What did you do in your garden today?

[lookingforidea]

View attachment 107553View attachment 107554View attachment 107555View attachment 107555cut more spinach beet leaves and bok choy today for us and the chickens they love this time of yr they get fresh cut greens everdayView attachment 107556

That is so healthy! Grow the veg and feed chicken, so you can eat healthy eggs. And make it as a nice recycle to grow more veg, I love that! How long have you been feed chicken? I want suggest a nice chicken coop or chicken run for you. https://aecojoy.store/products/aecojoy-96-chicken-coop-with-wheels?_pos=9&_sid=2bcc800b4&_ss=r from Aecojoy brand, i found so many pieces of outdoor items that useful in my graden.

 

[oneeye]

$45 a yard for topsoil / compost mix

last year it was $30 a yard. But, they are under new management. Also they are open earlier in the year, and have a better selection. So I'm not complaining....too much.

I'm doing the 50/50 compost / topsoil mix because last year I did straight compost and it was too hot. My loofah plant only made male flowers and I didn't get any loofahs. I also felt like some of my peppers were more stunted than I expected.

Most commeral compost is made from grinded up tree and brush debris. City maintenance and landscape contrators take their tree cuttings to giant grinders to grind and shread the wood.

The compost company that sells the compost also take any expired consumable liquids from big companies like Coke, Pepsi, Coors, Miller Brewer, Gatoratd and many others and mix the liquids with the shreaded wood and it converts the wood to compost in 3 months. Compost requires 2:1 to 3:1 ratio of brown to green to work. The added liquids make up the the :1 that makes compost.

So when using commercial compost by the yard, its a good idea to add some orgainic nitrogen with the compost for it to work well. Topsoil doesn't have enough nitrogen to keep the wood from sucking up all the nitrogen. IF you add a 40 lb bag of poultry mix or alfalfa prills fertilizer you should be ok.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

You need to target the birds you want. Build a blue bird house only blue birds will stay in it. Red birds live in very tight dense bushed. Robins like tree limbs with 3 forks. Wrens will live in wren houses. Sparrows have houses they like best. Robins are ground feeders they eat worms. Doves are ground feeders they eat seeds. Birds will not live in house with a perch other birds can land on. 95% of the bird house plans online are rubbish. I use to like Wrens but they are very aggressive birds they will run off other birds. Online info claims wrens eat there body weight in bugs every day. Target birds in your geographical location. Wrens will land 8 ft from your face then chirp there lungs out like they are telling you to get the @#$% out of my yard. Wrens are funny birds but I don't want them in my yard anymore.

Common names are deceiving Gary. Englishmen travelled the world and saw something that reminded them of home so called the bird that. Robins is a good example, "It's got a red breast, must be a robin readbreast", there are different birds all over the world all called 'Robin', our original one is an insectivore which is highly territorial, living solitary, or as a pair sometimes of year, and fights to the death if another one comes on its territory. The American one is a type of thrush that flocks and migrates, couldn't be more different. I didn't know about your wren, but ours is super shy, builds a little domed nest right in the middle of dense bushes. In winter they sometimes gather in large numbers to keep warm in places like hollow logs. Hedging and ditching was a winter job and people who never saw a wren's nest would disturb them, and thought they grew out of the ground, hence their Latin name. Troglodytes troglodytes.
You are perfectly right about attracting the right ones though, for example, great tits are fairly common here, and feed their young caterpillars, but they time their egg laying and hatching to the emergence of oak tree caterpillars and feed them exclusively. No one knows how they manage the timing, the caterpillars emerge with the new leaves and it is different every year, but the eggs have to be laid well in advance. Birds are amazing.
These boxes have a fairly large hole compared to the ones I already have, so I am expecting sparrows rather than bluetits, and they seem to be untreated, so I'll take them down and give them a coat of something late summer, and build some different sorts, but they are a quick, easy way to get started now when the birds are just looking to start building.

 

[Ruderunner]

Yesterday still continue with clean up. Have a young man over to help. He will be back on Thursday. Lots of leaf clean up still to do. Husband glad I found someone. Today doing errands, lunch with a friend at the Whip Tavern, 15 mins from me. https://www.thewhiptavern.com/#1

Do you have a leaf blower or lawn vac? Or are you doing this by hand?

I used to do it by hand, then stepped up to blowers and a couple years ago picked up a lawn vac. Best thing I ever bought for the yard, well besides the riding mower.

 

[Ruderunner]

Well, had scheduled a long weekend hoping to do garden stuff but the weather is still uncooperative. I'll work on vehicles instead today and tomorrow.

Might work on starting indoor seeds for future planting.

 

[gary350]

Common names are deceiving Gary. Englishmen travelled the world and saw something that reminded them of home so called the bird that. Robins is a good example, "It's got a red breast, must be a robin readbreast", there are different birds all over the world all called 'Robin', our original one is an insectivore which is highly territorial, living solitary, or as a pair sometimes of year, and fights to the death if another one comes on its territory. The American one is a type of thrush that flocks and migrates, couldn't be more different. I didn't know about your wren, but ours is super shy, builds a little domed nest right in the middle of dense bushes. In winter they sometimes gather in large numbers to keep warm in places like hollow logs. Hedging and ditching was a winter job and people who never saw a wren's nest would disturb them, and thought they grew out of the ground, hence their Latin name. Troglodytes troglodytes.
You are perfectly right about attracting the right ones though, for example, great tits are fairly common here, and feed their young caterpillars, but they time their egg laying and hatching to the emergence of oak tree caterpillars and feed them exclusively. No one knows how they manage the timing, the caterpillars emerge with the new leaves and it is different every year, but the eggs have to be laid well in advance. Birds are amazing.
These boxes have a fairly large hole compared to the ones I already have, so I am expecting sparrows rather than bluetits, and they seem to be untreated, so I'll take them down and give them a coat of something late summer, and build some different sorts, but they are a quick, easy way to get started now when the birds are just looking to start building.

