Plan and Prepare-Garden

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, this very dry year has been eye openning to say that least, I have never had so little rain ever, we have our own tracking system and even when the area’s around us get rain, we are getting nothing, listens to thunder and watched rain go by yet again this weekend.

The hand pump on the drilled back well is getting very hard to pull the water up, clearly its dropped from its typical level, and I don’t want to go back to power, but will have to continue researching putting it on a windmill in the near future.. the front shallow well is holding but we have to be careful with it, we have put on more collection systems for the steel roofs but we need rain for them to work. so far that means our shallow well is really holding the fort down.

After looking at my garden, heading to the market and checking out the cost of farmers market prices, a quick stop at walmart and came home and show our heads, we have decided to take the laundry to town and pay to do it, take the water saved and put it into careful watering in the garden, simple math, the food value is worth more then the cost to go once a week and do laundry in town does.  Hopefully this will be a temp measure for the next month or two, and of course a couple good rains and we would not need to go that week etc.

We spent hours on sat and even more on sunday cutting down tree’s, trimming the branches off, and taking some wood to go cut up as fire wood (after it cures of course) and the rest is being selected and cut down for a huge new hugelbeet.  We now have enough wood for the base and middle, and we will be adding a new layer after the chicken layer, which will be pig poo and bedding, then a light layer of cow and then finish with a big layer of year old sheep before letting it all sit, don’t plan on adding my dirt till next spring.

This heat is cooking my manure piles, I have never seen them go down as fast as they are this year, I would have thought they would be to dry to compost properly and we have given them a watering once or twice when we had rain this spring and it was not quite this dry but nothing for weeks and still they are composting down at a rapid rate.

This fact is not lost on me, I intend to add alot more well rotten organics to the main garden area this fall and work it in the spring, I want the whole feeding area, scraped and mixed and then dumped into my one half of the main garden, spread out to a three or four inch cover and allowed to sit fallow with a green cover on top for the rest of this year and early spring, then I am going to turn it in slightly and turn that whole area into corn next year. 

We are in the process of cleaning out another 1/8th of a acre that will become my grain crop area, we are clearing the bush in this area, then we need to fence it, put a hot wire on it and we are putting the pigs in to help clear it, and work on those many, many stumps, once they work their magic, then I will use girl to finish pulling what’s left out this fall, and if there is anything left compostwise, after we get done the new 40 foot bed, plus the garden, then I will add it to that area, I want to get it finished in time ideally to put in winter wheat, but if not, at least be ready for a spring planting, I want some to be flax as well.

Ps, what are you learning or planning on doing different in your garden after learning from this harder then normal year?

Also, we have a cestern by the big back barn, I have always used it as a root cellar because water for the outside/garden/pasture has never been a issue, but we are talking about cleaning it out, removing the moveable shelving that I haul up and down and considering setting up a system to fill it with water in early spring, when we did get rain and or filling it with the hose from the dug well, when its full to overflowing in the spring,  I would have to measurements to be sure how much extra water this would allow us to store but it would be a very good amount! for future use in the garden season.. thoughts?

Posted in gardens | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

A day well spent..

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, we had a amazing saturday, up early and did house and critter chores and then we headed off to the farmers market, where we walked around, took notes on prices (yikes) and left empty handed..  The local lamb lady didn’t even have her prices up anymore, I guess to encourage folks to come in to talk to her raither then to see them and walk on by.

The selection of things was good but the quality was certainly down and the prices up, I was surprised to see that it made little to no difference near as I could tell to the buying public, the rest of the folks where happily handing over their hard earned cash.

Then off to the feed store, where I got a new toy that lets you clip a regular bottle to your backpack or jeans, we typically have our metal bottles but nice to have the choice for when we are rotating out our bottled water stocks, it was on the sale table for a dollar.. love it!

At that point we went shopping at the big old walmart, I love shopping with DH, we went in, got what we needed (all of three things) and got out in under ten min, now that is the way to do it!

On the way home, I saw Farmer T who I had not seen since I got home, so gave a wave, and laughed as she stopped in the middle of the road to come give me a warm welcome home hug and a reminder to start coming over to go riding again, guess the bridge is fixed so we can take the main trail again, they are up to about 4 hour rides at this point, that’s going to make me sore for sure but looking forward to it.

