Garden 2010

[bnolte]

With winter seemingly out of breath here in Maryland, I figured its time to start the annual garden thread.

With a little prodding from my Dad, we've decided to upgrade the garden fence a bit. Using 6x6 posts, and 2"x4" horse fencing to deter the critters, we are on the way to enclosing a 30x50 foot area, mostly around the existing garden, squaring things up and enlarging it a bit in the process. Here's what we got so far:

 

[childebrandt]

We are going to try and get tomatoes and strawberries this year...There is a farmer close to us that haas a great road-side stand..Sell great sweet corn and yellow squash.....Not too sure when to plant....

 

[aschumacher]

Bruce, don't know what types of critters your defending against...just dont give them a map of the Delaware river bridges! If you need 6x6's...I dont think I need them migrating up my way.

<font size="-2">(what you got kangaroos or water buffalo??)</font>

 

[kmcconaughey]

Allen, Bruce is probably defending against deer, if this is the case, his fence is more likely under-designed.

The best defense I've found for deer, (aka hoofed rodents.

) is PLOT SAVER

Curt, hopefully Bruce will post on planting schedules for your area, looks like he isn't too far away. Here in Wisconsin, I plant my tomato and pepper plants at the end of May. If I plant any sooner than that the soil is too cold and the plant growth stalls, which from my experiments over the years sets them back. They actually grow better with the later planting date. I could plant them earlier if I were to use poly tunnels or plastic laid out to warm the soil aka "solarize" the soil but that's more work and expense, not worth it to me. Strawberry plants can go in sooner, early May or even late April if it's a little warmer than "normal". I usually plant the various direct seeded veggies around the same time as I plant the tomatoes. Some day I'd like to build some movable greenhouse poly tunnels like Eliot Coleman designed and describes in his book "Four Season Harvest", then I could plant earlier...

 

[mgonitzke]

An electric fence works pretty good too. If you use a wire near the ground, it keeps the rabbits and raccoons out, too.

 

[kweaver]

The best defense against deer is an empty freezer !

 

[bbowman]

Harumph,harumph!
Ken always puts it in perspective!
Bobby B.

 

[kide]

Bruce:
You putting that fencing up in two 5 foot passes? Up our way, the deer appreciate a 5 foot fence, leave thank you notes regarding keeping all the smaller critters out..

 

[bnolte]

Garden Update:
Easter Weekend I hosted a family gathering of about 18 people or so. While the women were in the house cooking, chatting, or admiring my niece's new baby, the guys gathered outside for an old fashioned fence raising. We got the posts braced, the wire stretched and stapled, and the gate hung. This week I attached wire to the gate, and worked out what to do about the gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground. With lots of freshly tilled dirt that was waiting to be planted, I decided to make a ramp with the dirt instead. Here are a few shots of the results of our labors

A shot of the gate, with the ramp.

I got potatoes, peas, cabbage, broccoli, and onions planted.

This half of the garden donated the dirt for the ramp. I will have to till it up again, what dirt didn't get moved got compacted by the 102.

All done for the day.

 

[bnolte]

I realize anything short of an 8 foot electric fence will probably not keep our determined antlered vermin out of the garden, though I still have room to put some barbed wire on top of the horse fence. That will hopefully make Bambi think twice about making the leap. As far as planting schedules. I am about right on time with the taters, onions, cabbage, and broccoli, and I still have lettuce and radishes to plant. I was probably a little late getting the peas in, and I usually wait until after May 1 to plant frost sensitive stuff like Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, corn, beans, and the like. My neighbor has a greenhouse and it's got all that stuff started for when the time comes.

 

[lhinds]

Good job on the garden fence Bruce.Glad I don't have the deer problem here. We have planted most of the garden. Havent planted tomatoes yet. A little early for that. We had lots of frost Thursday and Fri. A M but didn'thurt anything. We will be eating garden salads in 2 weeks. So much better then the grocery store stuff.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Bruce, I like your fence! I need one like that around my property so I can haul a couple of the horses up from the farm. I like the dirt ramp, simple solution, hopefully the bunnies won't figure out how to dig under it. If they do, place a 6x6 pressure treated timber under it in the middle of the dirt ramp.

 

[bnolte]

Kraig,
I am actually thinking about lowering the gate about 3 inches or so. If I do it right, the gate will just skim the ground on the high side, and I'll only need 3 or four inches of fill on the low side.