If you travel the USA you see different types of Wrens, different humming birds also in other locations. Humming birds in Phoenix AZ are very large about 3 times larger than humming birds in TN. We never see Meadowlarks in TN but Illinois has 1000s of them. This time of the year lots of people are selling bird houses to make money but the houses are generic they do no target any bird. Some birds like slots not round entrance shoes. Houses with slots are called, nesting boxes. Birds that build nest with sticks like nesting boxes it is hard to get sticks through a round hole. Slots and holes need to be the correct size, too small or too large birds will not live in those houses. Bird autobahn security has good bird house and nesting box plans. Look our for links that take you to fake scam bird autobahn security web pages that want money. I learned if I try to find bird autobahn security with google search I get scammers every time that want $$$ but if I search for a certain bird information I get the real bird autobahn security.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

@roadrunner , we have leaf blowers, tarps, tractor that vaccums up leaves, we have it all. some areas just need hand raking out ----depends on what plants are in those areas, and location. No one ever understands the amount of leaves we deal with every year.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

It's hard to judge without any information, but maybe he got a better offer elsewhere?

But he still needed to the respectful thing and call me.

 

[Sean Regan]

I wasn't going to do much today.
Just finish off the pagoda.

I didn't give it a complete "make over," just painted the roofs, part of the decks and the sorin. I didn't want it to look too new. The balustrades, which are hardwood mouldings set in the concrete floors, did not need a repaint.

Some of the work that went into this nearly forty years ago is always unseen.
At the time, there was no internet and I relied on illustrations in books.

There's a limit to what you can do with concrete, but I had a go at making "simulated pin-joint supports." These are used under the corners of the roofs which stick out quite a long way.

These of course can't be seen, due to the size of the roofs.


I'm pleased with the progress of this Acer palmatum Taylor. Lots of little buds on every branch. It has spent the last two winters in the utility room in the garage. I replace two we'd bought in successive years which I left on the patio and died over winter.

Still no sign of any hedgehog activity.

 

[ThatsMyPurseIDontKnowYou]

Most commeral compost is made from grinded up tree and brush debris. City maintenance and landscape contrators take their tree cuttings to giant grinders to grind and shread the wood.

The compost company that sells the compost also take any expired consumable liquids from big companies like Coke, Pepsi, Coors, Miller Brewer, Gatoratd and many others and mix the liquids with the shreaded wood and it converts the wood to compost in 3 months. Compost requires 2:1 to 3:1 ratio of brown to green to work. The added liquids make up the the :1 that makes compost.

So when using commercial compost by the yard, its a good idea to add some orgainic nitrogen with the compost for it to work well. Topsoil doesn't have enough nitrogen to keep the wood from sucking up all the nitrogen. IF you add a 40 lb bag of poultry mix or alfalfa prills fertilizer you should be ok.

They told me last year that the "compost" was 1/2 old mulch and 1/2 year old cow manure.

Like I said, it was quite hot and caused some issues with my plants. Thats why I had it cut half with topsoil this year.

 

[ThatsMyPurseIDontKnowYou]

Common names are deceiving Gary. Englishmen travelled the world and saw something that reminded them of home so called the bird that. Robins is a good example, "It's got a red breast, must be a robin readbreast", there are different birds all over the world all called 'Robin', our original one is an insectivore which is highly territorial, living solitary, or as a pair sometimes of year, and fights to the death if another one comes on its territory. The American one is a type of thrush that flocks and migrates, couldn't be more different. I didn't know about your wren, but ours is super shy, builds a little domed nest right in the middle of dense bushes. In winter they sometimes gather in large numbers to keep warm in places like hollow logs. Hedging and ditching was a winter job and people who never saw a wren's nest would disturb them, and thought they grew out of the ground, hence their Latin name. Troglodytes troglodytes.
You are perfectly right about attracting the right ones though, for example, great tits are fairly common here, and feed their young caterpillars, but they time their egg laying and hatching to the emergence of oak tree caterpillars and feed them exclusively. No one knows how they manage the timing, the caterpillars emerge with the new leaves and it is different every year, but the eggs have to be laid well in advance. Birds are amazing.
These boxes have a fairly large hole compared to the ones I already have, so I am expecting sparrows rather than bluetits, and they seem to be untreated, so I'll take them down and give them a coat of something late summer, and build some different sorts, but they are a quick, easy way to get started now when the birds are just looking to start building.

Buzzards are a great example of this.

The US doesn't have "buzzards".

Buzzards are a bird of prey in Europe that circle high looking for prey.

Immigrants saw vultures doing the same and called them buzzards.

Vultures aren't buzzards.

 

[ThatsMyPurseIDontKnowYou]

Made little raised bed areas for my cukes and filled them in. This will just make it easier to mow and weed eat around them this summer.