I wasn't going to plant tomatoes, squashes, peppers or beans this year due to the drought and the fact we took one week at the end of April/beginning of May to to go Mexico and I knew any starts we'd planted would die from lack of water while we were gone.
I couldn't stand it. I had to plant some veggies just because we always do. I found a couple small tomato starts at the nursery. I bought one Roma tomato plant and one red cherry tomato plant. I also discovered some pole bean starts they had. That was strange. Who gets bean starts? You buy seeds and germinate them which takes a week.
Well, finding pole bean starts inspired me. I bought a six-pack of Cherokee Wax beans which are yellow and string-less. We also bought some Blue Lake pole bean seeds and are germinating six seeds right now. We'll be doing that in two-week increments through the end of June so as to be able to have new plants to grow every two weeks to supply us with a continual crop of beans. We love beans.
Sidepocket put in a super duper new bean pole garden this year. I mean it's Sonoma County cool. While I didn't do anything as extensive, I believe I've made something that will work well. I also like to make things out of stuff I have about the place. I used some old 3/4 inch PVC pipe I had and some old rebar I had laying around to make the structure for the beans to grow up. I then tied trellis netting on the thing by hand.
Using a hacksaw, I cut the rebar into four foot lengths. I pounded them 2 feet into the ground leaving 2 feet above ground onto which I slide the PVC scaffolding of my trellis. I also had some left over trellis netting from last year. All I had to buy to complete this simple project were two 3/4ths inch PVC coupling pieces. You can see those two pieces along the top bar of my PVC scaffolding. Total price of this project was $3.12, including tax. The two rebar pieces and the entire trellis can be moved to any location with ease.
Several years ago we started planting garden plots on the small patch of grass we have out front. The only reason we have even that small bit of lawn in for the dogs to do their business. I built smallish boxed fenced structures. Two are about 6 feet by 6 feet. The other one is 4 feet by 8 feet. Why did I build them? To keep deer out, that's why.
Deer are habitual creatures. They have a daily and nightly round they trek to forage. Once your garden is on their schedule, it will be visited every day and/or night. Using a product called "Liquid Fence" keeps them off stuff they'd love to eat. Liquid Fence is organic and is really just concentrated rotten garlic and egg that you dilute and then spray on the plants you want deer to avoid. Deer hate the smell. You spray in on once a week for 3-4 weeks which "trains" them to skip your garden. After that all you need to do is spray once a month to keep deer from coming back.
Another thing deer won't do is get into a small enclosed space. By building smallish little square garden boxes, deer are simply too afraid to jump into those spaces because they feel trapped and confined. Deer only will allow themselves to be in open spaces so they can run away when they want to. The small garden boxes keeps them from eating plants below the fence line. I made these things all within one day using cheap pine wood and 1/4 inch chicken fencing material. I made little gates to be able to get inside to do what needs doing. The deer don't ever enter these spaces, though they will eat stuff that grows over the top, but Liquid Fence takes care of that problem.
The earth I grow stuff in is super duper rich. I've written about how I make my soil before. It consists of Fox Farms Ocean Forest potting soil which is totally organic and includes stuff from the forest and ocean and amazing nutrients for long feeding of plants. It's superior and is exactly what I use (then amend) to grow anything I want to be the best it can possibly be. And you can grow anything in it including flowers, fruits, veggies and medicinal plants. It's totally ready to go. I add lots of worm castings (30 pounds per 100 gallons of soil), home-made bone meal, blood meal, green earth, bat guano and powdered granite just to make it super duper duper.
The beds are dug about 10 inches deep and lined with galvanized 1/4 inch metal mesh to keep moles from digging around. We don't have much in the way of gopher problems due to the soil being hard-pan clay, but moles are another story. Moles don't eat plants or roots. They tunnel through loose soil to get at worms and grubs, but their tunneling through your garden harms plants as the roots get really messed with. They are easily dissuaded from tunneling anywhere there is wire mesh.
The PVC structure is held steady by cotton ropes as it's more than 8 feet high. this whole thing is simple and easy and ready for pole beans to grow. The part that took the longest to do was tie the trellis netting onto the PVC poles. I wanted that stuff snug.
What do you want to kibitz about tonight?
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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