Home on the farm, the rest of the day was a trimming, and hauling day, we spent four to six hours (I did the four, and then came in to do house, chores, and supper) trimming out smaller and in some cases not so small tree’s in the yard, pasture and tree area, we want to build a second large hugelbeet that will be ready for next spring, just in case we have the same dry and heat next year, so we now have enough taken down to do a 40 foot base of both bigger and smaller wood for the hugelbeet.

We did make piles in the different area’s but next we will need to sod out the area that we want to put the new one in, and then i am going to lime the subsoil before putting down the tree trucks and brush pile.

O ya and Dh broke the ax handle, good thing you can get replacements for them..

I made a meatza pizza for supper, and as I expected DH loved it, me not so much, considering my favorite “pizza” is ham and pinnaple and DH is meat lovers loaded, this was not a surprise really.. however, a small amount with a large side salad is not bad..

We were listening to vinal tap and ended up spending the last 20 min of it, just a dancing in our kitchen, Dh was getting his funk on LOL for a man that would not sing or dance when I meet him, he sure can do so now.. I remember him only being willing to waltz(sort of) at our wedding, was just busting the moves last night.. 🙂

As I was teaching him how to turn me in the jive, I was laughing but also had a tiny sad moment when I realized that with my mom’s new hip and now knee, she won’t be able to ever jive with me again, from the time I was little, if the right song came on, we would just stop and dance, glad I still have that in my life.

Of to bed for a well deserved sleep, and the hounds even let me sleep in till just after 6 this morning! Here’s to a wonderful and productive sunday to go with my great saturday!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

Free Food! – Bumper Crop of Black ChokeCherries..

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

DH had a surprise for me last night when he arrived home, as he often will do on his way home from the feed store he took a new route home and when he came though the door, he was excited to show me something he had found on a tiny back road, as he handed these lovely clumbs of rich dark berries on twigs, he asked if I knew what they were, I took one look and was delighted.. Black Choke Cherries!

I know this fruit, and only needed to bite down into a cherry to hit the pit, see how ripe they were and get that lovely cottenish/pucker bite in my mouth, this was very mild, these were some perfectly ripe berries, just bursting with juice.

I asked how many and I am thrilled to hear that we have a very large clumb of a number of mature bushes and even more excited that he says there is for sure 4 to 6 small bushes perfect for digging out and transplanting to the farm, I will thank the patch by hauling out tubs of compost and will fill the holes left from digging the baby bushes out by filling it in for the bigger ones..  Not only so there will be no holes for us to step in next year but also because it will feed the bushes that I want to harvest from.. Don’t worry, i’m not picking on private property, these are wild ditch fruit.

From the sounds of it, it will be possable to get a number of five gallon buckets full easily and I am so excited to add this fruit, I will be making some into wine/vinagar, some into juice with a small amount into jelly but most of it will be dried and lots made into fruit leather..

If there is extra after that, I will dry the fruits with pits in and use them as extra high quality chicken feed in late winter. While I have not seen them yet, I will be looking to see how or why these bushes are having such a bumper crop on such a dry year, I am guessing they must bump up to a good underground water level but more on that later!

Posted in wild foods | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

My Momma got robbed! – She’s fine!

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Thankfully it went as well a robbery could in her favour..

So here is the story as I know it, first thing you need to know, she has very good hearing, and has always been a lighter sleeper and with her knee still waking her up often, she sleeps even lighter so she was awake at 2pm when she saw the first flashlight go by the bathroom window, she got up and went to the kitchen to see that someone was in her motorhome and looking in bags etc.

She called the cops (who arrived about 20 min later) and then went out on the deck (with the stairs she is not to do yet) and yelled at the guy, that she had seen him, had called the cops, needless to say that gentleman, tall, thin with ballcap on took off with bags in hands..

Guess what he took!-Food mostly.. yup, kettles, pots and pans there, a very good quality bedding etc and he took food and laundry and personal soap/care items.

Now she caught him early enough that this “could” have been a grab and go but he did appear to have time to look in a few bags, and she had a brand new set of non-breakable dishes having gotten them at home sense..

