2023 Garden Thread
- Thread starter mcswny
- Start date
This is my biochar additive year…about every 4 years. I have and will buy about 12 bags of Wilco Wormgro… 20 quart bags and a cup and a half of bone meal per 10 sq ft
I always plant Leeks And hollow crown parsnips, broad winsor favas. And parsley root in late September for winter crops. Alternating seasons.
jact55
Life of the Party
Nice. I've done biochar in the past. Those bags aren't cheap for burnt wood lol. Probably not hard to make your own, but I think proper burning Temps is necessary. You make your own biochar?
But do all what you/I have talked about above, add a bunch of molasses and fish hydrolysate, bokashi, worm tea and let it cook under tarps for a couple weeks.
You done any worm farming?
I've done in the past on a small scale. Want to get into it in a bigger way at some point.
TicTokCroc
Sunkist and Sudafed
I have farmed meal worms, got a pretty big colony built up and was getting quite a bit of frass, several 5 gallon buckets worth. I need to build up the colony again, the chickens love them. Our neighbors have horses, lots of poop, I should look into a red wriggler farm.
No ido not.
archeologists have found that ancient Amazonian cropland contains large deposits of dark, rich soil called Terra Preta that was made by these ancient farmers between 2,500 to 4,000 years ago. This Terra Preta contains high amounts of charcoal created through the process of pyrolysis (burning organic material in high heat and low oxygen) which preserves up to 50% of the carbon vs. converting it into CO2 gas through complete combustion. Pyrolysis produces a very porous and stable form of organic matter through physically and chemically altering the composition of the biomass being burned.
Small scale worm stacks but a lot crawl up into layers of my compost towers in leaf mass layers. I make sure the compost towers get plenty of air with heavy screen vents at the bottom sides and have a hinged lid that is framed hardware “cloth”( 1/4 or 1/2” gridded galvanized wire screening. I bag about a dozen 50 gallon garbage bags of maple leaves—- lot of maple trees along the streets that i rake up. I use the composting bags for the towers and late fall and winter mulching, rake off about a month ago and back in heavy bags that i save for this.
Since it's the first of April I decided I better get started. So I put some lettuce and sweet onion seeds in a window sill tray. I should be able to transfer the lettuce outside in a couple weeks; probably longer for the onions. I could maybe start some carrots inside as well, cuz nothing's going to germinate outside in the raised beds this week.
I tried a little experiment with carrots . Sprinkle in rows on top of prepared bed soil in a raised box put a cut to shape piece of cardboard and flooded it with water weighted with chunks of scrap boards… 2 weeks later i lifted the cardboard -germination! The tap root knows where the dirt is… covered it with a cut piece of hardware cloth. Previously at a small raised bed I transplanted a bunch of carrot seedlings I started in deli trays with domes. Those did not like the cold wet soil . They should have been put out of the greenhouse for hardening off time for a few days. The greenhouse is about 68 degrees to 60 at night. I would start the carrots and when they get their first set of ferny leaves they are ready to plant out but hardening them off a bit first
Snow insulates btw. When i was a kid we hah a big burning pile that was covered with snow. The sun was bright but cold. Some of the snow melted and froze. Never paid attention to it but one day the dome of the pile had frozen like a window and i saw red splotches through it. Told dad. Vounteer tomato plant- huge we had tomatoes for dinner.
Got a cool little “gardening” present for my birthday. A couple dozen bee cups - little glazed porcelain stemmed cups the size of crocus… they hold about a tsp of water . Yeah bees need to drink water when it's hot. placing them where you see bees. We have a big Perovskia atriplicifolia) Russian sage-aka bee magnet and lavender and anise hyssop plants as bee attractors. You need bee plants. They are selective just like we are
Nice
But I’m more of about a “D” cup man myself
But a couple dozen ? Variety is sooo nice.
Store 2 — Bee Cups
www.bee-cups.com
TicTokCroc
Sunkist and Sudafed
C'mon man!!
Not even going to walk out and look today!
![IMG_20230403_071125569[1].jpg](https://pnwflyfishing.com/forum/data/attachments/40/40892-bfb88c48e39080cf1b536dcd05407e3f.jpg "IMG_20230403_071125569[1].jpg")
![IMG_20230403_071413302[1].jpg](https://pnwflyfishing.com/forum/data/attachments/40/40893-628711f871b9f317cb55755f607bf5f3.jpg "IMG_20230403_071413302[1].jpg")
I got nothing to complain about comparatively. It is too damn cold though to plant anything that i want to plant. Starting carrots and beets in greenhouse but in the next 10 days in SW it still is about 4-5 degrees on average lower than i would like. Shooting for a low of the low 40’s which may well be a few weeks? Planting peas twice so far… its a maybe. A week ago last year my mason bees came out to say hello with little to feed them cuz a 65 deg day will do that then back to the grey we know so well.
We planted a hosui pear tree last summer and it looks quite attractive in bloom at the moment. I think it'll be another week until full bloom.