KENtuckyKen,
I will add another Harumph to the chorus about making room in the freezer for Bambi.

Unfortunately, my neighbor keeps horses in an adjoining field, so I gotta think twice about shooting a rifle. Its a deer's paradise around here, too many people around to hunt easily, and plenty of farmland and small patches of woodland for Bambi to forage and hide.

 

[jbaker]

here is a photo of the freshly tilled garden, I used my "new" 149 on this, and I do not miss the manual lift on the 1200 I used last year.

 

[bnolte]

Stopped by a local farmer today who was advertising well-composted and PH neutral Horse Manure for $15 a truckload on Craigslist. We ended up shooting the breeze for about an hour, and he ended up giving it to me for $10. He may have a repeat customer.

 

[ljones]

Bruce Nolte, What are you trying to keep out
you have a fort knox garden.

Dont ever loose the key to the gate if so you
are screwed

 

[bnolte]

Lucas,
All I'm trying to keep out are the usual critters, such as raccoons, foxes, rabbits, groundhogs, and so on, and maybe deter the deer a bit.

The reason we built the fence so strong was twofold: Opportunity and Experience. The Opportunity factor was when my dad had the opportunity to pick up some 8'long 6"x6" posts, from a local sawmill that were too short for use as structural parts of say a pole building, but fine as fence posts. He had a chance to pick up those 8' 6x6 posts for $3 each. The experience factor led me to upgrade the fence wire from welded wire to heavy woven wire. The welded wire tended to snag whenever I got to close to it with the mower, so despite the extra cost, I went with the woven wire.

The gate is a 10 foot metal gate I got for $54.99 at TSC, which was better than any gate I could fabricate myself for the price. I attached some of the leftover wire from the fence perimeter to make it critter proof. A 10 foot gate allows me to get my cubs and pickup inside the garden, which is helpful when having to mow or deliver a load of manure.

I don't have a tiller attachment for my cubs, but I do have a hot-rod Troy-bilt Horse tiller. The engine is an 11 horsepower electric start engine from Harbor Freight that was adapted to use on the Troybilt. It just loafs along even when tilling deep.

As for a key, I scabbed a 4x4 post onto the post on the latch side of the gate, and use a simple pivoting board to keep it closed. I won't keep out any human poachers, just hopefully the 4 legged variety.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Bruce, nice score on those posts! Sure wish I could find a deal like that to fence in my property. Nice tiller. I have a 5hp, 17" rear tine MTD tiller, works great. I also have a 48" CAT-0 Cub Cadet tiller that my parents had on the 2072 they used to have. It fits nicely on my AC620.

 

[bnolte]

Garden Update:
The weather has been alternating between heavy rain storms and bouts of blustery and cold dry weather, alternately saturating and drying out the soil after an unusually warm, and at times hot early April. This has caused a few issues with all that nicely tilled soil and manure.

My cabbages, broccoli, and onions are up and doing well, even the cabbages nibbled on by varmits before I finished work on the gate. Peas only sprouted sporadically, a victim of the uneven rains.

My Potatoes seem to be the subject of changing opinions of the best spacing, number of sections, and so on. I started with rows of 2 slices with at least one eye every 30 inches or so, and after consulting Dad, I planted the remaining ones as single pieces every 15 to 18 inches or so. I filled in the gaps with a few leftover pieces, most of which have sprouted. I still had some gaps and clusters, so I carefully transplanted a few of the extra shoots into gaps in the row. Luckily it rained right after I finished, so I am optimistic they will take without them getting set back too far.

With a close shave with a late frost on Monday, I concluded that it was better to let the tomatoes and peppers stay in my neighbor's greenhouse a few more days.

 

[lhinds]

Bruce Nolte. Our potatoes have done the same as yours. But they are still coming through the ground after 7 weeks. After planting we had about a 40% crop and now we have about a 95% crop. I have some about 16" and some 2" tall.A lot of people in my area has had this same problem.?????? We planted our last year potatoes so it wasn't a problem with the seed. My tomatoes are starting to bloom. Beans are 6" tall.
Set out some sweet potatoe plants yesterday.
The cub cadets are getting a work out in the garden this year. We spaced our rows 4ft. apart so we can use the 124 102 and tiller. We had so much rain last week that it almost washed the garden aeay.
Just rambling. Luther