This got me to thinking, we have a couple choices, a dumb B&E dude, taking the ull bargin shop bags instead of the full home sense bags..

Or, a smart B&E guy that knows that food and personal care items are good sellers, I have heard reports that one of the most prizes stolen items is laundry soap as there is always a good steady “black market” for it.

or, someone that put more value on what they could eat themselves, vs what they could take that could be resold..  If that was part of the case, then things are getting even worse then I thought..

Not much luck on figuring out who did it, and so the cops wrote the report but nothing will come of it.. so I will go with, I am glad my mom is ok, that it was minor and hope that food ends up in the tummy of peaple who truly need it.

Posted in Life moves on daily | 11 Comments

On the hunt for the perfect Socca Recipe (Chickpea Flat Bread)

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I am on the hunt for the best Socca Recipe, I am reading and getting conflicting reports on the amount of water to use, the amount of time to let the batter sit or not? Must be grilled, no it can be baked, or made like a pancake.. Eat it fresh and warm only vs will keep a week in the fridge, just reheat and crisp it..

So before I waste a whole bunch of my flour making little batches and ending up trying all these different ways, anyone out there make this and can give me a leg up?

a) I am looking for a basic thicker style flat bread recipe

b) I am looking for a crepe like recipe that can be used as wraps

c) I am looking for a pizza crust recipe..

And if it turns out that no one else is making these, then I guess its time to put on my apron buy a second bag of that crazy priced flour and hit the kitchen to figure it out 🙂

So if you make these and have a favorite recipe, please share it with me.. Thanks so much!

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | 17 Comments

Farmgal’s Broody Hen Advice

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Farmgal’s advice on “broody hens”

Well, I have heard it a couple times in the last little while, either I want a broody hen or my hen went broody and I heard that is rare now a days, that broodyness has been breed out of most chickens today and that these hens have added value..

I say, yes and no..and I spent a whole bunch of time writing out a answer and then the cat came for a snuggle, hit a key with her foot and it all went bye.. so this time I thought I would do a post on it and put it out in detail.

So the first thing to know is that I am unaware of any way to make a hen go broody, I mean you can set up the extra for broody hens but if they don’t want to sit, they are not going to..

The second thing to know is that I don’t believe that broodyness has been breed out of most breeds, I just don’t think that chicken owners give the girls the time-space-age they need to figure it out, by this I mean that typically my best broody hens are between the ages of 3 to 5, and most folks owners that read the books will have already put those girls into the stew pot. If you know that a girl is going broody and starting to sit, it might be a good idea to give a good hard look at their protein levels, if they are out on pasture or getting to forage in the yard, then they will do just fine but if they are confined, then you might want to increase that protein level if you want good to excellent hatch rates.

Now having said that, if you ask around you can find breeders in your area that will have kept broodyness in their birds, most folks will tell you to get a banty and I will get to that but for now, lets stay with layers and dual purpose birds, in my own local area the very first spring on the farm, I got Bard Rocks from a boody line, and then I went to the bird sale and picked up a set of brown leghorns from a local breeder, turns out to be one of the best choices I could have done, while they do lay smaller white eggs, and give a lighter body to the offspring (but not as bad as banties half breeds would) they have proven themselves to some of the best mothers on the farm, giving me upwards of two clutches in a summer with between 8 to 14 chicks typically.

So what am I looking for in a broody girl..

a) A smart girl that will take advantage of the quieter laying box’s, if a hen try’s to get broody on a popular active laying box, the odds are very good that when she comes off to eat/drink/bathroom, other hens will come in and mess with the nest/clutch. I have never seen a girl yet successfully sit a nest in the most open popular nesting sites.

