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How Does Your Garden Grow? Part 2…
How Does Your Garden Grow? Part 2…
By servantheart, Editor-At-Large
After a few days of sun, I’m finally able to walk in my lower yard without walking across the sturdy oak pallets, my “free wooden walkway”. The sun warmed us to over 90 deg. F yesterday, and the skies were blue, but with it comes the heavy humidity that is the bane of the Deep South. Container plants and young seedlings are in need of watering twice a day, very carefully, of course. I have dozens of “volunteer” tomato plants that popped up after using my compost for mulch; normally, I wouldn’t try to grow from compost volunteers, but, I know a family much in need of food supply who likes tomatoes, so, we will be growing them.
You know how it is. A family who can’t feed their own without help, but the Mom is too clinically depressed to get out there and grow a garden. I’m working on that with her (gardening, that is)…and Dad is absent 5 days a week, off chasing construction work so he can feed his family. And, yes, they’re sheeple. Can’t let kids go hungry because parents are sheeple, can we?! At least, not while we still have time to try to teach them how to grow their own food supply. Didn’t say I’d do it for them – but I will get the tomato plants to them when they are old enough to transplant; from there, it will be up to them.
I believe I’ve found a way to conquer those dang slugs and snails! As I’ve mentioned before, the beer traps seem to work very well. Just change the beer every couple of days. I’m not finding much in them now, just a few snails and an occasional slug, but, in the first few days, I found monster slugs in them – the kind that could devour a garden with no help required. Or is it because the rain has stopped and soil is drier? Or both? Either way, I believe my lower garden is being saved, if only partially.
But I also found another technique that has worked well; this may not be feasible for a large garden, but it works for my small raised gardens. I originally had about 50 green bean babies; the slugs and snails devoured all but about 20, some of them down to nothing but stalks. By setting the beer traps AND covering them at dusk with glass or plastic jars, they’ve grown new leaves and they are going to make it! I also added a tiny bit of veggie fertilizer, which helped them recover, I do believe. I save every glass jar and plastic jar I can; I love to recycle things and keep things out of the landfill; I’m grateful that I had plenty of glass/plastic jars from peanuts, fruits, pickles, etc. I have plenty of canning jars I could use, but, I save those for canning – they’re precious to me. But I just cover my green bean babies in the evening with a jar, gently twisting it into the soil a bit to hold it in place, and remove them early the next morning; as hot as it is getting now, leaving these on for long would result in a cooked green bean baby, so, do keep that in mind.
The potatoes in a container are beautiful! This is the first time I’ve tried this method, and I could not be happier. Here are two pics of my potato bin on day 1 and another pic on day 25:
My grapes are twining their way up the supports, and blooms are on the heirloom tomatoes. Citrus in pots are hanging full of “babies”.
Well, that’s the report from farmer servantheart today! How does your garden grow?
Grace and Truth,John 1:14; 1:17; 2 John 1:3 Sha’alu Shalom Y’erushalayim (Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem)
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Source: http://seasonedcitizenprepper.com/how-does-your-garden-grow-part-2/
