Weeds in the garden

Gymgirl might just be right. I am one of those nuts who fertilizes his yard. I mowed Monday and we got .8 inchs of rain last night so I'll have to mow again tomorrow. I love it when the grass is green. By the way, our yard has been pretty as the garden this year.

I love it here when they mow the park... It smells so good... I do miss the grass sometimes, cant run outside in bare feet, to many bullheads and rocks.. LOL...
Thanks Honeybee we try and I am proud of the fact I can live off the land and am teaching valuable lessons to Billy that he can carry on with thru out his life..

(Not garden related, well now you can say the chicken is fertilizing Billy's growth..LOLOL)

The one thing I dearly miss about moving from my house when I got married, is being able to walk BAREFOOT in the grass on weekends with my morning cup 'a coffee and watching the bluejays and cardinals...where I am now, we have stray cats that use our yard and the latrine....

If you want to get rid of Billy, I'd be glad to take him off your hands, chicken and all. Llike that sparkle in his eyes. Fine boy.

GG wrote;"Cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, & kohlrabi are in the brassica family of veggies, and grow best in cool to COLD weather. Lettuce and spinach also do best in the cool temps (Someone just posted their lettuce wasn't destroyed by 38 degree temps...)"

Yeah, I'm sadly aware of that they prefer cool. I wrote because you'd said your red cabbage headed in the fall after making it thru the summer. I was thinking of letting mine go, and wondered if it might apply to the cauliflower as well, as they are (which you mention) so similar. I will be planting agan in the fall, but really hate to trash something that might end up producing if I'm patient.

My peas are struggling, too. The weather has been so odd that things don;t seem to know what to do. My onions flowered, too.

Sigh.

But my "Maters and squash are happy, and those are my faves :)

Cat,
It wasn't my RED cabbage that headed in the fall. That first time I grew three Bonnie 50 lb. cabbages for 9 months. It was two of them that headed in the fall and continued to grow thru the winter and got picked February 20th or so...I had planted them at the end of the school year in May, right at the beginning of our scorching summer heat. Didn't know I should've waited until the end of August or so. So I HAD to baby them thru the heat.

I Wouldn't do it that way again! Too much chance of them bolting or the buggies dessimating them in the summertime...

If yours have any leaves at all, all is not lost. Harvest those leaves and cook them! Yummy! Same with the cauliflower and broccoli leaves. Cook em all together!

Thanks Jim, He does come with Chickens, Geese,Turkeys and Ducks as well as his horse and his English mastiff/hound dog Roper... Oh and saddle included with horse.. LOL He is happy cause we live out of town on the ranch and he is allowed to roam and we spend alot of time outside doing things. We dont have cable or satellite tv since in the summer we are not in the house. He is my best friend and my anchor in life. We fly kites in the arena and blow bubbles and watch the sun go down from the tail gate of the truck (Although we have a perfectly good and big front porch) I am now on vacation and we are planning on making a Chicken tractor, moving pens out of the BBQ area and putting our herbs in that space to protect from the wind..

He does his chores, feed and water horses and various critters and people tell me that it is alot for a 4 year old to do, I dont think that way, I want him to learn responsibility and although he does not feed in the morning, he helps in the afternoon.

His brother was out here yesterday and they got to eat squash out of the garden, Billy chowed down, his brother not so much...LOL the difference between the two boys is evident and Billy is much more outgoing and willing to try new things..
PS for those who dont know... Billy is my grandson who I have custody of and lives with me 24/7. He has been with me almost all his life since he was 4 months old. He rode way before he could walk, rode his first horse at 3 weeks old, helped me break a BLM Mustang at 2 years old... owned his very own horse at 3 years old, won a saddle last year and a belt buckle this year... I am the lucky one...

MissJestr,

That is sooooooooooooooooooo WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY cool!

Cudos to you on stepping up to accept the responsibility of nurturing a young one into a responsible man who someday will love and take care of a wife the way you are taking care of him now! Believe me, the love he receives now will be passed forward in his own life.

Hugs to you both.

Linda

The way you describe Billy reminds me of my son at that age. At three put him in a saddle and let him go. My boy is 43 now and I still miss those days of his following my every step. He was driving a tractor and putting up hay at 10.

Thanks Gymgirl he does mean the world to me and I hope that some girl will benefit from his raising...
I took his brother back to his mother today and Billy told me he wanted to stay with me, Ok no problem. When he saw his mother he hugged her and she did not even ask if Billy could visit. I told him thats ok, cause I needed him to go to Home Depot with me for some supplies and he sid Ok Nanny I know I need to stay with you cause I love you.
So off to home Depot where we got supplies for the chicken tractor and he got to ride in the "Tony Stewart Car" We cruised the plants and I really wanted some red onion sets, but they did not have any. I know now that my onions are Sweet Georgia Onions and they are short day's..(I bought them from there)

I am jealous of all of you, My garden is very teeny, I have a maybe 10 ft wide backyard and half of it's cement, I also can't take up all the dirt cause the doggie needs some space to romp! I think my little bed is 4x6 feet and I crammed WAAAAY too many things in there. It's my first garden, I am learning as I go! I have 5 tomato plants all squished in there, a few broccoli plants (who knew they got so huge?) black beauty squash and pole beans creeping up the fence. There is also lettuce, chives, basil and cucumbers hiding in there somewhere, I am going to move the cukes as soon as I get more compost to a wooden crate so they will have a little more room.

Here is my basil that i kept in pots (the stuff in the garden isn't doing too well it needs more sun! and to not be hidden under tomatoes!) and some assorted wild flowers that will hopefully bloom soon and attract bees!

Any space can be a productive garden! Looks like you are making the most of what you have. If you don't have the space to grow out, grow up!

i'm going to get some of those over the door shoe racks to hang from the fence and put little containers of herbs and flowers in. It's gonna be ridiculous.

Hey, that's a great idea, and it will work... I love it!

PrettyMess,
Actually, it looks like you've got it going on! Your "little" 4x6' gives you 24 square feet of growing space.

According to the Square Foot Garden concept, you have room to grow lots of stuff. Your configuration could be:
Tomato plants (1 per square foot) = 5
Broccoli plants (1 per square foot) = 4
Black Beauty Squash (1 per square foot) = 4
Pole Beans on the back side so they can creep up the fence.
Lettuce can be planted close and thinned out as you harvest baby leaves
Chives & basil, planted close and thinned just like the lettuce
Cucumbers on another side where they can be trained to run away from the bed....

Looks like you're in pretty good shape, I'd say!

NO space is ever too small. It depends on what you do with it.

Take Kelley's advice and learn the tricks for growing up and not out.

Go take a look at this square foot planting guide...

http://www.essene.com/Vegetarian/PlantSpacingsInASquareFootGarden.htm

Linda

This message was edited Jun 11, 2010 3:01 PM

Aren't we gardeners creative when we need to be? LOL

wow thanks Linda! Everything seems super crowded, especially the tomatoes, so I am hoping that I get a good amount of fruit! I bought the small cages, rookie mistake, so I am trying to figure out ways to give them more things to stay inside so they will grow up and up and up! They will soon be blocking my neighbors window, oops!

Just an update on our garden, We have Eggplant coming out good, our corn has silk on it, not sure what to do first year corn grower. Have dug up some onions for salads...YUMMY. ate a bell pepper fresh off the plant the other day, and well squash does not make it to the house on most days. One okra came up...LOL everything is doing good...