B) Protective yes, but needs to be calm and steady bird, I repect a hen that will fluff up and give me the eye, and even a couple good strong peeks, as long as she will hunker down and set her eggs, she gets 5 stars on this, however, I need a calm steady broody girl that will let me set eggs under her (this allows you to take eggs from other birds you know laid them and make sure you get a selection of genes in that clutch), it allows you to count eggs, candle eggs and remove bad ones. Now I don’t mess with my sitting hens much or often, but a couple times in the process, I need to do so, and I want to do it while! the momma bird is there, she might peek me but if she stays during the process on the rest of the clutch, she will be happier then if she goes to eat, and you move everything around and then let her back in.

c) She needs to keep good body condition, by this I mean she needs to be willing to get off, eat, drink and do her bathroom breaks, but at the same time, she needs to be set enough that she won’t be temped to head out into the yard, I have hens sit so hard that they loss body condition, this is bad because that hen will take a good long while to get back up to condition and start laying again, where a hen that sits very well but does get off to eat and drink faithfully, will keep her condition and get back to laying within a much! shorter time frame.

d)She in fact needs to sit, lots of the time I hear, they started and then stopped and then started an stopped, or my hen goes broody all summer long.. wrong, your hen is not broody, she’s a faker, and fakers need to end up in the pot or have their eggs taken daily, don’t waste your time on a girl that won’t sit for more then a week or ten days at a time, she is wasting her time and your time.. Even in my own flock that I have been breeding broodyness into for the past 8 years, depending on breed, I can have upwards of 50% false starts from girls that won’t stay on their eggs for the full time required. Having said that once a hen sits till she hatches, I find she will almost always do it again and again..

e) She needs to stay on the eggs for that 12 to 48 hours that it will take for all of them to hatch out, nothing worse then having 8 or 10 good eggs with chicks in them and having a mother only wait for the first two or three and leave the rest to die from lack of warmth as she leaves with the only the first hatched, when you have a hen that cares, she will sit on those eggs till she can’t hear anyone anymore.

f) She should ideally be willing to take extra chicks, most hens will accept extra chicks as long as there is room, this is awesome for a number of reason’s, if you have a proven girl that you can count on, you can get new chicks in for bloodlines from that hatchery, knowing that you will not need a heat lamp, that your girl will take those extra five new females and raise them as her own, or you can move over a second hens chicks to a different mother, the chicks are still momma raises but the hen that lost her chicks will start laying much! faster then she will if she has chicks underfoot.

G)She needs to be a good momma, and just because they can sit does not mean that this is the case, she should be showing the chicks what to do in terms of food and water but she should also be very protective of them from all the other birds, along with other critters and a really good momma teaches them the babies to be weather wise as well. If you use a whistle to call your birds like we do, she will quickly teach the young ones to come to get their treats, and they will learn that you are a good thing in their world, instead of a scary thing, this will help teach the chicks to trust you and will help you raise up the next gen of steady as she goes hens.

Last but by no means least the hen that sits should be one of the best examples of what You want to see in the next gen, and by this I am not just talking about more eggs or more meat like the books are talking about, I mean, do you live in a very cold climate, then breeding to reduce comb size is a valuable trait to consider as it reduces winter heat loss, do you want pasture birds, then breeding in smarts is a good thing, do you have lots of preditors in your area, then breeding for a body type that can still fly either a good distance or up into tree’s is worth its weight in gold, good conformation is a given but I will say it anyway, you want to breed for not just a solid body but for the best legs and feet you can.

So do you look for anything else in your broody hens? Want Chick Advice –Chick 101

Posted in Critters | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Rain, Beautiful Rain!!

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Its been just over two weeks since the farm has seen a drop of rain, so when I heard the first sounds of water on the roof at just after 3 am this morning, it got me up, its now just after five and its rained pretty steady for the past two hours, lighter rain and then heavier rain in waves, we are on the outer edge of the system that is no doubt going to make a lot of farmers and gardeners very happy in my neck of the woods, I am very hopeful that the afternoon rains that they say are coming will indeed do so and maybe I will get very lucky and get in the middle of the rains instead of the edges.

Having said that, I did go stand outside and have a warm summer rain shower to start my day.. so wonderful, the ducks are out bathing, honk is bathing himself in the rain and the purrpots are hiding but I can already hear the little wild birds singing in the darkness..

I will bet that everything in the gardens are just soaking this up, I was listening to CBC yesterday and Ed, our garden guru was talking about the fact that in really hot and dry conditions like now, not only was really thick mulch perfect for keeping water but he was talking about how it was also amazing at helping when it finally did rain, that if its bare soil, that the rain in fact tends to hit hard and then drain away, where if your area is well mulched, it will take the impact and then create dozens of little spots for the water to soak in and get held for the plants to drink it up, instead of puddingly and running away, another great reason for all the work we have put into getting that mulch in place.

