem dump truck loads of soil being delivered and requiring movement. That could be achieved with a wheelbarrow and manual labour but it's much easier to borrow your buddies tractor!
Raised beds and tractor porn pic especially for dbd33!
Raised beds and tractor porn pic especially for dbd33!
#22
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 303
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
Using straw bales is a great idea. Out here on the west coast, they also make excellent insulation for cold frames so you can grow greens all winter.
Deer are an increasing problem here. They will rip bits off just about anything including new shoots on roses and nasty tasting things like lily of the valley but stinky stuff keeps them at bay. They won't jump barriers if they can't see a clear landing but they can easily leap over fences higher than the maximum allowed in most communities. We simply extended the height of the fencing round the vegetable garden by putting thin plastic mesh on high poles attached to the posts. Tying on to the mesh bits of surveyors' orange tape or bits of foil pans also helps. This seems to be working so far. I keep deer off flowers and shrubs with comfrey "tea" made by letting a good pile of comfrey leaves and stems rot down in a closed plastic garbage can in the sun. The resulting brew is terrific liquid fertiliser as well as smelling like a skunk on steroids. (Use disposable plastic gloves or you'll be scrubbing your hands for a week.) I have Russian comfrey smuggled in from my father's garden in Scotland but you can get the regular kind quite easily here -even a small bit of root will get going and grow very fast.
Has anybody tried growing melons? This is the first time I've tried and they seem very finnicky - wilt easily and the slugs love them although they don't touch the nearby squashes maybe because they have tougher, hairier leaves. I'm growing Petit Gris de Rennes which is supposed to have an outstanding flavour.
A few more observations/suggestions.
Raspberries will grow and multiply just about anywhere. They don't need much water and get few pests and diseases. Just cut out the old canes every couple of years or as soon as the fruit is looking a bit small and crumbly.
Sparrows have a bad habit of nipping off the shoots of peas as they come up. Might need to cover them with netting. This was a problem in Alberta, less so here.
Robins will take one peck out of each ripe strawberry. Again, nets seem to be the only answer.
Drought tolerant ground cover plants will help your more vulnerable flowers to get through. Just about any kind of thyme is good for this and most varieties attract bees.
Low growing sedums are also hardy living mulch and a neat little plant called brass buttons will form solid sheets and hold in moisture very well.
Using watering "spikes" gets water right down to the roots and can be left permanently round trees and shrubs. These are just fairly short plastic cones you can buy with sometimes a way of attaching 2 litre bottles of water to them but you can easily make your own in various sizes out of plastic pipe with a birdseye cut ( try Habitat for Humanity's ReStore for deals on pipe.)
Hot dry weather is getting to be the norm for summers. Last year was so extreme that we had to hang tarps to create shade. We now have a frame about four feet above the beds with green mesh fencing on the top and washing line strung along the front. The mesh gives some shade but lets water through and we hang fairly heavy cloth along the line to shade the tomatoes during the hottest hours of the afternoon.
We did all our water storing much earlier in the year with a diverter from the roof downspout (Home Hardware has them.) Rain barrels don't hold a lot but having several helps. The cheapest large storage units we've been able to find are the bladders used by the US army. Ours holds about 13,000 litres and filled in about a couple of weeks with a hose run from the downspout. (A guy on Denman Island sells these bladders.)
What are the bylaws restricting water use in your area? We have four stages now with lawn watering limited to two days a week and stage 4 prohibiting all outdoor water use and limiting water consumption to cooking and "personal" essentials. Last year, the town reached stage 3 and almost got to stage 4. This is why we now have our own backup store of water although I can't see anybody stopping watering their vegetables altogether even if stage 4 does come into effect.
Deer are an increasing problem here. They will rip bits off just about anything including new shoots on roses and nasty tasting things like lily of the valley but stinky stuff keeps them at bay. They won't jump barriers if they can't see a clear landing but they can easily leap over fences higher than the maximum allowed in most communities. We simply extended the height of the fencing round the vegetable garden by putting thin plastic mesh on high poles attached to the posts. Tying on to the mesh bits of surveyors' orange tape or bits of foil pans also helps. This seems to be working so far. I keep deer off flowers and shrubs with comfrey "tea" made by letting a good pile of comfrey leaves and stems rot down in a closed plastic garbage can in the sun. The resulting brew is terrific liquid fertiliser as well as smelling like a skunk on steroids. (Use disposable plastic gloves or you'll be scrubbing your hands for a week.) I have Russian comfrey smuggled in from my father's garden in Scotland but you can get the regular kind quite easily here -even a small bit of root will get going and grow very fast.
Has anybody tried growing melons? This is the first time I've tried and they seem very finnicky - wilt easily and the slugs love them although they don't touch the nearby squashes maybe because they have tougher, hairier leaves. I'm growing Petit Gris de Rennes which is supposed to have an outstanding flavour.
A few more observations/suggestions.
Raspberries will grow and multiply just about anywhere. They don't need much water and get few pests and diseases. Just cut out the old canes every couple of years or as soon as the fruit is looking a bit small and crumbly.
Sparrows have a bad habit of nipping off the shoots of peas as they come up. Might need to cover them with netting. This was a problem in Alberta, less so here.
Robins will take one peck out of each ripe strawberry. Again, nets seem to be the only answer.
Drought tolerant ground cover plants will help your more vulnerable flowers to get through. Just about any kind of thyme is good for this and most varieties attract bees.
Low growing sedums are also hardy living mulch and a neat little plant called brass buttons will form solid sheets and hold in moisture very well.
Using watering "spikes" gets water right down to the roots and can be left permanently round trees and shrubs. These are just fairly short plastic cones you can buy with sometimes a way of attaching 2 litre bottles of water to them but you can easily make your own in various sizes out of plastic pipe with a birdseye cut ( try Habitat for Humanity's ReStore for deals on pipe.)
Hot dry weather is getting to be the norm for summers. Last year was so extreme that we had to hang tarps to create shade. We now have a frame about four feet above the beds with green mesh fencing on the top and washing line strung along the front. The mesh gives some shade but lets water through and we hang fairly heavy cloth along the line to shade the tomatoes during the hottest hours of the afternoon.
We did all our water storing much earlier in the year with a diverter from the roof downspout (Home Hardware has them.) Rain barrels don't hold a lot but having several helps. The cheapest large storage units we've been able to find are the bladders used by the US army. Ours holds about 13,000 litres and filled in about a couple of weeks with a hose run from the downspout. (A guy on Denman Island sells these bladders.)
What are the bylaws restricting water use in your area? We have four stages now with lawn watering limited to two days a week and stage 4 prohibiting all outdoor water use and limiting water consumption to cooking and "personal" essentials. Last year, the town reached stage 3 and almost got to stage 4. This is why we now have our own backup store of water although I can't see anybody stopping watering their vegetables altogether even if stage 4 does come into effect.
#23
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
Has anybody tried growing melons? This is the first time I've tried and they seem very finnicky - wilt easily and the slugs love them although they don't touch the nearby squashes maybe because they have tougher, hairier leaves. I'm growing Petit Gris de Rennes which is supposed to have an outstanding flavour.
This year, tried a couple of melons and the plants got as bit as a few inches before wilting away and one got eaten by something.
I've never tried to grow squash or aubergine.
They grow like weeds and we can't get rid of them, annoyingly. Must have been from the neighbours chucking the stuff into the compost.
#24
Re: It's Not Easy Staying Green
This is the extent of our gardening. Hopefully taking a slash in the pot after a few bevvies counts as organic.