Well, when it starts to brighten up, I will need to go pick all the pink tomato’s because with this much rain, I will for sure have splitting happening in them if I don’t, my heads on the califlowers are forming, they are on the smaller side but I am sure that this will give a great help in it.

I have always loved the sound of the rain but today it means so much to more then me.. it means alot for the gardens, the trees, the pasture and the hay fields around me, and I am sure that this will go a long way to helping Farmers R crops around me as well..

Posted in farm | 10 Comments

Garden Monday..

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, its Garden Monday, but the truth is, I am waiting for rain, but there has been a few things, I was able to collect and put away pint jar of radish seeds for sprouting in winter time, it should have been a quart jar but the little yard lamb seem to like them and as they were in the horse trough there were not behind the garden fence, so little I could do about it.

I have started getting fresh tomato’s this past week, along with green beans, radishes, onions, horseradish greens and green peppers, I am pretty sure if I dug, we would be able to get fresh new potatos, DH put down another couple hundred pds of mulch in the garden and taking things from our normal 2 to 4 inches of mulch to 4 to 6 inches of mulch seems to help perk the plants up.

I do have lots and lots of mints thriving in this heat..so I am wild crafting and drying mints.. Got another small bowl of mixed berries this past week, a few more currents, gooseberries and mulberries came in..

I am just amazed at the amount of wild parsnip that is thriving this year, we always have some (which we battle as its one of the few things DH reacts to if he gets swiped by it) but this is crazy, one of the land owners down the way (a couple farms over) used to have race horses and he has clearly gotten out of it, and is letting that feild be fallow and its currently a field of wild parsnip!, I really! really hope he takes the time to cut it down at the very least and to be honest, he needs to consider turning it and reseeding it, otherwise its just going to stay taken over!

On the flip side, we got the second side of the little barn all guttered off and more water barrels set up so that we can collect an extra 300 gallons from that side of the barn if it would ever just give us a really good rain! something we have talked about for years but never needed to do because for the past because what we had gave us more then enough water.

The price of critter feed has already gone up, a bag of starter that we got two months ago was 13 and where we in for a “what” when the same bag, make and model and the same store was up to 17 when we went back for one this weekend.. Now that is one heavy jump in a very short time and this years crops are not even in yet..hmmm

I read that 28 states in the US have declared themselves in a state of drought and that there will be minor to major crop failures in all the states listed, I tried to figure out if we have anything like that in canada at the moment but so far I could not find anything on it.

Have a great monday!

Posted in farm, gardens | 12 Comments

Pickled Radish in Soy Sauce

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

As my regular readers know I have a crazy amount of books in my house, and one of the books my mom sent me last year was the joy of Pickling by linda ziedrich, if you like pickles of all kinds, then this is a very interesting book to pick up, it has 250 recipes and while it does cover the basic’s it takes food and ways to pickle that are just different for me..

So when I sat looking at a bunch of big Daikon radish intermixed with easter egg radishes that are so hot from the heat, they darn near make your eyes water, I was unsure how to use them, I had been served dishes in finland with hot cooked radish mixed in as part of the veggies palate, and so I took the super hot easter egg ones and sliced and diced them into a lovely veggies mix, they replaced the heat you would get from onion in the dish while adding some great color and texture.. this was a two thumbs up and would do it again for sure..

Which left me with the Daikon radish’s, they are not bad raw, and I do like a bit of them peeled and grated raw added to cabbage salad but just has to many ready all at once, so I thought I would see if there was any chance that any of my preserving books might have idea’s on how to use this “new” to me radish..

Bingo in the Joy of Pickling.. when the recipe calls for two things, is it even a recipe 🙂 Well it is in my books when it takes two things, melds them and turns out something that is so different!

1 pd of Daikon radish
1/2 cup of light japanese soy sauce ( has it happens at the asian store, they had a sale of soy sauce in 1 liter jugs for 1 each, and I got one to make sure we liked it and then went back for six more as it was good for a long time)

1 pint jar..

Cut the diakon into 1/4 inch rounds or half round depending on the size to start with, pour your sauce over and shake and put in fridge, she said, I could use them within 24 hours but I felt they needed at least 48 hours to really come into their own, the radish will give out water and mix with the sauce, mine just! barely covered the radishes, I expect that might be due to the fact that my radishes are in heat and not quite as juicy as they could be.. keeps up to one week in the fridge..

Now I like them as a side pickle, I also chopped up and used in a salad but I also poured a mess of them into a lamb stirfry and thought it went very well with the meat and the mess of other veggies, giving different flavours and textures to the stirfry, if I was eating rice right now, I would love to dice some of them up along with a few other things into a rice dish..

So what is your favorite way to use up “hot” or a overload of radishes coming in from the garden?

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

What’s working in the garden in this heat and drought..

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, most of you know that I love to try a number of different things in the garden, and I have had alot of success with my no-till, dry land planting spacing and with my mulching..

Having said that, this year has been a real challange in regard to the water, the garden and I have been watching and tracking things on why some things are doing better or in some cases amazingly better then others..
So I am going to run though some of the different things that I have on the go this year and how they are working..

Square foot bed- at this point, I have given up and pulled it and mulched it, I can’t keep it watered enough for the plants to be worth the time.. (I am sure if I was willing to water, this would work, if fact, I am planning on doing a small shade greens 4 by 4 box that I will water so I can have softer greens to mix in the salads, the horseradish greens are so hot, the nettles are so stinging, the wild greens are very strong in this heat, some that I can normally eat as is or with one blanch, can take me two or even three light blanches to get them to the point of being good..

Horse Trough Bed, – we got our greens crops out, my radishes went to seed, and I got about half the crop, turns out the yard sheep really like to eat the radish pods, and I have gotten a good crop of green beans out of it, however the cucumber etc is doing nothing. Its worth noting that it has composted down and lost almost two feet worth of depth in the box itself.

Shade small Hugelbeet, we got our spring green in it and it did well but its not doing well at this time, no really fault of its own, its not fenced and the chickens have cleaned it out, but its still got green onions for a while yet.

Large Full Sun Hugelbeet- Now if you remember, I placed this big one in such a way that in the spring, its a wet area, and clearly it did its job well, it sucked up the water into the wood, its the best at the moment on the farm, the melon plants are thriving and growing very well, and I have not watered them once.

Nursery garden- This is a my very sheltered garden that is ringed by tree’s- we took off our spring crop and our summer crop is struggling but holding..

Main garden- There are area’s that things are struggling in, the heavier the mulch the better, all is dry land planted in spacing, I gave the tomato’s a full four feet each this year and I am glad I did.. The difference in the garden shows up in two ways, the soon and heavier the mulch the better, but also those plants planted around last years compost pile and or those planted around a underground composting pit are the ones that are not just holding but are in fact growing and or producing..

Food Forest Garden- Again, while not thriving as I would like, they are growing, and faster then the main garden (but not as well as the hugelbeet ones) and I believes its a combo of me ripping and dropping or green mulching what is growing around the ones I want to have produce more and also that its cooler in the food forest (up to 10 degree’s cooler) but also because I have found that in the morning, there is alot of dew on the plants, (including in the pasture, which is why the sheep are now night and very early morning grazing) Given this, I spent a little time and set up little “water traps” that now collect the dew and drip it into the food hills. I will report back on if it was worth the effort but I believe it will be..

The compost pile garden-tomato plants– Now I have done a fair amount of looking, study and even a bit of digging and I think? I have a bit of the answer here..we wanted to build up that area, as it was a bit low and can be sof/wet ground, the compost when it came out of the barn was deep pack and the oldest was already six months old and half composted out, and we put it in three foot high piles, so that its kind of rolling little hills with valleys or at least dips between.. now it was wet very early this spring, so that would have soaked in and helped it compost down (I had measured it when we put it out and it has composted a full foot down on average), the plants all came up in the side of the valley or dip, none came in the flat hotter top of the pile, that means they have a bit of side shade from the hill in front, dew will drip down, rain will collect in that area and they need to grow a shorter distance before they would have passed out of the compost and gotten their roots into the soil below, and then the compost would just ask as a really like mulch.. Clever little plants!

So what different thing are you trying this year that is working and handling the heat and the dryness, are you watering? and if so how often?

Posted in gardens | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments